In 1599, the English organ builder Thomas Dallam prepared an instrument for voyage to the Ottoman Empire, a diplomatic gift for Sultan Mehmed III (r. 1595–1603) on behalf of the English crown. Funded by merchants of the Levant Company, the instrument was installed in Constantinople in the Sultan’s harem, the female-centered space of the Ottoman court. The negotiations for this gift were entrusted to two women who navigated the space between the Sultan and the world outside the court: the Sultana, Ṣāfiye Sultan (d. 1619), and her kira, a Jewish woman by the name of Esperanza Malchi (d. 1600). Women negotiated this musical–diplomatic relationship at a time when England was fiercely pursuing trade with the East. By centering a marginalized individual whose actions were enabled by trust and knowledge, I complicate the notion that the harem was an environment in which sexual transactions were the only economy of power.

This chapter discusses the terms in which collective exile experienced by Constantinopolitan refugees was rendered in architecture, by analyzing how Nicaea was renovated into a new exilic capital, replacing Constantinople (New Rome). Extensive fortifications were built around Nicaea, Nymphaion, Heraclea Pontica, Prousa, Smyrna, Tripolis, and Philadelphia. In analyzing their architectural form and the dedicatory inscriptions embedded in their walls and towers, I describe how Nicaea and its surrounding landscape evoked a collective exilic experience for the refugees it protected. As attested by the built environment, these experiences at times align with but also contrast with literary tropes on exile written about by the period’s chronicler, Niketas Choniates. The era of exile is commemorated in the unusual appearance of Jewish exilic leaders and prophets in several dome mosaics of newly renovated works in Constantinople.

The Introduction discusses the role of Constantinople as capital and center of the Byzantine Empire, the so-called Palaiologan Renaissance, and the historiographic consequences of both, particularly upon the study of the Laskarid dynasty during the years 1204−1261.

This chapter focuses on the newly excavated and restored palace at Nymphaion, renowned for its salutary waters and gardens, which had become a secondary imperial capital during exile, and its resemblance to the Palace of the Porphyrogennitos in Constantinople, built in the early Palaiologan period. The architectural form of a rectangular, block-shaped palace with a bath in the lowest story appeared at Nymphaion for the first time and was subsequently brought back to Constantinople and replicated by Michael VIII after 1261. Known as the Tekfur Sarayı, it contains Laskarid imperial iconography on the palace’s columns and walls, illustrating Michael VIII’s reliance on Laskarid artistic sources even after usurping the throne.

Volume I offers a broad perspective on urban culture in the ancient European world. It begins with chronological overviews which paint in broad brushstrokes a picture that serves as a frame for the thematic chapters in the rest of the volume. Positioning ancient Europe within its wider context, it touches on Asia and Africa as regions that informed and were later influenced by urban development in Europe, with particular emphasis on the Mediterranean basin. Topics range from formal characteristics (including public space), water provision, waste disposal, urban maintenance, spaces for the dead, and border spaces; to ways of thinking about, visualising, and remembering cities in antiquity; to conflict within and between cities, economics, mobility and globalisation, intersectional urban experiences, slavery, political participation, and religion.

Byzantine travel accounts written in Greek belong to a wide variety of literary genres and are contained in texts that cross such boundaries as may have existed, given that the concept of genre for the Byzantines was not coherent. The narratives falling within the orbit of Byzantine travel literature vary significantly in goals and approaches; taking the form of – or, in some cases, being incorporated in – pilgrims’ accounts, saints’ lives, memoirs, correspondence, reports of official missions, poetry, chronicles, and prose romances. However, travel writing cannot be said to have been a genre flourishing in Byzantium during the middle and the late Byzantine periods. The travellers’ accounts that came down to us were written by clergymen, male officials, and secular literati. Female-authored ones do not survive; the sole exception being the Alexiad written by Anna Comnena which includes passages describing journeys and expeditions that took place during her father’s Alexios reign.

Ottoman wars from the mid-fifteenth century through the end of the eighteenth century fundamentally changed the geopolitics of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and the Middle East. The Ottomans emerged in West Asia Minor toward the end of the thirteenth century. Known as “Turks” in contemporaneous Europe, the Ottoman ruling elite incorporated people of a wide variety of ethnic origins who considered themselves the followers and descendants of Osman (d. 1324?), the dynasty’s founder. Those loyal to the dynasty of Osman used the Turkish designation of “Osmanlı” (Turkish, “of Osman”), which over time came to be rendered in English as “Ottoman.” Within three generations after Osman’s death, the Ottomans had either conquered or subjugated into vassalage most of the preexisting polities and rival dynasties in the Balkans and Asia Minor. Timur Lenk’s victory over the Ottomans near Ankara in 1402 temporarily checked Ottoman expansion. Still, the dynasty recovered, and by 1453 Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1444–46, 1451–81) sealed the Ottomans’ status as a formidable military power by conquering Constantinople, the capital of the thousand-year-old Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire. Expansion through conquest continued well into the sixteenth century. Ottoman battlefield victories under Sultan Selim I (r. 1512–20) against the Safavids of Persia (Chaldiran in 1514) and the Mamluks of Syria and Egypt (Marj Dabiq in 1516 and Raydaniyya in 1517) and under Sultan Süleyman (r. 1520–66) against the Hungarians (Mohács in 1526) resulted in spectacular Ottoman territorial gains in eastern Anatolia, Azerbaijan, Syria, Egypt, and Hungary.

