Bogdan Smarandache
I am one of the newest members at DiplomatiCon (EOS project n° 40007541), having joined the team as a postdoc last October 2023. I am very pleased to have joined this project, in part because its emphasis on documents and the modalities of diplomacy aligns very closely with my own interests. Being here has provided a wonderful opportunity for meeting colleagues working on diplomatic activity across the medieval Mediterranean from multiple perspectives. It has also provided a great opportunity for exploring later Mamlūk sources.
About me: prior to joining DiplomatiCon, I was based in Paris at the équipe “Islam Médiéval” of the Unite Mixte de Recherche (UMR) 8167 Orient et Méditerranée, where I began my first postdoc under the supervision of Sylvie Denoix (CNRS, Équipe “Islam Mediéval”). During my two years there, I further developed my research on negotiations between Christian and Muslim rulers aimed at ensuring the protection of juridical minorities in each other’s territories. Additionally, I supported the project Les mots de la paix/Terminology of Peace in collaboration with the project director and co-founder, Sylvie Denoix.
I completed my doctoral dissertation at the Centre for Medieval Studies in the University of Toronto, in 2019, under the co-supervision of Mark Meyerson and Linda Northrup. In my doctoral research, I explored the shared conventions and discourses through which Christian and Muslim sovereigns in the Eastern Mediterranean advocated for the protection of their co-religionists living beyond their own territories from the 7th to the 13th century. Up to now, I have focused mainly on the Ayyūbid-early Mamlūk period (roughly 1174–1382), seeking evidence for the evolution of diplomatic protocols and practices and the impact of diplomatic agreements on daily life.
For the DiplomatiCon project, I am carrying out several tasks under the supervision of Frédéric Bauden, while based at the University of Liège:
I am supporting the next stages in the development of the project’s database in coordination with Laurent Simon and Davor Salihović, and in collaboration with other team members specializing in Social Network Analysis (SNA) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Their expertise has shaped my understanding of the technical aspects of building a database and how the DiplomatiCon database might be used in research projects. Getting a hang of the database’s potential functionality and the complexity of data entry and management has made for an exciting challenge!
Like the research assistants, doctoral students, and two other postdocs in the project, I am also collecting and entering data for the database. Currently, I am scanning modern editions of texts composed in the Mamlūk period (1250–1517), comprising chronicles, regnal biographies, and chancery manuals for any evidence of diplomatic contact between representatives of the Cairo Sultanate, Italian polities, and the Crown of Aragon. I am still building my Arabic vocabulary, but my current knowledge of the language is adequate for quickly detecting the topics that appear throughout these works.
As I flip through these editions, I come across references and accounts dealing with administrative appointments, military campaigns, calamities and natural disasters, the conditions of Christians and Jews, the lives and legacies of eminent leaders and scholars, and poetry citations. Indices are useful for finding references, but these are not always complete so it is important to check these editions page by page. After a bit of practice, it becomes easy enough to spot Arabic umbrella terms for Western Christians, like al-Faranj (“the Franks”), at a glance. If I find any such references, then I undertake a close reading of the section in question to determine if the encounter described is relevant to the project.
The Mamlūk period marked a significant increase in the production of literature, so we have far more numerous historical sources and records at our disposal compared to the earlier Ayyūbid or Fāṭimid periods. Yet, despite this efflorescence of literature and diplomatic activity, I have found only two references to Mamlūk-Italian-Aragonese negotiations in the seven sources I have hitherto perused. Some authors writing in the Mamlūk period were simply not interested in Western embassies. However, a lack of records does not necessarily reflect a lack of contact. We know from many other sources and studies that the sultans of Egypt and Syria negotiated widely and maintained diplomatic relations with their neighbors as well as their more distant counterparts across Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Some authors writing in the Mamlūk period [1250–1517] were simply not interested in Western embassies. However, a lack of records does not necessarily reflect a lack of contact.
Whereas some sources offer sparse details on diplomatic encounters, many of the remaining thirty-three Arabic sources I have yet to peruse are known to contain abundant references to negotiations, and many even include copies of agreements. I am confident that the project will be flooded with records from the Mamlūk side, as it currently abounds in Central and Western Mediterranean records.
Within the framework of the project, I am also further developing my own research on legal frameworks for medieval diplomatic agreements. In particular, I am relating juridical discussions on the legal status of Western Christians entering Islamic territories under safe conduct to clauses protecting them found in diplomatic agreements. An example of such a clause can be seen in an agreement negotiated by the Mamlūk sultan, Baybars (r. 1260–1277), and the Hospitaller Order in 665/1267:
It is incumbent for merchants, wayfarers, and those who arrive in and return from both sides to remain safe from the Islamic side and from the Frankish and Syrian Christian side in the territories to which this truce applies; this safety extends to their persons, possessions, animals, and all that pertains to them.
To investigate this connection between legal discourses and diplomatic agreements, I am incorporating the study of legal and chancery manuals that circulated in the Mamlūk period. Many of these texts include references to amān, a loosely defined concept of safe passage. I am analyzing these alongside the specific clauses found across the corpus of Mamlūk-period agreements to determine how the latter might have been informed by juridical discussions, or at least how those charged with drafting agreements participated in a shared legal milieu. In this regard, understanding the transmission of legal and diplomatic knowledge at the Mamlūk court and the training of chancery scribes is essential to my research.
Finally, I am also available as a resource for three of the project’s doctoral students, Michele Argentini, Queralt Penedès Fradera, and Marta Manso Rubio, to aid with technical issues involving the entry of data into the project’s database and, as needed, to provide recommendations for readings and research and writing support. I see this role as an opportunity for fruitful intellectual exchange as Michele, Queralt, and Marta always have interesting insights into Aragonese and Venetian diplomatic practices to offer. That’s all from me for now. Peace out! ✌