Palaiologi: Manuel II Paleologus -Second to last Byzantine Emperor The last dynasty of Byzantine emperors The Palaiologi were the last dynasty on the throne of the Roman Empire, from 1204 [...]
Russian Icon of Saint Nicolas, 13th - early 14th century, tempera on wood. Our knowledge of Russian art begins with the Scythians and other Central Asian art. But what most people think of [...]
Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1300s AD) Muromachi family gets power The great families drove out Emperor Do-Gaigo in 1338 AD. Who was the Emperor Do-Gaigo? More Japan articles Then the new shogun was from the [...]
First shogun of Japan: Minamoto Yoritomo (maybe), by Fujiwara Takanobu - Kamakura Japan Who was the first shogun of Japan? The first shogun, Minamoto Yoritomo, established the shogun system in the [...]
Medieval Islamic science: Al Tusi's diagram of linear motion from circular motion Indian and African science In the Early Middle Ages, before the formation of the Islamic Empire, Buddhists ran the world's biggest [...]
Al Tusi in his observatory (ca. 1259 AD) Nasir al Tusi was born in Iran in 1201 AD, as the Seljuk Empire was falling apart. The Seljuks were Turkic people. But al Tusi, [...]
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 [...]
Sultan Mehmed II (by the Venetian painter Gentile Bellini, 1479 AD) After the old Seljuk kingdom in Anatolia (Turkey) fell apart, one of these Seljuks, a man named Osman, started in 1299 AD to [...]
The Seljuks defeat the Persians (1040 AD) The Seljuks were Turkic nomads from Turkmenistan. They were related to the Uighurs. They entered the Abbasid empire around 950 AD and gradually converted to Sunni Islam. By 1030 AD the Seljuks [...]
Mamluks: A Mamluk inn for merchants in Cairo Mamluks were enslaved soldiers The Mamluks were originally enslaved bodyguards of the Abbasid caliphs of the Islamic Empire (the word "mamluk" just means "slave" in Arabic). Starting around 850 [...]