The perspective and content of this poem are best understood in light of its author’s career. The poem was likely written in late 381 or early 382, months after Gregory had returned to Cappadocia from a twenty-month stint in Constantinople. He had been sent to the imperial capital, in all likelihood, by bishops who gathered at Antioch in the autumn of 379; his action item was the establishment of a pro-Nicene community in a Homoian-dominated city. In 380, Emperor Theodosius arrived and, as the first pro-Nicene emperor in nearly two decades, he deposed the city’s Homoian bishop Demophilus, made Gregory Constantinople’s de facto bishop, and convened the Council of Constantinople in May 381. More than 150 bishops attended the council, over which Gregory briefly presided, and collectively they tackled issues both theological and practical. The success of the council, then, depended on him having a political tact and finesse that he simply did not have. After alienating allies and hardening the opposition from adversaries, Gregory resigned from both his presidency and episcopate, only to lambaste the bishops at the council after he settled back in Cappadocia.

The Life of Hypatius was likely written in the mid-fifth century by Callinicus, the second abbot of the monastery that Hypatius founded across the Bosporus Strait from Constantinople. From a literary perspective, the text is a fairly conventional example of a late antique Greek hagiography; it owes much in structure, tenor, and phrasing to the period’s most well-known hagiography, Athanasius’ Life of Antony. Based on evidence internal to the narrative, Hypatius would have lived from 366 to 446 and would have, along with two companions, set up their community some three miles south of Chalcedon around 400 in an otherwise unoccupied compound that included an apostolic church (that doubled as a martyrium), palace, and monastery built by the imperial official Rufinus. During the early years of Hypatius’ residence here, the site hosted the Synod of the Oak, an event that ultimately deposed John Chrysostom, although Hypatius was personally absent during the trial. Two of the Egyptian monks known as the Tall Brothers – Ammonius and Dioscorus – died during their stay, and their remains were deposited within the church.

While the focus of preceding chapters has been on written sources, this chapter looks at the archaeologicy of cities as evidence for underlying ideas. The old model of the disintegration of a city of straight lines into tangled suqs is hard to reconcile with the evidence. New cities continue to be built through Late Antiquity, with the model set by Constantinople. Far from indicating the grid as the ideal, it is based on Rome itself, a notably non-gridded city. Despite contrasts of terrain, Constantinople competes with old Rome wherever possible. Justinian was responsible for a series of new cities, as Procopius claims, for which we have the advantage of good archaeological studies. If there is a model for these, it is Constantinople itself. Visigothic Reccopolis follows the same pattern. Exceptional among these new cities is the Umayyad foundation of ‘Anjar, outstanding as the most mathematical grid plan since antiquity; the model seems to be in Roman forts. Finally, Charlemagne’s Aachen is examined; though a palace rather than a city, contemporary court poets celebrate it as a New Rome.

This chapter introduces readers to the main source for marriage ritual, namely the Byzantine priest’s service book known as the euchologion. A brief typology of Byzantine euchologia is given, and a discussion of the benefits and methodological limitations in the use of euchologia for the writing of cultural history.

Great changes have taken place in the approach of historians to the topic since the publication of East of Byzantium (1980). Instead of centre-periphery or top-down models they now see the relations between Byzantium and the east in terms of connectivity, networks and horizontal ties. This is connected with the spread of late antiquity as a concept and includes a great expansion in Syriac studies. Late antiquity now embraces the emergence of Islam and looks towards Eurasia; another challenge is posed by the rise of global history. But these developments, with the new focus on the fall of the western empire, raise major problems of identity for Byzantium itself, and indeed for western Europe.

Cities seem to form when state population surpasses 10,000. Over 5000 years, top city populations have remained 0.1−0.5% of world population. The square root law of city population: The largest city population tends to be hundred times the square root of state population. This law held from 3000 BCE to 1800 CE. Constantinople exemplifies it from 400 to 1800. It no longer holds, as the economic reach of major cities surpasses international borders.

Chapter 2 broadens the contextual setting of the miracle cycle by examining its role in the cultural production of the period, noting that its proliferation in visual art was not an isolated phenomenon. I locate the expanded imagery in its contemporary cultural milieu and literary production, looking especially at texts in the domains of historiography, hagiography, and poetry, by authors associated with the court, such as George Pachymeres, Nikephoros Gregoras, Theoktistos the Stoudite, Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos, and Manuel Philes. Literary commissions dealing with miracles are closely linked to the restoration and rededication of churches and monasteries and the reactivation of the healing powers of relics and shrines, demonstrating a new interest in, and emphasis on, the miraculous.

Chapter 1 sets the critical stage for the exponential increase of the iconography of Christ’s miracles by providing the contemporary sociopolitical, historical, and religious context. I focus specifically on the results of the shift from the Unionist policy of Andronikos II’s father, Michael VIII, to the empowerment of the Orthodox Church pursued by Andronikos himself. Miracles play an intriguing role in the theological debates and justifications for the reinstatement of Orthodoxy under Andronikos. The period of religious fervor and intellectual flourishing that the emperor enabled during his long reign formed the fertile environment in which the new miracle iconography could develop.

This chapter addresses the subject of sex in Constantinople in the sixth century CE, the heart of the Eastern Roman Empire. It draws on a range of rich evidence. A fundamental starting point is provided by the writings of the contemporary historian Procopius, in particular his comments in Secret History on the life and deeds of the empress Theodora, wife of the emperor Justinian I (527–565), who was an actress before marrying her husband. In addition it draws on the legislation of the emperor Justinian, the chronicle of John Malalas, erotic epigrams of the period, and Christian ascetic literature. From these writings strong ideals of right and wrong sexual behaviour emerge, revealing both traditional Roman values and the increasing Christianisation of society. This can create the impression that sexual activity was very tightly controlled, especially prostitution, extra-marital sex, and same-sex sex. However, it is apparent that life was less clear-cut. Justinian himself recognized that desire was a powerful impulse and that people did ‘sin’. It is also evident that people could enjoy thinking about illicit sex, and engage in it enthusiastically. Ironically, overtly Chistian texts could even incite the desire they sought to neutralize.