Where the Middle Ages Begin
For Constantine, Justinian, Sultan Mehmed II, and Atatürk, Hagia Sophia served as a model for the changing political and religious ideals of a nation. To use the useful phrase coined by Linda Young, Hagia Sophia is a building that is “in between heritage.”
The following article examines the ‘fate’ of the Efrenciyan or foreign residents of the city of Trabzon following the Ottoman conquest of the city in 1461.
An economist is indeed tempted to think of Ragusa as the “Adriatic Tiger “ of yesteryear, an early example of a small open economy with strong fundamentals, and to hypothesize further that, in analogy to the current consensus about what it takes to minimize the impact of external crises, these strengths also allowed Ragusa to mitigate the effects of the many external shocks and financial crises in Medieval Europe.
Acts of revenge could be carried out across generations, forcing the relatives of a slain individual to escape humiliation and shame by embarking on a never-ending journey of vengeance and retaliation.
From their Balkan homeland the Vlachs began their migrations north in the thirteenth century, migrations that were accelerated no doubt by the beginning of Ottoman Turkish expansion into the Balkans.
Confrontation with Ottoman expansion began for Braşov at the end of the 14th century with the treaty with Mircea the Elder in the year 1395 which was part of King Sigismund of Luxembourg’s anti-Ottoman policy and was signed in Braşov.
Tony Rothman recalls one of the turning points of early modern history, when a heroic defence prevented the rampant Ottoman forces from gaining a strategic foothold in the central Mediterranean.
Was there not a paradox in a Muslim prince patronising an Italian medallist?
The historical sources on medieval Greek diet provide extensive information on the identity of foods consumed, but are less informative regarding the proportions in which they were consumed.
Turkish intrusions into what is today the continental part of Croatia began in 1391 and continued throughout the 15th, and the beginning of the 16th century when a large part of continental Croatia was incorporated into the Turkish Empire.
In this essay I seek to explain this surprisingly peaceful outcome to a potentially explosive situation, and more broadly to contribute to a new kind of history of early modern diplomacy that takes as its starting point practices of mediation in all their complexity.
The fourteenth century was of paramount importance for both the Byzantine Empire and the Ottoman Emirate. In Byzantine history it marks the end of a great medieval empire, especially relating to its administrative and economic decadence. For Ottoman history, it punctuates the transition of a frontier beglik into a world-dominant empire.
Tamerlane who won the Ankara war against the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I in July 28, 1402 did not immediately left Anatolia and stayed there for approximately one year. He continued his pillage attacks and conquests in various cities of Anatoia during this period.
This article explores issues of cross-cultural communication raised by the Ottoman court’s intense patronage of European artistic talent during the early part of Suleyman the Magnificent’s reign (1520-1566).
The famous/infamous European hero, crusader and voivod, Vlad “Tepes” Dracula III (1431-1476), was actually (for better or for worse) one of knightly peers of European Chivalry.
The Fall of Constantinople: Bishop Leonard and the Greek Accounts By Marios Philippides Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies v.22 (1981) Introduction: The work attributed to George Sphrantzes (1401-1477) has comes down to us in two different forms: a short version, the Chronicon Minus, and a much large account, the Chronicon Maius. The latter incorporates all […]
Image of the other as a tool of political legitimation: image of Venice in Renaissance Ragusa Kuncevic, Lovro (Central European University; Institute for Historical Sciences of Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Ragusa)) Conference: Topics, Theories, and Methods in the History of Politics beyond Great Events and Great Men, Central European University (2007) Abstract My goal in this […]
The impact of the 1492: Mass Exodus, Jews and the Ottoman Social Structure By Saffet Emre Tonguc Masterès Thesis, Boğaziçi University, 2002 Abstract: This study aims to question the widely accepted assertion that the Jewish population of the Ottoman Empire experienced a “Golden Age” after 1492, when the Sephardic Jews that were expelled from Europe […]
The war against Islam and the Muslims at home: the Mudejar predicament in the Kingdom of Valencia during the reign of Fernando «El Católico» Meyerson, Mark D. Sharq Al-Andalus, No.3 (1986) Abstract Fernando’s ¡nternal policy of fostering the communities of Muslims, or Mudejars, in the territories of his own Crown of Aragón seems at odds […]
The aim of this thesis is to analyze the possible impact of the Black Death on the early Ottoman society. Firstly, a temporal and spatial analysis of the outbreaks was established using contemporary Ottoman, Byzantine and Latin sources.
Saint Peter and Paul Church (Sinan Pasha Mosque), Famagusta: A Forgotten Gothic Moment in Northern Cyprus Walsh, Michael Inferno, Volume IX, 2004 Abstract When Pope Urban II called the Council of Clermont in 1095, and in so doing ordered the start of the Crusades to the Holy Land, it was neither obvious nor predictable what […]
‘Clash of Civilizations’, Crusades, Knights and Ottomans: an Analysis of Christian-Muslim Interaction in the Mediterranean Buttigieg,Emanuel (University of Malta) Religion and power in Europe : Conflict and Convergence, Pisa University Press, (2007) Abstract In a world that has become so powerfully gripped by a possible escalation of a ‘clash of civilizations’ that could spiral out […]
Twenty-five sites were added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List last month, including four which date from the Middle Ages. The 35th session of the World Heritage Committee was held last month in Paris, where 25 of the 35 proposed sites received final approval to be included on the List, which marks places that are particularly […]
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