The early Byzantine attitudes toward Islam emerge primarily from the genre of religious polemic of the eighth and ninth centuries (W. Eichner, “Die Nachrichten tiber den Islam bei den Byzantinern,” Der Islam 23 (1936) 133~2, 197-244. C. Guterbock, Der Islam im Lichte der byzantinischen Polemik (Berlin 1912). A. Abel, “La poUmique damascenienne et son influence sur les origines de Ia theologie musulmane,” L’Elaboration de /’Islam (PariS 1961) 61-85. J. Meyendorff, “Byzantine Views ofIslam,” DOPapers 18 (1964) 113-32. A.-T. Khoury, Der theologische Streit der Byzantinern mit dem Islam). Though there were very extensive religious conversions in the former Byzantine provinces of Syria, Palestine and Egypt, these largely affected the heretical Monophysite populations; the Byzantine authors do not concern themselves with the fate of these populations under Arab rule, and their actions reflect Monophysite rather than Orthodox views of Islam. The religious polemic between Islam and Byzantine Christianity arose in the lands of the Caliphate, where such Orthodox clergy as John of Damascus and Theodore Abu Qurra felt the need to defend the Christian religion against the attacks of Muslims who now held political mastery. As defence also implies attack, these theologians defended Christianity by attacking the Islamic religion. It was through these Orthodox Christians in Islamic lands that a detailed, and hostile, knowledge of Islam came into Byzantium during the ninth century in the writings ofNicetas of Byzantium. There were, from the beginning, four principal categories in this religious disputation: (1) the reasons for the historico-political situation, explained in terms of God’s will, (2) dogma, (3) ethics, and (4) cult practice. Since they remained constant in Byzantine religious polemic and carried over into the late period.

In this traditional Byzantine view imperium, divine providence, Greek culture, and therefore superiority, were the monopoly of Byzantium (O. Treitinger, Die ostromische Kaiser- und Reichsidee nach ihrer Gestaltung im hofischen Zeremoniell (Darmstadt 1956). N. H. Baynes “The Hellenistic Civilization and East Rome,” Byzantine Studies and other Essays (London 1955) 116-43. K. Lechner, Hellenen und Barbaren im Weltbild der Byzantinern. Die alten Bezeiehnungen als Ausdruck eines neuen Kulturbewussteins). During the period of the Macedonian expansion from the ninth to the eleventh century, the pretentions of such a theory were more easily fitted to reality than they were during the later period. After the appearance of the Turks the disparity between theoretical claims to superiority and the daily demonstrations of political inferiority increased greatly with the progress of time. Psychologically the Byzantine attitudes toward Islam were based upon the formal Byzantine self-image, but Islamic victory began to erode and then to cause a rearrangement of this self-image. The traditional values and attitudes which the Byzantines entertained about Islam and themselves were called into question by an unparalleled succession of catastrophes stretching over the four centuries from Manzikert to the fall of Constantinople.

The first and most important impact of Islam on Byzantine society during this later period was military conquest and political subjugation. Together they forced Byzantine literati to offer explanations for the shocking decline of Byzantium and the success of Islam. There were, fundamentally, two categories of responses, secular and religious (C. J. G. Turner, “Pages from the Byzantine Philosophy of History,” BZ 57 (1964) 346-73. H.-G. Beck, Vorsehung und Vorherbestimmung in der theologischen Literatur der Byzantinern (Orientalia Christiana Analeeta 114, Rome 1937). I. Sevcenko, “The Decline of Byzantium Seen through the Eyes of its Intellectuals,” DOPapers 15 (1961) 167-86).

