The Abbāsid palace of Theophilus: Byzantine taste for the arts of Islam1
Hussein Keshani
The Byzantine emperor Theophilus (829–842) is recorded as having commissioned a palace in the style of contemporary Abbāsid palaces Baghdad near Constantinople, making it an important instance visual cultural exchange between Byzantium and Islamdom. One widely held explanation suggests that had taste for arts This paper argues Abbāsid‐style should be placed context political events Theophilus's architectural patronage. can then seen product Byzantine‐Muslim rivalry mediated by increasingly shared culture objects included concepts.
Al-Masaq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean