Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Greenwood, Tim
• Brubaker, Leslie
• Darley, Rebecca
• Reynolds, Daniel

Titel

Composing World History at the Margins of Empire: Armenian and Byzantine Traditions in Comparative Perspective

Ist Teil von

• Global Byzantium, 2022, Vol.1, p.87-107

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

United Kingdom: Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2022

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This chapter takes a fresh approach to examine how authors from 'peripheral' states wrote themselves into global world history. Basing his argument on primary manuscript research, Greenwood meticulously tracks the process by which early medieval Armenian historians recast their narratives into components of (Greek) universal history texts, thus enabling them to claim parity with the larger polities that surrounded them. This chapter examines how authors from 'peripheral' states wrote themselves into global world history. Studying the Armenian reception of Byzantine chronography and universal history from a comparative perspective, therefore, allows us to trace some of the contours of a complex intellectual engagement on and beyond the margins of empire over a long period of time. Preserved in Armenian, the structure, content, and perspective of this complicated composite study of Church history nevertheless betray its Byzantine origin. The use of dayeak is certainly surprising and could be interpreted as undermining the notion that Greece was the source of all learning, implying that Armenian and Iranian traditions also held significance and meaning. As C. Holmes observed, the various compositions in Armenia, Arabic, and Greek attest to the attraction and availability of imperial Byzantine histories for authors writing at the margins of the Byzantine Empire at the start of the eleventh century.