Lewis Read

University of Vienna, Institut für Geschichte, Post-Doc

University of St Andrews, Medieval History, Undergraduate

University of St Andrews, Arabic and Middle Eastern History, Graduate Student

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I am currently a Research Assistant on the ERC project RELEVEN, hosted at the Department of History of the University of Vienna. My research specialises in medieval Armenian book production, transmission, and circulation across the Eastern Mediterranean between the ninth and eleventh century, with a particular focus on the historical, palaeographical, and philological analysis of Armenian book culture in conversation with the Byzantine Greek and Christian Arabic traditions, as well as on the application of digital tools for the study and preservation of Armenian manuscripts.

I earned my PhD in History from the University of Vienna (2025), during which I undertook further training in natural language processing, computational linguistics, and automated semantic analysis through machine learning from the University of Oxford. Prior to this, I received my MLitt in Middle Eastern History and Arabic (2020) and MA in Medieval History (2019) from the University of St Andrews.

At Vienna, I currently teach as part of the History bachelors programme, offering courses on the socio-cultural, economic, and political history of the medieval Middle East.

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Papers by Lewis Read

A Neglected Armenian Source of the Late Umayyad Era: The Martyrdom of Vahan of Gołt'n

by Tim Greenwood and Lewis Read

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists 33 (2025): 30–106, 2025

The Armenian Martyrdom of Vahan of Gołt'n, composed in 744 CE, offers a fresh perspective from wh... more The Armenian Martyrdom of Vahan of Gołt'n, composed in 744 CE, offers a fresh perspective from which to study the Umayyad caliphate. A sophisticated literary composition assembled in a monastic context, the Martyrdom traces contemporary networks of power, communication, and knowledge within and beyond Armenia. As a product of the late Umayyad world, it constitutes a work of major significance for the study of the Umayyad caliphate at large and the caliphal North in particular during the first half of the eighth century. The Martyrdom reveals contemporary Armenian perceptions of Umayyad hegemony, including ʿaṭā (stipend) payments, public executions, conversions, apostasy, contemporary apologetics, and the nature of Caliph Hishām's court at Ruṣāfa. At the same time, it portrays members of the Armenian elite, lay and clerical, reacting in different ways to new political circumstances. The present article provides the first annotated English translation and extensive thematic introduction to the Martyrdom of Vahan of Gołt'n, with the aim of making the text accessible to Islamicists and thereby integrating this rich source into discussions of the late Umayyad era.

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A Neglected Armenian Source of the Late Umayyad Era: The Martyrdom of Vahan of Gołt‘n

by Lewis Read and Alasdair Grant

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 33, 2025

The Armenian Martyrdom of Vahan of Gołt‘n, composed in 744 CE, offers a fresh perspective from wh... more The Armenian Martyrdom of Vahan of Gołt‘n, composed in 744 CE, offers a fresh perspective from which to study the Umayyad caliphate. A sophisticated literary composition assembled in a monastic context, the Martyrdom traces contemporary networks of power, communication, and knowledge within and beyond Armenia. As a product of the late Umayyad world, it constitutes a work of major significance for the study of the Umayyad caliphate at large and the caliphal North in particular during the first half of the eighth century. The Martyrdom reveals contemporary Armenian perceptions of Umayyad hegemony, including ʿaṭā (stipend) payments, public executions, conversions, apostasy, contemporary apologetics, and the nature of Caliph Hishām’s court at Ruṣāfa. At the same time, it portrays members of the Armenian elite, lay and clerical, reacting in different ways to new political circumstances. The present article provides the first annotated English translation and extensive thematic introduction to the Martyrdom of Vahan of Gołt‘n, with the aim of making the text accessible to Islamicists and thereby integrating this rich source into discussions of the late Umayyad era.

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Fostering in Early Medieval Armenian Sources from the Fifth to the Seventh Century

Journal of Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies , 2024

Dayekut'iwn, a practice of fostering found in early medieval Armenian sources, formed a significa... more Dayekut'iwn, a practice of fostering found in early medieval Armenian sources, formed a significant basis of social interaction between families in the historical Caucasus and Iran. This article presents a new and extensive analysis of fostering in the context of early medieval Armenian sources written between the fifth and seventh century, illustrating the broad context in which early medieval Armenian social history can be understood.

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Conferences & Workshops by Lewis Read

Between Athos and Antioch: Urban and Monastic Translator Teams & Shared Translation Practices in the Eastern Mediterranean (10th-11th c.)

by Adrian C . Pirtea, Marijana Vukovic, Lewis Read, Habib G . Ibrahim, and Miriam L Hjälm

Medieval literary translations happened at many places and in many contexts, with large urban cen... more Medieval literary translations happened at many places and in many contexts, with large urban centres building up strong competences which often depended on the extraordinary linguistic capabilities of individual translators (both lay and ecclesiastic). Attracting people of various backgrounds, monasteries also became centres of translation, not least because they housed speakers (and readers) of several different languages. Two important such centres from the mid-tenth to the late eleventh century were Mt Athos and Antioch with its environs. This was the period in which Athos was established as a monastic area, with Greek but also Georgian presence from the beginning, and soon attracting also users of Latin and Slavonic. After the Byzantines reconquered Antioch from the Hamdanids in 969, Greek language and literature rose again to prominence on a local level, but also encountered other rich literary traditions, such as Arabic, Armenian, Syriac and Georgian. Both on Mt Athos and on the Black Mountain, these monastic communities engaged in large-scale translation projects of the entire Biblical and Patristic heritage (including hagiography, ascetic literature, homilies, commentaries, etc.). At the same time, the city of Antioch itself fostered a new intellectual environment in which Graeco-Syro-Arabic translations could take place.
Although some of the translators’ names are known, scholars have only recently begun to study these translation activities and projects in more detail. Focusing on the cases of Antioch (incl. the surrounding monastic landscape) and Mt Athos (incl. its interactions with Thessaloniki and Constantinople), this workshop will address the following questions: Who are the main individuals, groups and institutions involved in these translations? What kind of evidence about these translations is still available today (narrative sources, manuscripts, etc.) and how can it be analyzed? Can the work of translator teams be detected in the extant sources and how can we study their translation techniques and methods? What is the relationship between the monastic and the urban translation centres? Are there any translation practices shared between Athos and Antioch that could indicate mutual influence and exchanges?
In addition, the workshop will explore other cases of monastic translations in the Eastern Mediterranean, such as the reception of the corpus of Antiochene translations during the Copto-Arabic Renaissance, or the later Graeco-Slavonic translations on Mt Athos.
Participants: Alice Croq (Université Paul Valéry - Montpellier), Joe Glynias (Harvard University), Miriam Hjälm (Sankt Ignatios College (EHS)/Uppsala University), Christian Høgel (Lund University), Habib Ibrahim (University of Tübingen), Joshua Mugler (Hill Museum & Manuscript Library), Sandro Nikolaishvili (University of Southern Denmark), Adrian C. Pirtea (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna), Lewis Read (University of Vienna), Daria Resh (Swedish Institute at Athens / SDU), Marijana Vukovic (University of Southern Denmark)

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Lewis Read

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