Medieval Islamic Art and the Byzantine Transition

Introduction: Rethinking the Byzantine–Islamic Break

The Islamic conquest, which spread with unprecedented speed through the Middle East and Near East, through Iberia, and as a major cultural influence into Western Europe, is often seen as a sharp point of departure from the Eastern Roman power that had ruled these regions prior. Steeped heavily in Christian ideology and iconography, with its seat of power in Constantinople (in modern-day Turkey), the Byzantine Empire cast a dominant impression on pre-Muslim Arab civilizations. The apparent immediacy with which history records this empire being replaced by Islamic dominance may therefore not be fully accurate — or at least, it may lack the nuance needed to explain the clear and formative impact that centuries of Byzantine rule would bear on the suddenly emergent Islamic world.

Though a pronounced break is often imagined between Byzantine rule over the Middle East and the Islamic push back through Europe, the art and architecture that remain for us to consider suggest that this break was not as clean as history implies. Research connects these consecutive eras through the countless artifacts that point to continuity between Byzantine and Islamic rulers. Still, as Grabar (1964) warns, we are left only to speculate about what occurred during the transition — what cultural features were destroyed and what was adopted. On this point, Grabar "identifies a crucial moment in the political and cultural contacts between Byzantium and the Arabs, when the buffer world of pre-Islamic Arabs, who basked at a distance in the glow of high Byzantine culture, was about to become the Islamic Empire, the strongest power of the Near East and the Mediterranean since the days of ancient Rome." (p. 69)

The Rapid Emergence of Islam and Its Cultural Inheritance

The text by Grabar offers a primary insight for this discussion: the rule of the Byzantine Christians, which spread throughout the known world, had cast an influence over Arab civilizations that far surpassed any of the local or tribal powers that generally defined pre-Muslim Arab life. Many of the cultural features of the Byzantine Empire would therefore serve as a natural model for the emerging Islamic power. Ettinghausen et al. (2003) describe this as a phenomenon connected to the broader rapidity of Islam's rise. They compare the swift emergence and expansion of the Islamic world to the far more gradual and organic spread of the Christian ideologies that eventually proliferated through Byzantium, noting that in the 7th and 8th centuries, the prophetic visions of Mohammed produced a sudden and unifying ripple through an already self-contained Arab world. (Ettinghausen et al., p. 17)

Ettinghausen et al. explain that one reason for the widely apparent Byzantine influence on Islamic art and architecture was the relative spontaneity of the Islamic movement as a whole. They report that "Islamic art did not slowly evolve from the meeting of a new faith and of a new state with whatever older traditions prevailed in the areas in which the state ruled; it came forth as suddenly as the faith and the state, for, whatever influences may have been at work in the building and the decoration of early Islamic monuments, their characteristic is that they were built for Muslims, to serve purposes which did not exist in quite the same way before Islam." (Ettinghausen et al., p. 17)

Islamic Capitals and the Architecture of Expansion

This underscores what broader research identifies as an almost simultaneous emergence of the new capitals of the Islamic world. This is the primary focus of Ismail (1968), which identifies the seven major cities of Basra, Kufa, Fustat, Ramla, Wasit, Baghdad, and Samarra as the collective capitals of the emergent Islamic empire. (p. 1) Each of these cities, Ismail indicates, was established on the edge of an expansive desert as a garrison for crusading Arab armies. The Ismail text thus reinforces a simultaneity of emergence that would precipitate the co-opting of already existent modes of expression. As Ismail explains, "emerging almost at the same time (save for Ramla) and marking at the respective moments of their emergence historical landmarks in the rapid expansion of the Islamic empire in its first stages of growth, these five cities were populated on the whole by Muslim Arabs, who were to safeguard the conquests and gradually absorb rather than be absorbed by other elements. These cities were thus able to maintain that Arab-Islamic tradition which, challenged later by the heterogeneous cultural heritage of what became the Islamic world, proved strong enough to make and keep that world Islamic, though not wholly Arabic." (p. 1)

This reveals two key features of the artifacts of the early Islamic Empire. First, they did not emerge as markers of an already-formed Islamic identity, as no such identity yet existed. Instead, they developed to serve practical purposes: providing Islamic seats of rule, creating military fortitude in protection of newly established governance, and furnishing places of community gathering and worship. (Ettinghausen et al., p. 18) Second, what we now perceive as inherently Arab architecture is in fact a hybrid created when these purposes converged with Roman-Byzantine architectural conventions. The Arab conquest not only borrowed heavily from Byzantine characteristics but, over time, the Islamic identity that formulated over the following centuries would supplant the impression made by the Byzantine Empire. This reality is imparted as much by the powerful sway of Islamic faith in this region as by the architectural remains of Byzantine influence, most evident in the structures erected to serve Islamic purposes.

Conclusion: Culture, Hegemony, and Architectural Legacy

Herein rests the broader challenge of this discussion: we are left to assess the conditions defining a transition period that may have truly unfolded over several centuries. From the integration of Byzantine architectural values into the Arab landscape to the revelations that forged an inseparable link between Islamic faith and Arab culture, pieces of cultural experience were gathered to formulate a new and self-perpetuating identity. The palaces, garrisons, and mosques that remain — and indeed those constructed today — imply a pointedly Islamic symbolism. Yet the findings presented here suggest that this symbolism was not conceived with the same immediacy as the visions of the Prophet Mohammed. Instead, the urgency of Mohammed's prophecies made it necessary for the burgeoning Islamic movement to adopt the forms of the existing order and mold them to serve its own purposes.

The lasting connection between these forms and the Islamic identity is sufficient evidence that the effort succeeded dramatically. Moreover, the evolution of Islamic architecture in the succeeding centuries suggests that Byzantine innovations served largely as a jumping-off point for a culture with its own profound importance to the development of world civilization. In both the transition between the two empires and in the Islamic Empire's subsequent effort to forge its own legacy, we can observe the reciprocity between culture, hegemony, geography, and architecture.

Works Cited

Ettinghausen, R., Grabar, O., & Jenkins-Madina, M. (2003). Islamic Art and Architecture 650–1250. Yale University Press.

Golombek, L. (1988). The Draped Universe of Islam. Colloquium in Memory of Richard Ettinghausen: New York University.

Grabar, O. (1964). Islamic art and Byzantium. Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 18, 67–88.

Ismail, O.S.A. (1968). The founding of a new capital: Samarra. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 31(1), 1–13.