Lead by the Principal Investigator Zara Pogossian, this project is funded through a European Research Council Consolidator Grant (Grant number 865067). It seeks to establish a new framework for studying the Armenian plateau and the wider area around it stretching from the south of the Caucasus mountain range to Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia (henceforth CAM) as a space of cultural entanglements between the 9th to 14th centuries.
The project is based on the premise that this region is key to understanding the history of medieval Eurasia but has so far been largely neglected by the burgeoning field of Global Middle Ages. The CAM was on the crossroads of expanding Eurasian empires and population movements, but was removed from major hubs of power, like Baghdad, Cairo, Constantinople, or Qara Qorum. Poly-centrism, political, ethno-linguistic, and religious heterogeneity, and frequently shifting hegemonic hierarchies were crucial aspects of its, nevertheless, inter-connected landscape. This fluidity and complexity left its mark on the cultural products – textual and material – created in the CAM. Exploring this production is at the centre of the project ArmEn.