Significant gifts: Patterns of exchange in late antique, Byzantine, and early Islamic diplomacy

Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies

Volumn 38, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 79-101

  Cutler, Anthony ^a  

^a PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 67049167723     PISSN: 10829636     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/10829636-2007-020     Document Type: Review

References (101)

1. Niccolò Machiavelli, "The Prince" and "The Discourses," trans. Luigi Ricci and Eric R. P. Vincent, new ed. (New York: Random House, 1950), 3
2. Elizabeth Cropper, introduction to The Diplomacy of Art: Artistic Creation and Politics in Seicento Italy, ed. Cropper (Milano: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 2000), 11
3. Cassiodorus, Variae 1.45.2, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores antiquissimi, ed. Theodor Mommsen (Berlin, 1894), 12
4. trans. S. J. B. Barnish, The "Variae" of Magnus Aurelianus Cassiodorus Senior (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1992), 20
5. Eusebius, Vita Constantini, ed. Friedhelm Winkelmann as Über das Leben der Kaisers Konstantins, 1.8.4, rev. ed. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1992), 18-19
6. trans. Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall, Eusebius' Life of Constantine (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 70
7. Eusebius, Vita Constantini 4. 7. 2, ed. Winkelmann, 122
8. trans. Cameron and Hall, Eusebius' Life of Constantine, 156
9. The crowns and other bejeweled treasures presented to Constantine in this account find their counterparts in offerings of Muslim rulers to the Ka'ba and, as Alicia Walker has kindly pointed out to me, visualizations of their equivalents in the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. On these gifts and their representation in the form of elements of Byzantine and Persian regalia in these mosaics, see Oleg Grabar, The Formation of Islamic Art (New Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press, 1973), 58-61. Unlike Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, available in Rufinus's version dating to 402-3, a Latin translation of the Vita Constantini does not appear to have circulated before that of Henri de Valois (Valesius) published in Paris in 1659
10. Hesiod, Works and Days, lines 263-64, in Hesiod: The Homeric Hymns and Homerica, ed. Hugh G. Evelyn-White (London: W. Heinemann, 1929)
11. For the robes of state and crowns said to be demanded of Constantinople by the Khazars and other northern peoples, see De administrando imperio, 1:66-67
12. These regalia are to be refused on the ground that they were God-given and carried to Constantine I by an angel. On this view, they constitute what Annette Weiner called "inalienable possessions. " See Annette B. Weiner, Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping - While Giving (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992)
13. Eusebius, Vita Constantini 4. 7. 3, ed. Winkelmann, 122
14. trans. Cameron and Hall, Eusebius' Life of Constantine, 156
15. In what follows I treat the regions and periods specified in the title of this essay. I am less concerned with gifts in the medieval West, which have been the subject of close attention. See the fertile studies by Florin Curta, "Merovingian and Carolingian Gift Giving," Speculum 81 (2006): 671-99
16. and Arnoud-Jan A. Bijsterveld, "The Medieval Gift as Agent of Social Bonding and Political Power: A Comparative Approach," in Esther Cohen and Mayke B. de Jong, eds., Medieval Transformations: Texts, Power, and Gifts in Context (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 123-56, and the abundant literature cited and assessed therein
17. These authors, it should be noted, are primarily concerned with the "domestic" transfer of immovable goods rather than diplomatic, "international" exchange. On a Byzantine object designed expressly for the edification of a Western European princess, see Cecily J. Hilsdale, "Constructing a Byzantine Augusta: A Greek Book for a French Bride," Art Bulletin 87 (2005): 458-83
18. Kitāb al-Hadāyā wa al-Tuhaf, trans. Ghādah al-Hijjāwī al-Qaddūmī as Book of Gifts and Rarities (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1996)
19. Oleg Grabar, "The Shared Culture of Objects," in Byzantine Court Culture from 829 to 1204, ed. Henry Maguire (Washington, D. C. : Dumbarton Oaks, 1997), 115, distinguished this text from the genre known as adab (belles-lettres) on the grounds that it is "poorly composed and makes little effort at literary effects in spite of several quotations from poetry. "
