Scripts and Languages in the Pre-National Ottoman Balkans
(Early Modern and Modern Periods)
IHR /NHRF │ MIET │ Orthpol Workshop
Athens, 16 May 2025
Matthias Kappler / Dimitris Kousouris / Ovidiu Olar / Emanuela Timotin
MIET, Thoukididou 13, Athens
Participants
Stelios Chronopoulos (Ioannina) / Stauros Grimanis (Athens) / Milorad Kapetanović (Vienna) / Matthias Kappler (Venice) / Elias Kolovos (Athens) / Dimitris Kousouris (Athens) / Ovidiu Olar (Vienna) / Mara Psalti (Thessaloniki) Emanuela Timotin (Bucharest)
Recent scholarship has emphasized the Ottoman Empire as an "empire of diversity," highlighting fluid identities, legal pluralism, and cultural hybridity. Yet, despite the abundance of multilingual and allographic texts—documents written in one language using the script of another—research remains fragmented along ethno-religious and disciplinary lines. This workshop explores the rich multilingual and multiscriptural landscape of the Ottoman Balkans prior to the rise of ethnolinguistic nationalism. It aims to foster a systematic, interdisciplinary dialogue on allographic practices, bringing together scholars from various fields to discuss manuscript and printed sources from the early modern to the late Ottoman periods. By examining hybrid texts—such as Ottoman Turkish in Greek script, Greek in Cyrillic and Latin scripts, or Romance idioms in Cyrillic and Latin scripts—we seek to reassess these practices not as deviations from norms, but as longstanding tools of identity, communication, and cultural exchange within a pluralistic imperial context.
Friday, 16 May
09:30–10:00 Introductory Remarks (Stauros Grimanis)
10:00–12:30 First Session (Chair: Mara Psalti)
10:00–10:45
Dimitris Kousouris (Athens)
Frangochiotika: The Historical and Cultural Context (Seventeenth – Early Twentieth Century)
10:45–11:30
Matthias Kappler (Venice)
The Linguistic Approach and the Areas of Karamanlidika and Greek Aljamiado
11:30–11:45 Coffee Break
11:45–12:30
Elias Kolovos (Athens)
“Translating” the Sultan’s Orders: Ottoman Turkish and Greek Documents from the Archive of Saint John the Theologian on Patmos
12:30–14:00 Lunch Break
14:00–17:00 Second Session (Chair: Milorad Kapetanović)
14:00–14:45
Emanuela Timotin (Bucharest)
Romance Idioms and their Scripts in Eastern Europe in Early Modern Times
14:45–15:30
Ovidiu Olar (Vienna)
Liturgy and Allography: Moldavian and Wallachian Bilingual and Trilingual Musical Manuscripts (Fourteenth – Early Nineteenth Centuries)
15:30–15:45 Coffee Break
15:45–17:15
Round Table (Chair: Stelios Chronopoulos)
Digital Tools for Complex Multi-Script and Multi-Lingual Texts
17:15–18:00 Concluding Remarks (Discussant: Elias Kolovos)
This event is jointly organized by:
IHR /NHRF – The Institute of Historical Research – National Hellenic Research Foundation (Athens);
MIET – National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation (Historical & Paleographic Archive) – Athens;
The “ORTHPOL – Orthodoxies and Politics: The Religious Reforms of Mid-17th Century in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe” project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 950287).
