Alterum Byzantium

Series | Alterum Byzantium
Review | Byzantium and Its Neighbours
Chapter | Turkish-Islamic Customs and Rites in the Byzantine Apologetical-Polemical Literature of the Fourteenth Century

Turkish-Islamic Customs and Rites in the Byzantine Apologetical-Polemical Literature of the Fourteenth Century

A Preliminary Survey

Abstract

Adel Theodor Khoury critiqued the anti-Islamic literature of the Palaiologan era as lacking in originality, arguing that it deviated from earlier Byzantine models by incorporating Western influences. Concurrently, studies on the processes of Islamization and Turkification in Anatolia have variously emphasised episodes of coexistence and the mutual exchange of religious practices. In this paper, the Author aims to reassess Khoury’s assumptions by analysing several case studies in which the direct encounter by the Byzantines with Turkish and Islamic practices enabled Palaiologan writers to introduce novel polemical arguments – arguments that were neither rooted in earlier traditions nor derived from Western sources.


Open access

Submitted: June 14, 2024 | Accepted: Aug. 27, 2024 | Published Forthcoming | Language: en

Keywords Byzantine anti-islamic literaturePalaeologan literaturePolemical literatureLate ByzantiumTurkish customsOttoman studies