This page is referenced by:

• 1 2022-06-15T11:56:15-07:00 What does this tell us about the Crusades? 10 plain 2023-01-15T11:08:41-08:00 It was the invasions of the Muslim Seljuk Turks into Byzantine territories that led to the call for the First Crusade in 1095. After the Seljuk Turks conquered formerly-Byzantine areas, these areas were also open to diverse peoples from Iran and central Asia who were primarily Muslim. Byzantine inhabitants and their incoming Muslim neighbors often fought but also exchanged ideas and designs, as we see in this bowl.  This bowl was probably made in the Black Sea region, perhaps by a Byzantine potter in a Black Sea (Chersonese) workshop. The harpy was a common Islamic motif and now appears on this Byzantine bowl.
  
  The crusades were a time of extensive trade and travel that influenced the art of the European world. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Italian mercantile cities, like Venice, began controlling a lot of Byzantine ceramic trade within the eastern Mediterranean.  Shipwrecks reveal the large quantity of ceramics that were traded over long distances.In addition to long-distance trade, it would be easy for a crusader to acquire this artifact at a shop or market in the eastern Mediterranean and bring it back to Europe. Our bowl's unique iconography would refer to their experience in the Holy Land and showcase the crusader's travels there. Ceramics from the eastern Mediterranean would be valuable to a European crusader, acting as a reminder of their crusading experience.