Rethinking the Historical Geography of the Byzantine Empire

This paper’s aim is to present the history and current state of historical geography in Byzantine Studies, its main challenges in the 21st century and the urgent need to adapt the way we think about historical geography in Byzantine Studies in the wake of current challenges and the evolving discussions in Byzantine Studies itself, i.e. if the term “Byzantine Studies” in itself is viable. Firstly, I will focus on time and space in Byzantine Studies, within which historical geography functions at the moment. I will present various scholarly traditions existing in Byzantine Studies (the Central European, the French, the Italian, the British and American) with regard to the periodization of Byzantine history. After that I will highlight the space, in which historical geography in Byzantine Studies is mainly entangled (with two core areas according to the Austrian school: the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor). We need to ask ourselves what the consequences for the historical geography in Byzantine Studies are, and here for example for the Tabula Imperii Byzantini, if the term “Byzantine Studies” in itself is put into question? Would a new definition of our field (namely East Roman Studies) be far-sighted and viable? Having discussed the terminology, time and space, we come to the question of Digital Humanities and historical geography. Here I will argue that digitization in historical geography is desperately needed, that we need to work jointly in databases in research teams and put our research and content regularly online, keep it up to date, which is easily possible in databases for our colleagues worldwide, and then publish our joint research also in printed form based on the researched data in the databases.