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Ibrahim Ibn Yaqub
Ibrahim ibn Yaqub ( ar, إبراهيم بن يعقوب ''Ibrâhîm ibn Ya'qûb al-Ṭarṭûshi'' or ''al-Ṭurṭûshî''; he, אברהם בן יעקב, ''Avraham ben Yaʿakov''; 961–62) was a tenth-century Hispano-Arabic, Sephardi Jewish traveller, probably a merchant, who may have also engaged in diplomacy and espionage. Biography His family hailed from Moorish-ruled Ṭurṭūšah (now Tortosa) close to the mouth of the Ebro: he may also have lived in Córdoba. Written and oral history and his writings suggest that he had a Jewish background. However, it has also been argued by other historians that he was a Muslim of Jewish background, and Bernard Lewis states: "There is some uncertainty to whether he was a professing Jew or a Muslim of Jewish origin." In 961–62 he travelled in Western and Central Europe and in Italy at least as far as Rome, where he was received with an audience with the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I during the first week of February. __FORCETOC__ No ...
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Ibrahim Ibn Jakub
Ibrahim ibn Yaqub ( ar, إبراهيم بن يعقوب ''Ibrâhîm ibn Ya'qûb al-Ṭarṭûshi'' or ''al-Ṭurṭûshî''; he, אברהם בן יעקב, ''Avraham ben Yaʿakov''; 961–62) was a tenth-century Hispano-Arabic, Sephardi Jewish traveller, probably a merchant, who may have also engaged in diplomacy and espionage. Biography His family hailed from Moorish-ruled Ṭurṭūšah (now Tortosa) close to the mouth of the Ebro: he may also have lived in Córdoba. Written and oral history and his writings suggest that he had a Jewish background. However, it has also been argued by other historians that he was a Muslim of Jewish background, and Bernard Lewis states: "There is some uncertainty to whether he was a professing Jew or a Muslim of Jewish origin." In 961–62 he travelled in Western and Central Europe and in Italy at least as far as Rome, where he was received with an audience with the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I during the first week of February. __FORCETOC__ N ...
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Book Of Roads And Kingdoms (al-Bakrī)
''Book of Roads and Kingdoms'' or ''Book of Highways and Kingdoms'' ( ar, كتاب المسالك والممالك, rtl=yes, ) is the name of an eleventh-century geography text by Abu Abdullah al-Bakri. It was written in 1067-8 in Córdoba, al-Andalus (present day Spain). Al-Bakri based his work on the accounts of traders, the writings of Muhammad ibn Yūsuf al-Warrāq, (''On the Topography of North Africa''), and Abraham ben Jacob. Despite the fact that al-Bakri never left al-Andalus, his writings are regarded as objectively reporting the accounts of other travelers by contemporary historians, and much of what he wrote is substantiated in other sources. He described a wide array of regions from the Atlantic Ocean, through the Sahara, to Central Africa, giving descriptions of the geography, people, culture and political situation in each region. The ''Book of Roads and Kingdoms'' exists today only in fragmentary form. It is sometimes confused with a work by the same name writte ...
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Boleslaus I, Duke Of Bohemia
Boleslaus I ( cs, Boleslav I. Ukrutný) (915 – 972), a member of the Přemyslid dynasty, was ruler (''Knyaz, kníže'', "duke") of the Duchy of Bohemia from 935 to his death. He is notorious for the murder of his elder brother Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia, Wenceslaus, through which he became duke. Despite his complicity in this fratricide, Boleslaus is generally respected by Czech historians as an energetic ruler who significantly strengthened the Bohemian State formation, state and expanded its territory. His accomplishments include significant economic development due to an expansion in trade, the introduction of silver mining and the minting of the first local coinage, the Prague denarius. Early life Boleslaus was the son of Duke Vratislaus I, Duke of Bohemia, Vratislaus I of Bohemia (d. 921) by his marriage with Drahomíra (d. 934), probably a Hevellian princess. His father took over the rule in Prague Castle, Prague around the time of Boleslav's birth, during which he ...
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Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate oceanic climate, with relatively warm summers and chilly winters. Prague is a political, cultural, and economic hub of central Europe, with a rich history and Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architectures. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia and residence of several Holy Roman Emperors, most notably Charles IV (r. 1346–1378). It was an important city to the Habsburg monarchy and Austro-Hungarian Empire. The city played major roles in the Bohemian and the Protestant Reformations, the Thirty Years' War and in 20th-century history as the capital of Czechoslovakia between the World Wars and the post-war Communist era. Prague is home to a number of well-known cultural attractions, many of which survived the ...
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Czechs
The Czechs ( cs, Češi, ; singular Czech, masculine: ''Čech'' , singular feminine: ''Češka'' ), or the Czech people (), are a West Slavic ethnic group and a nation native to the Czech Republic in Central Europe, who share a common ancestry, culture, history, and the Czech language. Ethnic Czechs were called Bohemians in English until the early 20th century, referring to the former name of their country, Bohemia, which in turn was adapted from the late Iron Age tribe of Celtic Boii. During the Migration Period, West Slavic tribes settled in the area, "assimilated the remaining Celtic and Germanic populations", and formed a principality in the 9th century, which was initially part of Great Moravia, in form of Duchy of Bohemia and later Kingdom of Bohemia, the predecessors of the modern republic. The Czech diaspora is found in notable numbers in the United States, Canada, Israel, Austria, Germany, Slovakia, Ukraine, Switzerland, Italy, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Russ ...
