Introduction

This chapter develops a holistic description of the Byzantine perceptions of Persia from the seventh century down to the late Byzantine period in all their complexity and diversity. Despite the huge wealth of information, the topic of Persia in the middle and late Byzantine tradition has never been the focus of research interest, and it remains invisible to modern analytical optics. To develop the author's own research approaches, it is essential to establish a clear conceptual framework of the study. He will refer to a few scholars only, whose conceptual and innovative works deal with Byzantine cultural memory: Gilbert Dagron, Paul Magdalino, Henry Maguire, Albrecht Berger, Anthony Kaldellis, Ruth Macrides, Claudia Rapp, Dimiter Angelov, Corinne Jouanno and others, in many cases, have been reconstructing memory dimensions of the Byzantine mentality.