Byzance et le monde extérieur
| , , ,Byzance entre Occident chrétien et monde musulman. Les données artistiques
The Emperor’s old clothes
Actual and virtual vesting and the transmission of power in Byzantium and Islam
Texte intégral
1Although this contribution addresses similarities and differences in the uses of cast-off clothing in the spaces of Byzantium and Islam, a difference in terms of time, that between modern and medieval attitudes toward such practices, must first be noted, for this disparity is greater and shapes our perception of resemblance between the two cultures. While in colloquial English the phrase “hand-me-down clothing” conveys some sense of transmission, it still retains much of the derogatory flavour of garments that are said to be cast off or, in German, abgelegte; in French the full force of rejection is apparent in the term vêtements de rebut. These terms fail to imply that the apparel in question has utility or significance for those who receive it or witness its reception.
- 1 “And I will clothe him with thy robe, and strengthen him with thy girdle, and I will commit thy go (...)
- 2 Gen. 42: 42-45. An eleventh-century version of this scene (Vat. Gr. 747, fol. 61 v) shows the char (...)
2In less prosperous and pre-capitalist societies the values attached to secondhand clothing were (and are) at once different from, and more diverse than, those of the modern world. In the latter there survive the physical traces of ceremonies and rituals in which the signs of an office or a function - sceptres and staffs being the obvious examples - are handed over from an office-holder to his or her successor, but none have the power of the keys of the kingdom that Christ gave to Simon Peter (Matt. 16: 19), or the key to the house of David that the Lord tells Isaiah (22: 22) he will lay on the shoulder of Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah. I cite this Old Testament passage not because it is more obscure than the legacy to Peter, and hence to the Papacy, but because this bequest also involves wearables1 and is thus paradigmatic for our investigation. When, for instance, in a twelfth-century miniature depicting the moment when Pharaoh sets Joseph over all the land of Egypt, “arrayed him in vestures of fine linen and put a gold chain about his neck and ... made him to ride in the second chariot which he had,”2 the painter displays all these goods but focuses the spectator’s attention on the ring that the ruler is about to put on Joseph’s outstretched finger (Fig. 1). While the text specifies that the chariot is Pharaoh’s own, the object in question is obviously more intimate: still holding it in his hand, he has just removed it from his own finger. If not a signet, the ring is still a potent sign of the passing of authority.
- 3 On this formula in its various versions, see L. Brubaker, Vision and Meaning in Ninth-Century Byza (...)
- 4 In the “Christian Topography” Elijah is cited as an example showing that, if God wished, men could (...)
- 5 John Chrysostom (PG 49, col. 46) treats the garment as a type of the eucharistic body (σάρξ) of Ch (...)
- 6 For the few representations of the mantle motif in Early Christian art - none, however, typologica (...)
- 7 See C. T. L(ittle) in Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 59, 2001. p. 17.
3More often, and no less faithful to the text, biblical illustration of this theme in Byzantium involves the transmission of clothing. From the ninth century there is a covey of images of Elijah leaving his himation to his disciple as he rises into heaven.3 It is clear, however, that the transmission of prophetic power is not the main point of these pictures. In the Paris Gregory (Fig. 2) not only is the scene identified as HAIAC ANAAAMBANOMENOC but what is technically a redundant garment is handed down to Elisha since he, like his master, already wears both a tunic and a mantle. It is so, too, in the Vatican “Christian Topography” (Fig. 3) where, however, as in Psalter illustration, the event is associated with things meteorological or geographical – “all thy waves and all thy billows are gone over me” - rather than political.4 It might be supposed that the transmission of the robe was so established a part of the prophet’s ascension that there was no need to emphasize this detail. Yet even while Elijah’s mantle had been the object of christological analogy as early as the beginning of the fifth century,5 this exegesis had no part in pre-Iconoclastic iconography.6 And even when it does appear in the miniatures we have just discussed, the fact remains that the conveyance of authority was not their primary topic. To find a ninth-century image in which a mantle serves as an emblem of supernal power it might be necessary to go as far afield as the Carolingian West where an ivory depicting Christ offering his pallium to the apostles (Fig. 4) has recently, and probably rightly, been interpreted as emblematic of their mission to preach, to cast out unclean spirits and to heal.7

Fig. 1 - Pharaoh makes Joseph ruler over all Egypt. BAV, ms. gr. 746, fol. 125r.
© Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vaticano)

Fig. 2 - Ascension of Elijah. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. gr. 510, fol. 264v (detail) © BnF
- 8 The Chronography of Gregory Abû’l Faraj, trans. E. A. Wallis Budge, London 1932,1, p. 66-67. The e (...)
- 9 L’Histoire de Saint Louis, ed. N. de Wailly, Paris 1867, p. 304. Muslim gifts of used clothing as (...)
- 10 Vestem de dorso suo oxi deauratum: Chronicon S. monasterii Casinensis, cap. xvii, Rerum italicarum (...)
4No one who has reflected for a moment on the rate of survival of Byzantine texts as against that of images will be surprised to learn that the number of references to the transmission of clothing in Greek historical sources outweighs that of its representations in art. Even so, as we shall see, it is clear that Syriac, Arab and Western authors seem to have been far more interested than their Byzantine counterparts in this sort of behaviour. Gregory Abu’l Faraj, for instance, reports how Theodosius II took the robe of a dead ascetic and “filthy as it was ... put it on so that he might be blessed thereby.”8 And, as if to lend sensory precision to the notion that the adoption of someone else’s attire could demonstrate the acquisition of that person’s favour, authority or sanctity, Joinville explains the symbolism of the gesture whereby the leader of the assassins sent his shirt to St.-Louis: “as the shirt is closer to the body than any other garment, so the Old Man wished to hold the king closer in love than any other king.”9 Although it is clear that the olfactory nature of such offerings was subordinate to devotional ends, it is remarkable how rarely in Byzantium gifts of hand-me-down clothing are recorded. Indeed, the most famous case - Alexios I’s transmission of a garment “off his own back” to abbot Benedict of Monte Cassino10 - is known to us only from a Latin source.

