Byzantium and the Pechenegs The Historiography of the Problem (East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450-1450, 79)

The author traces 150 years of the study of relations between Byzantium and various North Pontic nomads, with particular attention to how colonialist or national aspirations often triggered, hampered, biased, or otherwise influenced scholarship. Contents 5 Acknowledgements 7 Abbreviations 8 Introduction 13 Chapter 1 Byzantium and the Pechenegs: Vasilievskiĭ to Moravcsik 19 1 Byzantium, the Pechenegs, and the Black Sea Straits 19 2 Byzantium and the Nomads of the North Pontic Steppes in European Historiography, Mid-19th to Mid-20th Centuries 32 2.1 Historical Writing in the Russian Empire before 1917 33 2.2 European Oriental Studies and the History and Languages of the Medieval Nomads of the Western Eurasian Steppes. Hungarian and Turkish Historiography 40 2.3 “The Battle for History”: Romanian Historiography, Bulgarian Historiography, and the Lower Danube in the 10th to 12th Centuries 53 2.4 Russian and Ukrainian Historiography in the 1920s–1940s 65 2.5 10th- to 11th-Century Relations between Byzantium and Trans-Danubian Nomads in International Byzantine Studies 74 Chapter 2 “Poised Perception”: Trans-Danubian Turks in the Historiography of the Balkan-Danubian Countries 85 1 Preconditions 85 2 The Pechenegs and Cumans and Their Relations with Byzantium in Hungarian Historiography, Mid-20th to Early 21st Centuries 88 2.1 Hungarian Oriental Studies 88 2.2 Medieval Studies 95 2.3 Archaeology 100 3 Romanian Historiography 108 4 Bulgarian Historiography 148 4.1 Archaeology 150 4.2 Medieval and Byzantine Studies 171 5 Historiography of Other Countries in the Region 188 Chapter 3 Eastern European Historiography since 1945 202 1 Soviet and Post-Soviet Archaeology 202 1.1 Interpreting the Archaeological Record of the Late Nomads of the North Pontic Steppe 203 1.2 11th- to 12th-Century Nomadic Archaeological Remains in the Prut-Dniester Region 219 1.3 The Pechenegs and the North Crimean Canal: Exploring Nomadic Archaeological Remains in Crimea 234 2 Soviet and Post-Soviet Medieval Studies 248 3 Oriental Studies 264 Chapter 4 International Byzantine and Oriental Studies 277 1 Congresses of Byzantine Studies 277 2 Publication of Major Sources 288 3 Visions 299 4 Selected Problems in the History of Byzantium’s Relations with Steppe Dwellers and Attempts to Solve Them 310 5 Oriental Studies 322 Conclusions 335 1 Periodization 335 2 Source Base and Methodology 337 3 Byzantium, Nomads, and National Historiographies 338 4 Byzantine-Nomadic Relations and International Byzantine and Oriental Studies 339 Selected Bibliography 341 Index of Geographic and Ethnic Names 392 Index of Persons 401 Index of Modern Authors 404 "This book traces 150 years' worth of scholarly interpretations of relations between Byzantium and various North Pontic nomads, with particular attention to how colonialist or national aspirations often triggered, hampered, biased, or otherwise influenced these interpretations. Original in its interdisciplinary approach, Mykola Melnyk's book highlights an overlooked topic: the history of non-historic peoples. Going beyond the well-studied written sources for nomadic history, the author incorporates insights provided by archaeology, linguistics, and the natural sciences, bringing forth promising avenues of research into the subject of nomadic cultures in the medieval world"-- Provided by publisher