1. This Note has a vast and quite turbulent bibliographical background, which would dwarf the text to little purpose, so I am limiting references to items which are relevant to its point (apart from a funerary excursus in n.6). I am grateful to David Ricks, Bruce Lippard and Michael Ursinus for advice.

For literature on Digenes. start with Beck, H. -G., Geschichte der byzantinischen Volksliteratur (Munich 1971) 48–63 Google Scholar. I fancy that the ‘discovery’ of the poem in 1868 may have been the result of a rearrangement of the Soumela MSS inevitble on the building of a new library for them after 1864: see Bryer, A. and Winfield, D., ‘Nineteenth-century monuments in the city and vilayet of Trebizond: architectural and historical notes: part 3’ 30 (1970) 276 Google Scholar. After 1887 Ioannides deposited the MS in the library of the Constantinople the frequent assertion that it is now ‘lost’ seems to be derived from an opinion expressed by Kyriakides, S. in 1936: Mavrogordato, J., Digenes Akrites (Oxford 1956) xi Google Scholar. In fact, after 1923 most of the Soumela library was transferred (eventually) to the library of the Turk Tarih Kurumu, Ankara, including other Pontic MSS such as a cartulary of Vazelon monastery, which the TTK preserves. I see no reason why the Digenes MS should be lost: has anyone tried asking for it at the TTK library recently?

For English readers, David is most accessible through two complementary translations: by Shalian, A.K., David of Sassoun: The Armenian Folk Epic in four cycles (Athens, Ohio 1964)Google Scholar, which is based on an ‘official’ composite text published in Erevan in 1939; and by an Armenian native of Trebizond, Surmelian, L., Daredevils ofSassoun (Denver 1964)Google Scholar, based on a single text.

2. ‘Was Digenes Akrites an oral poem?’, BMGS7 (1981) 7-28; but see now Alexiou, S., (Athens 1985)Google Scholar. If Byzantinists wish to test the versions of Digenes against a more-or-less genuine oral poem, they should read a single version of David of Sassoun.

3. E.g. in papers in Grégoire, H., Autour de l’épopée byzantine (London 1975)Google Scholar. There are further hazards. I do not know whether to be gratified or alarmed at the way my first undergraduate (but still wary) foray into this field has been taken up: ‘Akhtamar and Digenis Akritas’, Antiquity 34 (1960) 295-97; Bartikian, H.M., ‘Notes sur l’épopée byzantine “Digénis Akritas” ‘, Revue des Études Arméniennes 3 (1966) 166 Google Scholar; and Huxley, G., ‘Antecedents and context of Digenes Akrites’, GRBS 15 (1974) 332–33.Google Scholar

4. On Wakhtang VI see Lang, D.M., The last years of the Georgian monarchy, 1658-1832 (New York 1957) 32–48, 118 Google Scholar. The latest English version of Shota Rustaveli is Katharine Vivian, The Knight in Panther Skin (London 1977); and Tsouladzé, French S., Le Chevalier à la Peau de Tigre (Paris 1964)Google Scholar. Whatever its date of composition or even authorship, which are now, not before time, in question, the romance is of such a literary nature that social conclusions drawn from it must be treated with the reserve one would put on the Erotokritos as a ‘source’ for Venetocratic feudalism; an example is Nino Salia, ‘Le poème médiéval Géorgien’, BediKartlisa 19-20 (1965) 15-30. On Seyyid Battal, see Kyriakidès, S.P., ‘Eléments historiques byzantins dans le roman épique turc de Sayyid Battâl, martyr musulman du Ville siècle, est-il devenu, dans le légende, le contemporain d’Amer (+ 863)?’, B 11 (1936) 563-70, 571–75 Google Scholar; and (for a local interpretation) Aslanbay, M., Seyyid Battal Gazi’nin, hayati ve bazi menkibeleri (Eskijehir 1953)Google Scholar. Admirably, Irène Mélikoff (-Sayar) has edited, translated and commented upon both La geste de Melik Dânismend (Paris 1960); and Le destân d’Umûr pacha (Paris 1954).