Fig. 4 - Christ gives his mantle to the apostles.
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cloisters Collection, acc. no. 2000.486
(By courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: Charles Little)
- 11 Amm. Marc, XXVII.6.11-12: corona indumentisque supremae fortunae... En habes, mi Gratiane, amictus (...)
- 12 Auson., Gratiarum actio ad Gratianum, XII.
5There is a telling contrast between medieval Greek literature and that of Late Antiquity with respect to garments employed as signs of respect or the passage of political authority. It is true that the visual, and especially the numismatic, witnesses depict such transfers as faits accomplis, as against the emphasis on process implicit in the manuscripts we have looked at. Thus a solidus struck in Trier after Valentinian I proclaimed Gratian his co-emperor in 367 shows father and son seated side by side and sharing the globe; identically clad, they are distinguished only by their size, an arrangement reproduced for their successor (Fig. 5). But unrestricted by the narrow compass of a coin, Ammianus Marcellinus speaks at length of this investiture with “the crown and robes of supreme rank” and, lest there be any mistaking their meaning, has the senior emperor declare in direct speech that these are imperial garments.11 The historian’s purpose here is to criticize Valentinian’s departure from the protocol that obtained when the robes of a caesar were awarded. Acute sensitivity to deviation from behavioural norms clearly characterizes this culture: thirteen years later, Ausonius, Gratian’s former tutor, was raised by the emperor to the consulate, an honour marked for the old man especially by the fact that the trabea palmata (embroidered with the figure of divus Constantius parens noster) was picked out of many by Gratian himself.12
- 13 Historia nova, IV.5.2. I cite the translation by R. T. Ridley, Zosimus, New History, Melbourne 198 (...)
- 14 Chron. Pasch., s.a. 522, ed. Bonn, p. 163; Malal., XVII.9, ed. Bonn, p. 413; Agath., III.15.2-3, e (...)
- 15 VII.12-18.
- 16 Wars III. 25.4-7. These included a gilded silver staff, a silver cap held with bands of silver, a (...)
- 17 De administrando Imperio, ed. G. Moravcsik, Washington 1967. p. 66. On the topos of barbarian rapa (...)
6More expressly political, of course, were the imperial garments (like that given by Valentinian to the eight-year-old Gratian) intended to denote one’s successor. The valences of awards of this sort are keenly demonstrated by Zosimus when he tells of the βασιλικὴ στoλὴ sent by Julian to his cousin to signify that the latter should inherit the throne if Julian perished in Persia (as in fact he did in 363). When Jovian rather than the designated heir was chosen, the pretender to the throne immediately rushed to hand over the garment to the emperor de iure and begged “to be allowed to retire and devote himself to farming and private business.”13 Generally, however, impatient desire for imperial robes is ascribed to foreigners. The emperor Justin’s gift of a crown and silk mantle to Tzath, King of the Laz, is described in the Chronicon Paschale, by Malalas and by Agathias, as a reward for this ruler’s conversion to Christianity.14 But more often, in a tradition reverting at least to Herodotus’ story of Xerxes commanding his cousin to assume the royal garments in the hope of learning from a phantom whether he should invade Greece,15 fascination with elaborate costume is treated as a quality inherent in the nature of the barbarian. This is implicit in Procopius’ description of the motley assemblage of rich attire and gewgaws conveyed by Justinian via his general Belisarius to the leader of the Moors. The gift, we are told by the historian, was required by ancient Moorish custom.16 In the face of such demands from the Khazars and other peoples Constantine Porphyrogennetos found himself forced to invent a myth of the divine origin, and hence the inalienability, of the imperial regalia.17
- 18 The History of the Caucasian Albanians by Movsēs Dasxurançi, trans. C. J. F. Dowsett, London 1961, (...)
7The adoption of a monotheistic faith was insufficient to redeem aliens from their unhappy reputation as obsessed with Byzantine crowns and garments. Moses Dasxuranc’i, the Armenian historian of uncertain date and hyperbolic inclination, tells how “the King of the South” [sc. the Umayyad caliph Mu‘āwiya I] lavished on Juanšēr, sparapet and prince of Albania, an Indian elephant, a parrot (“the most precious of all birds, and one which in former times was to be seen nowhere but in the kingdom of the Greeks”), a pearl-studded sword and “robes embroidered with spun gold, silks, brocades, true purple dyes [and] beautiful purple robes.” The caliph further ordered the first of his wives to send to Juanšēr’s spouse “the wonderfully beautiful adornments of queens, silken and gold-embroidered dresses,“ while each member of the prince’s retinue “be given enough brocades and feathers for fifty men.”18
- 19 Thus De administrando Imperio, p. 264, reports that Constantine IV (?) sent the leaders of the Che (...)
- 20 Διὰ βασιλικῶς χειρòς ἐπιδίδοται. See N. Oikonomidès, Les listes de préséance byzantines des ixe et (...)
- 21 Traité des Offices, ed. J. Verpeaux, Paris 1966, p. 275. In the light of this and similar passages (...)
- 22 P. Gautier, Le typikon du Sébaste Grégoire Pakourianos, RÉB 42, 1984, p. 43. For possibly analogou (...)
