Byzantium and Islam : Age of Transition

Although my ancestors are from Asia Minor, the geography that has been identified as the Heartland of Byzantium, and I spent most of my life in its capital city, Istanbul (Constantinople) where the biggest monument to this once great empire, the Hagia Sophia, is part of the backdrop of everyday life, there was something I always found a little elusive in deciphering the Byzantine civilization and culture.  Considering Byzantium was actually an extension of the Greco-Roman culture which happens to form the foundations of the predominant culture in the West today, it is actually quite surprising how little is clearly known of this once central power of late antiquity and early middle ages, especially in contrast to the obsession we seem to possess for the culture of ancient Greece and Rome.  Thanks to the enlightening exhibition going on at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that is due to close on July 8th, I feel I have finally found some of the clues to these curious concepts.