Discrimination Against the Jewish Population in Medieval Castile and León
I have tried to show the degree of discrimination suffered by the Jewish community in these two kingdoms in the Middle Ages through a deep analysis of the legal sources, lay as much as ecclesiastical, and also through documentary collections reflecting their practical application
Medieval Friends: Chansons De Geste Ltd. – thematteroffrance.com
This week on Medieval Friends, we’re featuring Thomas Motter’s website, thematteroffrance.com. Thomas is fluent in French, and has lived in Paris and Munich. He’s done extensive research on medieval French history with an emphasis on the Chansons de Gestes.
Muslims as Pagan Idolaters in Chronicles of the First Crusade
If the crusade is indeed a working out of God’s will, how does one fit it into the context of divine history?
Asserting Political Authority in a Sacred Landscape: A Comparison of Umayyad and Israeli Jerusalem
Maintenance of authority is of course the end goal, but how does political leadership ‘build’ political authority in the first place?
Blue Eyes in the Islamicate Middle Ages
Negative representations of blue eyes in Islamicate literature and art have been ubiquitous since the advent of Islam in the seventh century CE
Christian Iberia: A Society Religiously Organized for War
Reconquista society in medieval Christian Spain is all too often considered through only economic and martial eyes. In this study of the prevelant cult of Santiago de Compostela (or St. James the Greater) I will demonstrate how medieval society meshed both war and religion.
Whose Golden Age? Some Thoughts on Jewish-Christian in Medieval Iberia
The medieval period in Spanish history has alternately been cast as a Golden Age of interfaith harmony and an example of the ultimate incompatibility of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities.
Charlemagne minus Mohammed?
On 28th January it will be 1200 years since Charlemagne died in 814. His legacy was immense.
Ibn Wāṣil: An Ayyūbid Perspective on Frankish Lordships and Crusades
Ibn Wāṣil (604/1208-697/1298) was a relatively prominent scholar and administrator who had close links with the political and military elites of Ayyūbid- and early Mamlūk-period Egypt and Syria throughout his career.
Anesthesia Drugs in the Medieval Muslim Era
In the Middle Ages, Christian Europe was in a state of intellectual stagnation and the theological doctrine that pain serves God’s purpose and must not be alleviated militated against the improvement in methods of narcosis. Nuland points out that the Middle Ages in Europe were dark ages so far as advances in the pharmacology of anesthesia were concerned.
An abbot between two cultures: Maiolus of Cluny considers the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet
In July 972, Muslim raiders from the citadel of Fraxinetum (modern La Garde-Freinet) abducted Abbot Maiolus of Cluny and his entourage as they crossed the Great Saint Bernard Pass ( Mons Iovis ) in the western Alps.
Integrative Medicine: Incorporating Medicine and Health into the Canon of Medieval European History
Hitherto peripheral (if not outright ignored) in general medieval historiography, medieval medical history is now a vibrant subdiscipline, one that is rightlyattracting more and more attention from ‘mainstream’ historians and other studentsof cultural history.
El Cid, Cluny and the Medieval Spanish Reconquista
Rodrigo Díaz, better known by his title El Cid, has traditionally been portrayed as one of the great heroes of Spanish history, perhaps the perhaps the Spanish national hero par excellence.
Medieval Cookbooks: Something to Inspire the Medieval Cook in all of us!
Baby it’s cold outside. Brrrrr! It’s January, snow is blowing, frost is nipping at your toes – it’s a great time to cook a hearty, hot meal. Want to make it even better? Try a medieval menu! Here are a few books to inspire the medieval cook in all of us.
Managing the Commons: The role of the elites in the uses of common lands in the Midlands of the kingdom of Valencia during the Middle Ages
In a recent paper, Danie Curtis has given a framework for classifying preindustrial societies in accordance with four variables, these are, the property, the power, the market of basic products and the modes of production.
The Interaction between the Crusaders and Muslims in the East: Myth and Reality
Christianity and Islam have had their fourteen hundred-year relationship defined by the era of the Crusades, a period that has often been characterized as a disastrous clash between two societies.
Early Islam’s Contribution to Western Opthalmology
The prevalence of eye diseases in the Islamic lands resulted in a particular interest in the skilful diagnosis and treatment of eye diseases.
Cutting and Running from the (Medieval) Middle East: The Mises-hors-scène of Kingdom of Heaven’s Double DVDs
Cutting and Running from the (Medieval) Middle East: The Mises-hors-scène of Kingdom of Heaven’s Double DVDs Richard Burt 15 | 2007 : Le Moyen…
New book examines Medieval Muslim Motherhood
Modern discourse often casts science and religion as bitter enemies. But if you were to rewind roughly 12 centuries, you would find at least one worldview in which the two domains were considered symbiotic.
How did Christians view the Rise of Islam?
When Muslim armies came out of Arabia in the 630s and 640s, Christian writers of the time saw it a sign that the Apocalypse had come.
Synthesis of Thought and Action: Muslim-Christian Political, Military and Theological Cohesion From the Time of the First Caliphs to the Reign of the Fatimid Empire
Muslim-Christian theological synthesis, beginning in the Umayyad period and culminating in eleventh century Fatimid Egypt, will be explored through the particular lens of Coptic-Christian clerical and lay efforts to appropriate the Arabic cultural language as a means of religious survival and dialogue with Muslim apologists.
Building the past through the eyes of the present: Were the Kingdoms of Medieval Spain a model of tolerance?
In this paper I am going to look at the ways in which contemporary concerns have shaped historians’ depictions of Medieval Iberian societies, and how that distant past is now used by politicians.
Islamic Astronomy in Medieval China
In 1271, Kublai Khan founded the Bureau of Islamic Astronomy in Peking, which operated alongside the long-established Chinese Astronomical Bureau.