Известия Уральского федерального университета. Серия 2: Гуманитарные науки (Jun 2018)
Designations of the Ottomans in the Byzantine Historical Writings of Doukas and Laonikos Chalkokondyles
Abstract
Denoting a particular nation, the Byzantines did not limit themselves to using the Greekised self-designations of these ethnic groups. The peculiarity of the Byzantine ethnonymic lexicon was the reproduction of archaic names, the use of the pejorative name “Barbarians” or collective nominations. The choice by Byzantine authors of one nomination or another to refer to a specific people reflects the nature of the Romans’ cultural perception of other ethnic groups and their attitude towards them in certain historical conditions. The purpose of this study is to analyse the synonymous series used by late Byzantine historians Doukas and Laonikos Chalkokondyles to describe the Ottomans, to reveal the peculiarities of the use of these names, as well as the cultural and historical characteristics thereof. Based on the method of content analysis of historical works of Doukas and Laonikos Chalkokondyles, the author distinguishes the following synonymous series: “Turks”, “Barbarians”, “Ottomans”, “Muslims”, and “Infidels”, and analyses the frequency of these designations and the contexts in which they occur. According to the study, the terms “Ottomans” or “Muslims” were used by the authors on a situational basis, depending on a strictly defined context, and did not carry positive or negative connotations. Using the name “Barbarians”, the historians designated representatives of another religion, different from Christianity, and applied it exclusively to Muslim peoples of Turkic origin. The word “Infidels” was applied by Doukas only to the Ottoman Turks in order to emphasise their religious otherness and hostility to Christian faith, while Chalkokondyles generally avoided the use of this semantically overloaded word. The most commonly used designation was the neutral ethnonym “Turks”, which was more typical among the Byzantines and, probably, was universally used in everyday speech practice.
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