ABSTRACT
The argument of this paper * is that Byzantine Iconoclasm was a response to the rise of Islam. This is an old-fashioned point of view. First advanced by the Byzantines themselves, the theory of Saracen influence was accepted by older scholarship on the subject, and long remained academically respectable. In the last generation, however, it has fallen out of favour. Contemporary literature on the subject, though far from agreed in other respects, is virtually unanimous that, whatever may have been the causes of Iconoclasm, Islam was not among them. That the military success of the Arabs impressed the Byzantines is not denied; if anything, it is emphasized. But the assumption that the Byzantines paid attention to what the successful Arabs believed is now deemed unproven, unnecessary or even incredible.
