Peter Jackson is a British scholar and historian, specializing in the

Crusades The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were in ...

, particularly the contacts between the Europeans and the

Mongols The Mongols ( mn, Монголчууд, , , ; ; russian: Монголы) are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia, Inner Mongolia in China and the Buryatia Republic of the Russian Federation. The Mongols are the principal membe ...

as well as medieval Muslim

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. He is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at

Keele University Keele University, officially known as the University of Keele, is a public research university in Keele, approximately from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England. Founded in 1949 as the University College of North Staffordshire, Keele ...

and editor of ''The Cambridge History of Iran: The Timurid and Safavid Periods''. His main research interests are on the relations between the Mongols and the

Latin West Greek East and Latin West are terms used to distinguish between the two parts of the Greco-Roman world and of Medieval Christendom, specifically the eastern regions where Greek was the '' lingua franca'' (Greece, Anatolia, the southern Balkans, t ...

between 1220 and 1410, and he has written extensively on the topic, exploring the concepts of medieval Europe, the Crusades, medieval Russia and the Mongols, especially the clash of cultures, and the interconnectedness of legends such as that of

Prester John Prester John ( la, Presbyter Ioannes) was a legendary Christian patriarch, presbyter, and king. Stories popular in Europe in the 12th to the 17th centuries told of a Nestorian patriarch and king who was said to rule over a Christian nation lost a ...

Academic career

Graduating from

St John's College, Cambridge St John's College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge founded by the House of Tudor, Tudor matriarch Lady Margaret Beaufort. In constitutional terms, the college is a charitable corpo ...

, in 1971, he was awarded a PhD from Cambridge in 1977 for the thesis "The Mongols and India, 1221–1351". In 1979 he was appointed lecturer in history at

, becoming a senior lecturer in 1991. He was awarded a personal chair in medieval history in 2002.Profile on Crusader Studies web site www.crusaderstudies.org.uk/resources/historians/profiles/jackson/index.html - retrieved May 2017 Mongol soldiers by Rashid al-Din 1305

Research

His 1999 book ''The Delhi Sultanate'' was described by a reviewer as amongst the most distinguished works on the

medieval Islamic world The Islamic Golden Age was a period of cultural, economic, and scientific flourishing in the history of Islam, traditionally dated from the 8th century to the 14th century. This period is traditionally understood to have begun during the reign ...

in our time ''

American Historical Review ''The American Historical Review'' is a quarterly academic history journal and the official publication of the American Historical Association. It targets readers interested in all periods and facets of history and has often been described as the ...

'', April 2001, p. 554 and was scheduled for translation into Arabic. In this book, the geographical extent of his scholarship, his linguistic skills, and his extensive knowledge of medieval Islamic geography enabled him to compress into a single volume a nuanced assessment which was rooted in close textual analysis and a mastery of the linguistic problems presented by his sources, reminiscent of the research of Simon Digby. His latest book on the Mongols and the Islamic World has been described as a work of great erudition which demonstrates Peter Jackson's life-long understanding of both the Muslim and the European sources for the

history of the Mongols The Mongols ( mn, Монголчууд, , , ; ; russian: Монголы) are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia, Inner Mongolia in China and the Buryatia Republic of the Russian Federation. The Mongols are the principal member ...

. Jackson also held a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship. In 2011 he retired as Professor Emeritus, and was elected a

Fellow of the British Academy Fellowship of the British Academy (FBA) is an award granted by the British Academy to leading academics for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences. The categories are: # Fellows – scholars resident in the United Kingdom # C ...

in 2012.
British Academy Annual Report 2012/13
' (London:

The British Academy The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars span ...

, 2013), pp. 37–38

Books

* * * * * Translator of *

Notes

References

List of publications

External links

* http://www.pearson.ch/HigherEducation/Longman/1449/9780582368965/The-Mongols-and-the-West-1221-1410.aspx * http://journals.cambridge.org/production/action/cjoGetFulltext?fulltextid=856308 * http://journals.cambridge.org/production/action/cjoGetFulltext?fulltextid=988376 Living people British historians Year of birth missing (living people) Academics of Keele University Historians of the Crusades Fellows of the British Academy Historians of India {{UK-historian-stub