Experiencing the Exotic

Testimonies from both Byzantium and foreign visitors to the empire affirm to a certain wonder in the city of Constantinople: the presence of exotic animals. Here, an exotic animal is defined as any mammal or bird whose natural habitat lies outside the political borders of the Byzantine Empire, and whose presence in the empire is the result either of trade or other forms of exchange. Exotic animals were paraded in the streets of the capital, participated in staged hunts in the Hippodrome, hunted with the emperor, and were displayed in court rituals. At the same time, exotic animal imagery decorates many aspects of the daily life of the Byzantine urban elites, while both exotic animals and their imagery were part of the life within the imperial court. Unlike other exotic animals, whose presence in the medieval Byzantine Empire is attested either exclusively in literary sources, or confined in a small number of representations, cheetahs feature in both literary sources and across a wide spectrum of artistic media. Their artistic representations, combined with evidence from literary sources, may reveal previously understudied aspects of Byzantine daily life. In order to do that, we need to determine how familiar the Byzantines were with the animal itself, the trade routes or other mechanisms used to procure those animals and their value, symbolic or otherwise, within the broad Byzantine society. For the most part, Byzantine sources remain silent on those animals. However, sources from the Islamic world, including India, provide enough information to allow us to reconstruct, though only to a certain extent, the Byzantine cheetah experience

Ancient history · Byzantine architecture · Emperor · Empire · Geography · Political science · Politics · Wonder · Byzantine Studies and History · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History · Law · Psychology