Where the Middle Ages Begin
The reason why Muslims authors of the 9th and 10th century A.D. dealt with the history and culture not only of
the Romans but also of other ancient and contemporary nations is related to the social, political and cultural
circumstances of their age.
This paper will present some of our latest insights on the design of the wall and the structural techniques used for the masonry and will compare these features with similar building structures at other sites.
Every one in Abbasid society who could compose poetry, good or bad, composed about slave-girls or at least made mention of them.
A bride being dressed and adorned; local people gathering to watch; gifts lavished, feasts prepared – these are all customs one would see in a modern day wedding. According to a recent article, these customs were also part of weddings in medieval Damascus although they had their unique Middle Eastern flavour.
It is my intention to show that the participation of monarchs in the Third Crusade had an adverse effect on the outcome of the Crusade. Whatever positive aspects of monarchical involvement in the Third Crusade were to be had can be seen at the beginning of the venture, when the Church needed financial and material support, as well as the prestige that royal participation could offer.
For Constantine, Justinian, Sultan Mehmed II, and Atatürk, Hagia Sophia served as a model for the changing political and religious ideals of a nation. To use the useful phrase coined by Linda Young, Hagia Sophia is a building that is “in between heritage.”
The phenomenon of eremitical monasticism in western Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries has been studied extensively,2 but little material has been found that might shed light on the foundation of eremitical communities by Franks in the Latin East.
The differences in the imposition of serfdom led to different economic and political effects for the peasantry in Europe. In Western Europe, wages rose, grain prices fell, and the consumption of meat, dairy products, and beer increased. More and more peasants moved into a widening “middle class” that could afford to buy manufactured goods.
This thesis will attempt to unravel how it came to be that men who claimed to fight in the name of the cross had come to attack one of the most important cities in all of Christendom. It shall focus particularly on the motivations and actions of the Venetians, a people whose involvement in this crusade and the crusading movement in general has often been misunderstood.
The British Library and Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development have unveiled an ambitious partnership to transform people’s understanding of the history of the Middle East, and the region’s relationship with Britain and the rest of the world.
This is the meeting place of the western and eastern worlds, for near here passed the movements between Palestine and Mesopotamia associated with Abraham, near here the Assyrians made their last stand after their capital fell in 610 B.C., and near here Crassus ill-advised attempt to press eastwards came to an end.
This paper looks specifically in this larger context at one key aspect of the western knowledge arriving in China, Islamic medicine, which included major Ancient Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Syrian Christian as well as Persian and even Indian components, making it truly international, and speculates as to how it got there.
Since the Fourth Crusade, there had been a permanent Latin settlement in the Aegean made up primarily of the Venetians who had fought alongside the Frankish knights in 1204.
This paper’s argument is purposeless without the reader knowing the seventh century events of the so-called explosion of Islam, and the interpretation of which I find so contentious. Thus a brief description of the episode is necessary.
Recent conservation work at Qusayr ’Amra in Jordan has revealed the name of the Umayyad prince who commissioned the construction of the building.
Media portrayals of the Crusades depict them as fierce battles between Christian knights and Muslim warriors, while some suggest that they were an episode in a wider clash of civilizations between the Western Christian world and the Muslim Middle East. But are these depictions accurate?
The catastrophic Mongol incursions into the heart of the Muslim world during the thirteenth century left a path of death and destruction in their wake.
The paper seeks to answer the question ‘Why did the Byzantine Empire fail in the defense of these territories’ by looking at diplomatic, military, economic and social differences between the Arab and Byzantine sides.
Exhibition of illustrated Persian manuscripts now showing in Melbourne; will go on display at Oxford later this year.
Ibn Rushd’s response to al-Ghazili ’s rather specious use of logic introduces the differentiation of religious and “scientific” or philosophical truths: an important, necessary, and previously unarticulated distinction which reverberated in the cathedrals and universities of Europe and which remains relevant for contemporary thinkers faced with similar dilemmas.
Hospitals have a long history throughout the history of medicine. First hospitals are originated from Persia in ancient times in the Sassanid Dynasty (2nd to 6th century AD).
In the prophetic tradition, the dwelling of God is understood as a spiritual one. Yet, in spite of the expressed manner in which Jerusalem was called The Holy City, an element of imperfection remained.
Individuals of slave descent led significant households in Baghdad and Samarra, the capitals of the Abbasid caliphate, the second great empire of the Muslim world.
Although the story of how Greek astronomy passed to the Arabsis comparatively well known, the history of its transformation by Islamic scholars and subsequent retransmission to the Latin West is only now being written
At least three historical characters, and one biblical one, are frequently referred to as albinos. Two of them, Edward the Confessor and Timur, were real people, one being a King of England and the other the most powerful of the medieval Tartar rulers; the third is a figure in Persian legend, Zal.
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