2.04 RT – Late Medieval Practices of Ownership in Byzantium and Beyond: Byzantine, Armenian, Serbian, and Ottoman Contexts

Land and property ownership is pivotal in discussions on social hierarchies, economic structures, and the role of the state in the economy of medieval societies. Amidst the constantly shifting political territories across the Caucasus, Asia Minor, and the Balkans from the 13th to the 15th century, this Round Table delves into the composition and legal nature of wealth and (re-)distribution of properties in Byzantine, Serbian, Armenian, and Ottoman contexts. Five early-career scholars revisit the topic through a combination of legal sources, charters, foundation documents, and historiography, in Armenian, Arabic, Greek, Old Church Slavonic, Ottoman, and Syriac. The overarching theme focuses on the relationship between private property ownership and religious and state structures. Key discussion points include the composition and legal nature of Byzantine aristocratic landholding; the extent of the Byzantine emperors’ claims of ownership; the discrepancies between the legal terminologies surrounding the ktetorship of religious institutions vis-à-vis the actual practices of the ordinary people; the intricate processes of collective micro-endowments in the transformation of property into social capital that allowed non-elites to exercise limited agency within the aristocratic and ecclesiastical property systems; the transformation of Greater Armenia from a land-based aristocratic to a commerce- and land-based aristocratic society marked by increased urbanism; and the emergence of Ottoman absolutist claims over medieval legal conventions of ownership in the course of state-building and centralization. Recognizing the potential of interregional studies of the economic histories of medieval and early modern societies across medieval Eurasia, this round table also inquires whether certain late medieval modes of ownership were transferred, borrowed, or adopted interculturally.