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Today's episode will be an interview about Byzantine and Islam with Judith Heron, who is

Professor Emerita at the Center for Hellenic Studies at King's College London.

Hi Judith.

Hi.

Thanks for coming on the podcast.

Thanks for having me.

So we're going to be talking about Islam and Byzantium, which is an issue I just looked at in the previous episode. I thought maybe I could ask at the beginning if you could tell us what sorts of evidence we can draw on here

so what sorts of texts what other sorts of evidence we can use to explore the relationship between the Byzantine and Islamic realms?

Well to begin with I think we should stress we should remember

that in this long period of about 800 years from the birth of Islam, the arrival of the Arabs in the

Mediterranean world, and the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, you know, we have a very, very long period and so it's important to remember

that Byzantium changed a lot in those 800 years and so did Islam and there were also several types of Islam. After all in the first

period we're talking about Byzantine's and the Arabs. In the later period after

the 11th century we're talking about Byzantine and the Turks primarily and then the Crusaders

come and Russian by bringing militant Latin warriors to reconquer the holy places of Jerusalem, Bethlehem and so on, and the Byzantine

Greeks rather stand back from that effort and leave it to the Latin Crusaders

to battle with the different Islamic forces.

But it's very important, I think, to remember that in the initial period of Byzantine Islamic relations.

We're talking about Byzantine-based in Constantinople

and the Islamic Kata fate,

...