Islamic Influences

High-status textiles, jewelry, and other objects imported or plundered from the Islamic world were popular at the tenth- and eleventh-century imperial court. Minor court functionaries like Zacharias, keen to adopt the styles of their superiors, sometimes replicated the designs found on these objects on their seals.

Obverse and reverse of a lead seal; the obverse depicts a simurgh, the reverse has four lines of Greek inscription — This tenth-century seal shows the diffusion of designs popular among the elite to those, like the butcher Leontas, of more humble means.

Leontas’s seal depicts a simurgh, a mythical Persian bird with the head of a dog, claws of a lion, and body of a peacock. Simurghs had been a popular image on elite textiles and metalwork for centuries in Iran. In the tenth century, this fashion reached the Byzantine court, and was then copied by people of more humble status like the butcher Leontas.

Image Sources

Seal of Zacharias, imperial protospatharios and chief groom (protostrator) (921–931). BZS.2020.017
Fragment of a hanging or cover with bird (ninth–tenth century). Wool and linen. BZ.1973.3
Seal of Leontas, butcher (tenth century, second half). 1951.31.5.2285, Harvard Art Museums/ Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Bequest of Thomas Whittemore

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Islamic Influences

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