8Nothing in the Armenian account suggests that these garments had previously been worn by the caliph but, as we shall see, at Muslim courts and likewise in Constantinople, gifts of clothing directly from the ruler - and even his image in full regalia -19 were almost as prized. Repeatedly, the Kletorologion of Philotheos stresses that the vestimentary insignia which marked the distribution of dignities and titles were “given by the emperor’s hand.”20 And more than four centuries later the Pseudo-Kodinos makes the same point about the way the crown was awarded to a despotes upon his promotion.21 Apart from these manuals of ceremonial, however, and in contrast to the Islamic record, there is scant reference in Byzantine texts to the receipt of clothing from the emperor. The signal exception is the proud allusion in the will of the Georgian Gregory Pakourianos, written before 1086, to the robes given to him by Alexios Komnenos after his victory over the Pechenegs; these, he specifies, had been worn by the emperor himself. In the same document the megas domestikos describes the βασιλικὰ πολύτιμα ἱμάτια bestowed on him by the sebastokrator Isaac Komnenos after his release from Cuman captivity.22
- 23 Historia, ed. J.-L. van Dieten, Berlin 1975, p. 441. Earlier (ibid., p. 189) Choniates makes allus (...)
9The rites involved here are clearly equivalent to the Muslim “robes of honour” (khi‘la) to which we shall turn presently. But before doing so, and particularly in light of the few allusions to such garments in the Greek texts - a sparsity that could be interpreted to mean that gifts of this sort were not part of imperial practice in Byzantium - it is worthwhile pointing to a passage in Niketas Choniates that suggests otherwise, or at least that the emperors had more than enough clothing to spare. Writing of Isaac II Angelos’ passion for luxury, and comparing his appearance in the palace to a young bridegroom, brilliant as the rising sun, the historian tells us that the emperor never showed himself twice in the same costume.23
- 24 The standard reference to this behaviour is the classic work of A. Christensen, L’Iran sous les Sa (...)
- 25 See the discussion below of Muhammad’s gift of his mantle and the literature cited in n.51.
- 26 Murūj al-dhahab, ed. C. A. C. Barbier de Meynard, VI, Paris 1869, p. 8, cited by R. A. Hillenbrand(...)
- 27 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmilfi’l-ta’rīkh, trans. W. McG. de Slane, RHC Or, 1, Paris 1872, p. 576.
- 28 Al-Maqrīzī, Kitāb al-SulŪk, trans. R. J. C. Broadhurst as A History of the Ayyubid Sultans of Egyp (...)
- 29 Ibid.
10Whatever the quantity in which Byzantine monarchs gave away clothing that they had worn, such awards seem at first quite distinct from the sacred gifts depicted in the manuscripts (Figs. 1-3). Indeed, the ruler’s dispensation of cast-off garments, even while this might have occurred in conjunction with the religious calendar, has an ancient history ostensibly independent of biblical models. As we shall see, this will prove to be a misreading, but for the moment it is worth noting that the eighth-ninth-century compiler Jāhiz reports that from the beginning of the Sasanian monarchy at the spring festival of No Ruz rulers had handed out to their courtiers the clothing they had worn in the winter and, in the autumn, repeated the performance with their summer attire.24 Mindful of Sasanian and early Muslim25 precedent, Arab authors still describe gifts of garments as taking place in aulic rather than sacred circumstances. Thus, according to al-Ma‘sûdi,26 al-Walīd II, delighting in a band of musicians, rose from his throne, covered with kisses every part of the body of a handsome member of the group, tore off his own clothes and heaped them on the singer. Most caliphal gifts were, of course, less informal and less impetuous. The Arab records tell mostly of clothing bestowed either as a reward for military victory or, like the black mantle - black being the dynastic colour of the ‘Abbāsids - and golden collar sent by al-Mustadī’ to Nūr al-Dīn when the latter was besieging Mosul, to encourage it. Neither the source nor the financial value of the award, however, deterred the atabeg from passing them on after he had taken the city to his nephew Sayf al-Dīn, according to one account,27 or to Saladin, according to another.28 (Successive transmissions cannot be ruled out. As in today’s market for antiquities and works of art, a distinguished pedigree or sequence of provenances seems only to have increased an object’s value). Saladin, in turn, is reported to have derided the robe as being too short, even while on the next day he wore it in a triumphal procession through the streets of Cairo.29
- 30 Ibn ‘Idhārī, Kitāb al-Bayān al-mughrib fi akhbār muluk al-Andalus wa ’l-Maghrib, trans. E. Fagnan (...)
- 31 Ibid., p. 405. The identity of the recipient is not certain but possibly the Hamdanid ruler of Ale (...)
- 32 Kitāb al-Sulūk (as in n. 28), p. 199.
- 33 Kitāb al-Hadāyā wa’l-tuhaf, trans. G. Al-Hijjāwï al-Qaddūmī as Book of Gifts and Treasures, Cambri (...)
