I will purchase a cluster of additional books in the succeeding week. One book in particular concentrates on the imperial age of Byzantium from 610-1071 CE, or the period that extended from the accession of Flavius Heraclius Augustus (610-641 CE) to the ignominious defeat experienced at Manzikert in 1071 CE. This book will reveal the transitional period of Late Antiquity (200-650/750 CE) and Byzantium's exposure to the Mussulman invasions. As a consequence of the inexorable advance of the Mussulmans, Byzantium was reduced to its medieval form which consisted of the Balkans, Anatolia and southern Italy. According to the Belgian scholar Henri Pirenne, the disruption of the flow of commodities in the Mediterranean Sea and the dissolution of a cohesive and unified entity that spanned the entire length of the Mediterranean resulted in the departure of the Mediterranean from its premier position as the focal point of world history. Political authority was concentrated into the territory situated between the Seine and Elbe Rivers (The Occidental Empire of the Carolingians) as well as the Mussulman states that emerged from the dissolution of the Umayyad Caliphate (661-750 CE). During the political apogee of their autarchy, the Umayyad Caliphs maintained an autocracy that extended to the three confines of their vast dominion which were the Jaxartes, Indus and Tagus Rivers.

The Umayyad Caliphate spanned from Mauretania Tingitana to the Red Sea in its African territories while its Asiatic territories extended from its Levantine provinces to the Jaxartes and Indus Rivers. Additionally, the Tagus River demarcated the possessions of the Occidental Europeans and the Mussulmans. Byzantium acted as a territorial gateway between Occidental Europe and the Umayyad Caliphate (Including the succeeding empire of the Abbasids: 751-1258 CE). Although the Byzantines safeguarded their Romano-Hellenistic tradition, their empire was greatly transformed by the Orientalization of its imperial court (The Orientalization of the Roman Empire occurred during the reigns of Diocletian: 284-305 CE and Constantine I 'the Great': 306-337 CE) which occurred as a result of the dissemination of separate cultural traditions and the incessant and unrelenting conflicts that the Byzantines waged against the inimical states of the Sassanians and the succeeding Mussulman empires. I only hope that this book illustrates the composition of the Byzantine theme system in Anatolia (According to George Ostrogorsky, the theme system was established during the reign of Flavius Heraclius Augustus, however, modern Byzantinists attribute the establishment of the Anatolian theme system to the autocrat Constans II: 641-668 CE). I am greatly interested in the dissolution of late antique Mediterranean culture and the nascence of the medieval epoch. I am also curious to see if the author expounded on the possible relation of a thalassocracy to Byzantium.