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Author Archives: Ruth
The Crusade of the Faint-Hearted, 1101-1102
The entry before this one is dated May, 20, 2014, titled “Good cops and bad ones: Caesarea in 1101.” link In 1101, the new Pope Paschal called for another wave of pilgrim fighters to go east. Some of them were … Continue reading
Posted in Crusades, Muslim Empire (old series)
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War gear of the First Crusade
When the organized Princes’ Crusade armies set out, they had the best standard weaponry of the time. So what did the average soldier carry? The most important weapon of the era was the spear, whether it was a throwing lance … Continue reading
Posted in Crusades, Muslim Empire (old series)
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1095: Meanwhile in Egypt…
The year before Pope Urban II called for the first Crusade in Clermont, Egypt experienced two important deaths that led to another split in the Shi’ite world. Caliph al-Mustansir ruled for sixty years in Cairo, starting when he was only … Continue reading
Posted in Crusades, Muslim Empire (old series)
Tagged Fatimids
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The Druze
In the later years of Caliph al-Hakim (see original entry here), two separate forces fused to create the Druze, the secretive cult/tribe based in Lebanon. This is another of those stories that’s hard to make out clearly because there are … Continue reading
The Battle of Karbala, 680
Karbala, an event not often included in European/American histories, is one of the defining moments for Islamic history. The year was 680. The newly-conquered Muslim lands had gone through four Caliphs in rapid succession, following Mohammed’s death in 632. … Continue reading
Posted in Muslim Empire (old series)
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Cosmetic, elective and women’s surgery
Elective surgery was only a concept in the Greek tradition that Northern Europe didn’t learn until the late medieval, when textbook education about surgery spread north from Bologna. I’m still not sure if the Greek world had been using opium … Continue reading
Posted in Med. and Magic, Women
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Paul of Aegina: basic Greek surgery
We think of a surgical patient as passive, lying down, unconscious. In medieval surgery, the patient was a participant in that he was certainly conscious, and therefore he could help out by putting his (or her) body in various useful … Continue reading
Posted in Literature, Med. and Magic
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Greek medicine’s pathway into Europe
The Big Story of Europe’s medieval period is something like, “How the rude northern tribes took over for Rome and then gradually learned to adapt to and surpass Rome’s standards of civilization.” You see this same shape in every topic: … Continue reading
Posted in Literature, Med. and Magic, Muslim Empire (old series)
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Surgery in early medieval Northern Europe
The medieval candidate for surgery could be described with four Ms: Male, military, moneyed, and mangled. Most surgery developed around the war games that gradually grew more rule-bound and civilized but never ceased to be nearly as deadly as real … Continue reading
Posted in Med. and Magic
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Theriac, the uber-medicine
Theriac was more of a concept than a single recipe. It was a cure-what-ails-you brew with multiple ideas of remedies. Its focus was on counteracting poison, but “poison” was as loose an idea as “toxin” is in alternative medicine today. … Continue reading
Posted in Med. and Magic
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