This paper attempts to reconsider the geographic, religious and political orientations of the city of Ani in the 13th century. Long considered an “Armenian” capital, this economically robust city was home to Armenian, Georgian, Persian and Turkish speakers, and during the 13th century enjoyed a great deal of artistic, architectural and commercial productivity. While recent scholarship on medieval cities in the region have yielded findings that suggest varying degrees of pacific inter-faith interaction, primary sources produced in Ani indicate that relations between the range of religio-linguistic populations living in and around the city were based primarily on competition (within a larger framework of coexistence.) This paper will attempt to understand how these competitive interactions were articulated within the city walls. At the same time, this paper will look beyond the walls of the city itself and strive to understand Ani’s “place” in the region. A city with a complicated internal identity, Ani was many things to many people in the 13th century: an Armenian “capital,” a Georgian city, a robust trading center and, eventually, a city controlled by the Mongols. This paper will suggest that Ani’s complicated internal dynamics were also reflected externally; and that echoes of the ambiguity of the city’s identity (geographic, religious and political) can be seen in texts composed from Baghdad to Tblisi to Konya.

Three madrasas, the Buruciye Medrese, the Çifte Minareli Medrese, and the Gök Medrese were built in the central Anatolian city of Sivas in 1271-72 CE. This paper examines the connection between architectural style and political power in these monuments within the broader context of Anatolia under Mongol rule. Upon close inspection of the monuments, their patrons, style, and spatial concerns subtle changes appear that distinguish them from earlier monuments in the region. The patrons of the three monuments operated within the possibilities of Sivas, employing local workshops who often relied on locally available materials and motifs. Hence, style does not necessarily correlate with political affiliation, unsettling the classification of these monuments as ‘Seljuk’ while not making them ‘Mongol’ or ‘Ilkhanid,’ or otherwise assigning them to a readily available dynastic label. The patron of the Gök Medrese, Sahib ‘At? Fakhr al-D?n ?Al?, had commissioned several monuments in and near Konya before the monument in Sivas. The shape of the portal block and the use of marble on the Gök Medrese refer to S?hib ?At?’s earlier commissions in the region of Konya. An architect’s signature on the portal enforces this connection to the patron’s earlier foundations, suggesting the use of a personal aesthetic preference, and a stable record in employing members of certain construction crews. In details of the decoration, however, references to monuments in Sivas suggest the participation of local workshops. Shams al-D?n Muhammad al-Juwayn?, the patron of the Çifte Minareli Medrese, was a high functionary of the Ilkhanid administration. The patron of the Buruciye Medrese, Muzaffar al-D?n Hib?t-all?h al-Bar?jird? is only known from the inscriptions on his monument. In stylistic terms, the stone carvings on these two monuments are closely related, and show an affinity with the Great Mosque and Hospital in Divri?i (1228-29 CE). Moreover, they are positioned closely together, while the Gök Medrese was built in a different part of the city, suggesting spatial divisions that reflect the distribution of power between competing notables. The stylistic subtleties of the architecture, the spatial logic of their placement within the city, and the use of inscription constitute sources that are more eloquent than any chronicle of the period. The monuments speak to the intentions of their patrons, and reflect the increasingly localization of architectural culture in Anatolia as the region was integrated into the Mongol empire.

