Cenk Güray&Nevin Şahin, Understanding Byzantine Music, 23.12.2020, BAA byzantiumatankara 2020-12-28 | Byzantine music tradition, having a millennium of written record and surviving performance practices in the Near East, is among the longest living music traditions in the world. Forming a bridge between past and present among different cultural networks, understanding Byzantine music requires the tools of multiple disciplines. This presentation provides and overview of the history of Byzantine music, answering these questions: How was music performed during the Byzantine period? What do we know about the music of that specific period concerning performers, instruments, and musical events? Through which sources do we gather information on Byzantine music? How was Byzantine music written? Can we understand the written sources on Byzantine music now? Besides looking at the history and study of Byzantine music, this presentation also offers an interdisciplinary path to understand Byzantine music through historical, cultural, and musicological research and examples from re-interpretations of Byzantine music together with examples from Byzantine chant.
Linda Safran, Beyond Books: The Diagrammatic Mode In Byzantium, 31.03.2022, BAA byzantiumatankara 2022-04-10 | Diagrams in manuscripts are easy to recognize, if not necessarily easy to describe. This talk considers diagrams outside of manuscripts and unaccompanied by lengthy texts. Such diagrams, as well as abstract ways of thinking diagrammatically—that is, in linear and geometrical terms, in three dimensions and not just two—were more widespread in the Byzantine visual landscape than has previously been noticed. I propose that this “diagrammatic mode” played a role in public life, helping to structure the Byzantines’ understanding of time and space, demonstrate harmonious relationships, and reify τάξις.
Cenk Güray & Nevin Şahin, Byzantine Chant and Its Reflections in the Neighboring Geographies, BAA byzantiumatankara 2021-06-02 | This seminar will concentrate on the historical musical relations between the Constantinapolis oriented Byzantine Chant tradition and the related Church music traditions in the surrounding Orthodox geography. The musical examples will cover chants selected from the regions lying in the north, south, west and east of Constantinapolis in an effort to answer the question: How did the music in churches of Russian, Bulgarian, Armenian, Syrian and Nestorian etc. communities interact philosophically and musically with the Byzantine chant originating in Constantinople?
Qiang Li, Reapprasing the Silk Road: Byzantium and Ancient China, 16.04.2021, BAA byzantiumatankara 2021-04-22 | In recent years, the Silk Road (or Roads) has being becoming a very popular subject in academic and non-academic circle all around the world. This phenomenon has many causes, and the foremost is the impact of the globalization of the world. In this special time with the COVID 19, we can clearly and strongly feel the impact of that on us. As to the Silk Road in history, how should we see it? There are already a lot of views on that, accepting, rejecting, or exaggerating it, etc. In this talk, as a Chinese byzantinist, I will present the recent focuses on Byzantium and ancient China along the Silk Road, based on which, to reappraise the significance of the Silk Road in the historical context. The talk will include three parts: 1. a short introduction for the Roman-Byzantine Empire and ancient China in sources of them; 2. archaeological evidence for their interactions; 3. reappraising the Silk Road in the historical context.
Irene Giviashvili, Intercultural Dialogue Between Byzantium and Georgia, 9.4.2021, BAA byzantiumatankara 2021-04-22 | Georgia - Byzantine relations date back from the times of Constantine the Great, when King Mirian (265-361), who adopted Christian religion (ca 325), turned to the Byzantine Emperor for support. Relations between the two Orthodox countries were strong, interrelated, though controversial. Common threats, coming first from the Arabs and then from the Seljuks, encouraged them to forge an alliance. The Georgian Kingdom was modelled according to the Byzantine system of ruling. Constantinople became a place of pilgrimage for spiritual fathers and aristocracy and the Georgian religious and educational centres were developed through Byzantium. Georgian Christian culture was created in close connection with the Byzantine one, and particularly monastic movement played a decisive role in this regard. The process was accomplished with the foundation of Iviron Monastery on Mount Athos in 983. Byzantium needed a stronger Georgia, not as a competitor but as a buffer zone and a battlefield to defend its eastern borders from common enemies; King David III Kuropalates (+1001), who, on the one hand, brought the Georgian Kingdom close to Byzantium, on the other hand, deprived his legacy of lands in favour of Byzantium due to his political games. Contrary, King David IV (1073-1125) tried to escape from the Byzantine shadow after the unification of the Georgian Kingdom, ignoring Byzantine titles and expanding the Kingdom from the Caspian to the Black Sea. Her grand-daughter King Tamar (1166-1213) played an important role in the creation of the Empire of Trabzon as a satellite to her kingdom and a buffer zone at its south-western borders. Consequently, new geopolitical reality deepened intercultural dialogue of the Kingdom of Georgia with its neighbourhood, including Byzantines, Armenians, northern Caucasians, Seljuk Turks.
