Mongol Empire

"All hope, abandon ye who enter here." These words from Dante’s Divine Comedy may shape our modern vision of hell, but did you know that the Bible says surprisingly little about it? In fact, hell as we know it was constantly reinvented during the Middle Ages.Dr. Eleanor Janega is ...  Show more

Who first imagined King Arthur pulling a shining blade from solid rock? What do extraordinary Bronze Age discoveries reveal about the legend's deeper roots?Matt Lewis is joined by Amy Jeffs to uncover the surprising origins of the sword in the stone (and other Arthurian legends), ...  Show more

The Crusades are well-known but only part of the complex history of the medieval Near East. During the same era, the region was completely remade by the Mongol invasions.  In a single generation, the Mongols upended the region’s geopolitics. 

In this e ...

The most disruptive and transformative event in the Middle Ages wasn’t the Crusades, the Battle of Agincourt, or even the Black Death. It was the Mongol Conquests. Even after his death, Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire grew to become the largest in history—four times the size of Alex ...  Show more

The Mongols were an unstoppable force through the 12th and 13th centuries, with an empire that stretched across huge swathes of land, from China to Europe. But its territory also included much of the Near East, where one aggressive power – the Mamluks – finally put a halt to thei ...  Show more

We talk to Dr Nicholas Morton about the arrival of the Mongols into the Byzantine world. Their confrontation with the Seljuks of Anatolia will have serious consequences.Dr Morton is Associate Professor in Middle Eastern and Global history at Nottingham Trent University in the UK. ...  Show more