VENICE – In the multilingual and multireligious Ottoman world, a single language could be written in multiple writing systems. Ottoman Turkish, for example, was written not only in Arabic script but also in Armenian, Greek and Cyrillic. This practice had profound cultural and social implications, yet its history has largely been overlooked because of the assumption that language, writing system and ethnic identity necessarily correspond.
A research project awarded €10 million by the European Research Council (ERC) will be the first to shed light on this distinctive practice of the Ottoman world, known as multigraphisation. The project brings together multidisciplinary research teams from four institutions in Greece, Austria, Romania and Italy, including Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, represented by Turkish studies scholar Matthias Kappler.
This is Ca’ Foscari’s 32nd ERC grant and its first Synergy Grant, a funding scheme designed to support ambitious, scientifically outstanding projects that require collaboration among exceptional researchers. Of the 957 proposals submitted, only 48 were selected for funding (5.1%), including eight involving Italian institutions. The Ca’ Foscari project is the only ERC Synergy Grant awarded in Italy in the humanities.
“Securing our first Synergy Grant, the only one awarded to a humanities project in Italy in this European funding round, is an extraordinary achievement, made all the more significant by the highly competitive selection process,” says Marco Sgarbi, Rector of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. “I congratulate Matthias Kappler on this remarkable accomplishment, which confirms Ca’ Foscari’s standing as a centre of attraction and a benchmark for international excellence in the humanities. The Synergy Grant confirms and reinforces this trajectory, demonstrating Ca’ Foscari’s ability to attract and nurture the finest academic talent and to promote ambitious research projects of the highest international calibre.”
The project, BASTRAD (Balkan and Anatolian Scriptural Traditions. Multiple Writing Practices in the Ottoman World, 14th–20th Centuries), is the first to systematically document and compare different writing practices across the entire region between the 14th and 20th centuries, investigating their connections with religious affiliation, social relationships, migration and cultural exchange.
"We will challenge traditional national historiographical narratives," explains Matthias Kappler, "which have often marginalised these practices. By bringing together evidence that has until now remained fragmented, BASTRAD promises to offer new perspectives on the history of multilingualism, cultural interactions and social diversity, with implications extending far beyond the Ottoman world."
Kappler studied at Ca’ Foscari and earned his PhD in Frankfurt before spending a decade teaching Turkish in the Greek-speaking part of Cyprus, where he developed his interest in multilingualism, before 'returning home' to Venice.
Bringing together four research teams specialising in history, cultural studies, linguistics, philology and digital humanities, the project will combine historical and linguistic research with innovative digital methods. The teams in Athens, Venice, Vienna and Bucharest will examine manuscripts and printed works in a range of languages – including Modern Greek, Turkish, Albanian, Judeo-Spanish, Eastern Romance and South Slavic languages – written in Arabic, Armenian, Cyrillic, Greek and Latin scripts.
They will develop digital collections and create an open-access research platform to document and map the circulation and use of sources. The materials will also provide valuable insights into everyday communication, spoken language, dialects and the formation of cultural identities.
At Ca’ Foscari, the team led by Kappler at the Department of Asian and North African Studies will focus particularly on Turkish texts written in Greek and Cyrillic scripts and Greek texts written in Arabic script, exploring their sociolinguistic uses and significance for dialect studies.
Venice is a particularly significant city for this research: many Turkish-language books written in Greek script (also known as Karamanlidika) were printed there, especially in the 18th century, thanks to the printing technology developed by the city's Greek printers. By contrast, the rare Modern Greek texts written in Arabic script (also known as Greek aljamiado) consist mainly of manuscripts and are scattered across archives in Greece and Turkey.
In collaboration with the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities, Ca’ Foscari's centre of excellence in digital humanities, the Venice team will also contribute to the digital processing and comparative analysis of these sources.
The project team includes Dimitris Kousouris (National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens), Yavuz Köse (University of Vienna) and Emanuela Timotin (Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti Institute of Linguistics of the Romanian Academy, Bucharest). The six-year project has a total budget of almost €10 million, of which €2,297,535 has been allocated to Ca’ Foscari. Kappler will lead a seven-member team in Venice, recruited through research appointments, PhD scholarships and postdoctoral research contracts, with expertise spanning Turkish dialectology, Greek written in Arabic script and digital humanities.
The new project also creates a unique opportunity for collaboration between two ERC-funded projects within Ca’ Foscari. At the Department of Humanities, Professor Daniele Baglioni leads ConScrIt, an ERC Advanced Grant project dedicated to allography in Italian language varieties.
For more information about ERC funding opportunities and projects funded at Ca’ Foscari, visit the dedicated webpages or contact the International Research Office – Individual Funding Unit.