Cross-Cultural Encounter and Transformation: in Western Asia Minor from Byzantine to Early Ottoman Times

This conference will explore one of the most fascinating historical landscapes of the Mediterranean, the Aegean coastland of Asia Minor. The region has always stood out as a crossroads of cultures and a liminal space of interaction, contact, and exchange that links the Mediterranean with the Middle East. The focus will be on an often-overlooked period of the region’s long history, the later Middle Ages, during which it transitioned from Byzantium to the Ottoman Empire and from a predominantly Christian to Muslim identity. Bringing together historians and archaeologists conducting cutting- edge research on regional and supra-regional aspects of Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire, and the Eastern Mediterranean, this two-day meeting allows scholars to exchange thoughts and discuss the methods, theoretical approaches, and latest results of their work on Western Asia Minor. Laying the ground for a future collective volume on cross-cultural encounters and transformations in the region, we will compare these findings to broader evolutionary patterns in the late medieval Mediterranean. The conference is part of the research project “Medieval Smyrna/İzmir: The Transition of a City and its Hinterland from Byzantine to Ottoman Times,” funded by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF P 33829-G) and hosted by the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

 

Registration is forthcoming.