11The honorific property of garments from on high was shared by horses, weapons and other appurtenances reputed to have been used by a ruler. Ibn ‘Idhārī reports a gem-studded sabre sent by the Fātimid al-Hākim from his own wardrobe to al-Mu‘izz,30 the Zīrid ruler of Qayrawān; in 1022, from the stables of Hākim’s successor, al-Zāhir, three mares with magnificent saddles, as well as a valuable robe, two standards woven from cloth-of-gold and others with gold and silver staffs went to Sharif al-Dawla.31 The practice was evidently infectious, especially to a monarch already predisposed to behave à l’arabe as was Frederick II: “the sovereign of the Franks,” aiming at Jerusalem and needing to appease the Ayyūbid sultan al-Kāmil sent him, according to al-Maqrīzī,32 “a number of horses, one being the emperor’s own with a golden saddle encrusted with precious stones.” In the Muslim sources the most consistent pattern of highly evaluated gifts from overseas is, nonetheless, to be found in responses to clothing and other goods from Byzantium. These were esteemed in their own right and often deemed worthy of transmission to a social superior, a major attestation to value in the Islamic world. Thus a present of purple brocade garments inwoven with gold, “each of which was worth two thousand dinars” and a “girdle fashioned of two thousand mithqāls of gold inlaid with enamel that cost ten thousand dinars” is said to have been sent by Leo VI to a governor of northern Syria who forwarded them to the caliph al-Mu‘tadid.33
- 34 For such evaluations see Cutler, Gifts and Gift Exchange (as in n. 17), p. 258.
- 35 Kitāb al-Hadāyā (as in n. 33), p. 150.
- 36 Used clothing could, of course, send other messages. Thus in 1219 the Ayyubid sultan al-Mu‘azzam s (...)
- 37 Ta’rikh al-rusul wa’1-mulūk [§1450], trans. J. L. Kraemer as The History of al-Tabarī, vol. 34, In (...)
- 38 Al-Mukhtasar fi akhbār al-bashar, trans. R M. Holt as Memoirs of a Syrian Prince. Abu’l Fidā, Sult (...)
12It is no surprise that the Arabs paid close attention to the constitution and monetary worth34 of clothing obtained from Byzantium, given, for example, the detailed account that survives of the materials and cut of the garments worn by Constantine VII’s envoys to Baghdad in 917.35 More complex, and therefore more deserving of scrutiny, are the multiple purposes served by the pattern of “re-gifting” in Islam. Such presents, especially from overseas, confirmed and legitimated the authority of their recipients,36 qualities for which there could be no better advertisement than their conveyance to other and higher powers. Even when a gift of apparel had a “domestic” origin it could enter into a political economy of redistribution that is richly documented. An early clue to this mechanism is the response of a mid-ninth-century ‘Abbāsid ambassador to Michael III, delighted and perhaps surprised by the fact that (as recorded by Tabari) “the emperor accepted my gifts and did not give orders that any of them be handed on to anyone else.”37 So customary was the practice of recycling in Islamic society that Abū’l-Fidā’, who had earlier accepted from one Mamlūk sultan a chestnut mare and fabrics that themselves had been presents to this ruler, in 1320 received from another “robes of honour of various kinds which I might confer on whom I wished,” as he puts it in his “autobiography.”38
- 39 There is a huge literature on this topic. See, e.g., L. A. Mayer, Mamluk Costume, Geneva 1952, p. (...)
- 40 Al-Mufaddal, Kitāb al-Nahj al-sadīd, ed. and trans. E. Blochet as Histoire des sultans mamlouks, P (...)
- 41 Kitāb al-Hadāyā, p. 207.
13We have no way of knowing if the plethora of garments in this instance came from the sultan’s own closets or were made ad hoc. In any case, since the tirāz where such clothing was manufactured were under the ruler’s control and bore inscriptions testifying to this fact,39 the difference in honour was at best one of degree. Common sense suggests that the huge numbers of costumes -those given, for example, to 1200 senior officials “without counting other personages who received this favour” when the Mamlūk sultan al-Muzaffar received the caliph’s diploma of investiture in 1308-1309 -40 were produced in royal factories, but at least in this instance modern reasoning fails to take into account the immense amount of clothing stored in caliphal treasures. Akin to the implications of Niketas Choniates’ observation on the clothes worn by Isaac Angelos, considered above, are those records that describe the possessions of such rulers as Hārūn al-Rashid whose clothing treasury (khizānat al-kiswa) included inter alia four thousand outer garments made of pure silk lined with sable, fox and other furs and four thousand turbans.41 Many distributions of robes of honour would scarcely make a dent in resources of this scope.
- 42 See now M. Springberg-Hinsen, Die Hil‘a. Studien zur Geschichte des geschenkten Gewandes im islami (...)
- 43 Thus, e.g., Ibn al-Jawzī, Kitāb al-Muntazam, speaks of “the seven robes of honour forming a single (...)
- 44 Ibn Wāsil, Mufarrij al-kurûb fi akhbār Bani Ayyūb, ed. J. Shayyāl, S. ‘Āshūr, H. Rabī‘, III, Cairo (...)
- 45 Kitāb al-Sulūk, p. 143.
14Be that as it may, two aspects of the khil‘a are particularly relevant to our present concerns. First, the very word has its origins in the Arabic verb for casting off.42 Secondly, so widespread and persistent were gifts of this sort that the term came to refer to the practice as much as the object of bestowal and served as a metonym for the act of appointment; in other words it was institutionalized. Yet this very development in no way implies singularity or uniformity in the nature of the vestments distributed. The textual evidence makes clear both the multiplicity of garments that could be involved in such a gift43 and the desiderata in costumes of this sort. When in 1207 al-‘Ᾱdil (Saladin’s brother and Richard the Lionheart’s opponent) asked the caliph al-Nāsir to invest him with Egypt, Syria and other areas the historian Ibn Wāsil is careful to point out that along with the diploma from Baghdad there came “a long broad-sleeved tunic of black satin.”44 That this is no extraneous detail is suggested by al-Maqrīzī’s observation of the pretensions of al-Mu‘izz, the ruler of Yemen, who, when he ordered his robes in 1202, “made the length of the sleeves twenty-five spans and the width six.”45
- 46 The political context, though not the miniature itself, is discussed by G. R. G. Hambly, From Bagh (...)
