Daily Medieval

When the East-West Schism was over 200 years old, Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Paleologos (1224 - 1282) asked Pope Gregory X to help reun...

During the reign of the Abbasid caliph  al-Mutawakkil  (822 - 861), he commissioned several building projects. Up to 20 palaces are listed ...

The death of Möngke Khan in 1259 led to the Toluid Civil War, a fight between two of the remaining sons of Toluid over who would succeed Mön...

Hulagu Khan was a grandson of Genghis Khan (Genghis had 43 grandchildren—known ones, that is, because he slept with a lot  of women in his l...

Part 1 is here . Hulagu Khan did not execute the Abbasid leader, Caliph al-Musta'sim, immediately; he wanted him punished for his foolis...

The Sack of Baghdad has been described as the single bloodiest event in the history of war. At the time, Baghdad was perhaps the greatest ...

The House of Wisdom was a marvelous repository of knowledge from all over the world. It also functioned as an informal university long befo...

[ source ] The Mongols were expanding westward. Under Genghis Khan they had taken a huge chunk out of Asia, from what is now the Koreas...