Loading Events
  • This event has passed.

Lecture by Hannah Barker, “In Distant Places Among Alien People: Slavery, Friendship, and Tatar-Venetian Relations in the 15th Century”

Tuesday, Apr 30 @ 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Dodd Hall 275, Los Angeles, United States + Google Map

Guest Speaker: Hannah Barker (Arizona State University)

In 1455, the Venetian patrician Giosafat Barbaro encountered an old friend in surprising circumstances. As a young merchant in the Black Sea port of Tana, Barbaro had met and befriended a local Tatar notable named Chebechzi. At the end of his time in Tana, Barbaro returned home expecting never to see Chebechzi again. He certainly did not expect to find him enslaved in a Venetian wine shop ten years later. At the moment, Barbaro acted immediately to assert Chebechzi’s freedom and help him return home. Later in life, Barbaro also wrote a memoir in which he reflected on this incident and the meaning of his friendship with Chebechzi and other Tatars.

Barker’s talk will situate Barbaro’s reflections in the broader contexts of slavery and freedom, friendship and reciprocity, and the complex web of medieval Venetian-Tatar power relations.

Hannah Barker is an associate professor of history at Arizona State University. Her research centers on connections between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea in the late medieval period, especially the trade in slaves which flourished during the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries.

 

This event is co-sponsored by CNES and the Islamic Studies Program

Register to attend in Dodd Hall 275

Details

Date:
Tuesday, Apr 30
Time:
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Event Categories:
, ,

Venue

Dodd Hall 275
Los Angeles, United States + Google Map

Organizer

CMRS Center for Early Global Studies