ByzRev 06.2024.

011
doi: 10.17879/byzrev-2024-5453

Nikolas Bakirtzis – Luca Zavagno (eds), The Routledge Handbook

of the Byzantine City. From Justinian to Mehmet II (ca. 500 – ca. 1500).
London: Routledge 2024. 508 pp., 115 figs. – ISBN: 978-0-367-19679-0

• Philipp Niewöhner, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

([email protected])

‘The Byzantine city’ in the title of this new book comes as a bombshell
blowing away half a century of archaeological research that questioned just
this, whether anything like ‘the Byzantine city’ ever existed. Earlier, pre-
archaeological scholarship on ‘the Byzantine city’ by historians such as Di-
etrich Claude, Clive Foss, and Wolfram Brandes was mostly
based on textual sources. Later, archaeologists came to question the ear-
lier, historical scenarios and started to describe various different Byzantine
cities: old or new, with or without ancient buildings, fortified or not, with
or without bishops, and with very different developments, depending on
where in the empire they were located. Michael J. Decker addresses
this issue in his thoughtful contribution on ‘Methodologies for Byzantine
Urban Studies’ (pp. 73–90). Differences between regions and time periods
seemed so big that most recent studies have limited themselves regionally
and chronologically, for example to Asia Minor before the arrival of the
Turks or to Greece after that of the Slavs: the former was characterised by
ruralisation, the latter by urban prosperity.
The editors of the collected volume intend to break away from such par-
tial approaches. Thanks to their expertise in the settlement archaeology of
Byzantine Greece and Asia Minor, they would seem well placed to over-
come the regional divide, and they have recruited as contributors special-
ists for various other aspects of Byzantium and beyond, including Italy and
the Near East, history and philology, art and architecture, as well as the
Ottoman empire and Italian merchant republics. The book thus aims ‘to
avoid a rather traditional taxonomical dissection of the urban phenomenon
along clear-cut political, economic, administrative, and military interpre-
tative lines’ (p. 2). It ‘envisage[s] a full incorporation of these within di-
achronic and interdisciplinary frameworks that address both the imaginary
and the perceived, the ideal and the pragmatic, the monumental and the
socio-cultural flows of life as they characterised the Byzantine urban expe-
rience’ (p. 3).

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However, the scope and breadth of all this, which – truth be told – is prob-
ably beyond a single volume and certainly beyond a single reviewer, also
hinders the inclusion of aspects that have lately become important for the
understanding of Byzantine urbanism: the rural hinterland, urban (and ru-
ral) density, and the natural environment.1 The result of such exclusion in
conjunction with the focus on a single ‘urban phenomenon’ and ‘experi-
ence’ becomes apparent in Ufuk Serin’s otherwise exemplarily metic-
ulous and well-researched contribution on ‘The Byzantine “City” in Asia
Minor’ (pp. 139–171): in the context of the volume in hand, Serin cannot
but misrepresent as general urban prosperity what appear to be exceptional
circumstances at Antalya and Trabzon (pp. 156–159). Serin thus misses
out on widespread urban decline and abandonment that becomes apparent
most everywhere else in middle Byzantine Asia Minor, if measured against
concurrent rural prosperity.2
In contrast, the summary of Nikolas Bakirtzis’ chapter on ‘Fortifica-
tions and the Making of the Byzantine City’ (pp. 272–289) would seem to
apply mainly to Greece, where Byzantine civilisation required the bulwark
of urban defences in order to survive the Slavic invasion of the rural hinter-
land: ‘Defensive enclosures secured continuity and served a critical role in
the adaptive resilience of Byzantine societies. Separated from the country-
side behind defensive enclosures, cities’ organization and layout mirrored
their role as administrative centres and hubs of religious, social, and eco-
nomic life’ (p. 283). In middle Byzantine Asia Minor, cities like Miletus
were simply abandoned once their fortifications were no longer needed for
defence against the Arabs (see below). However, Asia Minor appears to
be less of an issue for Bakirtzis in any case, to judge by his take on
Ankara (pp. 282–283, fig. 12.8), for which he refers to Foss, ‘Byzantine
Ankara’ (n. 61 on p. 289), ignoring copious more recent bibliography that
may be found in Serin’s chapter (pp. 154–155, fig. 7.6 with n. 146–153
1. E.g. Adam Izdebski, Ein vormoderner Staat als sozioökologisches System.
Das oströmische Reich 300–1300 n. Chr. (Forschungen zur Geschichte und Kultur
des östlichen Mitteleuropa 59). Dresden 2022.
2. Hugh G. Jeffery, Middle Byzantine Aphrodisias. The Episcopal Village,
AD 700–1200 (Aphrodisias 12). Wiesbaden 2022; Jesko Fildhuth, Pergamon.
In: Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst. Vol. VII / fasc. 55. Stuttgart 2023, pp.
1010–1043; Philipp Niewöhner, Not a Consumption Crisis. Diversity in Marble
Carving, Ruralisation, and the Collapse of Urban Demand in Middle Byzantine
Asia Minor. In: Joanita Vroom (ed.), Feeding the Byzantine City. The Archae-
ology of Consumption in the Eastern Mediterranean (ca. 500–1500) (Medieval and
Post-Medieval Mediterranean Archaeology Series 5). Turnhout 2023, pp. 171–194.

