The Byzantine Panoplia Tradition and Greek Qur'an Translation in the Latin West

Abstract

Byzantium has played only a minor role, if any at all, in the Western appropriation of knowledge on Islam. One exception to this is the Panoplia dogmatike by Eustathios Zigabenos, active under and working on the commission of the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118). The Panoplia dogmatike (‘Dogmatic Armoury’) was a most imperial text, designed to support the emperor's fight against heretics. The text carried not only standard Byzantine views about Islam, but also, in almost documentary style, quotations from the Qur'an that originated from a Greek translation used by Niketas Byzantios (working in the 860's and 870's) and Evodios (late ninth century). In the Latin translation of the Panoplia dogmatike by Pier Zini in 1555 a selection of Qur'anic quotations, accompanied with Byzantine comments, were made available to Latin readers.