Association and Identity in Eastern Mediterranean (1300-1360). Building and Coagulating Groups, Networks and Lordships

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The Ottoman state emerged in the Eastern Mediterranean. In order to understand the pillars of its power-structure, of the violence it exerted and its astonishing ability to assimilation one has to scrutinize how individuals exerting violence and concepts of violence circulated in the space of the Eastern Mediterranean, how they cohabited and how they reached reconciliation in conflicts. The proposed project is based on results of research achieved in Ottoman, Byzantine and Medieval studies during recent years. With the help of a methodology inspired by network theories it aims at the emancipation of Ottoman studies from the dominance of the so-called gaza theory authored by Paul Wittek. The permeability of territorial as well as social boundaries allowed for the existence of heterogenous, but also ephemeral military-political constructs. The project investigates how such groups identified its identity, how they guaranteed and legitimised their existence and claims. It engages in the search after the concrete ethnic and political elements making up the associations active in exerting violence in the Eastern Mediterranean and South-Eastern Europe. The focus lies on contacts of the "Turks" with the Catalan Company and the relationship between the groups entering South-Eastern Europe with the Ottoman ruler in Anatolia. The project analyses sources hitherto neglected in this context, namely the documents of the Catalan Company, along with numismatic and archaeological evidence; it also re-interprets narrative sources.