Where the Middle Ages Begin
Guenée dubbed the late fourteenth century le temps des alliances’, pointing to the effect on politics and administration in France of visible, recognised networks. These might be based on kinship, marriage and godparenting, where the obligations were well understood, but not necessarily written down
Among many Moslem scholars who shared in enlightening the path of medical human knowledge is ‘Alzahrawi’ who is regarded as the father of modern surgery, and rightfully so. He was a great surgeon, a pioneer in surgical innovation and a great teacher whose comprehensive medical texts had shaped the European surgical procedures up until the renaissance and later.
Before Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1400–68) revolutionized printing with his discovery of moveable type, manuscripts of collected recipes from the Iberian Peninsula grew out of several traditions. Most notable are two manuscripts directed toward the urban aristocracy from the waning years of the Almohad dynasty, two works from the aristocracy of Aragon and Castile, and one woman‘s manual that weaves together recipes for food, home remedies, cosmetics, and general hygiene.
Indeed, research suggests that the beard grows faster during periods when a man is sexually active, and some psychoanalysts claim that shaving is an act of auto-castration.
It is the end of the Roman period, however, that interests us most. What happened then is a model for the relationship between Church and state that has had an enduring and powerful influence.
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).
Medieval Islamic medicine has until now been studied primarily through its learned treatises. According to that theoretical corpus, written in Arabic, Islamic medicine mainly constitutes an elaborate systematization and synthesis of earlier Graeco-Roman sources.
The Christian forces in the Holy Land during the mid-to-late-1100s had, for many years, requested assistance to maintain their dwindling and increasingly challenged control in the Holy Land, but no help came. The tenuous rule of Guy of Lusignan, King of Jerusalem, in the mid-1180s, led to further internal conflict.
The first and foremost topic of classical and medieval physics is the concept of motion
(Grk. kine ̄sis, Arb. h ̇ araka, Lat. motio). Within the complex of issues and problems associated with motion, the question ‘in which category does motion itself belong?’ occupied a position of considerable importance in scholastic natural philosophy.
Sexual relations in Middle Eastern societies have historically articulated social hierarchies, that is, dominant and subordinate social positions: adult men on top; women, boys and slaves below
Among the spectacular Eastern hunting techniques which could become the object of interest and envy of the Europeans, one easily adapted to the natural conditions of Europe was undoubtedly the falconry. In fact, it became not only a great fancy of medieval and renaissance Europe, but also a kind of cross-cultural bridge across ideological gaps.
The issue of a Muslim woman’s dress code has been debated for centuries. This is of great importance as it is widely used as a criterion to measure the extent of a woman’s piety or devotion to Allah.
Working for eighteen years under the patronage of the Norman King Roger II Guiscard of Sicily, who gathered scholars from many regions at his court in Palermo, the Moroccan geographer Al-Idrīsī in 1154 completed a description and an atlas of maps of the known world.
The sometimes benign, often neutral or mildly hostile, occasionally horrifically violent history of inter-faith relations from the time of the First Crusade in the mid-twelfth century through to the end of the fifteenth century forms the backdrop to much of what I have to say
A German legal historian, Paul Roth, published in 1850 a work that set out the basic concept of feudalism. According to Roth, Charles Martel had combined the two existing institutions of ‘vassalage’ and ‘benefice’—that is, a vassal swore allegiance to his lord in return for which he was given some kind of benefice, usually rent-free land.
From Baghdad to Barcelona, Jews, Christians and Muslims rubbed shoulders in streets and in marketplaces, shared meals, undertook joint economic ventures, traveled together, etc.
How could the Berbers originate in al-Andalus when everyone knows they are the original inhabitants of North Africa? One of the goals of this article is to show that asking the question in this way is part of the problem and that it stands in the way of securing the soundness of historical interpretations of the past.
![Alfonso X as a judge, from his Libro de los Dados,[1] completed ca. 1280.](http://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/LibroDesJuegasAlfonXAndCourt.jpeg)
A great deal of current interest has been sparked regarding Alfonso X’s attitudes towards the various minorities which comprised his dominions. An excellent place to begin any serious re-assesment of alfonsine ideas of tolerance and intolerance is provided by the Cantigas of Santa María, the king’s greatest contribution to medieval art and letters.
This paper will thus be structured in several sections. First it will be necessary to approach the topic of Roman water supply systems as a whole, their direct relationship with urbanism and city-dwellers, and how these monuments were a clear indicator of Romanitas, even in the post-Roman period.
This study will focus on just one aspect of the transition from Muslim kingdom to medieval Christian state. In 1238, Ciudad de Valencia, the most important urban center in the Muslim kingdom of Valencia would fall to Jaime I, el conquistador, king of Christian Aragon and Catalonia, opening up a vast region to Christian influence.
Very little is known about the actual life of Leo Africanus, in spite of his well established posthumous fame. He did not leave many marks in contemporary documents.
The reign of Alfonso VI was also to be the setting within which León-Castilla joined in the emergence of a new western Europe and itself also assimilated the new norms and structures that were being erected everywhere there.
The legend of Prester John and his magnificent kingdom has captivated scholarly and lay audiences from the twelfth-century through the twenty-first.
When one reads Medieval historiographic texts—whether written in Latin, Arabic or Romance—it appears that both the Moorish invasion and the Christian Reconquest of Spain are linked to a rape episode.
The aim of this article is to draw attention to a group of persenal names which occurs almost exclusively in the city of Barcelona in tilese decades around the year 1000, which may throw some additional llght on the range of externa1 cgntacts. The name in question is that of Greco.
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