The Siege of Antioch took place during the First Crusade in 1097 and 1098. The first siege, by the crusaders against the Muslim-held city, lasted from 21 October 1097 to 2 June 1098. Antioch lay on the crusaders' route to Palestine, and ant...

Hildegard of Bingen, also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary, and polymath. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monop...

In the early 11th century, the Egyptian Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the destruction of all churches and synagogues in Jerusalem. Reports of this were one cause of the First Crusade, which marched off from Europe to the area...

The Kingdom of Jerusalem was a Christian kingdom established in the Levant in 1099 after the First Crusade. It lasted less than two hundred years, until 1291 when the last remaining outpost, Acre, was destroyed by the Mamluks. At first the...

Muhammed al-Idrisi, was an Arab Muslim geographer, cartographer and egyptologist who for some time lived in Palermo, Sicily at the court of King Roger II. Muhammed al-Idrisi was born in Ceuta then belonging to the Almoravids. He created the...

Pope Gregory VIII died in Pisa on December 17, 1187, of a fever, after holding the Papacy for only 57 days. On October 21, 1187, the day after the death of Pope Urban III, Alberto di Morra was elected pope and took the name Gregory VIII, in...

Empress Matilda, also known as Matilda of England or Maude, was the daughter and heir of King Henry I of England. Matilda and her younger brother, William Adelin, were the only legitimate children of King Henry to survive to adulthood. Will...

Emperor Gaozong, born Zhao Gou, was the tenth emperor of the Song Dynasty of China, and the first emperor of the Southern Song. He reigned from 1127 to 1162. He fled south after the Jurchens overran Kaifeng hence the beginning of the Southe...

Enrico Dandolo was the 41st Doge of Venice from 1195 until his death. Remembered for his blindness, piety, longevity, and shrewdness, he is infamous for his role in the Fourth Crusade which he, at age ninety, directed against the Byzantine...

Afonso I of Portugal (English Alphonzo), more commonly known as Afonso Henriques, was the first King of Portugal, declaring his independence from León. Afonso was the son of Henry of Burgundy, Count of Portugal and Teresa of León, the illeg...

The Knights Hospitaller (also known as the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta, Order of St. John, Knights of Malta, and Chevaliers of Malta; French: Ordre des Hospitaliers) is a Christian or...

Manuel I Komnenos, Latinized Comnenus, also called Porphyrogennetos ("born in the purple"), was a Byzantine emperor of the 12th century who reigned over a crucial turning point in the history of Byzantium and the Mediterranean. His reign sa...

Frederick I Barbarossa was elected King of Germany at Frankfurt on 4 March 1152 and crowned in Aachen on 9 March, crowned King of Italy in Pavia in 1154, and finally crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Adrian IV on 18 June 1155. He was crown...

Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in western Europe during the High Middle Ages, a member of the Ramnulfid dynasty of rulers in southwestern France. She became Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right while...

Averroës is the Latinized form of Ibn Rushd, a mediæval Andalusian Muslim polymath. He wrote on logic, Aristotelian and Islamic philosophy, theology, the Maliki school of Islamic jurisprudence, psychology, political and Andalusian classical...