Beyond the Pillars of Hercules

The new chapter from my second manuscript “The Enchanting Encounter with the East” focuses on the onset of the European maritime expansion into the Atlantic. Bold mariners would pave the way to the north as far as England and the Lowlands as well as to the south along the Moroccan seaboard down to Cape Chaunar. – See more at: https://scriggler.com/DetailPost/Opinion/40382#sthash.bd58GiJy.dpuf

I claim that this time frame-roughly the late 13th-14th century can be dubbed the Little Age of Discovery. Sailors bacome experienced enough and their ships secure enough to sustain the Atlantic voyages. The interests are mostly commercial; however, the pursue of the personal glory cannot be excluded.

This chapter will be followed by two additional extracts devoted to the discovery of the new Atlantic space, not yet designed for colonization.

Photo by Rosan Harmens

 https://unsplash.com/photos/Sd8O2SgKDJA

The Enigma of the Antipodes: A Medieval Fantasy

This is a new version of a chapter. Most of the corrections referred to the style and the endnotes, which are more appealing to the reader than the Internet user. In this extract I collected the flowers of ancient wisdom along with the medieval interpretations about the role of the Antipodes, the fourth continent of the intellectual imagination. At the beginning of the Age of Discovery this sentiment turned into the reality.

https://scriggler.com/DetailPost/Opinion/37535

The Medieval Affair with the Race

My new article, The Medieval Affair with the Race, https://scriggler.com/DetailPost/Opinion/36560

tells about the attitude of medieval Western Europeans to racial problems. Though contacts with the black population were very rare and the info about the sub-Saharan Africa was virtually non-existent, representatives of the Latin Europe possessed an inherited virus of their racial superiority based on their white supremacy and religious exclusiveness.

You may also read other chapters from my second manuscript https://scriggler.com/Profile/michael_baizerman

and join nearly 9,000 readers of my previous extracts.

The Location of Jerusalem

Read another chapter from my manuscript. The extract called “The Location of Jerusalem on European Mind Maps” tells about the paramount importance of the Holy City for Christendom, especially from the Crusade era. All observers agreed that it was the world’s spiritual center but many also claimed that it was the geographical middle point of the earth. https://scriggler.com/DetailPost/Opinion/35570

This is my latest chapter on the scriggler. You can also get familiar with the other extracts from my second manuscript, “The Enchanting Encounter with the East”, on my profile page https://scriggler.com/Profile/michael_baizerman

(six headlines from the above) as well as view pages from my book, Dawn and Sunset, and about the ancient Israel. You are also invited to make comments.

 

The Trefoil of the World

I published a new chapter from my second manuscript https://scriggler.com/DetailPost/Opinion/34696

The extract discusses the medieval concept of the three continents asigned to the sons of Noah and follows its development until the end of the 16th century. The funny thing is that even after the discovery of America there were followers of this old yarn (view the Clover Leaf Map). It also shows that the Middle Ages did not officially ended around the year 1500 CE. Instead, each person followed his or her own destiny. Some contemporaries carried the old mindset; others held a novel worldview.

The chapter starts Unit II, The Bounded Land and the Boundless Ocean, of my manuscript “The Enchanting Encounter with the East”.

Alexander’s Gate (5)

Still working on this chapter. I decided to rename it: “In the Sinister Shade of the Iron Gates”. It will be as long as a Unit and will include at least 7 parts. There will be at least one illustration: Aivazovsky’s picture of the Dariel Gorge in moonlight. I will probably add more: the chapter is based on mappaemundi. Six parts are almost ready. I have to decide whether I will add pages about the Khazars or not. And write Conclusion.

How Wide Spreads the Ocean

I published another article on my most successful site https://scriggler.com/DetailPost/Opinion/34322

This is the last chapter from Unit 1 of my manuscript titled “The Enchanting Encounter with the East”. You can see all these parts at my page https://scriggler.com/Profile/michael_baizerman

(the upper four headlines). My previous article gained such popularuty that was awarded with the title “Publication of the day”.

The chapter tells about various estimations of the width of the Ocean Sea and discusses the prospects of crossing the water body which, according to the popular worldview, separated the western and eastern extrenmes of the Old World. I give comments on a few real and fictitious travel reports of the ancient era and match them to a range of opinions concerning the transversing of the Atlantic.

I will soon start uploading chapters from Unit II, The Bounded Land and the Boundless Ocean. This part of my manuscript deals with basic ideas of medieval geography: the concept of the three continents, Jerusalem as the heart of the world, attitude to race, Antipodes-the legend of the fourth continent, and the Little Age of Discovery: amazing maritime adventures throughout the 14th century which led to the discovery of archipelagoes in the Central Atlantic and paved the way to the exploration of Africa.

The Size of the Inhabited World

A new version of my article titled “What is the Size of the Inhabited World” is available https://scriggler.com/DetailPost/Opinion/33098

The extract speaks about ancient and medieval estimation of the length of the “human planet”, especially its west-east extent. At the end of the fifteenth century, one of dominating approaches was to enhance the land span to unrealistic proportions implying that the circumference of the Old World was not such a crazy idea.

How to Measure the Earth’s Circumference

A chapter from my second book focuses on ancient and medieval endeavors to calculate the world’s circumference. The representatives of the two scholarly trends, of the “big” and “small” earth, offer their assessments, sometimes correcting their previous estimations. In spite of a great deal of mathematical geography, the extract puts forward a new proposal concerning the comparison between various standards of measurement and makes unusual conclusions. The article is embellished by the images of Eratosthenes, Posidonius, and al-Farghani.  https://scriggler.com/DetailPost/Opinion/31762

There will be two more publications from Unit I, titled “The Miraculous Revival or the Painful Discovery”, of my second manuscript. The common thread is the reemergence of interest to geography throughout the European Middle Ages and the reanimation of classical knowledge, often rhymed with the “ancient wisdom”. Also, the first attempts to look at the real world and the classical traditions without blurring spectacles of prejudice.

 

Yelu Dashi

One of the aims of my study on Prester John is to find out about numerous prototypes of this mysterious character. This week I was collecting data about one of them, Yelu Dashi, the founding father of the Kara Khitai steppe empire. Forced to flee from his Manjurian homeland, a talented military commander managed to consolidate a throng of adherents who praclaimed him the Gurkhan (the supreme ruler). Later in his reign, he interfered with the struggle between the Seljuk Sultan Sanjar and one of his vassals which led to the confrontation of the Muslim and Kara Khitai armies in the Qatwan steppe outside Samarkand. The overwhelming victory of Yelu Dashi expanded his empire which encroached into Muslim lands. His wealth came from foreign trade with China on the one hand and the Islamic states on the other.

His character became epitomised by the German chronicler Otto von Freising who tells a fascinating tale about an Oriental emperor of the Three Indies, a Christian though of the Nestorian creed, who crushed a formidable Muslim army and plans to march to Jerusalem to assist his crusading brothers to wipe off the followers of the crescent from the Holy Land.