15This concern with amplitude is beautifully suggested by the famous miniature of Mahmud of Ghazna putting on the sign of appointment with which he had been invested by the caliph in the year 1000 (Fig. 6).46 The sultan’s struggle to fit his arm into the left sleeve gives both his courtiers and the manuscript’s beholder a splendid view of the garment’s richness. This robe and the circumstances in which it was given are described by Rasẖīd al-Dīn, the author of the Jāmi‘ al-tawārīkh that this image illustrates:
- 47 I owe this translation to the kindness of Sheila Blair. The relative importance of the miniature i (...)
The Caliph al-Qādir bi-’llah sent the sultan a precious robe of honour, the likes of which no one had ever seen before and bestowed on him the honorific ‘Right-hand of the State and Trustee of the Nations’. The sultan put on that honour which had accrued to him from the Majesty of the Prophecy and the endowment of the caliphate and ascended the throne of the sultanate. The amīrs of Khurāsān and the local potentates lined up in audience around him and honoured him (lit. fastened the belt of allegiance). The sultan [in turn] rewarded each one of them with kindness, giving them valuable robes of honour and innumerable gifts.47
- 48 The Epic Histories Attributed to P‘awstos Buzand (Buzandaran Patmut’iwnk‘), trans. N. G. Garsoïan, (...)
- 49 In the Homilies of John Chrysostom, Paris BNF Coislin 79, fols, lv, 2r. For colour reproductions s (...)
- 50 I. Kalavrezou, The Glory of Byzantium, no. 142.
16The miniature appears in a book made more than three hundred years after the event that it depicts. It might be thought, therefore, that the emphasis on the fullness of the sultan’s robe represents a fashionable updating of the style of the end of the first millennium. Yet much earlier texts stress the importance of generous cut in garments offered as a gift. The Armenian Epic Histories of the fifth century, for instance, describes the clothing with which King Pap (ca. 368-374) invested Glak, his inspector of royal fortresses as “robes [of honour]: patmucan, a tunic and trousers of disproportionately large size [that] hung down fold over fold, so that he could not adjust them himself because the amplitude of the garment engulfed him.”48 Where material prodigality corresponding to Islamic examples is most apparent in ceremonial costume is, however, in Byzantium. Imperial figures such as Michael VII Doukas and Maria of Alania had themselves shown in mantles with voluminous sleeves and an abundance of accessories, features left unchanged when their likenesses were re-labelled to denote the emperor’s successor.49 Most telling of all - and here we can revert to the starting point of this paper - are those images that purport to represent biblical events or personages but dress them in costumes of the time that their illustrators inhabited. The ‘dancing women” who accompany Miriam, Moses’ sister, in a Psalter miniature of 1058 wear not only hats that span the width of their shoulders but long brocade robes with capacious pointed sleeves and gold-embroidered collars and girdles (Fig. 7). These are no doubt garments of the Constantinopolitan court of the eleventh century.50

Fig. 6 - Investiture of Mahmūd of Ghazna.
Edinburgh University Library, Or. Ms. 20, fol. 121a.
© By permission of the Edinburgh University Library

Fig. 7 - Miriam and her companions. BAV, ms. gr. 752, fol. 449v.
© Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vaticano)
- 51 On this see T. K. Thomas, Textiles from Medieval Egypt, A. D. 300-1300, Pittsburgh 1990, p. 35-36 (...)
- 52 Thus in the first half of the 10th century Hilāl al-Sābi’ states that when enthroned the caliph we (...)
- 53 These examples are also cited by T. T. Allsen, Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire, Cambri (...)
17If it is generally true that contemporary fashion shaped the representation of ancient events then we have here a model for a dialogue between past and present in which the former was made present to those who were its heirs and the latter sanctioned by sacred precedent. While for obvious reasons medieval Islam eschewed visual images of the Qur’ān, of the holy figures of the Old Testament and of Muhammad, the long life and wide diffusion of the legend according to which the Prophet gave his mantle (burda) to the poet Ka’b b. Zuhayr51 point to just such an exchange - for Muslims a gift that was the archetypal khil’a, one that authorized all successive bestowals. Although the burda played a central role in caliphal investiture ceremonies,’52 its semiotic range transcended the conveyance of political authority. Like Xerxes’ belief that the psychic powers of his cousin would be enhanced by this relative’s assumption of the royal apparel or Theodosius IPs expectation that he would be blessed by putting on the robe of the ascetic53 - both the stuff of legends the force of which was reinforced by centuries of repetition -, Muhammad’s award to the poet became the material out of which was woven a network of metaphysical significance.
- 54 From scores of available examples, I cite only two: al-Idrīsī’s 12th-century record of (a) the num (...)
18Yet the inference from these cognates cannot be that all cultures behave similarly when they manufacture ideology out of myth by spinning its substance into webs of literary and visual representation. The relative silence of the Byzantines on the subject of power conveyed via clothing clearly undercuts such a generalization. Although as he gives his ring to Joseph Pharaoh wears the robes of a Byzantine emperor (Fig. 1), no Greek author or painter to my knowledge interpreted this as more than an incidental offering. And even while the story of the mantle given to Elisha became a topos of spiritual transmission, those who in the ninth century chose to depict the event (Figs. 2, 3) incorporated this motif, as we have seen, into demonstrations that served quite other purposes. The relative lack of evidence for such a practice in Byzantium is surely part of a larger difference - the minimal attention paid to presents in medieval Greek cultural expression in contrast to the gift stream that bulks so large in Islamic literature. But to advance this explanation is only to postpone the question. Instead, one could see the problem as historiographical in origin, recognizing historiography as emblematic of the differential ways in which societies view the task of recording past events and construing actual behaviour for the future. Dissimilarities of performance in this respect are apparent whenever one compares the wealth of detail that attends a Muslim description of a building, a city or other temporal concerns54 with the laconic treatment that such phenomena generally receive in the Byzantine sources. In the end, cultural differences are irreducible.
