Sidered Theodora a sorceress. In fact, she was very much her husband's partner in running the empire and showed considerable courage early in their reign when rioters burned much of Constantinople and threatened to depose them. Theodora refused to leave the city, declaring that she would rather die wearing the imp erial purple (a color reserved for the clothing of the emperor and his family) than live in exile. Theodora and Justinian were able to quell the riots, and continued to rule.
Justinian decided to rebuild Constantinople on a grand scale. The most memorable monument was the Hagia Sophia, a great domed church that still stands today. It was once lined with mosaics of semi-precious stones and gold that shimmered in candlehght or filtered sunlight. The dome had a series of windows around its base so that in bright sunlight it appeared to be floating. One of the favorite ways to impress visiting barbarians was to take them to a religious service in the church. On one occasion a child was suspended from the dome to play the part of an angel and fill the dome with heavenly singing. Justinian and Theodora also built churches in Ravenna (St. Vitale) and Venice (St. Mark’s).
Another ofjustinian’s cultural achievements was the codification of Roman law in the CorpusJuris Civilis. The Roman laws were a jumble of old practices and decrees of Roman emperors that had governed commercial transactions, criminal offenses, and the relationship of the emperor to the people. Justinian’s jurists worked on eliminating duplications and inconsistencies to produce a unified code of laws, the Codex Justinianus. He also had them compile a summary of the main legal principles in the Institutes.
In the 12th century, the emperor’s compilation of laws found its way back to the west, where it had considerable influence on western legal thinking. It also played a large role in the establishment of universities and legal practices. Much of modem commercial law and legal thought about the relationship of rulers to the mled originated in the Roman law pre-
Served in the Codex. It suggested that emperors were subject to the law just as the people were and that the power of emperors derived from the people. These ideas reflected the older Roman tradition, butjustinian himself was more of an eastern despot, inclined to take law and governance into his own hands.
The reign of Justinian marked a transition for the Roman Empire. His government was oriental in style, that is, power was concentrated in the office of the emperor and his subjects hadhttle access to him. Those Justinian did see had to prostrate before him while he sat wearing a multilayered diadem instead of the traditional crown oflaurel leaves. Butjustinian was also the last of the Latin-speaking emperors. Greek language and culture had become so predominant that even though the people continued to refer to themselves as Romans, to westerners they were “the Greeks.”
Justinian and Theodora envisioned the reconquest of the west, but their wars proved more devastating than successful. The expense of these campaigns, along with the couple’s elaborate building projects, drained the treasury. Further religious conflicts over whether Christ was divine or human also left many people disaffected. Some argued that Christ was entirely divine (these adherents were called monophy-sites, meaning one purely spiritual body), while others held that he was enhrely human. The compromise position maintained that he was both perfectly divine and perfectly human.
Because of threats from the east, the reconquest of the west proved impossible.
The Persians had managed to capture a Byzantine emperor, forcing him to serve the Persian emperor on bended knee. When he died in this humiliating service, he was stuffed and hung from the roof of the palace. After defeating the Persians in 641, the Byzantines finally were able to give the unfortunate emperor a Christian burial.
The interior of Hagia Sophia, commissioned by Justinian and Theodora, was originally covered with mosaics that shimmered with gold in the sunlight. The massive windowed dome seemed to Jloat in golden light. When the Turks conquered Constantinople, they painted over the Christian mosaics in accordance with Islamic beliefs.
Muhammad (right) leads a group of his predecessors including Abraham, Moses, and Jesus in prayer. The Islamic religion considers Muhammad to be the last of God’s prophets. This Persian manuscript shows that there were exceptions to the rule of not representing humans in pictures.
The long and draining wars left both empires vulnerable to yet another set ofinvaders, the Arabs.
The Arabian peninsula lay outside the domination of the Roman Empire, but through trade and caravan routes its merchants had contact with the Byzantine and Persian empires. The peoples of the area were polytheists (worshipers of many gods) and had no political unity. However, the peninsular Arabs all recognized the city of Mecca as a religious center. It was in Mecca that Muhammad was born about 571. He worked as a caravan trader for a wealthy woman who became his wife. In his travels, he had contact with Jews and Christians in the towns that bordered the Byzantine Empire. In his late 30s he underwent a mystical experience and had a series of revelations, which he attributed to God. Muhammad began preaching a new faith based on strict monotheism (worship of one God). Initially, only his wife and a few relatives converted, but his radical views worried the merchants of Mecca. They believed he was discrediting the Kaaba—a special shrine in Mecca that contained many statues and symbols of their gods, including a black stone that was said to have been given to Adam on his expulsion from Paradise. To escape the merchants’ wrath, Muhammad fled to Medina; his flight is known amongMuslims as the “Hegira.” In Medina he preached and gathered a number of followers. His followers wrote down his sermons, and these notes formed the basis of the Koran. By 630 Muhammad’s following was large enough to defeat Mecca, and he made a triumphant return to the city. He removed idols from the Kaaba, but kept the black stone. In the final two years of his life, he unified the Arabs under the new religion, Islam, and created a state in which he acted as both the religious and political leader.
