Medieval World Culture & Conflict Magazine

Medieval Warfare picks up where its sister magazine, Ancient Warfare, leaves off. Starting around 500 AD, Medieval Warfare examines the world during the Middle Ages up through the early years of the Renaissance (the magazine generally leaves off in the 16th century). While popular topics such as the Crusades and the Vikings are given regular coverage, Medieval Warfare also tackles more complex and obscure topics, ranging from the Umayyad Caliphate versus the Byzantine Empire to horse trading in 14th-century England.

Medieval World Culture & Conflict Magazine

Editorial

Oxford - The murder capital of England?

Runestones reveal story of Viking Queen

Vlad the Impaler may have cried tears of blood, study finds

Fourteenth-century cannon discovered off Swedish coast

Medieval castle repaired in England

Nine medieval sites added to UNESCO's World Heritage List

Letter reveals terrible prison conditions in the Early Middle Ages

ON THE COVER

THE BATTLE OF MANZIKERT • The battle of Manzikert, fought between the Byzantines and the Seljuks in 1071, left a deep mark in history. The progressive western expansion of the Turks finally extinguished the Christian empire and altered the fate of the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeastern Europe until the nineteenth century. The earlier Ottoman source covering the event is the Saljūq-nāma of Ahmed ibn Mahmud. Although his work is modelled on the accounts of the Muslim historians Sibt ibn al-Jawzi and al-Husayni, there are rearrangements and deliberate omissions. These serve to meet the author's compositional goal that should be seen through the prism of the Seljuk sulan Alp Arslan's devoted faith to Allah, which contributed to his victory at Manzikert.

HERALDS • Heralds are the administrators of heraldry, employed by the monarch to handle designing, granting, and recording coats of arms. Their origins, however, were not quite so elevated.

GLORY IN DEATH • Sweden's massive burial mounds and wealth-laden boat graves are amongst the most awe-inspiring archaeological sites to have survived from pre-Viking Age Scandinavia. With their connections to Beowulf and legendary Norse sagas, no Nordic grave sites are more fascinating than those found in and around Uppsala, the ancient seat of Swedish royalty.

The Vendel Period and the Domain of Svitjod

A WAY WITH WORDS • When negotiations broke down between powers in the Middle Ages, battles and wars followed, but far more often diplomacy bore fruit. Alliances were forged, ties were strengthened, marriages negotiated, treaties agreed and signed, wars avoided. Sometimes, the agents of such diplomatic wrangling were unexpected – and they often travelled very far from home. No state was more adept at diplomacy than the Byzantine Empire – a vital conduit between East and West.

Papal diplomacy

“Giraffe Diplomacy”

WHEN TRANSLATIONS WERE KING • When representatives of the Byzantine Emperor and Muslim Caliph met in Córdoba in the late months of 949, few could imagine that the long-lasting impact of this gathering lay beyond the pomp, ritual, and military parades. Instead, it was the gift of a Greek medical manuscript that we still remember today as a key diplomatic tool.

Constantine VII

A BYZANTINE EMPEROR IN EUROPE • On a cold day in December 1399, a ship sailed away from Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Aboard it was none other than Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos. His first destination was the Morea, from where the emperor would set out for the shores of Italy, later travelling to France and England.

PILGRIMS, PATRONS, AND POTENTATES • One of the foremost pilgrimage destinations in the Orthodox world, Mount Athos—a semiautonomous monastic federation in northern Greece—was a node for extensive traffic to and from...