5. The question is faced squarely and sensibly by Oikonomidès, N., himself ‘discoverer’ of the Escorial Taktikon. Compare his Les listes de préséance byzantines des IXe et Xe siècles (Paris 1972)Google Scholar; and ‘L’ “épopée” de Digénis et la frontière orientale de Byzance aux Xe et Xle siècles’, Travaux et Mémoires 7 (1979) 375-97. For ethos, cf. Haldon, J.F. — Kennedy, H., ‘The Arab-Byzantine frontier in the eighth and ninth centuries: military organisation and society in the borderlands’, ZRVI 19 (1980) 79–116.Google Scholar

6. Luttrell, A., ‘The later history of the Mausolleion and its utilization in the Hospitaller castle at Bodrum’, in The Maussolleion at Halikarnassos, ed. Jeppesen, K., II (Aarhus, 1986)Google Scholar (= Jutland Archaeological Society Publications, XV:2), 133-35. His PI.III, of MS Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, 14, f.312v, dateable 1066-81, shows the Mausoleum in the form of a ciborium baldachin (four free-standing columns on a square marble enclosure carry a dome). This Byzantine type of tomb was evidently shared by that of Patriarch St. Athanasios I of Constantinople (d. before 1323): Talbot, Alice-Mary M., Faith healing in late Byzantium (Brookline, Mass. 1983) 14, 56-57, 126–27 Google Scholar. Another example of this type, the tomb of the Grand Komnenos IV (d. 1429 and incidentally father-in-law of han Turali’s great-grandson) survived until 1917 and is illustrated in my ‘The faithless Kabazitai and Scholarioi’, in Maistor. Classical, Byzantine and Renaissance Studies for Robert Browning, ed. Ann Moffatt (Canberra 1984) pi.3. The last built of the type known to me are the canopied tombs of King Solomon II Bagration of Imereti (d. 1815) — see Bedi Kartlisa 25 (1968) 214-17 — and of Metropolitan Konstantios of Trebizond, who was buried sitting down in his surviving tomb in 1879: see 29 (1968) 103-5. The practice of enthroning dead kings and prelates may have given rise to this sort of tomb and persisted until this century: see the photograph of the funeral procession of Patriarch Ioakeim III (d. 1912) in Dwight, H.G., Constantinople. Settings and Traits (New York and London 1926) 507.Google Scholar

A.L. Yakobson reports another type of tomb from the Crimea, of stone-cut models of triple-apsed domed churches, or simply of their open apsides in a sort of shrine, which may have Armenian and Georgian parallels, and for which late Byzantine antecedents have been proposed: see Yakobson, A.L., ‘Model hrama iz raskopok Eski-kermen v Krimu i problema novogo architekturnogo stilya v Vizantii’, ZografS (1977) 30–33 Google Scholar; Grabar, A., ‘Observations sur l’Arc de Triomphe de la Croix dit Arc d’Eginhard et sur d’autres bases de la Croix’, Cahiers Archéologiques 27 (1978) 77–83 Google Scholar (for which references I am grateful to Dr. Zaga Gavrilovic); and Jakobson, A.L., ‘A propos des relations entre les régions littorales au Nord et au Sud de la Mer Noire’, BS42 (1981) 43–51 Google Scholar and figs. l-5b. However, all examples Yakobson has so far published look to me to belong to a common nineteenth-century (and I think no earlier) Pontic type, with which some have declared epigraphic links. A similar one was labelled Byzantine in the Council of Europe exhibition in St. Eirene, Istanbul, in 1985. Comparable examples in their homeland are illustrated in S. Ballance, A. Bryer and D. Winfield, ‘Nineteenth-century monuments in the city and vilayet of Trebizond: architectural and historical notes: Part 1’, 28 (1966) 264, pl.34. Nevertheless it is clear that late Byzantine mausolea and funerary practice await their student.

A final and understandable misconception is that the sculpted rams found outside such Armenian churches as the Twelve Apostles at Kars, or at Varzahan (midway between Sinir and Bayburt) are Akkoyunlu monuments: in fact all appear to be Armenian tombs. (The frontispiece of Curzon, R., Armenia [London 1854]Google Scholar may be identified as of the now lost example at Varzahan; the original drawing is now in the collection of Francis Witts Esq., of Upper Slaughter).

7. For the large bibliography of this small site, see Bryer, A. and Winfield, D., The Byzantine monuments and topography of the Pontos (Washington D.C. 1985) I, 103-6; II, pl. 29.Google Scholar

8. F. Iz, s.v. ‘Dede Korkut’ in EI ² has a bibliography up to 1958, to which may be added (besides items mentioned below): O.Ş. Gökyay, Buğünkü dille Dede Korkut massailari (Istanbul 1943); Fahrettin, K.M., Dede Korkut, Oğuznâmelevi (Istanbul 1952)Google Scholar; Zhirmunskiy, V.M. and Kononov, A.N., Kniga Moego Deda Korkuta (Moscow and Leningrad 1962)Google Scholar; and Korogly, H., Oguskiy geroicheskiy epos (Moscow 1976).Google Scholar

9. Lewis, Cf. G., The Book of Dede Korkut (London 1974) 119 Google Scholar; and Siimer, F., Uysal, A.E. and Walker, W.S.; The-Book of Dede Korkut. A Turkish epic (Austin, Texas and London 1972) 101 Google Scholar. I summarise because I have gone over this before in ‘Greeks and Türkmens: the Pontic exception’, DOP 29 (1975) = The Empire of Trebizond and the Pontos (London 1980) V, 119, 134-35 (where the question of dowry/bride- price is also raised).

