Skip to main content

IMC 2023: Sessions

Session 622: Re-Evaluating the 11th Century, II: Changing Perceptions of Place and Space in Response to Networks and Entanglements

Tuesday 4 July 2023, 11.15-12.45

Sponsor:RELEVEN (Re-Evaluating the 11th Century), Universität Wien
Organiser:Lewis Read, School of History, University of St Andrews
Moderator/Chair:Aleksandar Anđelović, Institut für Geschichte, Universität Wien
Paper 622-aArmenians in the 1070s: New Perspectives on Entanglements between Byzantium and the Seljuk Turks
(Language: English)
Lewis Read, School of History, University of St Andrews
Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Historiography - Medieval, Islamic and Arabic Studies
Paper 622-bBetween Baghdad and Samarkand: An East Syriac View of the 11th Century
(Language: English)
Benjamin Sharkey, Faculty of History, University of Oxford
Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Islamic and Arabic Studies
Paper 622-cKnown Unknowns: Looking North from the Islamic Imperial Centres in the 11th Century
(Language: English)
Kieran Hagan, Department of Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies, University of Edinburgh
Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Islamic and Arabic Studies
Abstract

Re-Evaluating the 11th Century (RELEVEN) explores networks, interactions, and connections between people and ideas across cultures and polities in the 11th-century Eastern Christian world. One of the central strands of the project investigates how perceptions of place and space developed in response to varied entanglements. People's sense of place and space is always contingent on perspective, even more so when they faced new interactions with those they may consider 'other'. Certain Eastern Christian historiographical sources reacted to new entanglements in a hostile manner, others offer periods of peculiar silence. Islamic writers could use these interactions to construct normative ideals of their own community in opposition to and in tandem with the non-Islamic populations they encountered. However, these historical traditions were produced in ideological and literary frameworks which often obscure more plural and complex realities. Each paper in this session examines 11th-century interactions between Eastern Christian and non-Christian communities with the aim of building a more nuanced picture of the networks and entanglements which characterised the period.