Central Peripheries. Empires and Elites across Byzantine and Arab Frontiers in Comparison (700–900 CE)

Pre-print, to be published in: Wolfram Drews (ed.), Die Interaktion von Herrschern und Eliten in imperialen Ordnungen [forthcoming]This paper analyses both the commonalities as well as the entanglements between the interactions of imperial rulers and elites at the peripheries for two frontier regions between competing imperial spheres (esp. the Byzantine Empire and the Arab Caliphate) in the early medieval period: the Southern Caucasus (with a focus on Armenia) and the lands of Northeast Iran and Central Asia (Khurāsān and Transoxania). As a " tertium comparationis " , the interaction between imperial China during the rule of Tang dynasty and elites of Central Asian origin is introduced (esp. in the 7 th and 8 th century CE) in order to highlight common patterns of network building between rulers and elites across cultural (and disciplinary) borders. Potentials, but also inherent dangers of such practices and thereby emerging interdependencies between emperors and changing elites from the peripheries are analysed and illustrated for a case study on the Byzantine-Arab wars of the 830s. Also the long term impacts of these network dynamics on the frameworks of power in Byzantium, the Caliphate and Tang China in the 8 th-10 th century CE are addressed.