Daily Medieval

With Fulk of Anjou dead from a riding accident  in 1143, Melisende now had full control over the Kingdom of Jerusalem with her son Baldwin ...

Ghazan Khan (1271 - 1304) was not the first Mongol leader to communicate with Christians, but he set about to firm up an alliance to deal wi...

When Kublai found out that his younger brother Ariq Böke was making plans to become Grand Khan while Kublai was off subduing the Song Dynas...

Al-Nasir Muhammad survived his first ousting, when the pre-teen was replaced by his advisor Zayn-al-Din Kitbugha. Now a teenager, he was re...

The current structure referred to as the Tower of David was built by Al-Nasir Muhammad, a Mamluk sultan who lived from 1285 to 1341. He re...

Yesterday's post mentioned that the first queen of Jerusalem, Melisende, was besieged in the Tower of David by her son, Baldwin III, wh...

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...

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 ...

We should probably start by pointing out the misleading nature of the illustration [MS. Ludwig XIV 6, c.1290-1310, from Aragon]. Depictions ...

In 1271, Edward, Duke of Gascony, went on a continuation of the Eighth Crusade that is sometimes called the Ninth Crusade and sometimes Lord...

King Louis IX of France could not convince any of the rulers of Europe to accompany him on a Crusade to free Jerusalem, which had been reca...

In 1244, allies of the Egyptian Mamluks, retreating westward from the advancing Mongols, stopped at Jerusalem long enough to recapture it f...

Excerpt from the Taxatio; see the word "Census" upper-right Today is the birthday of  Pope Nicholas IV; you can read a brief ...

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

Mamluk going to war, from a 14th century History of the Tatars The short answer to the question posed in the title is "slaves....

The growing power and importance of Sicily in the Middle Ages was mentioned here . But the solution they found didn't quite last; co...

Dimashq. دمشق. Dimishe'. al-Sh ām. The City of Jasmine. "Oldest continuously inhabited city in the world." Damascus. I...