![Black Sea as literary and cultural space (II) [First part] Cover Image](/api/image/getbookcoverimage?id=document_cover-page-image_1435757.JPG)
La mer Noire comme espace littéraire et culturel (II) [Première partie]
Black Sea as literary and cultural space (II) [First part]
Author(s): Jordan Ljutskanov, Eyüp Özveren, Alexis Nuselovici, Mzagho Dokhtourichvili, Rafał Quirini-Popławski, Inga Ghutidze, Marie Vrinat-Nikolov, Gérard Dédéyan, Gerardo Acerenza, Petra Košťálová, Cyril Aslanov, Grigol Jokhadze
Contributor(s): Jordan Ljutskanov (Editor), Eyüp Özveren (Editor), Mzagho Dokhtourichvili (Editor), Alexis Nuselovici (Editor)
Subject(s): History, Anthropology, Social Sciences, Language studies, Language and Literature Studies, Cultural history, Geography, Regional studies, Human Geography, Regional Geography, Studies of Literature, Ethnohistory, Local History / Microhistory, Middle Ages, Comparative Study of Literature, Bulgarian Literature, Greek Literature, Other Language Literature, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, 6th to 12th Centuries, 13th to 14th Centuries, 15th Century, Theory of Literature, Georgian literature, Italian literature, Non-European Languages
ISSN: 2815-5424
Published by: Сдружение „Транспонтика“
Keywords: historiography of Black Sea studies; onomastics; catalogisation vs. lamentation; reconnaissance vs. pilgrimage; limits of geopolitical knowledge; sea-centrism vs. earth-centrism
Summary/Abstract: An autochthonic and east-centred onomastic history of the ‘Black Sea’ is drafted, and pairs of competing views towards a hinterland, of attitudes towards territories traversed, and of cognitive centrisms are presented. The Introduction includes a review of the state of the arts in Black Sea studies and traces some approaches to its holistic study.
Series: Transponticae
- E-ISBN-13: 978-954-354-013-6
- Print-ISBN-13: 978-954-354-0
- Page Count: 208
- Publication Year: 2023
- Language: English, French
On the Georgian hydronymy of the Black Sea (Materials for a history of the Black Sea)
On the Georgian hydronymy of the Black Sea (Materials for a history of the Black Sea)
(On the Georgian hydronymy of the Black Sea (Materials for a history of the Black Sea))
- Author(s):Inga Ghutidze
- Language:English
- Subject(s):History, Language studies, Language and Literature Studies, Geography, Regional studies, Regional Geography, Local History / Microhistory, Oral history, Ancient World, Middle Ages, Modern Age, Lexis, Georgian literature, Non-European Languages
- Page Range:3-40
- No. of Pages:38
- Keywords:Black Sea; hydronymy; Georgian ethnos
- Summary/Abstract:Sources from the Antiquity and Middle Ages, fictional narratives, maps, and notes of travellers provide numerous and rich Georgian, Arabic, Persian, Greek, Latin, French, Italian lexical units designating the Black Sea. Among them, names created by the Georgians or connected with the Georgian ethnos predominate: the Speri Sea, Georgian Sea and Sea of the Georgians, Caucasian Sea, Colchian Sea, Laz Sea, the Laz Garden, Megrelian Sea, Phasian Sea, the Sea of David… In this article we address the importance of the above-mentioned terms in the history of Black Sea and the Georgian ethnos, and the connection between the latter two. Arguments are given to oppose researchers’ assertions that Georgians have had only a distant relation to the Black Sea.
Penser la mer Noire pour proposer une « périodisation spatiale » de l’histoire de l’espace littéraire bulgare
Penser la mer Noire pour proposer une « périodisation spatiale » de l’histoire de l’espace littéraire bulgare
(Thinking about the Black Sea to propose a “spatial periodisation” of a Bulgarian literary space history)
- Author(s):Marie Vrinat-Nikolov
- Language:French
- Subject(s):Language and Literature Studies, Geography, Regional studies, Human Geography, Regional Geography, Studies of Literature, Bulgarian Literature, Greek Literature, Turkish Literature, Other Language Literature, Theory of Literature, Sociology of Literature
- Page Range:43-54
- No. of Pages:12
- Keywords:literary historiography; transnational literary space; Bulgaria; Ottoman communities
- Summary/Abstract:To think in terms of literary field, as Pierre Bourdieu did in the second half of the twentieth century, was already to introduce topography into literary history, which made it possible, among other things, to focus on institutions and to view literature as a “space of possibilities” and not as being conditioned by political and historical events, in a deterministic causal relationship. And if Pascale Casanova extended and broadened this work to the “World Republic of Letters”, if Franco Moretti drew up stimulating cartographies, it seems to me that the notion of literary space, encompassing an “imagined community” and all the areas with which this community has maintained links, unilateral or mutual, a space considered in the horizontality but also in the verticality of strata that accumulate in the memory of this space, helps to consider literary history in a new perspective and to bring out phenomena that a national and strictly temporal (linear) framework conceals and unifies. The Bulgarian literary space is thus revealed in its multiplicity, at the confluence of two large areas of privileged literary contacts: the Black Sea space (currently Turkey, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia and Georgia) and that of Western Europe (mainly France, Germany and Italy).