In substituting the old pagan Tyche for divine providence Metochites had broken directly with the canonized interpretation of the Byzantine phenomenon. In the Miscellanea one looks in vain for Christianity’s rival, but Islam is virtually ignored. He views the Turks as though they had remained pagan tribesmen, untouched by Islam. Other writers too, both thinkers and politicians, presented Byzantine history in untraditional ways. George Gemistus Pletho represents an extreme in which the Roman component of the Byzantine Weltanschauung is replaced by a pagan Hellenism, and in the realm of causation it is pagan fate, €ip,apldvT}, which determines men’s fortunes. The Emperor Manuel Palaeologus and the historian Chalcocondyles record the victories of Islam as more the consequence of ordinary than divine factors (Turner, op.cit. (supra n.3) passim. Theod. Metoch. Mise. 792. E. Trapp, Manuel II Palaiologos. Dialoge mit einem “Perser” (Vienna 1966) 56-57). The role of Islam and its victories over the Christian Empire are thus made an integral part of the older theological concept of the Byzantine Empire. The eleventh-century historian Attaliates remarks that when the Turks first invaded the provinces inhabited by the Armenians and Syrians, the Greeks reasoned that the invasions were a punishment sent by God for the heresy of these peoples.

The Greeks changed their minds and decided it was their own sins which had caused the invasions. In a differing version Michael the Syrian declared that God had sent the Turks to punish the Greeks for their religious persecution of the Monophysite Christians of eastern Anatolia. Even many Turks seem to have considered their victories over the Greeks as having been due to the wickedness of the latter and God’s desire to punish them. The synodal documents of the late thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries which refer to the sad condition of the Christian communities within the Turkish Anatolian emirates explain these conditions in a similar fashion. There were also ideas among some that the coming of the Turks foretold the days of Anti-Christ and the end of the world (Michael Attaliates, ed. 1. Bekker (CSHistByZ, Bonn 1853) 140-41. Joannes Scylitzes. ed.1. Bekker, II (CSHistByZ, Bonn 1839) 686-87. Joh. Schiltberger, Reisen . .. in Europa, Asia lind Afrika von 1394 bis 1427, ed. K. F. Neumann (Munich 1859) 133-34. Michael the Syrian, Chronique, ed. and tr. J. B. Chabot (Paris 1899) III.l54. F. Miklosich et J. MUller, Acta ,1 diplomata graeca medii aevi sacra et pTofana (Vienna 1890) VI.61-62). One of the more interesting texts of religious causation is chapter 47 from the work Seven Times Seven Chapters of the Byzantine preacher Joseph Bryennius, entitled “Some causes of the pains which afflict us.” Bryennius, like so many moralizing preachers throughout history, bemoaned the fact that the morals of his own time were far below those of the “olden days,” and so God had punished the Christians through the Turks.

Bryennius complains of virulent irregularities in religious life. Many Christians do not know how, or simply refuse, to make the sign of the cross. Priests perform ordinations, administer communion and remit sins all for cash payment. They live with their wives before marriage, and the monks cohabit with the nuns. There is no blasphemy which Christians do not employ. “We grumble at God whenever it rains and whenever it does not rain; because he creates summer heat or cold weather; because he gives wealth to some and allows others to be poor; because the south wind rises; because a great north wind blows, and we simply appoint ourselves irreconcilable judges of God.

Doctrinally the Christian theologians charged the Muslims with believing in a God who was pure matter, devoid of intellect and spirit. They arrived at this position by a curious argument which commenced with the Muslim attack upon the Christian Trinity as a manifestation of polytheism, denying that God had as associates the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Christians reasoned that by divesting God of the Son A6yoc and of the Spirit 1TV£VJLU, the Muslims rendered God aAoyoc (without reason’) and a1TVovc (spiritless’), and so reduced Him to dead matter. Then by a mistranslation of God’s epithet, samad, which occurs in Sura 112, the Christian polemicists attempted to drive home their charge. In this Koranic passage samad actually refers to God Eternal. But inasmuch as the term also had the meaning of ‘not hollow’, or ‘solid’, the Greek translators rendered the term not as ulcfJv£Oc (eternal’) but as oA6ccpvpoc, ‘compact, solid: In short, the Greeks took the denial of the Trinity as an indication that the Muslims believed in an impotent God who was pure matter (Euthymius Zigabenus, PG 130 (1865) 1337. John Cantacuzene, PG 154, 392, 440-92. Eichner op.cit. (supra n.l) 159–61). In the twelfth century this mistranslation of samad as it proved to be a stumbling block in the conversion of Turkish Muslims to Christianity. Consequently the emperor Manuel Comnenus attempted to delete the term from the formula so that the objections of the Turks could be removed (Nicetas Choniates, ed. I. Bekker (CSHistByZ, Bonn 1835) 278-84).

