Byzantium and the Emergence of Muslim-Turkish Anatolia, ca. 1040-1130

This book proposes a new interpretation of the transformation from Byzantine to Muslim-Turkish Anatolia. With the waning influence of Constantinople and Cairo, in Anatolia and the Muslim heartlands, local elites and regional powers came to the fore as holders of political authority and rivals in endless power struggles. Turkish warrior groups quickly assumed a leading role in this process because of their intrusion into pre-existing social networks and their successful exploitation of administrative tools and local resources. There was no Byzantine decline nor Turkish triumph but, rather, the driving force of change was the successful interaction between these two spheres.

Alexander Daniel Beihammer received his PhD from the University of Vienna and is a member of the Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung. From 2001 to 2015 he taught at the University of Cyprus and is currently Associate Professor of Byzantine History at the University of Notre Dame. He has published widely on Byzantine official documents, diplomacy, and cross-cultural communication between Byzantium and the Muslim world, as well as on Byzantine-Latin contacts and mutual perception in the crusader states and the Eastern Mediterranean.