COLLÈGE DE FRANCE – CNRS

CENTRE DE RECHERCHE D’HISTOIRE

ET CIVILISATION DE BYZANCE

TRAVAUX ET MÉMOIRES
26

Mélanges
James Howard-Johnston

edited by
Phil Booth & Mary Whitby

Association des Amis du Centre d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance

52, rue du Cardinal-Lemoine – 75005 Paris
2022
ORIENT ET MÉDITERRANÉE (UMR 8167) / MONDE BYZANTIN
COLLÈGE DE FRANCE / INSTITUT D’ÉTUDES BYZANTINES

TRAVAUX ET MÉMOIRES
– publication annuelle paraissant en un ou deux fascicules –
Fondés par Paul Lemerle
Continués par Gilbert Dagron
Dirigés par Constantin Zuckerman

Comité de rédaction :
Jean-Claude Cheynet, Vincent Déroche,
Denis Feissel, Bernard Flusin

Comité scientifique :
Wolfram Brandes (Francfort) Peter Schreiner (Cologne – Munich)
Jean-Luc Fournet (Paris) Werner Seibt (Vienne)
Marlia Mango (Oxford) Jean-Pierre Sodini (Paris)
Brigitte Mondrain (Paris)

Secrétariat de rédaction, relecture et composition :

Emmanuelle Capet

©Association des Amis du Centre d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance – 2022

ISBN 978-2-916716-87-9
ISSN 0577-1471
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of contributors .................................................................................................. ix

Preface ................................................................................................................... xiii
Abbreviations .......................................................................................................... xv
Main publications of James Howard-Johnston ..................................................... xvii

Mark Whittow, Byzantium and the “feudal revolution” ........................................... 1

Peter Heather, Mark and James (& me…): a memoir of Mark Whittow ................ 15

Late antiquity 21

Walter Beers, A Miaphysite subalternity? John of Ephesus, the Jafnids,

and the villages of the Ḥawrān ............................................................................ 23
Geoffrey Greatrex, Procopius, the Nika riot, and the composition
of the Persian Wars ............................................................................................... 45
Tim Greenwood, Adontz, Armenia and Iran in late antiquity ............................... 59
Fiona K. Haarer, Zeno’s frontier policy: tactics and diplomacy .............................. 83
Peter Heather, Malchus of Philadelphia & a Byzantine diplomatic archive ........... 105
Neil McLynn, Ammianus Marcellinus and the making of Persian strategy ............ 125
Charles F. Pazdernik, Chosroes as spectator in Procopius’ Wars ............................ 143
Alexander Sarantis, Two worlds in crisis: warfare, political change, and economic
recession in Anatolia and the Balkans, ca. 565–750 ........................................... 163
Josef Wiesehöfer, Alfred von Gutschmid, Theodor Nöldeke
and the beginnings of the Sasanian Empire ....................................................... 191
Miranda E. Williams, East Roman client management during the reign
of Justinian I: a comparison of strategies on the Eastern and African frontiers ... 209

Mélanges James Howard-Johnston, ed. by Phil Booth & Mary Whitby

(Travaux & mémoires 26), Paris 2022, pp. V–VII.
VI TABLE OF CONTENTS

The last great war and the rise of Islam 231

Phil Booth, Egypt under the Sasanians (619–29):

“stability, continuity, and tolerance”? ................................................................. 233
Sebastian Brock, The emperor Maurice through East Syriac eyes ......................... 259
Rika Gyselen, La géographie administrative de l’Empire sassanide :
ce que le Šahrestānīha-ye Ērānšahr ne dit pas ...................................................... 271
Marek Jankowiak, P.Lond. I 113.10, the exile of Patriarch Kyros of Alexandria,
and the Arab conquest of Egypt ........................................................................ 287
Andrew Marsham, Bede, Ibn Isḥāq, and the idols: narratives of conversion
at late antique edges .......................................................................................... 315
Arietta Papaconstantinou, Witnessing a world crisis from below:
the view from rural Egypt .................................................................................. 341
Vivien Prigent, L’usurpation du patrice « Flavius Grégoire » : rana in fabula ? ...... 353
Christian C. Sahner, The Passion of the Sixty martyrs of Jerusalem (d. ca. 724)
[BHG 1217]: study and translation ................................................................... 385
Peter Sarris, At the origins of the “persecuting society”? Defining the “orthodox
republic” in the age of Justinian ......................................................................... 407
Eberhard W. Sauer, Jebrael Nokandeh, Hamid Omrani Rekavandi,
Roger Ainslie, Mohammad Arman Ershadi & Davit Naskidashvili,
Qalʿeh Kharabeh in northern Iran: a Sasanian military tent city
for ten thousand mounted soldiers? ................................................................... 423
David G. K. Taylor, The Syriac version of Strategios’ History of the Persian
conquest of Jerusalem .......................................................................................... 445
Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina, “The coals which were his guardians…”:
the hermeneutics of Heraclius’ Persian campaign and a faint trace
of the “last great war” in Zoroastrian literature .................................................. 467
Bryan Ward-Perkins, From soldier martyr to warrior saint:
the evidence to ad 700 ...................................................................................... 491
Mary Whitby, George of Pisidia’s poem On the Avar War (Bellum avaricum):
introduction and translation .............................................................................. 517
Michael Whitby, The year 629 and the Chronicon paschale ................................... 545
Andrew Wilson, A series of unfortunate events: the end of classical urbanism
in southwestern Asia Minor in the early seventh century ad .............................. 565
Philip Wood, New histories of a time of conflict: the seventh century
in the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian ............................................................... 595
 TABLE OF CONTENTS VII

Middle Byzantium and beyond 615

Jean-Claude Cheynet, Les étrangers (Bulgares, Arméniens, Francs), ciment

de l’aristocratie micrasiatique au xie siècle ? ........................................................ 617
Jeffrey Michael Featherstone & Juan Signes Codoñer, Tales from the Palace?
Ten episodes in the Ps-Symeon and their possible connexion with
Basil Lecapenus and the historiographical atelier of Constantine VII ................. 633
Peter Frankopan, Kaiserkritik in 12th-century Byzantium: understanding the
significance of the Epitome historiôn of John Zonaras ......................................... 653
Mirela Ivanova, Seeing like a church: the politics of Theophylact of Ohrid’s
Fifteen martyrs of Tiberioupolis ........................................................................... 675
Rosemary Morris, From promulgation to practice: the evidence for the application
of tenth-century legislation in the Athonite archives .......................................... 695
Jonathan Shepard, Missions, emissions and empire: the curious case of Cherson .. 711
Constantin Zuckerman, The eleventh century in De administrando imperio ......... 743
Edward Zychowicz-Coghill, The Byzantinist of Isfahan: Ḥamza ibn al-Ḥasan
on Greek and Roman history ............................................................................ 759

Afterword 777

Catherine Holmes, James: an appreciation ............................................................ 777

Abstracts/Résumés en anglais ................................................................................. 781