The author also deals with a question of relations between Byzantium and the world of Islam. Arabic captives were being baptized by force rather than by preaching. Very few cases when Greek monks were visiting Caliphate and converting Moslems are collected from Byzantine hagiography. Promises of Byzantine emperors to spread Christianity to the Arabic world look more like crusading rather than missionary plans.
IV
In the book a survey is made of Byzantine efforts to convert nomads. Greek sources here are numerous. For centuries Byzantines regarded nomads as essentially unlawful people whose conversion to Christianity demanded that they fully reject their basic ways of life. For example, the missionaries were trying to forbid Tatars to drink «koumys» (horse milk). But such rigidity gradually gave way to more sober approach: as the Empire was declining, its demands became less strict. It can be proved by the marginal notes in the «Sugdaian Synaxarion» and by such outstanding and largely overlooked source as the questions of Theognoste, the Greek bishop of Saray (capital of Tatars), addressed to Constantinopolitan patriarch John Bekkos, and the answers of the latter about the sense and the formalities of missionary practices. This is a document of real religious wisdom and tolerance. It proves that Greeks preached to nomads in difficult circumstances, and showed great courage in doing this. They simplified the rite, adjusted the teaching and tried hard to disseminate not the Byzantine way of life, but the most general concepts of Christianity. Interestingly, the Patriarch approves of all the innovations suggested by the bishop with the only exception: he insists on the excommunication of a priest who happened to kill somebody during his missionary service.
The author also deals with Alanian Christianity. He compiled all medieval Greek inscriptions from Northern Caucasus, scattered through archeological accounts of the past hundred years. Several dozens religious inscriptions (sometimes in broken Greek, sometimes in Ossetian or Kabardine languages but in Greek characters) prove that Byzantines did not have any regular clergy there for any considerable time; they converted Northern Caucasus but failed to organize normal local church, although Alanic bishop is constantly mentioned in official Byzantine documents. The big part of the chapter is dedicated to the analysis of a first‑class source, which has never been used properly: the verbose letter of Theodore, Byzantine bishop of Alania (13