Paradigms of frontier interaction: a new use for Digenes Akrites

Abstract

This article argues that the Byzantine romance known as Digenes Akrites has more to offer historians than is often recognized. Regardless of the fictional nature of the story or of the exact date of its composition, the Digenes tale can serve as an exemplar of the kinds of interactions which regularly took place in the frontier regions between the Byzantine and Muslim worlds and the social values and cultural mores that guided such interactions. If taken as a paradigm of otherwise invisible conditions along the frontier regions of southeastern Anatolia, Digenes can shed new light on an otherwise dark and incomplete picture. It is, in fact, a frontier world in and of itself, in which outside powers, both Muslim and Byzantine, are distant images and only occasional players.