Les Arméniens dans la région de Trébizonde (xie-xixe siècle)
Les Arméniens dans la région de Trébizonde (xie-xixe siècle)
(The Armenians in the region of Trebizond (11th - 19th c.))
- Author(s):Gérard Dédéyan
- Language:French
- Subject(s):History, Geography, Regional studies, Human Geography, Regional Geography, Local History / Microhistory, Oral history, Middle Ages, Modern Age
- Page Range:55-78
- No. of Pages:24
- Keywords:Gabras; Kekaumenos; Hayton; Laz; Armeniac; Chaldia; Georgia; Hamshen (Hemshin); Koloneia; Trabzon
- Summary/Abstract:During the period studied, the regions bordering or close to the Black Sea, previously featured in our study on the Byzantine theme of Armeniacs (Dédéyan 2019), underwent successive shocks leading to modifications of the political borders or the administrative limits which characterised the Byzantine Empire until the mid-11th century. The Armenians were present, among others, in the Byzantine duchy of Trebizond, where Constantine Gabras, quite probably of Armenian stock, was almost independent from 1126 to 1140. This duchy stretched, under the dynasty of the Komnenoi (1081-1185), along the coast of the Black Sea, partially encompassing ancient Byzantine themes with an Armenian population (Armeniakon, Koloneia, Chaldia). The Armenians were still present in the Greek Empire of Trebizond (1204-1461), creation of the Grand Komnenoi, after the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins of the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204). The city of Trebizond itself experienced an increase in its Armenian community following the emigration, in 1239, of part of the population of Ani, driven out by the Mongol invasion. Granted by the Greek emperor, in the 14th century, a special district, the Armenians, enriched in the international trade, in potential relations with the Armenian and Genoese merchants of Crimea, provided themselves, in the 14th and 15th centuries, with several churches, while having in a relative proximity the monastery of Holy Saviour which became, in the 16th century, an active centre of copying of manuscripts: the creation of a prelature, in the same period, attests the importance of the Christians of Armenian confession. One Armenian entity deserves special attention, from a political and cultural point of view: Hamshen, a mountainous canton located largely to the east of Trebizond, of modest dimensions, extending from the northern slopes of the Pontic Alps to the port of Atina, on the Black Sea. The Hamshen dates back to the construction, from the end of the 8th century, by Prince Hamam, who had withdrawn into the Byzantine Empire due to the persecutions of the Arabs in Vaspurakan, of the fortress of Hamamashen (“built by Hamam”). Integrated into one of the subdivisions of the Armenian theme, then into the Duchy of Trebizond, finally into the Empire of Trebizond, the Hamshen nonetheless remained, in local reality, a small semi-independent Armenian principality, led by “barons”, as in Cilicia, (whose names, Armenian, rarely Turkish, are quite well known in the 15th century). Finally, the grim description that the Armenian-Cilician prince Hayton made at the beginning of the 14th century in his Flor des Estoires de la Terre d'Orient, widely distributed in Europe, gave the Hamshen a certain notoriety. Defeated by the Ottomans at the end of the 15th century, the Hamchentsi (Hamshenli in Turkish) nevertheless retained a form of self-administration, their derebey (“lord of the valleys” in Turkish) obstructing the interventions of the local Ottoman governor. Having an ecclesial and monastic network, still standing – but without priests – in the 19th century, the Armenians of Hamshen were, from the 18th century onwards, victims of violent persecutions, which led to numerous conversions to Islam, the relative partition between Muslim villages and Christian villages, and a migratory flow towards western Asia Minor or Abkhazia. Farmers, breeders, artisans, or professional soldiers in the service of their derebey, speaking a predominantly Turkish dialect in the West, and a predominantly Armenian one in the East, the Hamshentsi were designated by the Armenian sobriquet Kêskês, “half-and-half”, by reference to their – frequent – situation of crypto-Christians or, less probably, to the fact that they were introducing Turkish words into the Armenian language. In the 19th century the Armenians of Trebizond enjoyed a period of cultural and economic flourishment during the Tanzimat (1839-1876), a period which the Hamidian massacres in 1895 put to an end.
