Daily Medieval

Established during the Golden Age of Islam in the newly founded capital of Baghdad , the Bayt al-Hikmah (House of Wisdom) had a simple goal:...

Harun al-Rashid (c.763 - 24 March 809) was the fifth ruler of the Abbasid Caliphate , his reign considered the start of Islam's Golden A...

This will make more sense if you read Part 1 . Shams has brought his daughter, Sit, and her son, 'Ajib, to Damascus on their quest to fi...

The full title of this tale, which is found in every version of the 1001 Nights , is "The Tale of Nur al-Din Ali and His Son Badr al-Di...

This illustration and the post that follows will make more sense if you read Part 1 . So Caliph Harun al-Rashid has given his vizier, Ja...

One of the stories that is found in every fragment/manuscript of the 1001 Nights  is called by two different titles: "The Three Apples...

Yesterday I mentioned that you would know who Jaʿfar ibn Yaḥyā al-Barmakī, an Abbasid vizier, was, even if you did not recognize the name. Y...

The previous post mentioned the man who discovered the combination of chemicals that dissolved gold. He could not have done that haphazardl...

Yesterday mentioned the gold and silver cramp rings used in the Middle Ages in England to avoid cramps and epilepsy. (The sample here—alas!...

Anglo-Saxon England called it "devil-sickness" and felt that lupins were an effective treatment, and they might have been right . ...

When Pietro De Crescenzi wrote his ground-breaking (pun intended) work on soil management and agriculture, he showed a special interest in ...

Knowledge of proper agricultural techniques waned in the thousand years following the fall of Rome, except in monasteries, where texts on so...

It occurs to me that, in order to explain the importance of Pietro De Crescenzi, I should explain the thousand years that preceded him. With...

We cannot underestimate the ubiquity of grain in the medieval diet. This was, of course, not a medieval discovery: different grains had been...

Let's start with garbage. My hometown of Rochester, NY, lays claim to the invention of the " garbage plate ." I will leave it ...

Vegetables were widely grown and consumed in the Middle Ages. Archaeological evidence suggests that meat was not usually part of the daily ...

By "vegetables" we are going to include any plant matter grown for food and not just flavoring (such as herbs and spices), because...

Modern stereotypes about medieval feasts suggest images of boars with apples in their mouths and giant turkey legs. Without adequate preserv...

The modern Christian—any modern reader, in fact—might never have thought of vegetarianism as a practice with a Biblical or Classical history...

Priscillianism was considered heretical partially because its origin was in gnostic beliefs coming from Egypt. Gnosticism, from the Greek γν...

Priscillian (c.340 - 385) was a good enough theologian that he was made Bishop of Ávila Spain in 380, but controversial enough that he had m...

Priscillian was the first person to be excommunicated and  executed (that we know of) because of his "heretical" beliefs. I use th...

Vincent of Lérins lived at a time when there were many different factions preaching different versions of Christianity. No one wanted this c...

The earliest mention of the man who became Pope Celestine I was a reference to "Celestine the Deacon" in a 416 document by Pope In...

Much of the history of the second half of the 5th century is known to us because of a disciple of Augustine of Hippo named Prosper. Born ab...