The formation and evolution of the Image of the Turks in Byzantine historiography

Abstract

This study explores the representation of the Turks in middle and late Byzantine historiography. It features a corpus covering the 11th to the 15th centuries, comprising the works of Attaleiates, Skylitzes, Anna Komnene, Kinnamos, Niketas Khoniates, Akropolites, Pakhymeres, Gregoras, Kantakouzenos, Palamas, Doukas, Khalkokondyles, Kritoboulos, and Sphrantzes. The Turkic peoples were known to the Byzantines from Late Antiquity. However, in the 11th century, both at their eastern and northern frontiers, the Byzantines encountered a rapid expansion of the Turkic populations. This new encounter made the Turkic peoples an indispensable object within Byzantine historiography. The representation of the Turkic peoples in Byzantine historiography bears both the remnants of the tradition of mimesis, in which the reuse of ancient ethnonyms, models, and, topoi was an indispensable condition for a respectable literary work, as well as vivid reflections based on the recent encounter of the Byzantines with the Turks. The image of the “barbarian” was already present in Antiquity, in various forms, employed for several foreign populations by the authors of the Greco-Roman world. In the representation of the “barbarians”, different ethnonyms such as “Persian”, “Skythian” or “Hun” referred to the varying cultural memory of the Byzantine authors. These authors left a rich corpus on the different Turkic states, their rulers, customs, warfare, and the different aspects of the lifestyle of the Turkic peoples. This dissertation investigates the formation and evolution of the representation of the Turkic peoples using this material.