Medieval Anatolia Is Elsewhere: Mapping Cultural Encounters and Impasses of Architectural Historiography Anatolia dwells at the meeting point of East and West and evokes the motherland of two civilizations, Byzantine and Ottoman. According to the standard textbook account, the latter succeeded the former in preeminence in the year 1453. Yet, when it comes to the region’s architecture, prevailing historical frameworks and periodizations have created distortions for an understanding of Anatolia’s medieval architecture. My talk focuses on the interaction of the architectural impulses of the Ottomans, and other Anatolian princedoms (1308-1453) such as Menteshe, and Aydin (and the corresponding regions of Bithynia, Caria and Ionia), the meeting of Christianity and Islam, and the improved resources at artisans’ disposal as a result of Ottoman hegemony resulted in buildings that surpassed their predecessors in both originality and creativity. As one of the most complex phases of the Anatolian history, the principalities period accommodates a number of significant transformations nourished by diverse cultural settings and indicate Mamluk, Latin, or Byzantine borrowings proving that these emirates were not immune to the complex cultural environment of the Mediterranean. Hence the built environment created under different principalities was a result of lively adaptation and creative innovation. Buildings executed represent a paradigmatic shift rather than a continuous evolution within a single regional idiom. As for the period, medieval Anatolia might be regarded as an “elsewhere” when compared against the “somewheres” of the period—e.g., Venice, Constantinople, and Damascus—where, in the rendering of the late artist Robert Smithson, “the most important” art was executed, ranked, and consumed. The art and architecture produced in medieval Anatolia can be seen as occupying a marginal site of power, perceived importance, and contemporary scholarly interest. Such relegated status often leads to generalized, misunderstood, and denigrating assessments of art. It is the “elsewhere” nature of medieval Anatolia that I will focus on in my talk. My talk has implications not only for an understanding of the medieval Mediterranean but also for the merits of “elsewheres” that burn less brightly on the cultural map.

Most mediaevalist historians work on objects that have vanished over time: Social structures, discourses, trade networks, state institutions, etc.: almost all our knowledge on these objects is indirect, gathered from traces, mediated by sources, in short, fundamentally absent. An important exception to this rule is the rural territory, some of whose components have remained largely unchanged for the past millennium or more. This continuous presence therefore affords us, at least in theory, the ability to directly share an experience with our medieval experience. Such a proposition is not without its challenges, of course, as it entails a significant task of reconstruction of the mental structures through which mediaeval Anatolians perceived the land surrounding them. Insofar as the word “landscape” can be defined as a segment of territory as it is perceived, this paper constitutes the first step in a broader research project aimed at reconstructing late mediaeval Anatolian rural landscape. The project will eventually come to encompass a wide variety of source types, including narrative and documentary written sources as well as archaeological material. At this early stage, however, this paper will survey the preliminary results of the analysis of one particular narrative text, the Vilâyetnâme. This hagiography, centering on the thirteenth-century saintly figure Hac? Bekta? Veli, constitutes an especially rich source for this project insofar as the anecdotes it contains are mostly set in a rural environment, and his intended audience was also most likely familiar with the countryside. The paper will also present the theoretical groundings of the broader research projects, and address the possibility that we may be able to see the world in which late mediaeval Anatolians lived.

This paper examines ahi brotherhoods that were among the most significant social groups that survived the thirteenth-century Mongol invasion of Medieval Anatolia. Beside their ethical teachings and political actions, the ahis left their mark on this geography by erecting hospices (zaviyes), much like the colonizing dervish communities who operated both in urban and rural settings. The first question the paper poses is whether or not it is possible to distinguish between the broad category of hospices and ahi hospices in particular. This issue is more to do with the hospice as space and its social meaning and functions. It is also generally accepted that ahis’ influence faded out with the centralization of the Ottoman political entity. The evolution of hospices and mosques-with-hospices appeared in a parallel pattern to the centralization of the Ottoman realm. The question that follows concerns the locations and the numbers of ahi hospices/mosques in Anatolia, and their place within this evolution. These questions can be addressed with relative certainty through comprehensive research into archival and narrative sources, epigraphic material, as well as archeological findings, since many ahi hospices remain under the soil today. As a working paper with certain limitations, this study will look at descriptions of hospices by narrative sources including fütüvvet manuals and travel accounts; ahi endowments recorded in foundation registers; cadastral records of land grants made to ahis by early Ottoman begs and sultans; and ahis’ appearance in the earliest available Ottoman archival sources. Preliminary research shows that ahi hospices were concentrated in and around the towns of Kütahya, Kastamonu, Amasya, Tokat and Ankara. On the other hand, modest numbers of such structures were erected by ahis near Bursa, the first capital of the Ottomans. Ahis might have lost their influence earlier in the vicinity of Bursa, perhaps due to systematic efforts of building a capital, and the process of Ottoman centralization that might have been more pronounced in this area. The question on whether or not ahi hospices were distinguishable from others, on the other hand, requires further investigation.