20. See, most notably, Natalie Z. Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), where, although international relations are not her concern, the role of gifts in the internal diplomacy of kings is treated (esp. 85-97)
21. Reviewing this book, Keith Thomas in the New York Review of Books 47, no. 20 (Dec. 21, 2000): 69-72, pointed to the "wholly alien" (72) nature of the practices of "archaic" societies as presented by Mauss
22. The most trenchant, but apparently overlooked, critique of Mauss - a topic that I take up below - is Patrick J. Geary, "Gift Exchange and Social Science Modeling: The Limitations of a Construct," in Negotiating the Gift: Pre-Modern Figurations of Exchange, ed. Gadi Algazi, Valentin Groebner, and Bernhard Jussen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2003), 129-40
23. A list of gifts given to the mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, by his Pakistani allies at the feast of 'Īd al-Fitr (the end of Ramadan) in 2000 was found outside the Pakistani embassy when Kabul was taken by the Northern Alliance a year later. The list specifies, among other things, "eight meters cloth + four meters turban silk cloth, black. " See Tim Judah, "In Conquered Kabul," New York Review of Books 48, no. 20 (Dec. 20, 2001): 28
24. Bahā' al-Dīn ibn Shaddād, al-Nawādir al-Sultānniya wa'l- Mahāsin al-Yūsufiyya, trans. Donald S. Richards as The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin (Burlington, Vt. : Ashgate, 2001), 155
25. The Chronography of Gregory Abū'l Faraj, trans. E. A. Wallis Budge, 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1932), 1:334
26. As does Bahā' al-Dīn, Gregory concludes his report on the mission with the suggestion that its true purpose was espionage. The homology suggests that Gregory's account derives from that of the Arab chronicler. I previously cited this passage in a more focused study of Arab-Crusader gift exchange, "Everywhere and Nowhere: The Invisible Muslim and Christian Self-Fashioning in the Culture of Outremer," in France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades, ed. Daniel H. Weiss and Lisa Mahoney (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2004), 253-81, but without noting its probable source in Bahā' al-Dīn
27. Ibn Khaldūn, Ta'rif, trans. Abdesselam Cheddadi as Le voyage d'Occident et d'Orient (Paris: Sinbad, 1980), 205
28. Kitāb al-Tāj, trans. Charles Pellat as Le livre de la couronne (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1954), 165-69
29. Al-Mufaddal, Al-Nabj al sadīd wa'l-durr al-farīd fīmā ba'd Ta'rikh ibn al-Amīd, ed. and trans. Edgar Blochet as Histoire des sultans mamlouks, 3 vols., Patrologia orientalis, vols. 12, 14, and 20 (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1916-1928), 2:593-94. The author claims to cite Rukn al-Dīn Baybars, a military general and historian (d. 1325)
30. Al-Mufaddal, Al-Nabj al sadīd wa'l-durr al-farīd fīmā ba'd Ta'rikh ibn al-Amīd, Edgar Blochet as Histoire des sultans mamlouks, 1916, Ibid., 3:144
31. Kitāb al-Tāj, trans. Pellat, Le livre de la couronne, 167
32. Anthony Cutler, "Gifts and Gift Exchange as Aspects of the Byzantine, Arab, and Related Economies," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 55 (2001): 257-58
33. The isnād is mostly studied with respect to collections of hadīth, the post-Qur'anic tradition of the sayings and deeds of the Prophet. See, e. g., Fazhur Rahman, Islam, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 54 and passim
34. This attitude is especially apparent in works attributed to al-Jāhiz. See C. Pellat, "Al-Πahiz: les nations civilisées et les croyances religieuses," Journal Asiatique 225 (1967): 65-105
35. Kitāb al-Hadāyā, trans. al-Qaddūmī, Book of Gifts and Rarities, 109, §82
36. I have slightly modified the English translation. The occasion for the gift is said to be the emperor's desire to renew an expiring armistice with the 'Abbāsid caliph. Further on this mission, see Michael F. Hendy, Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy, c. 300-1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 269-70
37. Mir Khvānd, Rawdat al-safā, trans. C. F. Defrémery as Histoire des Samanides (1845; repr. Amsterdam: Oriental Press, 1974), 199-200
38. Again, the resemblance between these gifts and those offered on the occasion of a royal marriage is remarkable, if hardly surprising given that such matches were no less exercises in diplomacy. When the daughter of the Seljuq sultan Malikshāh wed the 'Abbāsid caliph Abu'l Qāsim in 1087, the gift that arrived at the palace in Baghdad comprised "130 camels magnificently clothed with Byzantine brocades... . The dowry was borne on 74 mules draped in various sorts of regal brocades, horse bells and harness were of gold and silver. On six of them [the mules] were 12 silver chests containing jewels and finery that were beyond price. Preceding the mules were 33 horses of excellent stock, whose stirrups were of gold encrusted with various jewels. " See Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fī al-Tārīkh, in Ibn-el-Athiri chronicon, quod perfectissimum inscribitur, ed. Carl Johan Tornberg, 15 vols, in 9 (Lugduni [Leiden], 1871-76), 10:160