La mer Noire et la Géorgie vues par les voyageurs italiens aux xve-xviie siècles
La mer Noire et la Géorgie vues par les voyageurs italiens aux xve-xviie siècles
(The Black Sea viewed by Italian voyagers in the 15th - 17th centuries)
- Author(s):Gerardo Acerenza
- Language:French
- Subject(s):History, Anthropology, Social Sciences, Language and Literature Studies, Customs / Folklore, Middle Ages, Modern Age, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, 15th Century, 16th Century, 17th Century, Italian literature
- Page Range:81-98
- No. of Pages:18
- Keywords:Black Sea; Mingrelia (Megrelia); Georgia; Italian travellers; Republic of Venice
- Summary/Abstract:The purpose of this article is to give an overview on the trips to Georgia of three Italian navigators between 15th and 17th centuries: The Venetians Iosaphat Barbaro and Ambrogio Contarini, and Pietro della Valle who was originally from Rome. These travellers in particular left long descriptions of their travels in the territories around the Black Sea which included short descriptions of their passages through Georgia. There is much work today on the journeys of these three figures and for this reason we will focus only on one lesser-known aspect, which is the impressions they left of Georgia. “Zorzania”, or “Giorgiania”, as they refer to it in their writings, was not the main destination for these travellers. However, several of them entered Georgia through the Black Sea, from the mouth of the Phasis River (today Rioni), and will then set foot on the territory of Mingrelia and Georgia to reach the Caspian Sea or Persia where it was necessary, in the case of Contarini, to convince Uzun Hasan (called by the Venetians in particular Usuncassan) to help the Republic of Venice to fight against the Turks.
La mer Noire vue par les yeux d’un pèlerin arménien : Siméon de Pologne et son voyage entre Lviv et Constantinople
La mer Noire vue par les yeux d’un pèlerin arménien : Siméon de Pologne et son voyage entre Lviv et Constantinople
(Black Sea in the eyes of an Armenian pilgrim: Simeon of Poland and his journey between Lviv/Lvov and Constantinople)
- Author(s):Petra Košťálová
- Language:French
- Subject(s):History, Anthropology, Social Sciences, Language and Literature Studies, Customs / Folklore, Studies of Literature, Modern Age, Other Language Literature, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Culture and social structure , 17th Century
- Page Range:99-128
- No. of Pages:30
- Keywords:Poland-Lithuania; Balkans; travelogue; travel accounts; Armenian diaspora; Lvov/Lwów/Lviv; Constantinople
- Summary/Abstract:The article introduces to parts and aspects of Simeon of Poland’s major work, Ւղեգրություն; տարեգրություն եւ յիշատակարանք [‘Travel account; chronicles and colophons’] (1619-1635). Simeon of Poland (or Lekhatsi, ca. 1584-after 1639) is one of the most significant figures of Armenian literature of the 16th and 17th centuries. He came from the Armenian Polish Diaspora (known as Lekhahayer) that settled on the territory of Poland-Lithuania since the Middle Ages (according to the tradition, the Lekhahayer diaspora was the result of a great wave of migration from kingdom of Ani during the 11th century); his parents were from Caffa, Crimea. The history of the well organised Armenian communities, which numbered several tens of thousands of people in what is today Poland, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Hungary, dates back mostly to the era after the Ottoman conquest of Crimea (1475). The central role there was played by Armenian traders and merchants (khojas, aghas) whose monopoly on so-called luxury oriental products (embroidered silk fabrics, weapons, jewelry, spices etc.) in a multicultural environment was undeniable. Armenians enjoyed special privileges, granted by Polish kings (Statuta), such as tax exemptions and autonomy (councils of elders, the mayor, the own court governed by code of Mkhitar Gosh etc.). The most famous Armenian centres of that time were in Lvov (Lwów, Lviv), Kamieniets Podolski, and Ottoman Plovdiv (Philibe, Philipopolis). Simeon’s work – his 'Travel accounts, chronicles and colophons' –, or simply 'Travel account' (“Ułegrut‛yun” in Armenian), represents a glimpse into the everyday life of the period and provides information on the economic, political and demographic situation in Poland-Lithuania and the Ottoman Empire (its Balkan, Anatolian, Egyptian and Syro-Palestinian domains). The author, as a Christian belonging to the Armenian Apostolic Church who came from Lvov, was particularly interested in living conditions concerning Armenians and other Christians settled in the cities under the control of the Ottomans and their specific situation in relation to the Armenians in Poland. Simeon spent almost ten years traveling through the Ottoman Empire (1608-1618), led by the major idea of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Rome and the monastery of St. John the Baptist (Surb Karapet) near the eastern Anatolian city of Mush. His itinerary was characteristic for travellers from Central Europe (Lvov, Chernivtsi, Suceava, Galati, Aydos mountain pass, through part of via Egnatia to Constatinople; from there continuing to Dalmatian coast and on return way navigating along the Greek coasts and across the Aegean, then