Byzantium is more and more recognized as a vibrant culture in dialogue with neighbouring regions, political entities, and peoples. Where better to look for this kind of dynamism than in the interactions between the Byzantines and the Armenians? Warfare and diplomacy are only one part of that story. The more enduring part consists of contact and mutual influence brokered by individuals who were conversant in both cultures and languages. The articles in this volume feature fresh work by younger and established scholars that illustrate the varieties of interaction in the fields of literature, material culture, and religion. Contributors are: Gert Boersema, Emilio Bonfiglio, Bernard Coulie, Karen Hamada, Robin Meyer, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Claudia Rapp, Mark Roosien, Werner Seibt, Emmanuel Van Elverdinghe, Theo Maarten van Lint, Alexandra-Kyriaki Wassiliou-Seibt, and David Zakarian.

Armenia and Byzantium shared a long history of political and cultural interaction. The articles in this volume offer a fresh look, often based on new material, on aspects of dialogue, exchange, and confrontation in the areas of literature, material culture, and religion.

The volume – whose chapters originated at panels at the International Byzantine Congress in Belgrade and at the IMC in Leeds – seeks to offer an introduction into various aspects of social and geographical mobility, and the intrinsic relationship between the two, as well as into the microstructures of social action in the Byzantine world during the high and late Middle Ages. Based on a balanced approach to the role of personal agency and social structure, the authors of the individual chapters seek to clarify how and why various kinds of people mobilized to either change place and/or social position, or to form groups whose actions shaped social reality both at the imperial centre and the provincial periphery.

In a searching challenge to the paradigm of medieval Christian dualism, this study reenvisions the Paulicians as largely conventional Christians engendered by complex socio-religious forces in the borderlands of Armenia and Asia Minor.

In 1204 the army of the Fourth Crusade sacked the great city of Constantinople. In earlier historiography the view prevailed that these Western barons and knights temporarily destroyed the Byzantine state and replaced it with a series of feudal states of their own making. Through a comprehensive rereading of better and lesser-known sources this book offers an alternative perspective arguing that the Latin rulers did not abolish, but very consciously wanted to continue the Eastern Empire. In this, the new imperial dynasty coming from Flanders-Hainaut played a pivotal role. Despite religious and other differences many Byzantines sided with the new regime and administrative practices at the different governmental levels were to a larger or lesser degree maintained.

Paul Wittek’s The Rise of the Ottoman Empire was first published by the Royal Asiatic Society in 1938 and has been out of print for more than a quarter of a century. The present reissue of the text also brings together translations of some of his other studies on Ottoman history; eight closely interconnected writings on the period from the founding of the state to the Fall of Constantinople and the reign of Mehmed II. Most of these pieces reproduces the texts of lectures or conference papers delivered by Wittek between 1936 and 1938 when he was teaching at Université Libré in Brussels, Belgium. The books or journals in which they were originally published are for the most part inaccessible except in specialist libraries, in a period when Wittek's activities as an Ottoman historian, in particular his formulations regarding the origins and subsequent history of the Ottoman state (the "Ghazi thesis"), are coming under increasing study within the Anglo-Saxon world of scholarship. An introduction by Colin Heywood sets Wittek's work in its historical and historiographical context for the benefit of those students who were not privileged to experience it firsthand. This reissue and recontextualizing of Wittek’s pioneering work on early Ottoman history makes a valuable contribution to the field and to the historiography of Asian and Middle Eastern history generally.

This work examines the historical, archaeological, and political interpretations of world-systems theory and geocivilizational analysis. The macrosociological issues of ancient and modern history are presented through five case-studies, concentrating on the Taurus-Caucasus region, which functioned as a contact zone throughout the different periods.

The first comprehensive introduction in English to books, readers and reading in Byzantium and the wider medieval world surrounding it.

What is the contemporary cultural legacy of Byzantium or The Eastern Roman Empire? This book explores the varied reception history of the Byzantine Empire across a range of cultural production. Split into four sections: the origins of 'Byzantomania' in France, modern media, literature, and politics, it provides case studies which show the numerous ways in which the empire's legacy can be felt today. Covering television, video games and contemporary political discourse, contributors also consider a wide range of national and geographical perspectives including Russian, Turkish, Polish, Greek and Hungarian. It will be essential reading for scholars and students of the reception and cultural history of the Byzantine Empire.

This is the third collection of articles by Nina Garsoïan on Early Armenian history and civilization. A number of articles included here continue earlier investigations of Iranian and Byzantine political and, especially, doctrinal and social influences on Medieval Armenia, precariously wedged between the two super-powers of the period, Byzantium and Sasanian Persia. A second theme is the development of the autocephalous Armenian Church as it freed itself from foreign pressures and achieved its own dogmatic position. Last, several studies consider some inadequacies in some recent historiography and suggest a more promising redirection in our approach to Armenian history and the formation of its national identity.