Daily Medieval

Once he was firmly established as Sultan of Egypt in 1310 (after two previous reigns), al-Nasir Muhammad became more aggressive to his neig...

Twelfth-century Castilian texts see the word morisco  as an adjective for Moorish people, and used it to refer to Muslims in general. Mediev...

Yesterday's post on the hoped-for Mongol alliance with the West mentioned a Georgian queen who saved her people from the Mongols. That ...

Peter of Montboissier was born to a woman who was called "Blessed Raingarde" (she was revered as saintly but not formally canonize...

John VIII was a Roman who, as a young man, witnessed the 846 CE raid against Rome by Muslims. According to the Liber Pontificalis  ("Bo...

The 10th Abbasid caliph was not intended to rise to that position. Ja'far ibn Muhammad ibn Harun was born in 822 to an Abbasid prince a...

During the Battle of the Trench between the Quraysh of Mecca with their Confederacy and Muhammad and the Muslims who had headquartered in M...

While the Battle of the Trench was happening, the outnumbered Muhammad in Medina looked to break up the attacking Confederacy by sending me...

After the Battle of Badr and the Battle of Uhud , the next encounter between the Quraysh of Mecca and the Muslims who followed Muhammad was...

After the Battle of Badr  and the deaths of some of the Quraysh leaders, the leader of the large caravan involved, Abu Sufyan, became leader...

Mecca was occupied largely by the Arab Quraysh tribe—a grouping of many clans. Muhammad was born into one of these clans, the Hashim. Muhamm...

Her full name was Halima bint Abi Dhu'ayb, and she was born in the late 6th century, a member of the Banu Sa'd. The Banu Sa'd wa...

The Koran is the only text of the Abrahamic religions (Islam, Christianity, Judaism) that mentions anything related to mothers and the feedi...

Yesterday I talked about philosopher Ramon Lull and his thoughts on the role of human milk in the proper raising of children. He was born i...

I mentioned yesterday that Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur had an interest in building and re-building mosques. One was the Kutubiyya Mosque, the...

In 778, Basques ambushed the rearguard of Charlemagne's army as it was going northward through the Ronceveaux Pass in the Pyrenees. They...

During the Battle of Toulouse in 721 and the defeat of the Muslim attempt to make inroads to Aquitaine and Gaul, the Muslim general was kil...

As the army of the Umayyad Caliphate, led by Abd-al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi, moved north into Gaul from Aquitaine in 732, their progress was slowe...

Ramon Llull (1232 - 1315) has been mentioned before . Born in Majorca, he married but lived what he later called a licentious life until, at...

Ibn Khaldun ( alias Abū Zayd ‘Abd ar-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Khaldūn al-Ḥaḍramī) was born 27 May 1332 in Tunis. He was a Muslim Arab from a...