39. trans. Donald S. Richards as The Annals of the Saljuq Turks (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002), 232
40. Paul Gautier, "Le Typikon du Sébaste Grégoire Pakourianos," Revue des études byzantines 42 (1984): 43
41. On the aura of "hand-me-down" clothing in general, see Anthony Cutler, "The Emperor's Old Clothes: Actual and Virtual Vesting and the Transmission of Power in Byzantium and Islam," in Michel Balard and Jean-Michel Spieser, eds., Byzance et le monde extérieur: contacts, rélations, échanges (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2005), 195-210
42. Muhammad ibn Yahyā al-Sūlī, Akhbar ar-Rādī billāh wa'l-Muttaqī billāh, 2 vols., trans. Marius Canard as Histoire de la dynastie abbaside de 322 à 333/34 à 944 (Alger: Institut d'études orientales, 1946-50), 2:34
43. Ibn Rosteh, Kitāb al-a'laq al-nafīsa, citing the account of one such prisoner, Hārūn ibn Yahyā, trans. Marius Canard in Aleksandr A. Vasiliev, Henri Grégoire, and M. Canard, Byzance et les Arabes, 3 vols, in 4 (Bruxelles: Institut de philologie et d'histoire orientales, 1950-68), vol. 2, pt. 2, 389-91
44. See also M. Izeddin, "Un Prisonnier arabe à Byzance au IXe siècle," Revue des études islamiques 15 (1941-46): 57
45. Al-Sūlī, Akbhar al-Rādī, trans. Canard, Histoire de la dynastie abbaside, 1:161; and
46. Kitāb al-Hadāyā, trans. al-Qaddūmī, Book of Gifts and Rarities, 99-102
47. See the detailed scrutiny of M. Mundell Mango, "Hierarchies of Rank and Materials: Diplomatic Gifts Sent by Romanus I in 935 and 938," Deltion tēs Christianikēs Archaiologikēs Hetaireias, 4th ser., 24 (2003): 365-74
48. I borrow this idea from the savvy analysis of Edmund Bosworth, "Sects and Violence," Times Literary Supplement no. 5281 (June 18, 2004): 12
49. The extent to which ideologies and practices are refracted as they pass from one cultural zone to another would be a phenomenon worth considering in a more extended discussion. A telling, if extreme, example is reported by the recent observation of a Tokyo department store which, during the Christmas season, exhibited a crucified Santa Claus. See Keith Miller, "Big in Japan," Times Literary Supplement no. 5260 (Jan. 23, 2004): 17
50. The frequency of transfers of this sort is a neglected topic. André Miquel, La géographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu'au milieu du XIe siècle, 2 vols. (1975; repr. Paris: EHESS, 2001), 2:471-72, showed that between 798 and 946 only two intervals longer than twenty years occurred in prisoner exchanges between Byzantium and Islam and only six intervals of five years or less
51. Even if such transfers cannot be considered irenic in nature, they are hardly conceivable without some form of gift exchange. A more recent treatment is M. Campagnolo-Pothitou, "Les Échanges de prisonniers entre Byzance et Islam au IXe et Xe siécle," Journal of Oriental and African Studies 7 (1995): 1-55
52. I first used the phrase "Mauss trap" to refer to Mauss's constricting influence in the title of a communication to the Byzantine Studies Conference. See Abstracts: Twenty-Fifth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference (College Park, Md., 1999), 82-83
53. For an early discussion of the utility of Mauss's ideas in relation to economic theory, see Cutler, "Gift and Gift Exchange," 265-76
54. I do not intend to survey the huge body of literature generated by Mauss's "Essai sur le don: forme et raison d'échange dans les sociétés archaïques," Travaux de l'année sociologique n. s. 1 (1925): 30-186
55. trans. Wilfred D. Halls as The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (London: W. W. Norton, 1990)
56. trans. Nora Scott as The Enigma of the Gift (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 1-107
57. Mauss, The Gift, trans. Hall, 13
58. Commenting on the rarity of a Mamluk envoy arriving without gifts for the Ottoman sultan, John Wansborough, "A Mamluk Ambassador to Venice in 913/1507," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 26 (1963): 516, notes the reaction of a Venetian diarist who remarked of this omission "Et questo secretario fu mandato senza prexenti, che molti anni fa non è stato uxitata a questo mondo. "
