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Armenia Entangled: Connectivity and Cultural Encounters in Medieval Eurasia

Project description

A closer look at CAM between 9th and 14th centuries

The history of medieval Eurasia has been somewhat overlooked by historians focusing on the Global Middle Ages. However, the southern Caucasus, eastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia (CAM) played an important role between the 9th and 14th centuries (despite being removed from major hubs of power). The EU-funded ArmEn project will shed light on how the CAM was on the crossroads of expanding Eurasian empires and population movements. It will review a large body of Armenian sources, as well as those in Arabic, Georgian, Greek, Persian, Syriac and Turkish. It will explore the locations and agents of entanglements by tracing shared features in the multilingual textual and artistic production of CAM and correlating them to the circulation of ideas and concepts.

Objective

ArmEn seeks to establish a new framework for studying the southern Caucasus, eastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia (CAM) as a space of cultural entanglements between the 9th to 14th centuries. It argues that this region is key to understanding the history of medieval Eurasia but has so far been completely neglected by the burgeoning field of Global Middle Ages. The CAM was on the crossroads of expanding Eurasian empires and population movements, but was removed from major hubs of power. Poly-centrism; political, ethno-linguistic, and religious heterogeneity; frequently shifting hegemonic hierarchies were key aspects of its, nevertheless, inter-connected landscape. This fluidity and complexity left its mark on the cultural products textual and material created in the CAM. ArmEn aims to trace shared features in the multi-lingual textual and artistic production of CAM and correlate them to the circulation of ideas and concepts, as well as to real-life interactions, between multiple groups, identifying the locations and agents of entanglements. The large but under-utilised body of Armenian sources to be explored together with those in Arabic, Georgian, Greek, Persian, Syriac, and Turkish, will illuminate cultural entanglements between Muslim and Christian Arabs, Byzantines, Syriac Christians, Georgians, Caucasian Albanians, Turko-Muslim dynasties, Kurds, Iranians, Western Europeans, and Mongols, that inhabited, conquered, or passed through and produced cultural goods in CAM. Evidence from manuscript illuminations and numismatics will provide a material cultural dimension to the analysis. ArmEn will create a trans-cultural vision of the CAM, bridging area studies into a unifying framework, bringing together various disciplinary approaches (philology, literary criticism, religious studies, art history, numismatics, etc.), to build a narrative synthesis in which the dynamics of cross-cultural entanglements in the CAM emerge in their spatial and temporal dimensions.

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Topic(s)

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ERC-COG - Consolidator Grant

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2019-COG

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Host institution

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI FIRENZE
Net EU contribution

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€ 1 844 459,71
Address
Piazza San Marco 4
50121 Florence
Italy

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Region
Centro (IT) Toscana Firenze
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 844 459,71

Beneficiaries (2)

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