Where the Middle Ages Begin
The remains of a large hospital from the Crusader period have been discovered in the heart of Old Jerusalem, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority. Later this year the public will be to visit part of the structure when the site is turned into a restaurant.
There were many worthy sites along the way, destinations in themselves, but Jerusalem in particular was unrivaled. It lured pilgrims to face death just to stand upon Mountjoy, that fabled vantage point overlooking the city.
This case study of Hodierna (c. 1115 to c. 1161), princess of Jerusalem and countess of Jerusalem, highlights how any given woman’s historical reputation is subject to unpredictable forces, often beyond her control and rarely reflective of her actions in life.
Although the military orders’ primary function was to fight against the infidel, warfare in the Middle Ages was never continuous, as armies could not be kept in the field indefinitely, and when there was an imbalance of power between Christians and Muslims it was in the interests of the weaker side to seek truces, even at the expense of concessions.
How did the kingdom’s leaders cope with the battlefield defeat? How did the settlements survive? Above all, what was the Military Orders’ contribution to the kingdom’s stability after the chaos following the battle?
The 1500 year-old mosaic was discovered during archaeological excavations ahead of the construction of a new highway.
Modern Tripoli still shows the division into two different urban areas existing since the Middle Ages. Until the arrival of the Crusaders Tripoli merely consisted of the ancient town on the coast.
What caused the particular enmity between Saladin and the Templars and Hospitallers? To understand this situation one must begin with examination of Muslim perspectives on monasticism in general.
The following paper is an attempt to describe one important feature of the social and economic problems of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: The colonization activities of the Crusaders in the Holy Land.
Archaeological excavations in the Israeli city of Jaffa have uncovered what was likely a wine press that dates back to the Byzantine era.
The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, established by the victorious crusaders in Palestine in July 1099, was one of the first colonial societies of the Middle Ages.
Fifty-six diagnostic sherds, dating to the Crusader period, were found in a pit. Most of them represent local Crusader types, with a few belonging to imported types. The chronological range of the Crusader-period pottery dates from the mid-twelfth to the early thirteenth centuries CE.
Although the mercenary phenomenon was differently considered and regulated in the West, the practice of taking up arms in the service of a rival army is attested in the Latin East in the twelfth and thirteenth-century.
Medieval teen king, precocious politician, and successful battlefield commander, Baldwin IV not only surmounted disabling neurological impairment but challenged the stigma of leprosy, remarkably continuing to rule until his premature death aged twenty-three.
That the threat posed by bands of marauders was taken seriously by the early crusader settlers can be seen by some of the barons’ brutal reactions to it.
It is a story will all the ingredients of epic tragedy: a brilliant, courageous and handsome nobleman travels to distant lands, fights battles, marries princesses, is elected King but is slain by treachery, still relatively young, just before he is crowned.
Sometime in AD 48, Peter had a tense meeting in Jerusalem with an enthusiastic missionary called Paul, who had been travelling among the peoples of the Near East, spreading news of Jesus’ teachings. Peter and his Jewish friends in Jerusalem were anxious that male converts to the new sect should be circumcised, as a sign that their commitment was genuine.
The Teutonic Military Order was founded in the Holy Land in 1198, where the already well established Military Orders of the Hospitallers and Templars were long active, with an ever-increasing military power and political influence.
Graeco-Roman domestic sexuality rested on a triad: the wife, the concubine and the courtesan.
Archaeologists working in the ruins of the Crusader town of Arsuf have uncovered a cache of more than 100 gold coins, worth more than $100 000.
Intermediaries were a vital component of this new society, one often almost entirely ignored by modern scholarship, which bypasses the interpreters and diplomats who moved between Latins and Muslims.
We suggested that the discovery of three raw glass furnaces at the site strengthens the assumption that the city was a major center for the making of both primary and secondary glass in the sixth and seventh centuries.
Beginning in 1170/1171, Salah al-Din built fortifications as the Fatimid vizier of Egypt. His considerations were primarily defensive in this period, following the Frankish campaign of 1168 that led to the siege of Cairo, and the Frankish-Byzantine naval expedition against Damietta in 1169.
eurThe vast belt of the Steppes, located between the Hungarian plains and the Great Wall of China,
runs along the southern edge of the Eurasian arboreal zone. Starting in the 1st millenium B.C. this region has been inhabited by Iranian, Hunnish, Turkish and Mongol mounted nomads who, at various times, unified a large portion of the Steppes into a single empire.
The tiny stamp was used to identify baked products and it probably belonged to a bakery that supplied kosher bread to the Jews of Acre in the Byzantine period.
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