Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium by Judith Herrin (review)

REVIEWS 234 endeavors. Goffman prefaces each chapter with a short “pseudo-biographical vignette.” The vignettes imaginatively reconstruct events in the life of a seventeenthcentury Ottoman emissary named Kubad Çavuş. Their intent, Goffman claims, is to “personalize the historical record” and to convey a “richer and more empathetic understanding” of the Ottoman world through personal detail (xv). The vignettes are an interesting idea and could be an especially effective strategy for engaging the “general and student audience” the series targets (xiii). The first problem with these short narratives is that they are occasionally deficient in the “personality” they hope to convey. While the early vignettes are quite engaging , some of the latter ones are not vivid or novelistic enough to personalize our perspective of the historical master narratives they introduce. The second and even more troubling problem with the narratives is that they are offered as a way to compensate for the “paucity of diaries, memoirs, letters, and similar writings” within the Ottoman historical record (xiv). To assume that the reconstructive work of a twenty-first-century scholar working in the American academy can even approximate the perspective of a seventeenth-century Ottoman is a dubious presumption. Goffman seems aware of his limitations and insists that his “intent is not to concoct fables”; nevertheless, he implies that these tales will “flesh out” a historical record he laments is administrative rather than personal (xiv–xv). The new translations of Ottoman texts available in Nabil Matar’s In the Lands of the Christians, however, do a great deal to remedy the source problem Goffman identifies. The books would make great teaching companions; one could supplement or replace Goffman’s narrative reconstructions with excerpts from the book, or with selections from the famous seventeenth -century Turkish travel writer Evliya Çelebi.5 Goffman’s book fills a useful gap for history instructors and students by presenting an empathetic history of the Ottoman Empire that is both scholarly and accessible. The historiographical questions the book raises about what counts as an Ottoman source and about the “value” of evaluating societies could actually provoke useful pedagogical discussions—as long as instructors encourage their students to read their textbooks critically. Left unchallenged, however, students will probably learn more content than method from the textbook. While the book presents an updated and sympathetic view of the Empire at a critical time, the authoritative tone of the book tends to reify the version of history it contains. Instructors can, nevertheless, find room for discussion and debate between the lines of this rich and detailed text. The book includes plenty of historical quotations and wonderful illustrations that are ripe for analysis; I hope students will be encouraged to grapple with these embedded primary texts for themselves. HOLLY CRAWFORD PICKETT, English, UCLA Judith Herrin, Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium (Princeton: 5 Nabil Matar, ed. and trans., In the Lands of the Christians: Arabic Travel Writing in the Seventeenth Century (New York 2003); Evliya Çelebi, Evliya Çelebi’s Book of Travels : Land and People of the Ottoman Empire in the Seventeenth Century, 5 vols. (Leiden and New York 1988–2000). REVIEWS 235 Princeton University Press, 2001) xi + 304 pp., ill., maps. Judith Herrin graces us with an informative and entertaining account of the rule of three Byzantine empresses, Women in Purple. Irene, Euphrosyne, and Theodora ruled the eastern Mediterranean Christian empire of Byzantium in the eighth and ninth centuries A.D. In addition to the dubious honor of being women rulers in an age when few females yielded such power, all three left lasting contributions to universal art and culture by preserving and protecting the veneration of religious icons in the Eastern Christian Church. The policy against the worship of icons had its beginnings in the seventh century. Throughout the 720s and 730s the Saracens were attacking the outreaches of Byzantium with the ultimate goal of entrenching themselves in the capital city of Constantinople. After a series of defeats at the hands of the Arabs , the Byzantine emperor Leo III, believing that his Arab enemies were granted victory because of their strict stand against the worship of images, issued an edict banning the worship of all icons in his own empire...