Byzantium & Friends

Author: Byzantium & Friends

Conversations with experts in the history of Byzantium and surrounding fields, hosted by Anthony Kaldellis.
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150. Why were pseudo-Arabic inscriptions placed on churches in Greece?, with Alicia Walker
Thursday, 12 February, 2026

A conversation with Alicia Walker (Bryn Mawr College) on the pseudo-Arabic inscriptions (or pseudo-kufic) that appear on a number of tenth- and eleventh-century churches in Greece, most notably at the monastery of Hosios Loukas. What did the Arabic script signify in Orthodox culture at the time if not tension with Islam? The conversation is based on Alicia's essay 'Letters from the Edge: Mapping Pseudo-Arabic between Byzantium and the Near East,' in E. Bolman et al., eds., Worlds of Byzantium: Religion, Culture, and Empire in the Medieval Near East (Cambridge University Press 2024). Alicia also prepared a video version of our conversation with images of the places and objects we discuss: you can find it here.