Notes
1 “And I will clothe him with thy robe, and strengthen him with thy girdle, and I will commit thy government into his hand; and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah” (Is. 22: 21).
2 Gen. 42: 42-45. An eleventh-century version of this scene (Vat. Gr. 747, fol. 61 v) shows the chariot, but not the robe, chain or ring given to Joseph. I am grateful to Massimo Bernabò for suggesting this example.
3 On this formula in its various versions, see L. Brubaker, Vision and Meaning in Ninth-Century Byzantium. Image as Exegesis in the Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzus, Cambridge 1999, p. 356-357, 360. G. Dagron, Empereur et prêtre. Étude sur le “césaro-papisme” byzantin, Paris 1996, p. 387, n. 22, suggested that the image in question might derive from a scene depicted in the church of St. Elias in the palace. The saint’s feast was introduced into imperial ceremony by Basil I and refined and orchestrated by Leo VI. Only in the Sacra Parallela (Brubaker, fig. 152) does Elijah convey a garment that he has manifestly just removed from his body. This more “logical” iconography seems to prevail in post-Byzantine art. See, e. g., an icon of the second half of the 15th century at Mount Sinai: J. Galey, Sinai and the Monastery of St. Catherine, New York 1980, fig. 103.
4 In the “Christian Topography” Elijah is cited as an example showing that, if God wished, men could traverse the heavens. Only in passing does the text mention the passing of his melote to Elisha. See Cosmas Indicopleustes, Topographie chrétienne, II, ed. W. Wolska-Conus, Paris 1970 (SC 159), p. 205.
5 John Chrysostom (PG 49, col. 46) treats the garment as a type of the eucharistic body (σάρξ) of Christ.
6 For the few representations of the mantle motif in Early Christian art - none, however, typologically related to Christ - see Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, I, col. 609 .s.v. “Elias” (E. Lucchesi Palli).
7 See C. T. L(ittle) in Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 59, 2001. p. 17.
8 The Chronography of Gregory Abû’l Faraj, trans. E. A. Wallis Budge, London 1932,1, p. 66-67. The exchange of clothing between imperial and religious authorities is a leitmotif in Syriac tradition. For example, in the so-called Chronique de Séert (ed. and trans. A. Scher, PO 13, Paris 1919, p. 492-493) the close relationship between the Emperor Maurice and the Nestorian katholikos, Mar Sabriso, is expressed in their mutual requests for vestments. The emperor asked the patriarch for his headgear, which the latter duly sent; Maurice is said to have kissed it and placed it in his treasury with the relics of other saints. In return. Mar Sabriso requested a piece of the True Cross and one of the emperor’s garments. Conversely, the replacement of dirty clothing with a clean garment received as a gift could be taken as a sign of purification. See the report in Theophanes the Confessor (ed. de Boor, p. 339) of the caliph ‘Umar who exchanged his himation, fouled during his siege of Jerusalem, with that of the Patriarch Sophronios. For the basis of this story in the biblical account of the prophet Joshua’s receipt of clean raiment from the Lord (Zach. 3:3-8), and its appropriation by al-Tabarī, Ta ’rīkh (ed. de Goeje) I, p. 2522-2533, see P. M. Cobb, A note on ‘Umar’s visit to Ayla in 17/638, Der Islam 71, 1994, p. 283-288.
9 L’Histoire de Saint Louis, ed. N. de Wailly, Paris 1867, p. 304. Muslim gifts of used clothing as a sign of esteem are attested as late as the 17th century. Sir Thomas Roe, James I’s emissary to the Mogul Empire, notes that “it is here reputed the highest of favour to give a garment worne by the Prince or, beeing New, once layd on his shoulder” when the emperor Jahāngir’s son, the future Shah Jahān, sent him a gold cloak “once or twice worne, which he caused to bee put on my back.” See The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the Court of the Great Mogul, 1609-1619, ed. W. Foster, London 1899, II, p. 334.
10 Vestem de dorso suo oxi deauratum: Chronicon S. monasterii Casinensis, cap. xvii, Rerum italicarum scriptores, ed. L. A. Muratori, Milan 1723, reprint Bologna 1977, IV, p. 503. This is perhaps the nearest we can come in Byzantium to M. Mauss’ idea that “accepter quelque chose de quelqu’un, c’est accepter quelque chose de son essence spirituelle, de son âme.” See his Essai sur le don. Formes et raison d’échange dans les sociétés archaïques, Année Sociologique, 2nd series, 1,1923-1924, reprinted in M. Mauss, Sociologie et Anthropologie, Paris 1950, p. 161. I have criticised the broader applicability to Byzantium of Mauss’ ideas in the article Gifts and Gift Exchange, cited in n. 17 below, esp. p. 247-248, 273-274.
11 Amm. Marc, XXVII.6.11-12: corona indumentisque supremae fortunae... En habes, mi Gratiane, amictus, ut speravimus omnes, augustos.
12 Auson., Gratiarum actio ad Gratianum, XII.
13 Historia nova, IV.5.2. I cite the translation by R. T. Ridley, Zosimus, New History, Melbourne 1982, p. 72.
14 Chron. Pasch., s.a. 522, ed. Bonn, p. 163; Malal., XVII.9, ed. Bonn, p. 413; Agath., III.15.2-3, ed. R. Keydell, Berlin 1967 (CFHB), p. 103.
