These essays survey the range of historical sources from the peoples who collided with the Byzantine Empire during this period of dramatic upheaval. The Empire that had been expanded and consolidated by Basil II (d. 1025) was to disintegrate in the face of incursions from the north and Muslim east. In addition, pilgrims and crusaders from the west passed through the Empire and settled - culminating in the capture of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. In order to understand the history of the region during this period, one must be aware of the rich source material created by these shifting populations, in a wide range of languages, and with differing traditions of historical writing. The fourteen essays give an overview of the material, highlighting any problems the historian may have in dealing with it, and provide detailed bibliographical surveys. Latin, Arabic, Jewish, Slavonic, Georgian, Armenian and Syriac sources are all discussed. This invaluable reference work offers new approaches for all those working on the meeting of the Christian and Muslim worlds in this period.

The Chronicon Paschale or Easter Chronicle is an important part of the Byzantine chronographic tradition of the late antique period. It was composed at Saint Sophia in 630, probably under the patronage of the Patriarch Sergius. It provides evidence of the riots, plots and massacres of Phocas' reign, the financial difficulties of the time, the Avar siege of Constantinople in 626, and the triumph over the Persians under Heraclius in 628.

The title of Mary Whitby's book 'From a Distance', is a line from a poem of the same name in this collection. The golden sprayed waves on the cover give a hint to the poem's content and is just one of the experiences where the author finds her inspiration. Her work with children, the horrors of war, her love of nature, traditions of Christmas and everyday incidents find their way into her writing. Her poems will inspire, amuse, and perhaps even cause you to recall memories of your own experiences. Things that touch her heart inevitably end up in a poem, be it sad, funny, shocking or whimsical, and this small book has them all.

This collection of essays has its origin in a conference held at Oxford in 2006 to mark the publication of the first English edition of the Acts of Chalcedon. Its aim is to place Chalcedon in a broader context, and bring out the importance of the acts of the early general councils from the fifth to the seventh century, documents that because of their bulk and relative inaccessibility have received only limited attention till recently. This volume is evidence that this situation is now rapidly changing, as historians of late antiquity as well as specialists in the history of the Christian Church discover the richness of this material for the exploration of common concerns and tensions across the provinces of the Later Roman Empire, language use, networks of influence and cultural exchange, and political manipulation at many different levels of society. The extent to which the acts were instruments of propaganda and should not be read as a pure verbatim record of proceedings is brought out in a number of the essays, which illustrate the fascinating literary problems raised by these texts.