Medieval art history has long emphasized the glories of the Byzantine Empire, but less known are the profound artistic contributions of Nubia, Egypt, Ethiopia, and other powerful African kingdoms whose pivotal interactions with Byzantium had an indelible impact on the medieval Mediterranean world. Bringing together more than 170 masterworks in a range of media and techniques—from mosaic, sculpture, pottery, and metalwork to luxury objects, panel paintings, and religious manuscripts—Africa and Byzantium recounts Africa’s centrality in transcontinental networks of trade and cultural exchange. With incisive scholarship and new photography of works rarely or never before seen in public, this long-overdue publication sheds new light on the staggering artistic achievements of late antique Africa. It reconsiders northern and eastern Africa’s contributions to the development of the premodern world and offers a more complete history of the region as a vibrant, multiethnic society of diverse languages and faiths that played a crucial role in the artistic, economic, and cultural life of Byzantium and beyond.

One of UNESCO's most important publishing projects in the last thirty years, the General History of Africa marks a major breakthrough in the recognition of Africa's cultural heritage. Offering an internal perspective of Africa, the eight-volume work provides a comprehensive approach to the history of ideas, civilizations, societies and institutions of African history. The volumes also discuss historical relationships among Africans as well as multilateral interactions with other cultures and continents.

This book comprises three closely related studies, namely 'The Nature of Trade in the Roman Mediterranean,c. 200 BC'AD 600'; 'Decline and Recovery: Byzantine Trade, c. 600'1150'; and 'Urban Change and Continuity in Roman and Byzantine Corinth'. In addition, a translation of the 'Rhodian Sea-Law', an important text for maritime trading history, is included as an appendix. 'From Rome to Byzantium' provides a detailed overview of trading activity in the Roman and Byzantine Mediterranean, grounded in recent archaeological research. In particular, it is argued that an element of 'free trade' played a significant role in the direction and nature of trading in Classical and Late Antiquity. It is also suggested that the so-called 'Dark Ages' of the seventh and eighth centuries saw more continuity in terms of both commercial activity and urban life than is sometimes admitted.

The only comprehensive history of this popular travel destination Beginning with Morocco’s incorporation into the Roman Empire, this book charts the country’s uneasy passage to the 21st century and reflects on the nation of citizens that is emerging from a diverse population of Arabs, Berbers, and Africans. This history of Morocco provides a glimpse of an imperial world, from which only the architectural treasures remain, and a profound insight into the economic, political, and cultural influences that will shape this country’s future.

A gripping intellectual adventure story, Sailing from Byzantium sweeps you from the deserts of Arabia to the dark forests of northern Russia, from the colorful towns of Renaissance Italy to the final moments of a millennial city under siege…. Byzantium: the successor of Greece and Rome, this magnificent empire bridged the ancient and modern worlds for more than a thousand years. Without Byzantium, the works of Homer and Herodotus, Plato and Aristotle, Sophocles and Aeschylus, would never have survived. Yet very few of us have any idea of the enormous debt we owe them. The story of Byzantium is a real-life adventure of electrifying ideas, high drama, colorful characters, and inspiring feats of daring. In Sailing from Byzantium, Colin Wells tells of the missionaries, mystics, philosophers, and artists who against great odds and often at peril of their own lives spread Greek ideas to the Italians, the Arabs, and the Slavs. Their heroic efforts inspired the Renaissance, the golden age of Islamic learning, and Russian Orthodox Christianity, which came complete with a new alphabet, architecture, and one of the world’s greatest artistic traditions. The story’s central reference point is an arcane squabble called the Hesychast controversy that pitted humanist scholars led by the brilliant, acerbic intellectual Barlaam against the powerful monks of Mount Athos led by the stern Gregory Palamas, who denounced “pagan” rationalism in favor of Christian mysticism. Within a few decades, the light of Byzantium would be extinguished forever by the invading Turks, but not before the humanists found a safe haven for Greek literature. The controversy of rationalism versus faith would continue to be argued by some of history’s greatest minds. Fast-paced, compulsively readable, and filled with fascinating insights, Sailing from Byzantium is one of the great historical dramas–the gripping story of how the flame of civilization was saved and passed on.

Includes section "Comptes rendus".

Byzantine Jews: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures is the collective product of a three year research group convened under the auspices of Scholion: Interdisciplinary Research Center in Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The volume provides both a survey and an analysis of the social and cultural history of Byzantine Jewry from its inception until the fifteenth century, within the wider context of the Byzantine world.

This volume is the first to focus solely on how specific individuals and groups in Byzantium and its borderlands were defined and distinguished from other individuals and groups from the mid-fourth to the close of the fifteenth century. It gathers chapters from both established and emerging scholars from a wide range of disciplines across history, art, archaeology, and religion to provide an accurate representation of the state of the field both now and in its immediate future. The handbook is divided into four subtopics that examine concepts of group and specific individual identity which have been chosen to provide methodologically sophisticated and multidisciplinary perspectives on specific categories of group and individual identity. The topics are Imperial Identities; Romanitas in the Late Antique Mediterranean; Macro and Micro Identities: Religious, Regional, and Ethnic Identities, and Internal Others; and Gendered Identities: Literature, Memory, and Self in Early and Middle Byzantium. While no single volume could ever provide a comprehensive vision of identities on the vast variety of peoples within Byzantium over nearly a millennium of its history, this handbook represents a milestone in offering a survey of the vibrant surge of scholarship examining the numerous and oft-times fluctuating codes of identity that shaped and transformed Byzantium and its neighbours during the empire’s long life.

A student and general reader guide to the middle period, or the most imperial era, of Byzantium's history. Jenkins strives to provide a connected account of what actually went on in the East Roman Empire.

A textbook providing the only comprehensive and up-to-date account of African history between 500 B.C. and 1400 A.D. Also useful to students of archaeology.