travelling to Egypt, Jerusalem and finally returning through inland Anatolia and along/across the Black Sea to home). Simeon’s travel diary (written in 17th century Armenian language) contains not only the description of the journey, but also (sometimes very detailed) information about the history, geography and ethnography of visited places, as well as his personal and subjective impressions and feelings. He saw the world exclusively through the prism of his own religious community (this is his recurring topos), at the same time describing the relations between Armenians and their neighbours. Thus Simeon draws a kind of microcosm of towns, villages, caravan routes and monasteries as meeting places between Armenians, Turks, Tatars, Poles, Jews, Greeks, Arabs, Assyrians, Georgians, Kurds, Albanians, Venetians and others. The space traversed by Simeon is depicted as a unified cultural entity interconnected and even intertwined by networks of Armenian merchant communities. Within their frame, our author finds himself both inside and outside. He remains an eternal pilgrim, mahtes, and, at the same time, a humble servant of Armenian Apostolic Church. Stereotyped images based on confessional identity seem to predominate in Simeon’s text. He regarded his journey as a passage from one Armenian community to another, which formed specific uninterrupted chain around the south-western shore of the Black Sea and beyond. His accounts reflect the mobility of urban Armenian Diaspora, constantly referring to the topos of Ani as well as to the narrative of exile as the main markers of regional ethno-religious identity (Armenians from Plovdiv, Armenians from Argeş, Armenians from Rodosto, etc.). Simeon’s text shows us the Eastern Balkan countries perceived as an area interconnected by identical economic interests, in which intermediaries (bilingual merchants) could cross borders without great problems. The shore of the Black Sea could be seen here as a multi-faceted phenomenon – a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional space, where the Armenian pilgrim constantly crosses the border within and beyond his own communities.
La rive septentrionale de la mer Noire et son arrière-pays comme Terra incognita : la ‘scythographie’ entre historiographie et mythographie d’Hérodote à Constantin Porphyrogénète
La rive septentrionale de la mer Noire et son arrière-pays comme Terra incognita : la ‘scythographie’ entre historiographie et mythographie d’Hérodote à Constantin Porphyrogénète
(The northern shore of the Black Sea and its hinterland as a Terra incognita: ‘Scythography’ between historiography and mythography from Herodotus to Constantine Porphyrogenitus)
- Author(s):Cyril Aslanov
- Language:French
- Subject(s):Anthropology, Social Sciences, Language and Literature Studies, Geography, Regional studies, Regional Geography, Studies of Literature, Greek Literature, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology
- Page Range:131-149
- No. of Pages:19
- Keywords:Scythians; Herodotus; Varangians; Rus’; Constantine Porphyrogenitus
- Summary/Abstract:Herodotus’ panorama of the Scythian tribes in Histories IV, 17-27; 103-109 (“Melpomene”) describes Scythians and Scythian-like nations from the south (the Black Sea shore) to the north, following a logic of progression from the familiar neighbours of the Greek colonies established on the shore of the Black Sea to the uncanny and threatening Barbarians. A reverse progression from the north to the south appears in chapter 9 of Constantine Porphyrogenitus’ De administrando imperio where the author describes the progression of the Russian μονόξυλα (“single-straked ships”) down the Dnieper in a way that looks very much like the report of a spy who has integrated the perspective of the people he is spying. In the present study, I compare the description of the Dnieper found in De administrando imperio, composed around 948-952, with Herodotus’ sketches of the same region some 1400 years earlier. The juxtaposition of these two texts that deal with the same geographic places reveals a deep contrast between the uniformity of the linguistic medium (Constantine Porphyrogenitus uses the language of Hellenistic historiography that is hardly different from Herodotus’ continuators in Attic or in Koiné Greek) and the profound changes undergone by the reality described. Though the geographical area Constantine is dealing with partly overlaps with the territories of the ancient Scythians, the human landscape of those places changed so considerably after 1400 years that it is difficult to recognise Herodotus’ space in Constantine’s description of the same countries. Despite the intensive changes underwent by the region since the resorption of the Eastern Iranians (Scythians) by the time of the Barbarian Invasions, it is nevertheless possible to find a common denominator between Herodotus’ ‘Scythography’ and Constantine’s description of the Scandinavian/Slavic symbiosis in the same places: both accounts deal with a mysterious Hinterland beyond the familiar shore of Pontos Euxeinos. My study aims at analysing how the two authors managed to express a strange mix of familiarity and uncanniness in the way they describe the scaring ethnicities found on the shore of the rivers that run down to the Black Sea.