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on p. 169) and fundamentally changes the understanding of that city and its
development.
An additional problem with Bakirtzis’ reference is finding the key to the
bibliographic abbreviation, because none are listed anywhere in the vol-
ume, and each chapter applies its own, different rules. In this case, the best
match may be found towards the end of Bakirtzis’ long n. 14 (p. 287):
‘Foss, ‘Late Antique and Byzantine Ankara’ (DOP 31, 1977, pp. 27–87)’;
but as Foss has dealt more often and more recently with Byzantine Ankara,
a certain uneasiness remains. The matter gets worse and approaches the
point of hopelessness in other chapters that employ different abbreviations
and only such, no full bibliographic references at all, e.g. chapter 15. How
is the reader to know what Crow, ‘Walls’ is referring to (n. 1 on p. 349),
considering how much Jim (?) Crow has published on various Byzan-
tine walls?
Related issues abound and include the figure captions, for example chapter
15, p. 339, fig. 15.4, where the caption reads: ‘A nineteenth-century by
Sebah and Joaillier and comes from the author’s archive’. Fortunately, the
image itself is inscribed ‘N. 8. Brousse – Vue panoramique du fauburg de
Tchékirgué. Sébah and Joaillier 1894’, indicating that the photograph be-
longed to a series or album, as was fashionable at the time,3 that it was taken
in 1894, and that it shows Çekirge, then a suburb, today a quarter of Bursa
in western Asia Minor. Such carelessness may be ignored as trivial, where
results are uncontroversial, e.g. Maria Cristina Carile’s chapter on
‘Monumentality and the Byzantine City’ (pp. 290–310) that comes to the
conclusion that ‘not only did the Byzantines have a sense of monumental-
ity and felt it, but built cities were also indeed monumental and continue to
be still today’ (p. 304), or Elisabetta Georgi’s chapter on ‘Water and
the Byzantine City’ (pp. 311–333), which characterises Byzantine water
management as relatively more utilitarian in comparison to the preceding
Roman period.
Some instances of negligence are potentially more serious, for example
chapter 18, p. 393, fig. 18.1 with note 28 on p. 404. The figure illustrates
the Trier Ivory, and the caption indicates the ‘fourth century’, but the bibli-
ographical references are a quarter century out of date, ignoring numerous
more recent publications and a likely eighth-century date.4 Or chapter 21,
3. Cf. for example Martina Baleva (ed.), Von Basel nach Bursa und zurück.
Die Geschichte eines Fotoalbums von Sébah & Joaillier. Cologne 2017.
4. Most recently Anthony Cutler – Philipp Niewöhner, Towards a His-

