The Annales Fuldenses, or Annals of Fulda, is a source for 9th-century events in Carolingian lands: the incursions of the Northmen, fighting among the royal relatives, and omens in the sky. It also contains the story of an unfortunate village, an even more unfortunate villager, and the evil spirit that haunted both.
Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi 5: The Year 598
Earthquake, and hiding kings, in Revelation, 14th century - (British Library)
Another year of drought, another of famine, and even more disasters pile on for the early-13th-century Egyptians. We also see Abd al-Latif make a surprising 20th-century appearance.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī. A Physician on the Nile: A Description of Egypt and Journal of the Famine Years. NYU Press, 2021.
Barber, Malcolm. The Crusader States. Yale University Press, 2012.
Dols, Michael Walters. The Black Death in the Middle East. Princeton University Press, 2019.
Ellis, Richard. Imagining Atlantis. Knopf, 2012.
Modern, John. Neuromatic: Or, A Particular History of Religion and the Brain. University of Chicago Press, 2021.
Abd al-Latif Baghdadi 4: Consuming the Present
Image from the Luzerner Schilling, a 16th-century manuscript (Wikimedia)
What happens when the river fails to rise? In 597 (1200), Abd al-Latif found famine, crime, and cannibalism.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī. A Physician on the Nile: A Description of Egypt and Journal of the Famine Years. NYU Press, 2021.
Lev, Yaacov. Administration of Justice in Medieval Egypt: From the 7th to the 12th Century. Edinburgh University Press, 2020.
Lewicka, Paulina B. Food and Foodways of Medieval Cairenes: Aspects of Life in an Islamic Metropolis of the Eastern Mediterranean. Brill, 2011.
Traveling Through Egypt: From 450 B.C. to the Twentieth Century, edited by Deborah Manley & Sahar Abdel-Hakim. American University in Cairo Press, 2008.
Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi 3: Harvesting the Past
The Sphinx, as it appears in Frederic Louis Norden's 1755 Voyage d'Égypte et de Nubie (Wikimedia)
Like many people ever since, and even now, Abd al-Latif was fascinated by Egypt's ancient sites and structures, the pyramids and the Sphinx. He was fascinated, but also disgusted with how their stones and contents had been treated as his contemporaries looked to them less with wonder, more with greed.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī. A Physician on the Nile: A Description of Egypt and Journal of the Famine Years. NYU Press, 2021.
Bonadeo, Cecilia Martini. ʿAbd Al-Laṭīf Al-Baġdādī’s Philosophical Journey From Aristotle’s Metaphysics to the ‘Metaphysical Science’. Brill, 2013.
Ibn Abi Usaybi'a. A Literary History of Medicine. Edited by E. Savage-Smith, S. Swain, and G.J. van Gelder. Leiden, 2020.
Joosse, Peter. The Physician as a Rebellious Intellectual. Peter Lang, 2014.
Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi 2: On Egyptian Flora and Fauna
Miniature from a copy of Kitab al-hashaish, an Arabic translation of Dioscorides’s De Materia Medica. (The David Collection)
We continue the Abd al-Latif series and dig into his observations on Egypt, its plants and animals, the hybrid banana and the terrifying sea horse.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī. A Physician on the Nile: A Description of Egypt and Journal of the Famine Years. NYU Press, 2021.
Bonadeo, Cecilia Martini. ʿAbd Al-Laṭīf Al-Baġdādī’s Philosophical Journey From Aristotle’s Metaphysics to the ‘Metaphysical Science’. Brill, 2013.
Ibn Abi Usaybi'a. A Literary History of Medicine. Edited by E. Savage-Smith, S. Swain, and G.J. van Gelder. Leiden, 2020.
Joosse, Peter. The Physician as a Rebellious Intellectual. Peter Lang, 2014.
Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi 1: Scholars, Sultans & Money
Born in the 12th century, Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi travelled the Ayyubid world in search of students, mentors, and patrons. His curiosity stands out, and does his impatience with scholars who, as he saw it, wasted their time with alchemy or other unimportant topics.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī. A Physician on the Nile: A Description of Egypt and Journal of the Famine Years. NYU Press, 2021.
Bonadeo, Cecilia Martini. ʿAbd Al-Laṭīf Al-Baġdādī’s Philosophical Journey From Aristotle’s Metaphysics to the ‘Metaphysical Science’. Brill, 2013.
Ibn Abi Usaybi'a. A Literary History of Medicine. Edited by E. Savage-Smith, S. Swain, and G.J. van Gelder. Leiden, 2020.
Prester John 3: The Fifth Crusade
Attack on tower near Damietta by members of the Fifth Crusade - From the Chronica Majora of Matthew Paris
The crusaders make their way first to Acre and then to Damietta. Perhaps someone would be along to help them soon?
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Prester John: The Legend and its Sources, compiled and translated by Keagan Brewer. Taylor & Francis, 2019.
Crusade and Christendom: Annotated Documents in Translation from Innocent III to the Fall of Acre, 1187-1291. Edited by Jessalynn Bird, et al. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.
The Fifth Crusade in Context: The Crusading Movement in the Early Thirteenth Century. Edited by E.J. Mylod, et al. Routledge, 2016.
Brownworth, Lars. In Distant Lands: A Short History of the Crusades. Crux Publishing Ltd, 2017.
Cassidy-Welch, Megan. War and Memory at the Time of the Fifth Crusade. Penn State University Press, 2019.
Madden, Thomas F. The New Concise History of the Crusades. Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.
Powell, James M. Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213-1221. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986.
Powell, James M. Innocent III: Vicar of Christ Or Lord of the World? Catholic University of America Press, 1994.
Prester John 2.5: Papal Correspondence
Pope Alexander III and the Ambassador - Spinello Aretino
A shorter episode, on a letter from Pope Alexander III to Prester John.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Prester John: The Legend and its Sources, compiled and translated by Keagan Brewer. Taylor & Francis, 2019.
Pope Alexander III (1159–81): The Art of Survival. Taylor & Francis, 2016.
Rachewiltz, Igor de. Papal Envoys to the Great Khans. Stanford University Press, 1971.
Prester John 2: Where From and What For
Prester John comfortably enthroned in East Africa - Detail from the Queen Mary Atlas, MS 5415 A British Library
On the many fantastic additions to the Letter of Prester John (Dragons! Strange Bakeries! Etc!), and on the theories around it.
Sources:
Prester John: The Legend and its Sources, compiled and translated by Keagan Brewer. Taylor & Francis, 2019.
Nowell, Charles E. "The Historical Prester John." Speculum 28, no. 3 (1953).
Romm, James S. The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought Geography, Exploration, and Fiction. Princeton University Press, 2019.
Wang, I-Chun. "Alexander the Great, Prester John, Strabo of Amasia, and Wonders of the East." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 14.5 (2012).
Prester John 1: The Letter
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From "Le Livre des Merveilles", 15th century. From the Gallica Digital Library. (Wikimedia)
The legend in its early forms: the arrival in Rome of a patriarch from the east, the chronicles of Otto of Freising, and that famous "letter."
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Otto of Freising, Chronicon, ed. G.H. Pertz, MGH SSRG (Hanover: Hahn, 1867), VII, 33, (pp. 334-35), translated by James Brundage, The Crusades: A Documentary History, (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1962). Accessed at Fordham University Internet Medieval Sourcebook.
Prester John: The Legend and its Sources, compiled and translated by Keagan Brewer. Taylor & Francis, 2019.
Baring-Gould, Sabine. Curious Myths of the Middle Ages. Roberts Brothers, 1867.
Heng, Geraldine. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press, 2018.