Gift Exchange in Byzantium: Diplomacy and Trade, lecture by Koray Durak (Boğaziçi University), Bilkent University, December 12, 2019 2:00 pm

Diplomatic gift exchange between the Byzantines and their neighbours have been traditionally seen as a non-economic exchange. Political and cultural significance of gifts are emphasized over their economic implications. Among the economic implications one can count a. the financial impact of gift exchange on the sender and the receiver, b. the economic stimulation that gift exchange caused for trade and manufacturing in the local markets of the sending and receiving parties, c. the role of gifts as promotional items, i.e the gift-sending country send gifts to promote its export items. These three points will be explored in the example of the middle Byzantine period gift exchange, with a focus on the gift exchanges between the Byzantine and Near Eastern courts.

Koray Durak has been teaching courses on the history of the medieval Mediterranean region, the Byzantine history, and the history of Byzantine Constantinople at the Department of History at Boğaziçi University since 2008. His main areas of research interest include Byzantine and medieval Islamic trade and networks of exchange, and geographical imagination in the Middle Ages.

The lecture is part of the Byzantine Seminar Series “Byzantium at Ankara,” an event organized and hosted in collaboration by Bilkent and Hacettepe University which will be held over the entire 2019/2020 academic year.