10. I am most grateful to Professor Charles Dowsett of Oxford for tracking down the published origins of the story translated by Surmelian, L., Apples of Immortality (London 1968) 221–24 Google Scholar as Nawasardeanc, T. ^c, Hay Žoĝovrdakan hek^c iat^c ner (Vaĝar sapat 1882) II, 29–37 Google Scholar, reprinted in Orbeli, H., same title (Erevan 1959) II, 254–59.Google Scholar

11. Panaretos, Michael, Tlepi, ed. Lampsides, O., 22 (1958) 70–76.Google Scholar

12. Abu Bakr-i Tihranî, Kitab-i Diyārbakriyya, edd. Lugal, N., Sümer, F., I (Ankara 1962) 12–15 Google Scholar and 90 (a memory that the then sultan of Trabzon — perhaps Alexios IV of n.6 above — supplied siege equipment to Kara Osman [1403-35] son-in-law of Alexios III, at Erzincan); Woods, J.E., The Aqquyunlu. Clan, confederation, empire (Minneapolis and Chicago 1976) 46–49.Google Scholar

13. On the importance Sinir, see Zachariadou, Elizabeth A., ‘Trebizond and the Turks (1352-1402)’, 35 (1979) 335, 339, 349 Google Scholar; and Bryer, A., ‘The question of Byzantine mines in the Pontos: Chalybian iron, Chaldian silver, Koloneian alum and the mummy of Cheriana’, Anatolian Studies 32 (1982) 136, 144–45 Google Scholar: it may have been Alexios’s silver rather than his mummy that Turali was after. Woods, 48, 239; Bryer, and Winfield, , Pontos, II, x-xi, 308-10; II, pis. 249–51.Google Scholar

14. Lewis, 18; Bryer, and Winfield, , Pontos, I, 352–55 Google Scholar. Woods, 47, 238 sits on the fence, which Stimer, Uysal and Walker avoid altogether.

15. It was, of course, a who sowed the seeds of Iconoclasm: on such Greek giantry see Kyriakides, S., (Athens 1922).Google Scholar

16. ‘Polyphemus and Tepegöz’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 18 (1956)279-302.

17. Nikolaides, S.A., 26 (1964) 250–56.Google Scholar

18. Irène Mélikolï, ‘Les Géorgiens el les Arméniens dans la littérature épique des Tures d’Anatolie’, Bedi Kartlisa 11-12 (1961) 27-35; and the same’s ‘Géorgiens, Turcomans et Trébizonde: Notes sur le “Livre de Dede Korkut”’, Bedi Kartlisa 17-18 (1964) 18-27.

19. Entwistle, Cf. W.J., ‘Bride-snatchtng and the ‘Deeds of Digenis’, Oxford Slavonic Papers 4 (1953) 1–17 Google Scholar. Thompson, S., Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (Copenhagen 1955-58)Google Scholar, Motifs H310-359 (especially H332.1 and H345), H901.1 and HI 161 are most relevant to Dede Korkut Ballad 6.

20. Trans. Shalian, 323-24.

21. X. de Planhol, ‘La signification géographique du livre de Dede Korkut’, Journal Asiatique 254 (1966) 225-44.

22. Panaretos, ed. Lampsides, 74, 78.

23. Doukas, , Istoria Turco-Bizantina 1341-1462, ed. V. Grecu (Bucarest 1958) 59 Google Scholar; cf. Bryer, A., ‘Greek historians on the Turks: the case of the first Byzantine-Ottoman marriage’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages. Essays presented to Richard William Souther, edd. Davis, R.H.C. and Wallace-Hadrill, J.M. (Oxford 1981) 471–93.Google Scholar

24. Umûr pacha (in n.4); Lemerle, P., L’Emirat d’Aydin, Byzance et l’Occident (Paris 1957).Google Scholar

25. Lewis, 17-18.

26. Abū Bakr, I, 15; Woods, 46-47, 238-39.

27. Panaretos, ed. Lampsides, 75, 77, 78.

28. Panaretos, ed. l.ampsides, 77.