15 VII.12-18.
16 Wars III. 25.4-7. These included a gilded silver staff, a silver cap held with bands of silver, a mantle with a golden fibula and a gilded boot.
17 De administrando Imperio, ed. G. Moravcsik, Washington 1967. p. 66. On the topos of barbarian rapacity see A. Cutler, Gifts and Gift Exchange as Aspects of the Byzantine, Arab, and Related Economies, DOP 55. 2001, p. 256. It is clear that the regalia are identified here not only with their imperial wearer but also with the divine, a field of operation more broadly discussed by J. Frow, Time and Commodity Culture. Essays in Cultural Theory and Postmodernity, Oxford 1997, p. 122, 129-130; A. Weiner, Inalienable Possessions: the Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving, Berkeley 1992.
18 The History of the Caucasian Albanians by Movsēs Dasxurançi, trans. C. J. F. Dowsett, London 1961, p. 128. I am grateful to Lynn Jones for this reference.
19 Thus De administrando Imperio, p. 264, reports that Constantine IV (?) sent the leaders of the Chersonites “a gilt statue with an imperial cloak and clasp and a golden crown” after they had defeated a group of “Scythian” rebels.
20 Διὰ βασιλικῶς χειρòς ἐπιδίδοται. See N. Oikonomidès, Les listes de préséance byzantines des ixe et xe siècles, Paris 1972, p. 89, 95, 97 and passim.
21 Traité des Offices, ed. J. Verpeaux, Paris 1966, p. 275. In the light of this and similar passages one wonders whether the tall hats with the image of the emperor worn by the aristocrats in the Lincoln College Typikon were not gifts from the imperial hand.
22 P. Gautier, Le typikon du Sébaste Grégoire Pakourianos, RÉB 42, 1984, p. 43. For possibly analogous gifts see P. Lemerle, Cinq études sur le ixe siècle byzantin, Paris 1977, p. 138 n. 56.1 am indebted to J.-Cl. Cheynet for his advice on these texts.
23 Historia, ed. J.-L. van Dieten, Berlin 1975, p. 441. Earlier (ibid., p. 189) Choniates makes allusion to another imperial gift of clothing, the surcoat (στολάδα), embroidered with purple and gold, that Manuel I gave to Gabras on the field of battle.
24 The standard reference to this behaviour is the classic work of A. Christensen, L’Iran sous les Sassanides, 2nd ed., Osnabrück 1971, p. 408, but this is now to be replaced by J. Rose, Sasanian Splendor: the Appurtenances of Royalty, Robes and Honor. The Medieval World of Investiture, ed. S. Gordon, New York 2001, p. 35-56.
25 See the discussion below of Muhammad’s gift of his mantle and the literature cited in n.51.
26 Murūj al-dhahab, ed. C. A. C. Barbier de Meynard, VI, Paris 1869, p. 8, cited by R. A. Hillenbrand, Art History 5, 1982, p. 20.
27 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmilfi’l-ta’rīkh, trans. W. McG. de Slane, RHC Or, 1, Paris 1872, p. 576.
28 Al-Maqrīzī, Kitāb al-SulŪk, trans. R. J. C. Broadhurst as A History of the Ayyubid Sultans of Egypt, Boston 1980, p. 39.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibn ‘Idhārī, Kitāb al-Bayān al-mughrib fi akhbār muluk al-Andalus wa ’l-Maghrib, trans. E. Fagnan as Histoire de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne, Algiers 1901, p. 401.
31 Ibid., p. 405. The identity of the recipient is not certain but possibly the Hamdanid ruler of Aleppo and N. Syria.
32 Kitāb al-Sulūk (as in n. 28), p. 199.
33 Kitāb al-Hadāyā wa’l-tuhaf, trans. G. Al-Hijjāwï al-Qaddūmī as Book of Gifts and Treasures, Cambridge, Mass. 1996, p. 89. A similar story in the same compilation, p. 117-118, involves the felt cloak, adorned with pearls, gold crosses and rubies, of the emperor Armaniyus (Romanos III), taken from him when he was defeated at Aleppo in 1030 and offered with other valuables to a successful Arab conqueror of the city eight years later.
34 For such evaluations see Cutler, Gifts and Gift Exchange (as in n. 17), p. 258.
35 Kitāb al-Hadāyā (as in n. 33), p. 150.
36 Used clothing could, of course, send other messages. Thus in 1219 the Ayyubid sultan al-Mu‘azzam sent tattered garments from his wardrobe to a learned high official who, he was convinced, had offended his dignity. Commanded by the sultan to display them as a sign that he was unfit to wear the robes of a scholar, the qādī is said to have entered into a depression from which he died. See R. S. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols. The Ayyubids of Damascus, Albany 1977, p. 186-187, citing Sibt Ibn al-Jawzī, Mir’at al-zamān ft ta’rikh al-a‘yān, ed. J. R. Jewett, Chicago 1907, p. 397-398.
37 Ta’rikh al-rusul wa’1-mulūk [§1450], trans. J. L. Kraemer as The History of al-Tabarī, vol. 34, Incipient Decline, Albany 1989, p. 169.
38 Al-Mukhtasar fi akhbār al-bashar, trans. R M. Holt as Memoirs of a Syrian Prince. Abu’l Fidā, Sultān of Hamāh (672-732/1273-1331), Wiesbaden 1983, p. 64, 78.
