ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines the aspect of the subject of Islamic art and Byzantium. He analyzes in some detail two questions which bear on the problem with particular force: First, the transformation of a Byzantine-Christian material culture into an Islamic one and the impact of this transformation on art, and, second, the iconography of power in early Islamic art. In the early period, especially in Syria and Palestine, Byzantium played the part of one of the many parents who brought a new Islamic art to life. Islamic art used Byzantine art when it needed iconographic expressions. Byzantine art thus became an essential ingredient in the formation of Islamic art. The author presents an interpretation of the systems of association between forms and functions and between images and needs which Byzantine art, for various historical and geographical reasons, imposed on the new culture.
