Category Archives: Literature

Latin drama used to teach Latin

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Ruth

Christianity went west and east during the latter years of the Roman Empire. Of course, its language going west was Latin, while its language traveling east was Greek. Priests and monks needed to read Latin sounds at the minimum, so … Continue reading →

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Movable type crosses from West to East, 1493

Posted on April 22, 2018 by Ruth

Around the time Orban’s huge bombard was breaking down the walls of Constantinople, Gutenberg printed the first Bible with movable type. As with all past inventions, we take it for granted without stopping to understand just how many things had … Continue reading →

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Samarkand and the Math Emperor, 1405

Posted on February 26, 2018 by Ruth

Timur’s grandson Mohammed, son of Shah Rukh, was a huge nerd. It’s hard to be born into a notorious warlord’s family when you really just want to sit up at night in an observatory measuring the stars, or calculate Pi … Continue reading →

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Ibn Khaldun asks tough questions, 1377

Posted on February 10, 2018 by Ruth

The Ibn Khaldun family were descended from a Bedouin, Khaldun, who settled near Seville in the early years of Muslim conquest. Under Reconquista pressure in the 13th century, they moved to Tunis, where they were among the educated governing elite. … Continue reading →

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Ibn Battuta Sees the World and Meets Hermits, 1325-55

Posted on January 30, 2018 by Ruth

The Muslim world had grown so large that it was very hard for them to know all parts of their own lands, let alone the rest of the world. Around 1355, a Moroccan named Ibn Battuta dictated and published his … Continue reading →

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Marco Polo and the Golden Ticket, 1299

Posted on January 15, 2018 by Ruth

We owe the first descriptions of Xanadu and Khanbalik (Beijing) to Marco Polo of Venice, whose book was published in 1299, co-written by Rusticello of Pisa. The book was quickly translated into many languages; the oldest manuscript we have is … Continue reading →

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The Ilkhan Turns Muslim, 1291-95

Posted on December 21, 2017 by Ruth

In 1291, the Mamluks finally captured Acre, the last outpost of the Crusader states. The Christian world didn’t know that they’d never take back any of that land, but in fact, they never would, until after World War I. At the … Continue reading →

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Rumi and the Whirling Dervishes, 1244

Posted on October 14, 2017 by Ruth

Jalal ad-Din Mohammed Rumi was born in Balkh, Afghanistan in 1207. There’s some unpacking to be done here: I think Mohammed would have been his father’s personal name, and Jalal his own. Ad-Din, of course, was a chosen or consensus-given … Continue reading →

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al-Jazari’s Book of Ingenious Devices, 1206

Posted on September 5, 2017 by Ruth

In 1206, an engineer named Ismail al-Jazari published a book about inventions. It was a Do It Yourself manual, showing 100 things he had built, with diagrams for how to build them yourself. al-Jazari was the chief engineer in the … Continue reading →

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Prester John’s Letter, 1165

Posted on July 8, 2017 by Ruth

“Prester John” was the unlikely name of a legendary Christian king somewhere far in the East. From century to century, people kept hearing and passing on rumors of his wealth and piety. A medieval Obi-Wan Kenobi, he was thought to be … Continue reading →

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