How did Persian and Other Western Medical Knowledge Move East, and Chinese West? A Look at the Role of Rashīd al-Dīn and Others
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.
Motivations and Response to Crusades in the Aegean: c.1300-1350
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.
ARABIC CONFLUENCE FROM CONSTANTINE TO HERACLIUS: The Preparation for a 7th Century Religio-Racial Explosion
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.
Early Islamic site discovered in Jordan
Recent conservation work at Qusayr ’Amra in Jordan has revealed the name of the Umayyad prince who commissioned the construction of the building.
The Crusades: What were they and why are they still relevant?
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 Eagle Returns: Evidence of Continued Ismaili Activity at Alamut and in the South Caspian Region following the Mongol Conquests
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.
Arab-Byzantine War, 629-644 AD
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.
Love and Devotion: From Persia and Beyond – exhibition now underway in Australia
Exhibition of illustrated Persian manuscripts now showing in Melbourne; will go on display at Oxford later this year.
Religious and Scientific Duality of Thought: How Ibn Rushd and al-Ghazili Set the Agenda for Medieval Scholastic Debates
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.
Azodi Hospital and University in Shiraz (10th – 14th Century AD)
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).
Jerusalem in Medieval Christian Thought
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.
Singers and Soldiers: Slavery in Early Abbasid Society
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.
Islamic astronomy
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
The albinism of Timur, Zal, and Edward the Confessor
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.
New book examines the role of Arab doctors in the history of medieval medicine
A leading medical historian has acknowledged the extent of Western medicine’s debt to medieval Arab doctors in a new book.
Arabic sources show extreme weather hit medieval Baghdad
The research, published in Weather, analyses the writings of scholars, historians and diarists in Iraq during the Islamic Golden Age between 816-1009 AD for evidence of extreme weather in Iraq, including snowfalls and hailstorms in Baghdad.
The art of medicine: Female patients and practitioners in medieval Islam
Diseases specifically affecting women that are discussed in medieval Arabic literature largely concern the reproductive organs, complications before and after childbirth, lactation, and child-rearing.
Muslim City Life during the Era of the Great Caliphs
Baghdad and many other cities in this Islamic world were international melting pots that attracted entrepreneurs and intellectuals of many languages, ethnicities, and faiths, including Jewish astrologers and Christian doctors.
Sacred Kingship among the Peoples of the Steppes
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 Iranian Factor in Byzantium during the Reign of Heraclius
A tripartite formula for the structure of Byzantine history has been suggested and generally accepted-Roman political institutions, Greek cultural elements, and the Christian religious faith, representing Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem respectively.
Images of Civil Conflict: One Early Muslim Historian’s Representation of the Umayyad Civil War Caliphs
This thesis examines the ninth-century Baghdadi scholar al-Tabari and his narrative representation of the three civil war caliphs of the Umayyad era (661-750 CE).
History of epilepsy in Medieval Iranian medicine
The history of epilepsy in Medieval Persian medicine is not well-known in the Western world. This article presents the clinical approaches according to which Medieval Iranian practitioners viewed epilepsy and dealt with its problems.
Silk Roads or Steppe Roads? The Silk Roads in World History
Modern historiography has not fully appreciated the ecological complexity of the Silk Roads. As a result, it has failed to understand their antiquity, or to grasp their full importance in Eurasian history.