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Schwerin
Schwerin (; Mecklenburgisch dialect, Mecklenburgian Low German: ''Swerin''; Latin: ''Suerina'', ''Suerinum'') is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Germany, second-largest city of the northeastern States of Germany, German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern as well as of the region of Mecklenburg, after Rostock. It has around 96,000 inhabitants, and is thus the least populous of all German state capitals. Schwerin is located on the southwestern shore of Lake Schwerin (''Schweriner See''), the second-largest lake of the Mecklenburg Lake Plateau after the Müritz, and there are eleven other lakes within Schwerin's city limits. The city is surrounded by the district of Nordwestmecklenburg, Northwestern Mecklenburg to the north, and the district of Ludwigslust-Parchim to the south. Schwerin and the two surrounding districts form the eastern outskirts of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region. The name of the city is of Polabian Slavs, Slavic origin, deriving from the root ...
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Mecklenburg Castle
Mecklenburg Castle was a medieval castle and a residential capital of the Nakonid and Nikloting dynasties of the Obotrites. It was located just south of the modern village Dorf Mecklenburg, sevenHerrmann, p. 189. kilometres (4 miles) south of the Bay of Wismar in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. The only remnants of the ruined castle are parts of an earthen wall. Some scholars have associated Mecklenburg with the medieval trading emporium Reric. Etymology The travelling merchant Ibrahim Ibn Jacub described Mecklenburg as “Nakon’s Castle” in 965. By 995 it was documented as ''Michelenburg''Herrmann, p. 188. or ''Mikelenburg'', meaning "large castle" in Low German. In Latin, it was known as ''Magnopolis''. The later duchy and region of Mecklenburg derives its name from the castle. The probable Slavic name, ''Veligrad'' also (“great” or “large castle”). was commemorated in a new Schloss Wiligrad built between 1896 and 1898 for Duke John Albert of Mecklenburg. Hist ...
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Nakonid
The Nakonids were the leading noble family of the Slavic peoples of the Elbe River from ca. 960 until 1129. They were themselves of Obotrite origin and engineered the formation of a Slavic principality in the region. They became extinct in the male line in the early 12th century. Their capital was Mecklenburg Castle. The Nakonids derive their name — a modern invention — from the earliest attestable ruler of the dynasty, Nako, who fought the expansionist tendencies of the German kingdom in the mid and late 10th century before being defeated and converted to Christianity. The Nakonid leaders alternated between being lapsed Christians (''mali christiani'') and ardent missionaries of the Slavs who were the prime movers of the Germanisation and Christianisation of the Polabian Slavs. The German historian Heinz Stoob, in his retranslation of the chronicle of Helmold, derived the first genealogy of the Nakonids. Besides Helmold, Adam of Bremen, Thietmar of Merseburg, and Sax ...
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Hedeby
Hedeby (, Old Norse ''Heiðabýr'', German language, German ''Haithabu'') was an important Danes, Danish Viking Age (8th to the 11th centuries) trading settlement near the southern end of the Jutland Peninsula, now in the Schleswig-Flensburg district of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is the most important archaeological site in Schleswig-Holstein. Around 965, chronicler Ibrahim ibn Yaqub, Abraham ben Jacob visited Hedeby and described it as, "a very large city at the very end of the world's ocean." The settlement developed as a trading centre at the head of a narrow, navigable inlet known as the Schlei, which connects to the Baltic Sea. The location was favorable because there is a short portage of less than 15 km to the Treene River, which flows into the Eider River, Eider with its North Sea estuary, making it a convenient place where goods and ships could be pulled on a corduroy road overland for an almost uninterrupted seaway between the Baltic and the North Sea and avoid ...
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Vikings
Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9–22. They also voyaged as far as the Mediterranean, North Africa, Volga Bulgaria, the Middle East, and North America. In some of the countries they raided and settled in, this period is popularly known as the Viking Age, and the term "Viking" also commonly includes the inhabitants of the Scandinavian homelands as a collective whole. The Vikings had a profound impact on the early medieval history of Scandinavia, the British Isles, France, Estonia, and Kievan Rus'. Expert sailors and navigators aboard their characteristic longships, Vikings established Norse settlements and governments in the Viking activity in the British Isles, British Isles, the Faroe Islands, Settlement of Iceland, Icela ...
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Mieszko I Of Poland
Mieszko I (; – 25 May 992) was the first ruler of Poland and the founder of the first independent Polish state, the Duchy of Poland. His reign stretched from 960 to his death and he was a member of the Piast dynasty, a son of Siemomysł and a grandson of Lestek. He was the father of Bolesław I the Brave (the first crowned king of Poland) and of Gunhild of Wenden. Most sources identify Mieszko I as the father of Sigrid the Haughty, a Scandinavian queen (though one source identifies her father as Skoglar Toste), the grandfather of Canute the Great (Gundhild's son) and the great-grandfather of Gunhilda of Denmark, Canute the Great's daughter and wife of Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor. He was the first Christian ruler of Poland, but he continued the policies of both his father and grandfather, who initiated the process of creation of the Polish state. Through both alliances and military force, Mieszko extended ongoing Polish conquests and early in his reign subjugated Kuyavia ...
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