The writing of this book arose from the convergence of two interests that have long intrigued me: the Hellenization of the Levant in antiquity and the centuries-long confrontation of Byzantine and Islamic societies, the joint heirs of this semi-Hellenized Levant. The decline of Byzantine Hellenism and the phenomenon of Islamization in Anatolia from the eleventh through the fifteenth century focus on that area and time within which these two interests converge for the last time. Perhaps this undertaking is inordinately ambitious, encompassing as it does a vast geographical and chronological span and cutting across three disciplines (those of the Byzantinist, Islamist, and Turkologist). Now that this work is finished thc words that Helmut Ritter spoke to me in an Istanbul restaurant in 1959, and which then seemed to be a challenge, take on a different meaning. This renowned orientalist told me, simply and calmly, that it would be impossible to write a history of this great cultural transformation. My own efforts have, of necessity, been rcstricted to certain aspects of this huge problem. Scholarship badly nceds new, detailed histories of the Seljuk, Nicaean, Trebizondine states, and of many of the Turkish emirates. There has been no comprehensive history of the Rum Seljuks since that of Gordlevski (1941) of Nicaea since those of Meliarakes and Gardner in 1898and 1912,of Trebizond since that of Miller in 1926

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