Meeting in the body of the horse:Culture&Knowledge transfer

How was knowledge about horses and equine medicine transmitted in the Middle Ages and at the turn of the early modern period, and how did this transmission work between different cultures? What role did equine medical manuscripts, their copies, revisions, and translations play in this process? Who was the mediator between the knowledge of the European West and the Islamic East? This will be investigated in the interdisciplinary project headed by the armenologist, linguist and equine scientist Jasmine Dum-Tragut (University of Salzburg) on the basis of late medieval Armenian horse treatises, their sources and translations in the geographical space between Occident and Orient. The project focuses on two Armenian horse texts. One from the early 13th century has been lost, but its existence is known through a note in another manuscript. The other is part of a comprehensive medical manuscript from the early 16th century that was rediscovered only in 2008. The comparison of the 16th-century Armenian horse book both with Armenian, European but also Arabic-Persian horse treatises and the translations of Armenian horse books into Arabic and Georgian offers a unique opportunity to trace the transmission of knowledge as a result of intensive cultural contact in a geographically and temporally limited setting. On the basis of the Armenian manuscript, it is possible to trace the journey of knowledge from the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia (present-day Turkey) in the 13th century, via Sivas in the Ottoman Empire (16th century), Tbilisi in the Kingdom of Georgia (18th century), Isfahan in the Iranian Empire (19th century). can be traced to its final destination in the Armenian capital of Yerevan (20th century). For this purpose, the Armenian manuscripts as well as several Arabic manuscripts and one Georgian manuscript will be investigated and analysed, compared and correlated for the first time. These manuscripts are kept in various collections and libraries around the world and will be made available to the project in digitized form. This project unites in its project team scholars from Armenian, Arabic and Georgian studies as well as equine studies and with its national and international cooperation partners from manuscript studies, medieval studies, Iranian studies, history of veterinary medicine, history of science and even cultural heritage studies, exceptionally many - and in Austria rarely represented - scientific disciplines. Last but not least, the project is considered as a comprehensive study of a specific Armenian cultural heritage, opening up the hitherto under-studied geographical area at the intersection of East and West, of Islam and Christianity, of the Middle Ages and the early modern period.