Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 126 h Dimitrios G. Letsios and the position of the stranger in the local society”. 55 In this paper an attempt is made at first place to clarify the criteria guiding the selection of works to be included in this data base. These guidelines have resulted to a selective inclusion of only a few hagiographical works. In addition, some earlier testimonies have been included, in the effort to shed light on the continuity of developments and highlight the interrelation of the information transmitted. The presentation of hagiographical testimonies has not been in any case exhaustive. Just a few examples of works included in the data base have been selected and other comparative works have been added. The picture to be drawn has been elaborated, as far as possible, on the basis of geographical and chronological order. To conclude, we note that hagiography, similarly to various other sources providing historical information, can be extremely useful to elucidate aspects of Arab history and civilization, and not solely with reference to Arab- Byzantine relations. As with all kinds of information sources — probably even more necessarily for hagiographical sources — this literary genre should be used with caution and suggestions extracted from such information should be crosschecked and supplemented by other relevant sources. In concluding, I quote Eleona Kountoura-Galaki, one of the first partners to this project: “It is true that the hagiographers of the Middle Byzantine period hardly show any interest in offering clear information and geographic descrip- tion of the territories in which the Arabs lived. Along with the hostile language used to describe the Arabs, we may observe that a similar mentality prevails in the description of the lands that have passed under their jurisdiction. Avery rep- resentative example of how hagiographers of the period perceived and depicted in their writings the lands from which the Arabs came is to be found in the Life of the 42 Martyrs of Amorion . The writer of this work, the monk Evodius, when describing the great expansion of the Arabs, vaguely touches upon their origin by saying merely that they came from a desert, without naming it. Then he says that the Arabs occupied Mesopotamia, Palestine, Syria, Egypt and Africa. 56 The humble hagiographer was, logically for his purpose and the audience he was envisaging, not very informative, but, after all, the rest is History. 55 D. Letsios, “‘Diabolus in figura Aethiopis tetri’. Ethiopians as demons in hagiographic sour­ ces: Literary stereotypes versus social reality and historic events”, in: Essays on Byzantine and Arab Worlds in the Middle Ages [Gorgias Eastern Classical Studies 15], eds. Juan Pedro Monfer- rer-Sala, V. Christides, Th. Papadopoullos, Piscataway, NJ 2009, 185. 56 Eleonora Kountoura Galaki, “Arabia, Egypt and Syria in Byzantine Hagiographical Works during the Late Byzantine and Ayyubid Period”, in Arabia, Greece and Byzantium, Cultural Con- tacts in Ancient and Medieval Times , eds. Abdulaziz Al-Helabi, Dimitrios G. Letsios, Moshalleh Al-Moraekhi, Abdullah Al-Abduljabbar, Riyadh 2012, vl. II, 346.