World

The medieval world takes us to Byzantium to explore the continuities with the ancient world and the multi-ethnic and multi-lingual empire that endured throughout the period. Or you can discover the many reasons and arguments for the rise and spread of Islam in the sixth and seventh centuries and the formation of the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates. Read more

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  • Diagrams in History

    Article

    One of the gifts of the social sciences to history is the use of expository diagrams; but attention is rarely given to the history of diagrams. Maps - schematized representations of locations in spatial relation to one another - can be dated back to Babylonia in the late third millennium...

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  • The Miraculous Crusade: The Role of the Mystical and Miraculous in the Morale and Motivation of the First Crusade

    Article

    The First Crusade may be considered the only really successful crusade in that it achieved its stated goal, but it demanded great courage and stamina of its participants in their journey to the Holy City of Jerusalem, fighting their way through an unforgiving hostile territory. But courage and stamina by...

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  • Upwards till Lepanto

    Article

    Ottoman society centred on the Sultan. He was lawgiver, religious official, leader in battle-and until the late sixteenth century an active field commander on campaign. The Law of Fratricide of Mehmet (Mohammed) II, 1451-81, urged each new Sultan to kill his brothers in order to produce a capable ruler and...

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  • A Crusading Outpost: the City and County of Edessa - 1095-1153

    Article

    Edessa is not now to be found on maps of the Near East; instead there is Urfa, the Turkish name for the former Christian city lying in the upper region of the Euphrates valley some two hundred and fifty kilometres from the Mediterranean. Like Christian Edessa, Moslem Urfa is a...

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  • The Knights Templars

    Article

    Professor Malcolm Barber explores the rise and fall of the Knights Templars. "The master of the Temple was a good knight and stout-hearted, but he mistreated all other people as he was too overweening. He would not place any credence in the advice of the master of the Hospital, Brother...

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