Project Details
Projekt
Trans-imperial Armenian Mobility and the Rise of Ottoman Tokat
Applicant
Professor Dr. Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg
Subject Area
Early Modern History
Modern and Contemporary History
Modern and Contemporary History
Term
since 2020
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 446518862
The project examines the mobility and culture of the Anatolian Armenians in the 17th and 18th centuries using the example of the city of Tokat (armenian Եւդոկիա Ewdokia), an early modern economic and cultural center of the Armenians in Anatolia. While the Early Modern History of the Armenians in Poland-Lithuania (Lwów-Lviv, Kamieniec, Zamość), in the Crimea, in the Persian Safavid Empire (New-Julfa in Isfahan) and in Constantinople is more thoroughly researched, this does not apply to Anatolia. In the context of the Safavid-Ottoman wars, Tokat became an Armenian center since the late 16th century, numerous inhabitants from the eastern war zone fled to the safety of Tokat and built an economic and cultural center there, which mediated between Isfahan, the spiritual centers in Armenia and the Armenian communities in Poland and Moldova. Persian culture and Central European theology were thus conveyed and further processed independently, as Tokat became a hub of a Trans-Ottoman cultural transfer.Historiographically, this era in research on the Armenians was always overshadowed by the medieval Armenian kingdoms and the modern prehistory and history of the Armenian genocide. The Anatolian history of the Armenian communities in the early modern period has therefore hardly been researched, and its reappraisal is an important desideratum.The project is based on scattered sources and numerous copies on the history of Tokat, copied in a contemporary and later manner, since local materials did not survive the history of violence in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Tokat can be seen as an example for other Anatolian cities with Armenian groups and networks, which are definitely considered part of an Ottoman and Trans-Ottoman history.Methodologically, prosopographic data and biographies of economic actors, writers, translators and clergymen from Tokat will be analyzed; these are processed primarily with the help of Actor-Network Theory. It is assumed that economic and cultural Trans-Ottoman networks overlap and that actors were active both in the Safavid Empire and in the networks reaching to Poland-Lithuania (see the biography of Hakob Tokhattsi).
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