These various folkloristic and prophetic elements had as a common and unifying element the belief that Byzantium would be conquered by the Muslim Turks, but that after varying periods of time the Greeks would rise, defeat the Turks and reconstitute their empire. By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the most widespread of these legend-prophesies centered about the fLCXPfLCXPWJLEVOC {JcxaA.£ac (,the petrified emperor’), the last liturgy in St Sophia, the fate of the officiating priest and altar, and finally the red or golden apple (W. Heffening, Die tUrkischen Transcriptionstexte des Bartholomaeus Georgievits aus den Jahren 1544-1548. Bin Beitrag zur historischen Grammatik des Osmanisch-tUrkischen (AbhKM 27.2, Leipzig 1942) 22-37. R. Dawkins, “The Red Apple,” ‘ApX€LOV Tov@paKtKOV Aaoypac/>tKOV Kal yAwCCtKOV 8’T]cctvpov, J7TtP.€TPOV J:T’ T6p.ov (1941) 401-06. For a different view of the ‘red apple’, E. Rossi, “La leggenda turco-bizantina del Porno Rosso,” StBiz 5 (1937) 542-53. G. Megas, “La prise de Constantinople dans la poesie et la tradition populaire,” Le cinqcentibne anniversaire de la prise de Constantinople, L’Hellenisme contemporaine (Athens 1953) 125-33. C. Mango, “The Legend of Leo the Wise,” Zbornik radova vizantoloshkog instituta 6 (1960) 59-94).

The story of the petrified empire:

The most popular element in these legends, an element which was common to the entire Greek world, was the story of the petrified empire. According to versions of this legend an angel intervened during the final battle of29 May 1453 to save the emperor Constantine Palaeologus as he was fighting the Turks. The angel took him away from the battle to an underground cavern near the Golden Gate in the western regions of Constantinople. Here he would remain in a petrified state (or asleep) until God should again send His angel. At this time God’s messenger would raise the emperor, return his sword to him, and the emperor would then issue forth with his army. He would enter Constantinople through the Golden Gate and give chase to the Turks as far as the Red Apple Tree, where he would massacre them. The legend of the final mass in St Sophia and of the fate of the great altar was similarly widespread. In this story the Turks broke into St Sophia just prior to the consecration during the divine liturgy, at which point the priest disappeared into the walls of the church. The interrupted liturgy will, however, be completed when the Greeks retake the dty, at which time the priest will emerge from his hiding place to consummate the liturgy. The altar of the church, which sank into the sea of Marmara, will also return to the church at this time.

The depth of Byzantine inimical attitudes toward Islam is most graphically manifested in the phenomenon of martyrdom and crypto-Christianity. Martyrdom in the Byzantine Church had, up to the Turkish conquest, been restricted to the period of the Roman persecutions and to the Iconoclastic era. But the process of the Turkish conquest imposed anew the conditions of both martyrdom and crypto-Christianity (Miklosich et Miiller, op.cit. (supra n.7) 1.183-84, 197-98). Such conditions were sufficiently widespread to create a whole new category of martyrs in the Greek Church, the so-called neo-martyrs. The first record of neo-martyrdom is that of the Byzantine general Gabras, who was martyred in the late eleventh century (A. PapadopouIos-Kerameus, “EVJL{3oAat Elc ~v [cTop{av Tpa7TE’oWroc,” Vizantiiskii Vremennik 12 (1906) 132-37). The thirteenth-century Nicetas the Younger was a merchant who shed his blood for the faith in the town of Nyssa (H. Delehaye, “Le martyre de Saint Nicetas Ie ]eune,” Melanges G. Schlumberger I (Paris 1924) 205-11). St George of Sofia, martyred in the Ottoman capital of Adrianople in the fifteenth century, had been a soldier in the Ottoman armies. Byzantine general, Greek merchant, Christian soldier in the sultan’s armies, all three could have escaped the fires of their tormentors had they merely accepted Islam. And in the latter two cases it was the Christians who, by their undiplomatic actions, had entered into quarrels with Turks and literally provoked their own martyrdom by damning Islam and Muhammad as a false religion and pseudoprophet respectively. Lest there by any doubt as to the frequency of martyrdom in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, one need only read such contemporary accounts as that of the sixteenth-century commercial representative of the house of Fugger, Hans Dernschwam.

