Military Сonfrontation and Сivilizational Interaction of Byzantium with the Ottomans: Changing Historiographic Paradigms

Abstract

This paper presents an analytical review of historiographic experience of conceptualization of key aspects related to the studies in the Byzantine-Ottoman confrontation and interaction and analyses the main trends of appropriate researches in contemporary Byzantine studies. There is a revision of previous understanding of the Ottoman factor in Byzantine history as totally destructive and a shift from the interpretation of Byzantine-Turkish relations mostly as a military-political and religious confrontation. The scholarship has allayed the evaluation of religious confrontation between Christianity and Islam, but did not wipe it off the slate, for the religious (and, broader, civilizational) factor continued to be one of the greatest obstacles to political and cross-cultural dialogue. The current state of research on the history of Late Byzantium exhibits that the experts tend to consider the problem of the empire’s relations with the Ottomans in various aspects: political, social, philosophical, cultural, and ethnic, and to link it to thinking on global problems of inter-civilisational interaction.