Muhammad regarded himself as the last of the prophets and included Moses and Jesus among his predecessors. Islam tolerated Jews and Christians as “peoples of book,” meaning the Old and New Testaments. A strict monotheist, Muhammad preached that his followers must submit to the will of Allah, the single, almighty God of the universe. The Koran provided instructions for living properly as well as religious guidance. The basic tenant of the faith was, “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.” Those who followed Islam were assured of salvation. Practice of the religion included praying five times a day, refusing to eat pork or drink wine, offering charity to the poor, making a pilgrimage to Mecca once in one’s lifetime, and perhaps fighting for the faith in a battle known as 2, jihad.
The unified Arabs spread quickly after Muhammad’s death. During the first wave of conquest, from 632 to 655, they conquered Syria, Egypt, and the Persian Empire. They continued their expansion into North Africa, where they destroyed the remnants of Vandal and Byzantine rule. The Arabs then moved into Spain and defeated the Visigothic kingdom. Finally, in 732, their drive into Europe was stopped by the Franks.
The Arabs proved remarkably able to adapt to new circumstances and to the cultures that they conquered. After their arrival at the Mediterranean Sea, they became excellent sailors. They captured Byzantine islands in the Mediterranean and threatened Constantinople from the Bospoms. The emperor’s armies fought back with Greek fire, a chemical compound similar to napalm that burned on water and set the Arab boats on fire. Only through great effort were the emperor’s soldiers able to keep Constantinople, the Balkans, and a portion of Asia Minor in Byzantine hands.
The Arabs also borrowed from the art, architecture, and intellectual achievements of the people they conquered. On capturing Baghdad, the capital of the Persian Empire, they became acquainted with the astronomical learning of the Persians, which included accurate observations of the stars.
Islamic artists perfected elaborate geometric designs for daily objects such as this baud, the walls of mosques, rugs, and clothing. The Koran forbade representations of God’s creation, including humans and animals.
The phases of the moon, and eclipses. They also found the writings of the Greek philosophers and medical experts. These manuscripts had come to Persia by a curious path. When Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman Empire, the intellectuals who remained tme to the pantheon of the gods in Athens and elsewhere left the Christian area with their books and settled in Persia. There their works were translated into Persian. Arab scholars then translated them into Arabic and added their own commentaries. These texts made their way through Spain to western Europe centuries later.
The Arabs also drew on the decorative traditions of other peoples to create their remarkable and beautiful mosques (Islamic houses of worship). Islam prohibited representations of God or his creation, humans, so Muslim artisans developed their own intricate geometrical designs for pottery, mosaics, and fabrics.
Although Muhammad created his new religion for Arabs, Islam and its culture proved very attractive to their subjectpopu-lations. Large numbers of Christians, Jews, and Persians converted, and mosques replaced some Christian churches.
By 700 the Mediterranean and northern Europe were very much changed. Rather than consisting of provinces in one large empire, northern Europe was splintered into a number of smaller, semi-tribal units mled by kings. Although nominally Christian, the people who made up these units retained many pagan practices. For instance, the names used for the days Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were derived from the names of the Germanic gods Tiu, Woden, and Thor. Sacred groves that honored these gods were referred to by Christianized names such as “Holy Wood” or “Hollywood.”
Although its land mass was much reduced, the Byzantine Empire remained powerful in the eastern Mediterranean. Constantinople was a huge city with a population ofamiUion people. Other large cities in the empire produced rich silks, glass objects, tapestries, carved ivories, and fine jewelry that were much in demand in the west. The Roman traditions were lost, and the emperors became more like eastern autocrats, with the ceremonies surrounding their persons becoming increasingly elaborate. Although they now ruled much of the former territory of Byzantium, the Arabs were unable to bring such a large territory under one ruler. Instead, parts were overseen by powerful leaders called “caliphs,” who acted as both the supreme rehgious and political leaders of their lands.
By the beginning of the eighth century, the period of expansion of different peoples—from the Anglo-Saxons in northwestern Europe to the Arabs in western Asia—was coming to an end, leaving populations coping with new cultural experiences and new neighbors. This chapter has told the story of how the wealthy and powerful experienced these vast changes. The next will examine their influence on the population as a whole, both members of the invading tribes and those they conquered.
The Koran is the religious book of Islam. “Koran” comes from the Arabic word for “recitation. ” Muhammad recited his reuelations with his followers every day first in Mecca and later in Medina. In Medina, he assembled a group of scribes to take down his words. After Muhammad’s death, several different collections of bis revelations circulated among his followers. Under the third caliph, Uthman, an official version erf the Koran was assembled. It is written in a learned Arabic, which remains the standard for all scholarly Arabic writing.
World History