The Black Sea and the issue of mental estrangement in Georgian medieval historical tradition
The Black Sea and the issue of mental estrangement in Georgian medieval historical tradition
(The Black Sea and the issue of mental estrangement in Georgian medieval historical tradition)
- Author(s):Grigol Jokhadze
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Politics / Political Sciences, History, Anthropology, Social Sciences, Ancient World, Middle Ages, Modern Age, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, 6th to 12th Centuries, 13th to 14th Centuries, 15th Century, 16th Century, Geopolitics
- Page Range:150-164
- No. of Pages:15
- Keywords:the sea; border; marine activity; mental estrangement
- Summary/Abstract:Contemporary Georgian historiography is acquainted with at least two scholarly grounded viewpoints regarding the sea and medieval Georgians. According to the first one, medieval Georgians thoroughly utilised the sea. Moreover, a mural painting in the Orthodox Christian cathedral Svetitskhoveli in Mtskheta contains scenes with sailboats which reportedly confirm Georgia’s political ambitions: it evidences a glorious past of Georgia, her longing to reach out for Europe and her opposition to the Ottoman Empire, etc. The champions of the second opinion maintain, on the contrary, that, on the score of political misfortune and hostile environment, Georgians had no chances to cross the sea, which turned into an inner resistance to an aspiration, self-containment from going to Europe directly and primarily, etc. As the analysis of Kartlis Tskhovreba (the principal compendium of medieval Georgian historical texts) and Georgica (modern compendium of excerpts from Byzantine writers on Georgia, encompassing 4th-15th century) has shown, pieces of information on Georgians and the sea are paradoxical and even mutually exclusive. On the one hand, the s/Sea is the border (compare: zghva, ‘sea, the Sea’ – zghva-ri, ‘limit, boundary’) and a geographical reference point from the reign of Parnavaz I of Iberia (4th-3rd centuries BC) to Tamar the Great (12th-13th centuries AD). The direct utilisation, or a pragmatics of the Sea, is alien to Georgians. Such an estrangement may be produced by political and also harsh climate conditions. Georgians could have perceived the Sea as the realm of lower instincts: “throwing into the sea” or, better, “throwing into the sea abyss”, seems to have been a punitive measure. On the other hand, terms signifying marine skills and marine objects in general are organic for Georgian mentality. “Sea” and words related to it are used metaphorically, in most cases, to designate: a) one of the four elements, an instrument of God’s wrath; b) the earthly universe; c) the transitional life as an abode of vanities and seductions of the earthly existence; d) the kingdom as a universal possession. Researchers who try to prove that medieval Georgians used the s/Sea freely and safely made nothing more than bold speculations, presuming that a certain historical figure could have left Georgia only by sea, that there could not have been other way, etc. However, I would say categorically: there is no such kind of specific information about it in Kartlis Tskhovreba. Nevertheless, there are narrative sources which show that maritime culture and traditions were part and parcel of the western Georgian medieval world and only neighbouring states’ aggressive animosity prevented Georgia from wide-scale utilisation of sea. The sources referred to are Greco-Roman ones which confirm the marine activity of the inhabitants of western and south-western Georgia. I formulate the main question as follows: why the historical narrative of ‘Whole Georgia’ says nothing about it? Why does it limit itself with an only metaphorical use of the Sea? Trying to answer them, I see fit such a reconstruction of the historical situation. Medieval Georgia was mainly ruled from Mtskheta or Tbilisi; the works contained in Kartlis Tskhovreba are written upon an order of the king of Whole Georgia. Because of both geographical and mental estrangement, sea and its specificity were distant and strange for Georgians from the East; in their mind, sea was mainly associated with “Greeks” and ‘boundary’. Sea might have been be tame and organic for the inhabitants of western Georgia, as proven by Greek authors, but they were foreigners and their attitudes to the Georgians were a kind of consumerist, in the long run. Thus, we know nothing about how sea, as it is, occupied and directed a Georgian’s consciousness.
