Word: buttings
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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It was a chaotic era, and William of Normandy, born around 1027, was the child of chaos. The illegitimate son of Robert, Duke of Normandy, he was known for most of his life as William the Bastard. Robert eventually recognized him, but only as he departed on a fatal pilgrimage...
When Dante Alighieri compiled his great medieval Who's Who of heroes and villains, the Divine Comedy, the highest a non-Christian could climb was Limbo. Ancient pagans had to be virtuous indeed to warrant inclusion: the residents included Homer, Caesar, Plato and Dante's guide, Vergil. But perhaps the...
That figure was Saladin. It is testament to his extraordinary stature in the Middle Ages that not only was Saladin the sole "modern" mentioned--he had been dead barely 100 years when Dante wrote--but also that a man who had made his name successfully battling Christianity would be lionized...
When Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub was born in 1138 to a family of Kurdish adventurers in the (now Iraqi) town of Takrit, Islam was a confusion of squabbling warlords living under a Christian shadow. A generation before, European Crusaders had conquered Jerusalem, massacring its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants...
Saladin got his chance with the death, in 1169, of his uncle Shirkuh, a one-eyed, overweight brawler in Nur al-Din's service who had become the de facto leader of Egypt. A seasoned warrior despite his small stature and frailty, Saladin still had a tough hand to play...