Abu 'l-Qasim Ferdowsi Tusi, or Ferdowsi was a Persian poet and the author of Shahnameh ("Book of Kings"), which is the world's longest epic poem created by a single poet, and the national epic of Greater Iran. Ferdowsi is celebrated as t...

Pope Sylvester II, born Gerbert d'Aurillac, was a prolific scholar, teacher, and Pope. He endorsed and promoted study of Arab/Greco-Roman arithmetic, mathematics, and astronomy, reintroducing to Europe the abacus and armillary sphere, which...

Sei Shonagon (lesser councilor of state Sei), was a Japanese author, poet and a court lady who served the Empress Teishi (Sadako) around the year 1000 during the middle Heian period. She is the author of The Pillow Book. Shonagon is also...

Murasaki Shikibu (Lady Murasaki) (c.978–c.1014 or 1025) was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court during the Heian period. She is best known as the author of The Tale of Genji, written in Japanese between about...

Guido of Arezzo (991/992 – after 1033) was a music theorist of the Medieval era. He is regarded as the inventor of modern musical notation (staff notation) that replaced neumatic notation; his text, the Micrologus, was the second-most-widel...

Peter Abelard (Latin: Petrus Abaelardus or Abailardus; French: Pierre Abélard) was a medieval French scholastic philosopher, theologian and preeminent logician. His love for, and affair with, Héloïse d'Argenteuil have become legendary. The...

Anna Komnene, Latinized as Comnena, was a Greek princess, scholar, physician, hospital administrator, and the daughter of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos of Byzantium and Irene Doukaina. She wrote the Alexiad, an account of her father’s reign, w...

Rumi was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic. Rumi's influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Tajiks, Turkish, Greeks, Pashtuns, other Central Asian Muslims, and the...

Alfonso X, called the Wise (Spanish: el Sabio), was the King of Castile, León and Galicia from 30 May 1252 until his death. During the Imperial election of 1257, a dissident faction chose him to be King of the Romans (Latin: Rex Romanorum;...

Villard de Honnecourt was a 13th-century artist from Picardy in northern France. He is known to history only through a surviving portfolio or "sketchbook" containing about 250 drawings and designs of a wide variety of subjects. The so-ca...

Jacob van Maerlant (or Merlant) is known as the greatest Flemish poet of the Middle Ages. He was born about 1235 and died sometime after 1291. Of his life little is known. In his first work, Merlijns Boeck, the author calls himself "Jacob d...

Marsilius of Padua was an Italian scholar, trained in medicine who practiced a variety of professions. He was also an important 14th century political figure. His political treatise Defensor pacis is seen by some authorities as the most rev...

Laura de Noves was the wife of Count Hugues de Sade (ancestor of the Marquis de Sade). She could be the Laura that the Renaissance poet Francesco Petrarch wrote about extensively; however she has never been positively identified as such. If...

Hafez was a Persian poet who "laud[ed] the joys of love and wine [but] also targeted religious hypocrisy". His collected works are regarded as a pinnacle of Persian literature and are to be found in the homes of most people in Iran, who lea...

William of Wykeham was Bishop of Winchester, Chancellor of England, founder of Winchester College and of New College, Oxford, and builder of a large part of Windsor Castle. William was born to an undistinguished family, in Wickham, Hamps...