Leisure, Islam and Byzantium

Abstract

This chapter follows the Roman Empire into the Byzantine and Islamic cultures that succeeded it (Cameron, 1976, 1979). The first section of this chapter will begin with the Greens and Blues, first met in Chapter 1. A wider account of the role of leisure, games and elite and popular culture in the Byzantine Empire will contextualize the story of the circus factions. Procopius’ Secret History (1981) will be used to present an account of the activities of the circus factions, and the leisure forms that were controlled by these factions. I will examine Christian writers and moralists of the early Byzantine period to explore the ways in which leisure was restricted and channelled. I will argue that in the increasingly autocratic eastern Roman Empire, theological debate became an outlet for communicative discourse and agency, to the extent that — especially in the sixth century — it became a form of leisure among the urban population of Constantinople. In the second section of this chapter, I will examine the restrictions and opportunities for leisure offered by Islam in the Early Caliphate Period, and the way in which leisure practices soon became a way of distinguishing among elites, the faithful masses and other People of the Book such as Christians and Jews. In the third section of this chapter, I will use the writing of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Psellus and Anna Comnena to chart the re-emergence of Byzantine power and the ritualized, gendered leisure of the empire in the 900s and 1000s.