Myrto Veikou, Interpretation of Byzantine Spatial Transformation, ByzantiumatAnkara, 11.2.2021 byzantiumatankara 2021-03-17 | This presentation scrutinizes the potential of archaeology and literary analysis towards an identification of ‘hybrid’ spaces and ‘makeshift’ spatial practices within the transforming Byzantine world of the 6th-9th centuries. It brings focus upon the archaeologist’s struggle to define historical settlement, based on the archaeological and historical record, as an act of walking a tight rope; one tip of the rope is paying justice to the flexibility and hybridity of settlement, and the other is acknowledging one’s stance amid a great diversity of theoretical perspectives on settlement. This discussion is partly based on material and insights published in the study “Encroachment, Subdivision, and Expansion: A Cultural Interpretation of Byzantine Spatial Transformation (6th- 9th Century)” in Beate Böhlendorf-Arslan & Robert Schick (Eds), Transformations of city and countryside in in the Byzantine Period (Leibniz-Science Campus Mainz/Frankfurt: Byzantium between Orient and Occident / BOO 22, 2020, pp. 25-38.I consider information on Byzantine secular and religious spaces (buildings, settlements, landscapes), deriving from archaeological evidence and texts, in order to define and interpret their transformations from the 6th to the 9th centuries. I comparatively evaluate transformations in urban, rural and other environments so as to allow involving political, economic and cultural aspects in a discussion of: a) the structures, which were transformed, b) the human agencies, which produced the transformations, and c) the challenges responsible for these agencies. I interpret these developments by means of contemporary archaeological theories of agency and non-representational theories (or theories of practices) in cultural geography. By using these theories, I aim to shift focus from the meanings of products of human agency (Byzantine architecture) into the meanings of human, »habitual« everyday practices (Byzantine spatial practices). My main argument in favour of this shift is that the scrutiny of social practices allows non-intentionalist accounts of Byzantine transformation acts.
Malte Fuhrmann, Port Cities of the Eastern Mediterranean. Urban Culture in the Late Ottoman Empire byzantiumatankara 2021-03-17 | This study investigates vital changes in the histories of space, consumption, and identities in the port cities of Smyrna, Constantinople, and Salonica (Izmir, Istanbul, and Thessaloniki) in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. It aims to create a more stringent narrative of what urban culture meant and what role the impact of “Europe” played in pre-World War I port cities. What people in Smyrna, Salonica, or Constantinople considered European often followed ostensible forms from elsewhere on the continent, but these forms became suffused with meanings the local residents projected onto them.I investigate these interpretations of Europeanness through a focus on changes in the urban texture, such as the construction of modern quays and representative buildings; leisure practices such as balls, operas, and beer drinking; class, gender, and identity discourses; as well as campaigns targeting foreign prostitutes or vagabonds.
Rossina Kostova, The monastery of St John the Forerunner on the island of Sveti Ivan, 11.02.2020 byzantiumatankara 2021-02-15 | The monastery of St John the Forerunner (Prodromos) is situated on the southern side of the island of Sveti Ivan approximately one mile northwest of Sozopol (ancient Apollonia and medieval Sozopolis). Its history as an imperial and patriarchal monastery is well documented in Byzantine and Greek sources for the period from the mid-13th to the 17th century. It also demonstrates a remarkable example of how written evidence matches an actual archaeological site. The main elements of the monastery excavated until now include two churches (an Early Byzantine basilica and a medieval triconch church), surrounding wall, dwellings and domestic buildings, refectory, kitchen, a large baking oven, and a deep cistern (hagiasma).Dr. Kostova's talk will summarize the results of the recent archaeological campaigns started in 2008 including a small marble reliquary containing human bones and an inscribed tuff ossuary. The legible sections of the Greek inscription on the ossuary reveal that the bone remains in the marble reliquary may be attributed to John the Baptist. Scientific analysis (AMS radiocarbon dating, DNA testing) of the relics demonstrates a surprising correspondence to the Biblical story and personage of John the Baptist: The bones were all from the same male individual who lived in the early first century AD.