59. At least two instances of gifts being declined are suspect in that they were likely reported in order to demonstrate the "otherness" of the barbarian. In 582-83 the Avar chagan asked the emperor Maurice for an elephant in addition to the annual Roman tribute of 100,000 pieces of gold. The emperor duly complied, only to have it sent back with a demand for a golden bed. See Theophanes Confessor, Chronographia, ed. Carl de Boor, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1883-85), 2:253
60. trans. Cyril Mango and Roger Scott as The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 375
61. For a similar but much later orientalist fable involving the rejection of clothing offered by Michael VIII Palaiologos to the Mongol commander Nogay, see Cutler, "Gifts and Gift Exchange," 268
62. See, e. g., Angeliki E. Laiou in The Economic History of Byzantium, ed. Laiou et al., 3 vols. (Washington, D. C. : Dumbarton Oaks, 2002), 2:692-93
63. Kitāb al-Hadāyā, trans. al-Qaddūmī, Book of Gifts and Rarities, 77 §31. A liberal interpreter might adduce those occasions on which Arab dignitaries at circumcision ceremonies are reported to have showered their retinue, and even the barber who performed one such operation, with "a million dirhams" (ibid., 138, §139, 141). But these gestures have more in common with late antique sparsio than with Polynesian or Native American potlatch
64. Rashīd al-Dīn Tabīb, Jami't-Tawarikh: Compendium of Chronicles, trans. Wheeler M. Thackston, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University, Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, 1998-99), 3:674-75
65. Constantine VII, De administrando imperio, 1:188-89
66. Al-Mufaddal, Al-Nabj al sadīd, trans. Blochet, Histoire des sultans mamlouks, 1:533-34
67. See J. Carriazo Arroquia, ed., Hernán Sanchez, Crónica de Juan II de Castilla (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1982), 269-70
68. The anecdote is reasonably doubted by Leonard P. Harvey, Islamic Spain, 1250 to 1500 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 221, on the grounds that garments of this sort are so frequently posited by Sanchez. Veridical or not, the chronicler certainly was blessed with the gift of graphic description: "as soon as he [Yūsuf] put it on he felt he was poisoned, and died within thirty days, with his flesh coming off in pieces. " Apart from the problem in toxicology posed by this allegation, its resemblance to the Ovidian story of Nessus's gift-shirt (Metamorphoses 9. 157-210) is too close to allow much credence
69. See Mauss, The Gift, trans. Hall, 6
70. Curta, "Merovingian and Carolingian Gift Giving," 676, points out Mauss's intention here
71. Thus the turquoise table of priceless value, the edges of which were adorned with precious stones, looted in 1058, is said to have "passed down to the Abbasids from the treasuries of the Umayyads, to whom it had been transferred in turn from the Sasanid treasures. " See Kitāb al-Hadāyā, trans. al-Qaddūmī, Book of Gifts and Rarities, 194-95, §256
72. For these last stages in its provenance, see Kitāb al-Hadāyā, trans. al-Qaddūmī, Book of Gifts and Rarities, 177, §209
73. Reciprocity, it must be remarked, is not a universal in human behavior, even among "primitive" peoples. When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark stayed with the Nez Percé in what would become Lewis County, Idaho, in May 1806, they proposed to the chief that he accept "a good horse" in return for others that they might cook and eat. This offended the sense of hospitality of the chief who ordered that they be provided with "two fat young horses" without any exchange. See Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, March 23-June 9, 1806 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), 7:237-41
74. Mauss, The Gift, trans. Hall, 10-13
75. A trenchant critique of the "unnecessarily mystifying notion" of mana is offered by Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992), 107-8
76. See, e. g., the sources cited in Bertold Spuler, Die Goldene Horde, 2 vols. (Leipzig: O. Harrassowitz, 1943), 2:535-36, for huge sums of money, silver vases, and "objects of goldsmiths' work made by the Franks" distributed on this occasion
77. Regarding the apportionment of plunder in medieval Islam, the paradigmatic prescription was established in sura 8:41 of the Qur'an where one-fifth of the spoils are said to belong to God and his Messenger, the latter's kinfolk, to orphans and the needy, while the remainder is to be distributed among the victorious soldiers. On this formula and its commentators, see Avinoam Shalem, "The Fall of Madā'in: Some Literary References Concerning Sasanian Spoils of War in Medieval Islamic Treasures," Iran 32 (1994): 80 and n. 54
