Letters, Diplomacy, and Religious Polemic in Ninth-Century Byzantium: Niketas Byzantios and the Problem of Islam

Niketas Byzantios was a Byzantine polemicist active in ninth-century Constantinople. His writings against Islam include two letters in response to an un-named Muslim intellectual and a general refutation of the Qur'an. Unlike earlier Byzantine anti-Islamic writers, Niketas does not regard Islam as a Christian heresy but attacks it as a completely other, alien, and illogical religion. This dissertation seeks to explain how Niketas came to understand and define Islam in this new way.;First, a general survey of Byzantine military and political encounters with Islam shows that Byzantium faced a crisis of confidence with its successive military defeats. Second, my analysis of Byzantine responses to Islam from the seventh through the eighth centuries demonstrates how a paradigm developed that defined Islam in terms of Christian heresy. A study of primary sources on the ninth-century confirms that in spite of the later vilification of Michael III, it was a period of renewal and revival in which Byzantium became an outward-looking society that was ready to redefine Islam in new terms. Through a close reading of Niketas' writings I analyze how he redefined Islam: he attacked Islam as illogical with Aristotelian logic.;My study proves that Niketas initiated a paradigm shift in how Byzantium redefined Islam. In my study of Niketas' sources, I show that he may have been influenced by Islamic writings in his efforts to use Aristotelian logic rather than an appeal to divine revelation as previous Byzantine polemicists had done. A brief survey of later Byzantine anti-Islamic writers make it clear that they followed Niketas rather than returning to earlier sources.