Caucasian Albania: Public Book Presentation

12 July 2023

Photo: De Gruyter

The first international handbook on Caucasian ‘Albania’ provides an overview of the current state of research on a topic that is little known in the West in both academic and public circles. This Thursday, the two editors present the open-access volume at CSMC.

By consequence of the Karabakh War in 2020 and due to Azerbaijanian revisionism concerning the history, culture, and cultural monuments of a region in the southern Caucasus, which in Antiquity was called ‘Albania’ (with no relation to the eponymous region in the Balkans), has been reignited. The discussion on Caucasian ‘Albania’ is little known in the West in both academic and public circles. Now, the first international handbook on it has appeared in the series ‘De Gruyter Reference’. It was edited by Jasmine Dum-Tragut (Universität Salzburg) and Jost Gippert, senior professor at CSMC, and is a first result of his fellowship (2020–2022) and the ERC project DeLiCaTe he is running at present.

The handbook provides an overview of the current state of research on the Caucasian ‘Albanians’ in an objective, scientifically sound manner. The contributions are not necessarily intended to reveal new scientific findings but rather to summarise approved knowledge. The volume brings together internationally renowned scholars, researchers, and practitioners from various fields of studies reporting on and reviewing the state of research concerning the Caucasian ‘Albanians’, their history and archaeology, their language and written monuments, their religion, church history, and their art, including their relation to the Udi people of today. The companion is intended to neutrally introduce the readership to the subject of Caucasian Albania from various perspectives.

The two editors will discuss the book, which is published with open access and can be downloaded from the publisher’s website, during a public book presentation on 13 July, 4:15 pm at CSMC. In addition, Jasmine Dum-Tragut will give a talk entitled ‘Meeting in the Body of the Horse: Knowledge Transfer between East and West’ earlier on the same day (12:15 pm), in which she will discuss her current interdisciplinary research project on the transfer of knowledge and cultural exchange in equine medicine, breeding and training across geographical, linguistic and cultural-religious borders. Based on medieval Armenian manuscripts and their written sources and translations, she and her research team study and analyse in depth equine texts between Christian Europe and Muslim Asia in the period between the 13th and 18th centuries.