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p. 452, that gives ‘St Benoît built in 1427’ as an example for ‘Genoese
Pera’, when that church was in fact built a century or so earlier as a dis-
tinctly Byzantine monument for a Greek Orthodox community outside the
Genoese possessions.
The case of Bursa is yet more intricate. Much Ottoman building activity has
left tantalizingly vague traces of earlier, ancient and Byzantine buildings
that Suna Çağaptay evaluates in her contribution on ‘Byzantine Prousa
to Ottoman Bursa’ (pp. 334–351), ‘discuss[ing] how the early Ottoman city
of Bursa grew out of the late Byzantine Prousa, which had itself grown out
of classical Prousa’ (p. 334). Çağaptay argues for urban continuity and
compares with the better attested case of Miletus/Palatia/Balat further south
in western Asia Minor (pp. 346–347 fig. 15.10), but this is misleading.
Early Byzantine Miletus was abandoned and completely deserted during
the middle Byzantine period, late Byzantine Palatia was a novel founda-
tion under a new name on the Theatre Hill, separate of what used to be
early Byzantine Miletus (see Serin’s chapter, p. 151), and Turkish Balat
was yet again newly established outside its late Byzantine predecessor and
unrelated to early Byzantine Miletus. If anything, Miletus/Palatia/Balat is
a case study of discontinuity and as such poses the question whether Bursa
or any other city may have undergone similar disruption.
Other readers will no doubt have queries of their own and should also con-
sult the volume’s digital edition in full colour. The printed book is limited
to on-demand quality, with a discoloured cover image and fuzzy black-
and-white reproductions throughout. The digital version is available for
download only via Bookshelf, an application that must be installed first
and serves to prevent file-sharing, restricts printing to no more than two
pages at a time, disallows copy-and-paste, and has a limited search option,
thus combining the disadvantages of print and digital publishing.
Even so, a steadfast reader will find herself unexpectedly rewarded by con-
tributions that do not concern themselves with handbook-style generalisa-
tions as to ‘the Byzantine City’, but present and discuss recent and novel
research as well as single sites or monuments. Andrei Gandila extrap-
tory of Byzantine Ivory Carving from the Late Sixth to the Late Ninth Century.
In: Brigitte Pitarakis et al. (eds), Mélanges Catherine Jolivet-Lévy (Travaux
et Mémoires 20). Paris 2016, pp. 89–107, at 93–98; Paroma Chatterjee, Icon-
oclasm’s Legacy. Interpreting the Trier Ivory. Art Bulletin 100/3 (2018) pp.
28–47; Philipp Niewöhner, The Significance of the Cross before, during, and
after Iconoclasm. Early Christian Aniconism in Constantinople and Asia Minor.
Dumbarton Oaks Papers 74 (2020) pp. 185–242, at 224–227.

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olates fascinating insights from coin finds in cities all around the Black Sea
(pp. 107–138), Nikolaos Karydis suggests that Sts Sergius and Bac-
chus at Constantinople may originally not have been domed, but timber-
roofed (pp. 247–271), Matthew Harpster and Michael Jones bring
the Amalfi Coast into play (pp. 352–367), Athansios Koutoupas paints
a vivid picture of late antique to Arab Alexandria (pp. 368–383), and Joanita
Vroom provides enlightening information on ‘Commercial Activities and
Ceramic Finds at Constantinople (ca. 500–1000)’ (pp. 427–450). These
and numerous other chapters, 21 in total, add up to great variety, and if
this is accepted as a forte of Byzantine urbanism and scholarship, the vol-
ume will make its mark not despite, but because it fails to describe ‘the
Byzantine City’ as a single ‘urban phenomenon’ and ‘experience’.

Keywords
archaeology; settlement history; Asia Minor; Eastern Mediterranean; Italy

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