""“While the perspective on (late medieval) Asia Minor often tends to become “sub-continental”, its maritime dimension is sometimes neglected. Yet, the ports and coastal zones constituted the most important points of interaction between the interior of Anatolia and the Mediterranean world. With the (anew) advance of the Seljuks towards the coast (conquest of Attaleia/Antalya in 1207, conquest of Sinope in 1214) and the increasing presence of Italian merchants in the harbours of the Aegean, the Black Sea and the Levant, maritime Asia Minor became a zone of intensive contacts between Byzantines (after 1204 in the exile realms of Nicaea and Trebizond), Armenians (in the Kingdom of Cilicia), Turks, Persians and Arabs (in the Sultanate of Konya) and “Latins” respectively “Franks”, thus also between Orthodox, Oriental and Western Churches as well as Islam (in its various denominations). With the fragmentation of Seljuk central power after the defeat against the Mongols in 1243 into various Emirates and their expansion especially into Western Asia Minor towards the Aegean and the establishment of Italian colonies (including “Catholic” bishoprics) in coastal towns and offshore islands (e. g. the Genoese on Chios and in Phokaia/Foça) and of the Knights Hospitallers on Rhodes, the number of zones of interaction, but also conflict increased (relocation of crusading efforts towards the Aegean in the 14th century, for instance). At same time, Venetians and Genoese integrated all these locations and regions as hubs and nodes into their commercial networks and into the late medieval “World System”. With the Ottoman Expansion, these territories were absorbed into one imperial framework once more (as it has existed under Byzantine rule until the 11th century), which finally also included the remaining western colonies (Rhodes in 1522/1523, Chios in 1566, Cyprus in 1571).
Some of these aspects, such as the intensive trade between Venetian Crete and the Emirates in South-western Anatolia in the 14th century , the military conflict between Crusaders and Turks in the Aegean or the establishment of Latin monastic communities and bishoprics in the region have already been analysed in greater detail. The same is true for aspects of religious transformations (especially conversions to Islam) in the region in the early modern period as well as in late medieval centuries, but less so for maritime aspects of the organisation, identity and dynamics of various religious groups. A view from the sea towards the coasts of Anatolia also opens a new perspective away from a “continental” overlapping of competing territorial claims towards a sum of potential nodal points within the late medieval network of socioeconomic interactions, which often modified or even overcame lines of religious, ethnic or political differentiation.
In order to survey and map such entanglements on the micro-level (individuals and groups), meso-level (religious, political and commercial communities) and macro-level (total network of maritime zones and nodal points), data gathered from the sources is stored, visualised and analysed with the help of tools and concepts of social network analysis – as the author has done for similar phenomena of religious or ethnic encounters in this period. The tools of network analysis enable us to integrate big amounts of information on the interactions, communications and affiliations of individuals into “social topographies”, which make visible the actual complexity of these entanglements. Researchers and other observers are able to detect patterns of social interaction –sometimes previously unnoticed within the mass of data. In addition to the linkages between individuals and groups, qualitative attributes (such as gender, ethnicity or religious affiliation etc.) can be integrated into the network graph and inspected with regard to their correlation with the patterns of interaction. Furthermore, mathematically based network models can be analysed with regard to an increasing number of quantitative characteristics, such as the relative centrality of actors, for instance. Also these characteristics can be visualised in network graphs and analysed with regard to their explanatory value for various research questions. Finally, network analysis can be combined with tools of cartography and Historical Geographical Information Systems (HGIS), thus establishing the connection between “social” and “geographical topography”, whose correlation can also be inspected.
On the basis of this combination of systematic survey of sources and relational analysis of encounters across religious borders, the significance of maritime Asia Minor as contact zone for the general transformation of Anatolia in these centuries will be demonstrated.”
For the entire paper look here:
http://www.academia.edu/4197258/Liquid_Frontiers._A_relational_analysis_of_maritime_Asia_Minor_as_religious_contact_zone_in_the_13th-15th_century
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