A great survey of the Byzantine cultural legacy in Italy, Russia, and the Middle East.

This was a fascinating read. As in Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization, Wells writes about how civilization survived western Europe's dark age in the form of the Byzantine Empire, and how this repository of art, science, philosophy, and literature provided the flame that lit the renaissance.

Sailing from Byzantium is a history book about Byzantium. Unlike many previous books on the topic, this focuses on the way Byzantine ideas---of commerce, of science, of culture---influenced the Christian, Islamic, and Slavic worlds.

Colin Wells shows an excellent ability to summarize historical sources and existing scholarship, and succeeds at creating a readable narration from a Byzantine setting. I particularly liked the (speculative) analysis where, albeit not being too novel (by the author's own admission), the author shows depth of thought and conciseness without losing readability. At points, however, this focus on readability turns into colloquialism, where kings and queens are almost compared to hiphop stars.

The part about the cultural influence of Byzantium on the emerging Slavic world is particularly compelling: for over 1,000 years, Constantinople has been the heart of an Orthodox world that it helped being created and it shaped remotely, all while trying to suppress violent invasions from both Christianity and the Muslim world.

Overall, an excellent read on the topic of Byzantium (Istanbul) and its influence on the creation of the modern world.

This was a book that filled in a gaping hole in my knowledge of world history. It seems that after Rome fell to the barbarian hordes all knowledge of Greek, Roman and mid-Eastern literature was lost in western Europe. A couple of scholars from Constantinople were sent to Italy to tutor scholars there in Greek and Hebrew. From this seed grew all western knowledge of the ancient world. Byzantium, the western Christian empire lasted a 1000 years before falling first to the Venetians, in the strange 4th Crusade,and later to the Ottoman Turks, the combined effects of which destroyed the intellectual community there. To fill out ones historical knowledge it is well worth a read.

I only listened to the first third of this audiobook. It is very informative, but also a little dry. If you're interested in Byzantine history, especially the ideas/culture/beliefs which shaped this empire, then you will thoroughly enjoy this book. At a different time, I could have easily given it 4 stars.

This is a neat book that explores Byzantine influence in the medieval West, medieval Islam, and medieval Slavic nations. This is intended for a non-specialist or an amateur lover of Byzantium (like me). The guiding themes of the book are "Athens and Jerusalem" (i.e., secular Greek science and philosophy and Constantinopolitan religious movements) and how these three different civilizations interacted with Byzantium. Broadly speaking, the West focuses on the later Middle Ages, Islam focuses on the earlier Middle Ages with a gradual waning of influence, and the Slavic section covers a solid millennium and is therefore half the book.

I enjoyed this book - I learned a lot, the narrative structure is clear, there is use of foreshadowing and callbacks, the author includes some paragraph-length primary source excerpts, there is a comparative timeline, a dramatis personae, a bunch of maps.

This was an attempt to shed light on a forgotten aspect of history. Most westerners, when they think of Rome, think of the Western empire. In terms of religion, the debate is between Protestants and catholics. Wells (and others) open a new page of history for us.



Wells divides his work into three sections. He shows how Byzantium influenced and was influenced by the Romans, The Muslims, and the Slavs. And at the end of each epoch of Byzantine history, Wells shows how causes that led to Byzantium's fall opened another dimension of its survival.



The pros of the book is the sectionon the Slavs. He made Slavo-Russian history dazzling

Byzantium bridged between the Western culture and civilization and the Eastern culture and civilization. Byzantium, also known (particularly to themselves) as the Eastern roman Empire lasted for about 1,00 years (more than the Roman Republic and Roman Empire combined). This book does an excellent job of describing the contributions of the Byzantium Empire in a number of areas - that of preserving the knowledge from the ancient Greek culture and passing that on to the West after the renaissance. But more gernerally, Byzantium had very strong influences on the development of Western, Slavic, and Islamic culture. The cyrillic alphabet came from Byzantium's St Cyril's efforts to create a written language for Bulgarians and the rest of the Slavic world (which before him had no written language). Definately an interesting and well researched book, and written accessibly,

4.5/5

Review to follow.

Three linked essays about the links between Byzantine culture and the influence on its neighbours: Renaissance Europe, Umayyad and Abbasid Kalifate and the Bulgarian, Serb and Russian Orthodox churches.
Well written and accessible, but laden with information and names, great way into the topic.

"As the author admits, this is a work of popular systhesis, not a scholarly tome. However, there is much interesting--and to me--new information. The insights on the cultural impact of the Byzantines on the Italian Renaissamce, Islamic learning, and Russian society is noteworthy."