Ioanna Christoforaki, Buildings, Images, and People in Hospitaller Rhodes, 10.12.2020, BAA byzantiumatankara 2020-12-14 | From Appropriation to Acculturation: Buildings, Images, and People in Hospitaller Rhodes (c. 1309-1522)The Order of the Knights of St John, otherwise known as the Hospitallers, took over Rhodes in 1309. During the two centuries of their rule, Rhodes transformed from a minor outpost on the eastern frontier of the Byzantine empire to an important call of port for merchants and pilgrims alike. This transition, however, was neither linear not unruffled. This paper will take a look at the shifts which took place as mirrored in the architectural output and visual arts of the island.
Sercan Yandım Aydın, Postmortem Lives of Byzantine Icons, 3.12.2020, BAA byzantiumatankara 2020-12-03 | In the following talk, first a brief introduction about the image and its theory in Byzantium and its later course in the history is given. Next, as art historical material, examples of Greek Orthodox images, mainly originated from Anatolia, after the end of Byzantium is presented. Their style and iconography, as panel paintings, reveal not just the currents of the time they were produced and more, but also, gives hints about the cultural identity, personal piety, and devotion of their owner and/or painters. This last factor is also critical to better understand Greek Orthodox component of the Late Ottoman society. With a very limited material at hand, one can still appreciate the dynamics of the religious imagery. Painterly influence comes not just from the Renaissance Europe, but also from Reformed Germany, in particular from the works of Albrecht Dürer. Therefore, discussing and understanding this fragmented piece of art historical material, once belonged to real people and to families, shed light into their cultural history as well.
Judith Herrin, Ravenna: Crucial of Empire, Crucible of Europe. 19.11.2020, Byzantium at Ankara byzantiumatankara 2020-11-19 | In her seminar Judith Herrin explains how scholars, lawyers, doctors, craftsmen, cosmologists, and religious luminaries were drawn to Ravenna where they created a cultural and political capital that dominated northern Italy and the Adriatic. As she traces the lives of Ravenna's rulers, chroniclers and inhabitants, Herrin shows how the city became the meeting place of Greek, Latin, Christian and barbarian cultures and the pivot between East and West. The seminar offers a fresh account of the waning of Rome, the Gothic and Lombard invasions, the rise of Islam and the devastating divisions within Christianity. It argues that the fifth to eighth centuries should not be perceived as a time of decline from antiquity but rather, thanks to Byzantium, as one of great creativity - the period of 'Early Christendom'. These were the formative centuries of Europe.
Livia Bevilacqua, Byzantine Cilicia in the Photographic Documentation, BAA, 5.11.2020 byzantiumatankara 2020-11-06 | In the last decades of the 20th century, several scholars explored the southern regions of Anatolia, in order to record the surviving Byzantine vestiges. A group of Italian art historians from Rome, Urbino and Padova – led by Fernanda de’ Maffei – visited the ancient provinces of Cilicia and Isauria in a series of field trips between 1989 and 2000. The group went into areas that had been explored by travellers and archaeologists since the previous century, and they gathered new, valuable material, including photographs, sketches and notes of religious, as well as residential and public buildings of the Middle Ages. Thanks to those trips, some of the most relevant Byzantine monuments of the region have been studied in detail, although a significant part of the research material produced remains unpublished. It is now preserved in the Center for Documentation of Byzantine Art History (CDSAB) at Sapienza University of Rome and can be regarded today as a precious resource for the study of Byzantine monuments and artifacts of the region. I will present some examples from the archive, placing them in the context of international research of the time, and I will attempt to highlight the relevance of the material gathered in those intense years for the study of the cultural heritage of southern Anatolia.
Tolga Uyar, Christian Art, Visual Culture and Society in 13th Century Anatolia, BAA, 29.10.2020 byzantiumatankara 2020-10-30 | Tolga Uyar's seminar is based on his forthcoming book focusing on the interactions between visual cultures in Medieval Anatolia. The book will examine the methodological questions for the study of the multi-religious social landscapes in the eastern Mediterranean as well as the nexus of geographical history, anthropology, popular piety and beliefs, and social agency in art. This in order to analyze issues of identity as they relate to artistic production. The aim of the seminar is indeed to explore the artistic bonds between Byzantium, Seljuk Rum, and the eastern Mediterranean world at large, by focusing on thirteenth-century monumental paintings in Cappadocia while also considering the wider sociocultural implications of the debate concerning Christian communities under non-Christian rule in the medieval era.