39 There is a huge literature on this topic. See, e.g., L. A. Mayer, Mamluk Costume, Geneva 1952, p. 59.
40 Al-Mufaddal, Kitāb al-Nahj al-sadīd, ed. and trans. E. Blochet as Histoire des sultans mamlouks, PO 20, Paris 1929, p. 144.
41 Kitāb al-Hadāyā, p. 207.
42 See now M. Springberg-Hinsen, Die Hil‘a. Studien zur Geschichte des geschenkten Gewandes im islamischen Kulturkreis, Würzburg 2000, p. 13.
43 Thus, e.g., Ibn al-Jawzī, Kitāb al-Muntazam, speaks of “the seven robes of honour forming a single costume”; I cite here D. Sourdel, Robes of Honor in ‘Abbāsid Baghdad during the Eighth of Eleventh Centuries, Robes and Honor (as in n. 24), p. 140. For the multiplicity of garments involved as described by Qalqashandī, see Sourdel, p. 143.
44 Ibn Wāsil, Mufarrij al-kurûb fi akhbār Bani Ayyūb, ed. J. Shayyāl, S. ‘Āshūr, H. Rabī‘, III, Cairo 1953, trans. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols (as in n. 36), p. 139. Here, too, a brilliant account of the political circumstances surrounding this gift.
45 Kitāb al-Sulūk, p. 143.
46 The political context, though not the miniature itself, is discussed by G. R. G. Hambly, From Baghdad to Bukhara, from Ghazna to Delhi: the Khil‘a Ceremony in the Transmission of Kingly Pomp and Circumstance, Robes and Honor, p. 200-202.
47 I owe this translation to the kindness of Sheila Blair. The relative importance of the miniature is suggested by the fact that it occupies more space than any other surviving picture in the manuscript. See S. S. Blair, A Compendium of Chronicles. Rashid al-Din’s illustrated history of the world, Oxford 1995, p. 44.
48 The Epic Histories Attributed to P‘awstos Buzand (Buzandaran Patmut’iwnk‘), trans. N. G. Garsoïan, Cambridge, Mass. 1989, p. 197. The inspector seems to have died of a surfeit of honours: the text suggests that these accoutrements prevented him from protecting himself against the axe-bearing assailants that King Pap later set on him for intriguing with Shapūr II of Persia.
49 In the Homilies of John Chrysostom, Paris BNF Coislin 79, fols, lv, 2r. For colour reproductions see The Glory of Byzantium. Art and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era, A.D. 843-1261, ed. H. C. Evans, W. D. Wixom, New York 1997, p. 182, 208.
50 I. Kalavrezou, The Glory of Byzantium, no. 142.
51 On this see T. K. Thomas, Textiles from Medieval Egypt, A. D. 300-1300, Pittsburgh 1990, p. 35-36 and Springberg-Hinsen, Die Hil‘a (as in n. 42), p. 49-53.
52 Thus in the first half of the 10th century Hilāl al-Sābi’ states that when enthroned the caliph wears the garment of the Prophet and bears the Prophet’s sword and staff. See Rusūm dār al-Khilāfa, trans. E. A. Salem as The Rules and Regulations of the ‘Abbasid Court, Beirut 1977, p. 73.
53 These examples are also cited by T. T. Allsen, Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire, Cambridge 1999, p. 87, as analogies for the functions of transmitted clothing in the Mongol world.
54 From scores of available examples, I cite only two: al-Idrīsī’s 12th-century record of (a) the number of loaves needed daily to feed the fish in the pools at Madīnat al-Zahrā’, and (b) the weight of cotton consumed by the wicks of lamps at the Umayyad Mosque in Cόrdoba. See al-Bayān al-mughrib (as in n. 30), p. 382, 479.
Table des illustrations
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Légende | Fig. 1 - Pharaoh makes Joseph ruler over all Egypt. BAV, ms. gr. 746, fol. 125r.© Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vaticano) |
URL | http://books.openedition.org/psorbonne/docannexe/image/1866/img-1.jpg |
Fichier | image/jpeg, 273k |
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Légende | Fig. 2 - Ascension of Elijah. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. gr. 510, fol. 264v (detail) © BnF |
URL | http://books.openedition.org/psorbonne/docannexe/image/1866/img-2.jpg |
Fichier | image/jpeg, 518k |
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Légende | Fig. 3 - Ascension of Elijah. BAV ms. gr. 699, fol. 66v.© Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vaticano) |
URL | http://books.openedition.org/psorbonne/docannexe/image/1866/img-3.jpg |
Fichier | image/jpeg, 400k |
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Légende | Fig. 4 - Christ gives his mantle to the apostles.New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cloisters Collection, acc. no. 2000.486(By courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: Charles Little) |
URL | http://books.openedition.org/psorbonne/docannexe/image/1866/img-4.jpg |
Fichier | image/jpeg, 715k |
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Légende | Fig. 5 - Solidus of Valens© Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection, Washington, DC |
URL | http://books.openedition.org/psorbonne/docannexe/image/1866/img-5.jpg |
Fichier | image/jpeg, 196k |
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Légende | Fig. 6 - Investiture of Mahmūd of Ghazna.Edinburgh University Library, Or. Ms. 20, fol. 121a.© By permission of the Edinburgh University Library |
URL | http://books.openedition.org/psorbonne/docannexe/image/1866/img-6.jpg |
Fichier | image/jpeg, 326k |
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Légende | Fig. 7 - Miriam and her companions. BAV, ms. gr. 752, fol. 449v.© Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vaticano) |
URL | http://books.openedition.org/psorbonne/docannexe/image/1866/img-7.jpg |
Fichier | image/jpeg, 486k |
© Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2005