ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the methodology used to map, for the first time, the Jewish communities of the Byzantine Empire. The project mapping the Jewish Communities of the Byzantine Empire enables specialists, general scholars and indeed the public at large to browse web maps of the Jewish presence in the empire to their own specifications, using Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The Mapping the Jewish Communities of the Byzantine Empire project uses GIS to disseminate data via the Internet. The chapter focuses on how historical project has dealt with the issue of uncertainty in the dates and locations of the Jewish communities of the Byzantine Empire, a problem that hinders interpretations of many periods of mediaeval history. All references to Jewish communities in the Byzantine Empire that can be dated and located based on the sources were entered into the project’s database. Visualising the database in time and space allows for patterns in data to be understood by non-specialists.
