On Friday and Saturday, January 17 and 18, we hosted the Eurasian Transformations Cluster of Excellence workshop on Administrative Spaces and Administrative Languages. As the opening session of the Multilingualism in Eurasian Premodern Societies: Social Hierarchies and Space series, the workshop focused on the languages of administration within the spatial dimension of the multilingual administrative centers of late antique, medieval, and early modern Eurasia.
After an introduction by Prof. Katalin Szende, which set the workshop within the broader aims of the Eurasian Transformations Cluster of Excellence, Prof. Keith Lilley used the example of medieval Chester to discuss linguistic mapping in urban spaces (watch). He concluded that we should see the medieval city as a symphony rather than a cacophony with linguistic communities communicating and negotiating their interactions. This was followed by a session on administrative languages in the east, south and north of Mongol Eurasia. Márton Vér explored Old Uyghur and Middle Mongolian in the Mongol Central Asia; András Baráti examined multilingualism in administrative centers of the Ilkhanid Empire; and Jack Wilson discussed texts connected to the Mongols written in one language but using the script of another.
After lunch, Bernhard Palme opened with a extensive trip through 1,000 of papyral history, followed by Nora Lafi on multilingualism in the Ottoman cities of North Africa, and Filip Emanuel Schuffert discussing language in the early modern administration of Warsaw. The final session of the day saw Mirjam Wien leading us through German language texts in a late medieval
Dominican friary in Sibiu, Transylvania (modern-day Romania);
Cristian Gaşpar gave us juicy details from early modern Romanian texts; and Peter Benka discussed multiple languages in early modern Northeastern Hungary (modern-day Slovakia). The day closed with a stimulating discussion, picking up on an ongoing theme concerning the difficulty of discussing spoken language based on surviving written documentation.
The final day had a single panel that focused on areas of Byzantine and Ottoman influence. Christian Gastgeber spoke on written communication between Greek Byzantium and the Latin West; Lena Sadovski spoke on Slavic and Latin writing in late medieval Dalmatia, bringing a gendered aspect to the discussion; and Marijana Mišević concluded with an exploration of communication between Ragusa and Istanbul. The workshop ended with a closing discussion, bridging Eurasia and acknowledging the different sizes of urban settlements. We discussed the prestige of different languages in different polities, the symbolism of language and power relations; and who was exercising power, how and for what purpose.