Castle of Edessa After the First Crusade After the First Crusade in 1096 AD set up Christian kingdoms all along the coast of Israel and Lebanon, of course the Fatimid caliphs who had ruled that area before [...]
Islamic medicine: From an Ottoman manuscript, two doctors telling the pharmacist how to make different medicines Writing medical encyclopedias Doctors made big scientific advances in medicine during the Islamic empire. The [...]
Illustration in Ibn al-Nafis Who was ibn al Nafis? Ibn al Nafis was born in Syria in the early 1200s AD, just as the power of the Seljuks was collapsing. He studied [...]
Saladin Saladin started the Ayyubids When the First Crusade defeated the Fatimid Caliphs and captured Jerusalem in 1099 AD, people were very upset. People in Egypt and Syria gradually decided that the Fatimids were too weak to [...]
Minaret at Samarra, 847 AD The first Abbasid caliphs In 750 AD, the Abbasid caliphs murdered all of the surviving Umayyad men but one. Who were the Umayyads? All our medieval Islam articles [...]
Islamic art: Mosaic from the Great Mosque in Damascus (about 710 AD) Umayyad art: no people or animals As soon as the Islamic Empire formed, under the Umayyad dynasty, artists began exploring the [...]
Dome of the Rock mosque, Jerusalem People didn't build a lot of new buildings during the Umayyad period. They were busy getting organized after the Islamic conquests, and the Umayyad dynasty didn't [...]
Kairouan (about 800 AD) The first Islamic buildings Greek architects designed the first buildings in the new Islamic Empire. They had already been living in the area when the Arabs conquered it. Because [...]
