#global middle ages

[medievalistsnet]

This book explores medieval East Africa and its integration into the vast trade networks of the Indian Ocean. It sheds light on the movement of people and goods, offering insight into the interconnected world of the ‘Global Middle Ages’.

Click here to learn more

[medieval-elephants]

Medieval chess, or medieval Kinder Surprise?

As mentioned in the previous post, chess originated in India and early chess boards often included a bishop. When the game was popularized in northern Europe, the original pieces continued to be used, although they lost their meaning or were reinterpreted over time. The elephant's tusks eventually became two bumps. Eventually, elephant, chariot, and vizier pieces were given names of officials at northern courts: bishops, knights, and queens. These transitions and designs happened in different ways in different places.

An interesting piece that showing one moment of transition, acquired by Musée de Cluny in 2011, has the abstract elephant shapes with bumps on the outside-- plus a surprise bishop holding a crozier and a book on the inside!

Material: Ivory Date: 12th century? Origin: Cologne? England? Now Paris, Musée de Cluny Cl. 23885

You can play with a 3D version at https://www.musee-moyenage.fr/collection/collections-3D/piece-d-echec-eveque-en-3d.html

[gradling]

10.02.2025

My sleep schedule is absolutely wrecked. Splitting my time among working, social obligations, and, well, other work has been tough, and, on top of that, my weekly call with my parents started and ended so late this week that I didn't get to bed until 1 AM (they live in another time zone). Maybe 10 years ago, I could have managed, but not anymore! So I need to start drawing stricter boundaries.

Working on research for teaching The Travels of Ibn Battutah this upcoming week! It's my first time teaching this text + we're going to be spending several weeks with it, so if anyone knows of any good resources, feel free to send them my way~

Also need to work on RA work today. Lots to remember to do.

[medievalweirdness]

A little something in the works - exploring the idea of the global middle ages, and trying to speak more broadly than we tend to as academics, to show non-specialists that there was so much in the medieval world outside of European history.

[medieval-unicorns]

The "animals of India", from a late 15th-century manuscript of Le secret de l'histoire naturelle contenant les merveilles et choses mémorables du monde Origin: France Date: c. 1480-1485 Now Paris, BnF Fr 22971, f. 31r

[paintsinthewaterofcreation]

not tumblr phannies and twt phannies shading each other. like look around, we’re all the same queer losers just in different corners of the room arguing over which corner is better - we’re in the SAME.ROOM.

[o4o41]

.

[itmightrain]

the US pulling out of the WHO is so fucking bad for global health but this graph (from the WHO website) is cracking me up like hello european union? what's up?? why are 27 countries unionized barely surpassing the contributions of the UK (a country on the brink of economic collapse)? also the bill and melinda gates foundation contributing only $26M less than germany is taking me out we live in hell lskdjfa;lsdkfj

[jerreeeeeee]

i feel like we don't talk about twosun enough. its inherently very interesting. this is the world that shaped our heroes. but the minutiae is easy to make up to suit your purposes and none of it ultimately matters to the narrative. trying to think of what we know about this world. there are 2 suns. a purple sky. it was a hard world (aren't all worlds?). there was a spaceship.

so what's the technological state of this world? hard to say. there's a spaceship, first of its kind, but how specific is that? is it the first flying ship at all, or only the first to leave the planar system? the light fell down a year before the starblaster took off, since the hunger came down right on that day. the ipre had the light for one year. how much did that contribute to their technological advancement? (i hate the idea of 'advancement' as if it's some inevitable linear progress but bear with me here, that's the easiest language to use). were they building ships beforehand? what else did they have?

here's how i tend to think of it: the ipre has the light. the ipre is already quite "advanced" for this world. here are things the ipre has, so by extension twosun has: bond engines, indoor plumbing, industrialized steel production. however i don't tend to think of twosun as a globalized world. so there are many places that do not have these things. and of course these are all things we think of as "advanced" but they also lack many things we think of as technological "advancement," like steam engines, or concrete. anyway.

i don't think its possible for the light of creation to have inspired all of this in only one year. this world was already well on its way. the ipre already existed, it already built spaceships. just not as ambitiously, and more rooted in magic than technology (the idea that magic is just science/technology you don't understand yet is very fun, but in this case i think magic is very much different, and has a longer history. although it can be used in tandem with tech, like in the bond engine).

and aside from technologically i tend to think of it as very politically fractured and chaotic. small regional governments with little reach, fraught and difficult trade, certainly no formal schooling systems (there are, like, wizard universities, all with different inscrutable systems, and then the ipre, and that's your choices for "education"). which is why there's more tech in some places than others.

the most interesting thing is, i think, the difference in lifespans among our crew. magnus, lucretia, and barry know only a more or less industrialized world (although i do tend to have barry grown up rural, that'd be one of those places all this tech hasn't quite reached yet), where there's an organization that sends spaceships with engines to different planes of this reality, and now with a little extra kick from the light, to different realities entirely. magnus has only ever showered with water from pipes indoors. he doesn't bat an eye at buildings made of all metal and glass. but lup and taako grew up in a medieval fantasy world. this shit's all, like, seventy years old max, and they've been around for nearly two centuries. they were bathing in big medieval washtubs as kids. their clothes were all handmade. merle too, although he grew up off the grid anyway. and probably davenport as well, but he would've been more immersed in tech, growing up in a gnomish warren. which is maybe why he was such a good pick for pilot of the starblaster.

but also: we see some of the same happen in faerun. even there it's not clear what the time period is. it's fantasy, all swords and sorcery. but there's trains and arcane engines and skyscrapers. again, not globalized, these things exist in isolated pockets. is it the light? did it still manage to have subtle influence all those years? is it just the luck of the millers finding a window into the plane of thought? is the real answer just that it's inconsistent in whatever way makes the most fun story? is it fun to play in the space of trying to make sense of it anyway?

[medieval-elephants]

Cozy conflict

Two elephants fight in a copy of Ibn Bakhtishu (d. 1058)'s Manafi al-Hayawan (On the Uses of Animals), made c. 1297-1300 in the area that is now Iran. But while the elephants are fighting, the images and text reveals how humans shared knowledge and ideas across long distances.

The text mentions that elephants live 300 years and are afraid of rats/mice. These and other ideas about elephants that also showed up in European texts at least since Pliny. The Morgan catalogue also notes that the text claims that elephant dung (with or without honey) can be taken as a contraceptive: don't try this at home!

Meanwhile, some scholars argue that the images resemble Gok Medrese reliefs in Turkey, and both may have been inspired by art from China brought by the Mongols, who swept across Eurasia in the thirteenth century. This single page is a very interesting example of how ideas about elephants can reveal wider influences and links between humans.

Materials: Paper, ink, and paint Origin: Maragha Date: 1297-1300 Now Morgan Library, M 500, f. 13r

[gradling]

Been working my way through the themed issue of Speculum, “Race, Race-Thinking, and Identity in the Global Middle Ages,” bit by bit.

[skin-quilt]

CLEGANE AND I WENT FOR A HIKE WHEN WE WERE IN TURKEY AND I DREW ON THIS CURB WHEN WE STOPPED TO TAKE A REST

[bugsbenefit]

trump news so good my dad got out of bed to tell me less than a minute after it was announced before i even saw it myself

[mexicangrizzlyappreciation]

The thing is even back then you could reasonably expect to live to 50 or 60+ if you made it to adulthood. Average life expectancy at birth was so low because nearly half of children wouldn't survive their childhood.

"30 years old isn't old man" what privilege do you live in where your life expectancy is far past 30 years

This post blindsided me so bad I spent a full minute staring at it in shock