78. Leo Diaconus, Historiae libri decem, ed. Charles B. Hase (Bonn, 1828), 76
79. trans. Alice-Mary Talbot and Denis Sullivan as The "History" of Leo the Deacon: Byzantine Military Expansion in the Tenth Century (Washington, D. C. : Dumbarton Oaks, 2005), 126-27 My thanks to Alice-Mary Talbot for repeated help in using this material
80. See the entry s. v. "Booty" by Eric McGeer in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, 3 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 1:308-9
81. Al-Maqqarī, Analectes sur l'histoire de la littérature des Arabes d'Espagne, ed. Reinhart Dozy, 2 vols. (1855; repr. Amsterdam: Oriental Press, 1967), 1:271
82. Leo Diaconus, Historiae libri decem, 163; trans. Talbot and Sullivan, 204-5. He records similar extortions from the city of Meyyafariqin two years earlier
83. Mauss, The Gift, trans. Hall, 29
84. A recent and striking exception to this rule is Marian H. Feldman, Diplomacy by Design: Luxury Arts and an "International Style" in the Ancient Near East, 1400-1200 BCE (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), where ample consideration is given (esp. 105-27) to the relations between luxurious materials, their crafting, and diplomatic exchange
85. The various essays in The Diplomacy of Art, ed. Cropper, focus more narrowly on the uses of painting in international affairs
86. A classic instance of artistic representation is the paratactic assemblage of wild animals and treasures presented by the "barbarians" to the emperor on the Barberini ivory in Paris. See Anthony Cutler, "Barberiniana: Notes on the Making, Content, and Provenance of Louvre, OA. 9063," in Tesserae: Festschrift für Josef Engemann, ed. Ernst Dassman (Münster: Aschendorff, 1991), 329-39
87. See Mauss, The Gift, trans. Hall, 23 and passim
88. Leo Diaconus, Historiae libri decem, 76; trans. Talbot and Sullivan, 126-27
89. Jean Baudrillard, Pour une critique de l'économie politique du signe (Paris: Gallimard, 1972)
90. trans. Charles Levin as For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (St. Louis: Telos Press, 1981)
91. I am concerned only with the utility of this analysis - less mystical and more directly applicable to the mechanics of display than Mauss's - for our present discussion and not with Baudrillard's addition of sign value to the trinomial system (use value, exchange value, surplus value) of Marxist and post-Marxist axiology. On the problematic definition of diplomatic gifts, as against tribute, in late antiquity, see most recently Josef Engemann, "Diplomatische 'Geschenke' - Objekte aus der Spätanike?" Mitteilungen zur spätaniken Archäologie und byzantinischen Kunstgeschichte 4 (2005): 39-64
92. Leo Diaconus, Historiae libri decem, 163; trans. Talbot and Sullivan, 204-5
93. On Nikephoros II Phokas's own triumph, after his victory over the Arabs in Crete in 961, displaying in the Hippodrome "a vast amount of gold and silver ... garments shot with gold, purple carpets, and all sorts of treasures crafted with the greatest skill, sparkling with gold and precious stones," see Leo Diaconus, Historiae Libri decem, 28; trans. Talbot and Sullivan, 81
94. Baudrillard, Pour une critique, 17-19
95. "De vita sanctae Radegundis libri duo" in Scriptores rerum merovingicarum, vol. 2, ed. Bruno Krusch (Hanover, 1888), 388-89
96. An English translation by Jo Ann McNamara and John E. Halborg is available in "Baudovinia, Life of Radegund," in Sainted Women of the Dark Ages (Durham, N. C. : Duke University Press, 1992), 96-99. The exchange occurred at a time when the Byzantines were seeking the alliance of the Catholic Franks, as against the majority of the Germans who were Arians
97. Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fī al-Tārikh, 10:655
98. trans. Richards, Annals of the Saljuq Turks, 277
99. In the case of Dubays' gift, we can presume that more than the normally invisible underside of the hooves would have been gilded. The metal must have been applied to what I have called horse boots. See Cutler, "Everywhere and Nowhere," 268
100. Niketas Choniates, Nicetae Choniatae Historia, ed. Jan Louis van Dieten, 2 vols. (Berolini [Berlin]: De Gruyter, 1975), 1:189
101. Choniates is alluding to a passage in Herodotus (7. 40), familiar to the literate Byzantine reader, in which a procession ordered by Xerxes includes ten such Iranian horses and there described as "sacred. " See Nicolas Drocourt, "Les Animaux comme cadeaux d'ambassade entre Byzance et ses voisins (VIIe-XIIe siècle)," in Byzance et ses periphéries: Hommage à Alain Ducellier, ed. Bernard Doumerc and Christophe Picard (Toulouse: CNRS, Université de Toulouse-le Mirail, 2004), 68, 79