The Island of Cyprus in the Early Islamic World: Harmonizing Legal and Geographical Visions

A key point of confusion has troubled the historiography of the medieval Mediterranean in regard to the newly-established frontier zone between the Byzantine Empire and the early Islamic empires of the Umayyad and ‘Abbasid dynasties. The island of Cyprus, lying just off the coastal areas where the inchoate frontier zone between Byzantine and Islamic cultural worlds had formed, receives only cursory mention in the source materials for a three-century period between the early Arabo-Muslim invasions of the seventh century and the Byzantine resurgence in the tenth. Noting the terms of early treaties with the Arabs, Byzantine historians suggested the existence of an unusual form of “condominium,” or shared governance over the island. Others have questioned this view, based on Byzantine sources that portray the island as lost to Byzantine control.

      What these discussions have lacked is a thorough examination of various types of Arabic-language sources that offer tantalizing details about the island's legal and geographical features in earlier medieval times. This paper will outline the potential value of these sources, not only for better clarifying the history of Cyprus but better understanding the nature of the Mediterranean maritime world as a whole.

            In the course of doing so, however, the paper will also outline the challenges, both historiographical and methodological, that early Islamic sources present. In particular, there is often a gap between the portrayals found in different types of texts, broadly defined as “legal” (including economics and religious law) and “geographical” (including both geographical and historical accounts). The “legal” texts often provide an idealized snapshot of the island's position and status, while the “geographical” texts hew more closely to lively narrative accounts or descriptions of commercial activity. However, the two categories can overlap and complement each other, and from this intersection, a new interpretation of the Mediterranean can emerge.