Countermarks with the monogram of the Emperor Heraclius (610–41) are found in Syria on Byzantine copper coins. After discussing the typology and the reading of the countermarks we reject the older proposals that the countermarks served as a kind of revaluation in connection with the Heraclian monetary reforms. Statistical analyses of 173 specimens and their provenances, as well as comparisons with contemporary finds, have led us to the conclusion that the countermarks were applied between c. 633 and 636 in Palestine 1. They were presumably produced during the struggles with the invading Arabs. Circulating copper coins (old and new — folles, three-quarter and half folles) became revalued by countermarking because of the serious lack of cash at that time in Syria.

Issues about the manufacture of Byzantine mosaics and the implications of these in wider terms relating to social and economic questions about the art form have been little discussed. This paper brings together evidence about Byzantine glass mosaic tesserae gathered from archaeology, glass technology and glass analysis, and synthesizes these into a discussion of three aspects: distribution; manufacture; trade and price. It looks to examine how these different elements can be used to form a more detailed composite picture about the production and distribution of Byzantine mosaics. It also proposes ways in which glass analysis can be used in a more coherent way to extend our understanding of mosaic glass production.

The alliance between Isaac II Angelas and Saladin at the time of the Third Crusade has received much attention from Western and Islamic contemporaries, yet the Byzantine sources are oddly silent. This article teases out a negative reaction in Byzantium to the alliance, a reaction found in an oration delivered by Niketas Choniates on 6 January 1190. The article concludes that Choniates opposed the alliance and tactfully urged Isaac II to turn his attention towards redeeming Jerusalem, then under Saladin's control. The conclusion is set within the larger framework set by other scholars, such as Magdalino, Angold, and Hamilton, who see the Holy Land as an important factor in Byzantine policy before 1176.

This article focuses on the significance of the Orthodox painters’ manuals, called hermeneiai zographikes, in the development of post-Byzantine iconography and painting technology and techniques in the Balkans during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Using a number of unpublished painters’ manuals (Greek and Slavonic) as primary sources for the study of Christian and Ottoman culture in the Balkan peninsula, it is possible to examine perceptions of Europe in the Balkans, in particular the principal routes for the transmission of ideas of the European Enlightenment, as well as the role of artists as mediators in the processes of ‘Europeanization'.

George Horton was a man of letters and United States Consul in Greece and Turkey at a time of social and political change. He writes of the re-taking of Smyrna by the Turkish army in September 1922. His account, however, goes beyond the blame and events to a demonization of Muslims, in general, and of Turks, in particular. In several of his novels, written more than two decades before the events of September 1922, he had already identified the Turk as the stock-in-trade villain of Western civilization. In his account of Smyrna, he writes not as historian, but as publicist.