Mediterranean Anatolia, Anatolian Mediterranean: A Landmass and its Sea(s)

The study of medieval and early modern architecture located in Anatolia, from the Byzantine to the Ottoman Period, has focused on the region as a landmass, marked by mountains, rivers, and steppes. Defined in geographical texts of the Islamic world as Lands of Rūm (Bilād al-Rūm) and understood as a frontier region between various polities and empires, as well as between Christianity and Islam, the region and its buildings emerge from the literature as solidly tied to land, connected through trade routes overland through Iran, Central Asia, and all the way to China. At the same time, attention to trade and its routes can help shift the narrative towards the sea, and a better understanding of Anatolia in a Mediterranean context. Major ports existed in Alanya and Sinop; new ports were created in Balat-Miletus and Ayasuluk-Selçuk-Ephesus, to replace silted-up antique ones. While these facts, and their impact on the economic and cultural setting of individual sites, have been studied, a synthetic approach to the question of what it means to conceive of Anatolia as a Mediterranean region is yet to be endeavored.