Workshop: The Mongols and the Silk Roads (May 10–11, 2018, Faculty of Arts, University of Szeged)

Abstract

On May 10–11 2018, the Faculty of Arts of the University of Szeged hosted an annual gathering of researchers dealing with the history of the Mongol Empire. The event was organized by several members of the Turkological Research group of MTA-SZTE (“Hungarian Academy of Sciences – University of Szeged”). Its main goal was the reassessment of a role that the international networks of merchants, and their activities along the Silk Roads, played in the Mongol Empire. The event saw the gathering of eleven participants from Hungary, United Kingdom, Germany, Bulgaria, Serbia, Israel, China and Japan, who covered a wide range of topics and source materials. The working language was English. On the first day, István Vásáry, professor emeritus of Eötvös Loránd University and keynote speaker of the event, held his lecture: The Mongol Period: Heyday of the Silk Roads. The other participants’ presentations, divided into four sessions, and followed by long, exhaustive and fruitful discussions, took place the next day. The presented papers will be Published online in one of the volumes of the internationally recognized journal Acta Orientalia Academiae Hungaricae in 2019.