However strong were these traditional attitudes toward Islam and Orthodox Christianity-and we have seen how powerful they were nevertheless Christians did apostasize to Islam. By the early sixteenth century the formerly Christian peninsula of Anatolia was about 90 per cent Muslim and the Balkan region slightly less than 20 per cent Muslim (O. Barkan, “Essai sur les donnees statistiques des registres de recensement dans J’empire ottoman aux xye et XYle siec1es,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 1 (1958) 9-36). The reasons for the preponderance of Islam in Anatolia and for the numerical superiority of Christianity in the Balkans are complex, and as they have been treated elsewhere there is no need to deal with them here. The disparity between the traditional Byzantine attitudes and the actions of religious apostates demonstrates the fact that ideologies lose their vitality and cannot survive when the institutions behind the ideologies either disappear, atrophy, or experience repeated and severe shocks. The mass conversions of Anatolians, and the large-scale Christian survivals of the Balkans are to be explained by this basic principle (S. Vryonis, “The Conditions and Cultural Significance of the Ottoman Conquest in the Balkans,” IIeme Congres international des etudes du Sud-Est Europeen (Athens 1970) 1-9). Under such stresses many lost their faith in the traditional explanations. Then there were the skeptics who simply had not time to wait for God’s angel to awaken the sleeping emperor in order to remove the Turks.

Ricoldo-Cydones grasped all this when he divided the Muslims into four groups. “Let it be known that those who follow the error of Muhammad are four groups. The first group is that which came into Islam through the sword, as it is said. Even now those recognize their error, (and) they would renounce it if they did not fear the sword. Another group is that which has been deceived by the devil and believes the lies to be true. The third group is that which does not wish to renounce the error of their ancestors but (who) say that they (will) maintain that which their fathers followed … The fourth group is that of those who because of the ease of the path, (because) of the multitude of women, and (because) of the other laxities, preferred rather the impurity” (Ricoldo-Cydones. PG 154. 1105).

A quite different view of the Turks (Scythians) emerges from the pen of Metochites. Among the immediate causes for the defeat of Byzantium and the victory of the Turks Metochites lists the superior virtue of the latter. The Scythians’, Metochites relates, were from time immemorial a great and unsubjugated race. That is not to say that some of them were never at any time under foreign rule, rather that the entire race was never under one rule. They are a numerous and bellicose people, prone to wars with foreigners and with one another. In ancient times they crossed the Danube, plundered Thrace, and passing through the Ionian regions they overran Italy, the Celtic lands, Spain, and crossed over into Libya. In more recent times these Scythians’ have enslaved most of Asia, Babylon, Assyria and lands as far as India. Metochites explains why the Scythians’ throughout their history have remained unconquered. It is because they have lived a type of life entirely different from that of the rest of mankind, a manner of existence which foreign peoples cannot assail and destroy. Though the Scythians’ live together in a society as do all other men, they live a beastly life, unpracticed in any contrivance and productivity. The Scythians’ neither dwell in cities nor safeguard their lives with walled enclosures, nor do they live in rural villages.
The more usual view of the Turks in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries among the Byzantines was that they were among the less elevated in terms of civilization. Indeed they were barbarians, and the high civilization ofIslam is somehow not related to them. Witness even the eulogistic description which Metochites presented. The nomadic life which he describes is in no way related to the complex of Islamic higher urban, economic, social and cultural institutions. To the Byzantines these barbarians appeared as cruel (xaAerroL, &:VEAE~/J,OVEC) infidels (amCTot) who persecute Christianity (XPLCTO- /Laxot). Their thirst for money (c/)tAoxp~/LaTov y~voc) is matched only by their sexual lusts for maids and youths, which lust does not abate even before the beasts of the field (Pseudo-Sphrantzes, ed. V. Grecu (Bucharest 1966) 468. Michael Ducas, ed. V. Grecu (Bucharest 1958) 59, 85, 361).