Can you imagine the sun disappearing for 18 months straight? A thick, impenetrable fog covering the greater part of three continents? A lack of shadows all around on account of the feeble light? This was exactly what many people across Eurasia and North Africa experienced during 536 CE, habitually dubbed as the worst time to […]

When a fully-fledged Timurid army swoops into India with tens of thousands of horsemen and camels, only to be met with armored war elephants, death and devastation are sure to follow. Read MoreDelhi Devastated: How Timur Crushed India’s Capital The mighty Mongol army tried to invade Vietnam on multiple occasions but had great difficulty bringing […]

38 medieval questions you are afraid to ask – all answered below in our Beginner’s Guide to the Middle Ages. This is a beginner’s guide. If you’re an expert, use our Medieval Guidebook to go one step further. Everybody has at least one medieval image inside their head. Towering castles. Gallant knights. Damsels in distress. […]

Walls are meant to protect civilization. It doesn’t matter whether we think about ancient city walls or large defensive projects such as Hadrian’s Wall in Scotland or the Great Wall of China. We easily conjure images of civilized lands – beacons of progress as they are – that need protection from the ferocious savages of […]

To get you started on history’s most marvelous millennium, we have categorized our in-depth articles for you. Use the links below to navigate to reports of your liking. Just interested in the latest from the Middle Ages? Simply head over to our homepage. Scroll through time itself: read articles on the… Early Middle Ages High […]

The Khazars were part of the greater Turkic world. They established an extensive commercial network on the Russian steppe. Khazaria thus became one of the foremost medieval trading empires. Neighboring christian and muslim empires tried to use the Khazars as a handy buffer state. But they were not easily manipulated: they adopted neither religion. Proud […]

In an age before modern medicine, the medieval Order of the Knights Hospitaller performed the goriest of tasks. They performed surgery, took care of the sick, and even tried to cure lepers. Although a military order, the Hospitallers were sworn to tend to the injured and ill. They were the Knights of the Hospital, after […]

During the 1340s, a princess born on French soil plundered French shipping in the Channel and raided coastal villages in Normandy, France. The noble lady, called Jeanne de Clisson, usually killed the entire hapless crew or and town that was on the receiving end of her fury. Except for the last man, who she left […]

Skip to content The sinews of war are infinite money, so the Hospitallers basically never had enough. Propaganda, then, was a useful means to increase their income. Read moreHospitaller History (3): Finances, Technology & Propaganda Tending to the sick was quintessential to the Order of the Hospital, but how did Hospitaller healthcare actually work in […]

The Leonese were the inhabitants of the Kingdom of León. They were among the first to take up arms against the muslim conquest of the Iberian peninsula. The kingdom rose to great heights and became one of the primary powers in the area. Their success caught up with the Leonese when a certain “breakaway region” […]

The Rus’ were a proud and unique people of mixed ethnic and cultural origin. They took to state-building along the many rivers of Eastern Europe – chiefly the Volga and the Dnieper. Their federation of city-states was governed by nobles of Scandinavian origin but encompassed Baltic, Slavic, Finno-Ugric, and even Turkic subjects. The Rus’ established […]

As the Middle Ages progressed, most European societies became ever more divided into three different orders, called estates. The first estate was the order of the oratores, meaning “those who pray” – in other words, the clergy. Through their teachings, Catholicism came to encompass practically all aspects of life in Western Eurasia. But neither the […]

The second estate of medieval society, the bellatores or “those who fight”, were a clearly privileged class. Whereas the third estate (the laboratores) had to work for a living, and the first estate (the oratores) focused on faith, the bellatores ruled. They created the political system of the European Middle Ages – at first defined […]

The Byzantines were among the longest-living civilizations of the Middle Ages. Some people even date the end of the Medieval Era at the fall of their capital city, Constantinople. During a major part of its existence, the Byzantine Empire was the center of the medieval world. Frankish kings sought Byzantine recognition, Slavic tribes incorporated their […]