Jonathan Shepard is a Research Associate at the Faculty of History, University of Oxford and was for many years University Lecturer in Russian History at the University of Cambridge.Peter Frankopan is Professor of Global History at the University of Oxford, where he is Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research and Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford. He is also UNESCO Professor of Silk Roads Studies and a Bye-Fellow at King's College, Cambridge.

• 1: The Byzantine Phenomenon Part I. WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE? 2: Byzantine Globalism: The Power of Attraction 3: Commonwealth, Empire, or Nation-State? 4: What Did It Mean to Be 'Roman' in Byzantium? 5: Commonwealth of Elect Nations: A Contradiction in Terms? 6: Identity through Language in the Byzantine Commonwealth 7: Keeping Up Appearances: Byzantine Perspectives of 'Legality' and the Italians Part II. HOW DO THEY DO IT? 8: Laying Down the Law in Byzantium: Law-Making and Adjudication 9: Identity, Law, and Beards: Judicial Shaving in Byzantium, c.600-900 10: A Taktikal Retreat?: Middle Byzantine Provincial Administration Revisited 11: Byzantium's Empires of Gold 12: The Patriarchate of Constantinople and Its Register: Documents, Agents, and Interconnectivity 13: The Byzantine Visual Commonwealth BORDERLINE CASES 14: Attracting Elites from the Empire's Periphery 15: Byzantine 'Zomia'?: Spaces of Refusal between Centre and Periphery, 500-1200 16: 'As Though from India Itself': Stories of Byzantium 17: Byzantino-Turkish Diplomacy and the Loss of Western Asia Minor, 1260-1335 18: Agents of Commercial and Diplomatic Exchange: Amalfitans in Byzantium in the Tenth to Twelfth Centuries 19: Imagining Byzantium in Norse Romance The Latin West 20: Frankish Commonwealth or Imperium Romanum?: The Empire in the West, 750-1500 21: Parallel Spheres: Monasticism East and West c.1000-1500 22: Alignment, Entanglement, and Antagonism: Byzantium and the West 23: The Byzantinization of the Roman Church under Innocent II (1130-1143) 24: Byzantium and the Crusades PART V. THE ISLAMIC-CHRISTIAN EAST AND BEYOND 25: Byzantium, Rum, and the bilad al-Islam 26: Looking East: Early Christian Art beyond Christian Hegemony 27: Melkite Translations of Byzantine Law-Books into Arabic 28: Art and Eschatological Empire between the Islamic East, Byzantium, and Latin Christendom: Sultan Baybars I's Mausoleum in Damascus 29: Romans, Egyptians, and the Second Arab Siege of Constantinople (717/18) 30: The Byzantine Commonwealth: A View from the East Part VIA. Obolensky's Commonwealth 31: Reclaiming the Balkans: A Study in Byzantine Soft Power 32: Bulgaria-Prime Candidate for Byzantine Commonwealth Membership? 33: A Virtual Empire?: Byzantium and the Eastern Adriatic Coast 34: Before Byzance après Byzance: The Making of Wallachia and the Byzantine Political Toolkit 35: Languages of Art 36: Finding the Frontiers of the Commonwealth Part VIb. Obolensky's Commonwealth 37: On Rus and the Commonwealth: Old Questions in the Light of Some New Studies 38: Early Rus Political Culture versus Byzantine Law: Reconciling Two Contradictory Ideologies 39: The Reluctant Empire 40: Byzantine Literature in the Slav World: Serendipity or Intention? 41: Non-elite Church Contacts between Byzantium and Rus in the Palaiologan Period Part VII. Steppe Changes 42: The Typology of the Nomad State in Western Eurasia 43: From War to Peace in Medieval Steppe Empires 44: Boundaries and Bonds: Khazaria and the Commonwealth 45: Bargaining with Byzantium: The North Caucasian Kingdom of Alania and the Empire 46: Triangles into Spheres: Trade, Faith, and the Palaiologan Balancing Act after 1261 47: Epilogue

Part I. WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE?