On May 13-14, 2026, the Matenadaran will host a one-day workshop titled “Scriptural Knowledge Transmission Among Eastern Christians in the Early Modern Ottoman World.” The workshop adopts a broader perspective, encompassing written and oral religious knowledge produced, circulated, exchanged, and communicated among (Eastern) Christian communities of the multicultural Ottoman Empire, with its vast geographical reach, as well as beyond its borders.
The main research topic is the study of the Bible in the seventeenth century as a body of authoritative knowledge, but the thematic scope of the workshop is broader.
The workshop will host leading specialists from abroad in Ottoman Studies, Habsburg and Balkan Studies, Syriac Studies, Art History and Theology.
Within the frames of the workshop at 17:00, May 13 a keynote lecture titled Shared Traditions, Sharpened Boundaries: Muslim, Christian and Jewish Holy Texts in the Sermons of Süleyman Efendi, the Preacher in Ottoman Buda (c. 1643-c. 1654) will be delivered by historian of Ottoman period, prof. Tijana Krstić from Central European University (CEU, Vienna).
The language of the workshop and keynote lecture is English. The Q&A sessions will be held in English and Armenian.
The workshop forms part of the project “Text, Paratext, Image. The Circulation and Transmission of Books and Knowledge in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire and Beyond,” funded by RA MoESCS Higher Education and Science Committee (“Women Leadership Advancement Program 2024,” code 24WS-6F010). Conveners: Researchers of the Matenadaran Anna Ohanjanyan, Ani Yenokyan, Anush Sargsyan, and Garnik Harutyunyan.