Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

In the autumn of AD 312, as Constantine was preparing to fight his rival emperor Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge over the river Tiber, he looked to the heavens and saw a blazing cross above the sun, accompanied by the Greek words, ‘in this sign, conquer’ (Εν Τούτω Νίκα). He took this to be a message from the god of the Christians: clearly a god who at that moment appeared to be more interested in battles and politics than in his son Jesus Christ’s programme of charity, forgiveness and reconciliation.

According to tree-ring data provided by Qilian juniper samples from Qinghai province on the Tibetan plateau, it seems that between AD 350 and AD 370, eastern Asia suffered a ‘megadrought’ – which remains the worst drought recorded in the last two thousand years. The skies simply dried up. Northern China endured conditions at least as severe as those of the American ‘Dust Bowl’ of the 1930s, or the Chinese drought of the 1870s

While this bloody piece of theatre ensured the Umayyads’ survival, it also cemented a schism within Islam that has survived for more than thirteen hundred years. The sects and factions that formed during the first and second fitnas gave birth to what we now know as the Sunni–Shia divide.k Shia Muslims refused to accept the legitimacy of the Umayyad caliphate, or indeed the legitimacy of Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman’s regimes. Instead, they insisted that Ali was Muhammad’s rightful successor: the first Imam. This in turn implied an alternative succession, through Hasan and Husayn, then a bloodline of further imams descended from Muhammad.

Charlemagne was described by the chronicler Einhard as being large and strong; when his grave was exhumed in the nineteenth century he was measured at a little over 6’3” – a prodigious height for his times.

A law code known as the Jasaq or Yassa enjoined everyone under Mongol rule to refrain from stealing from or enslaving one another, to exhibit strict protocols of generosity and hospitality, to obey the authority of the khan above all others and to disdain rape, sodomy, washing clothes in thunderstorms and urinating in sources of water.

maintained and developed in the Islamic world during the Umayyad period, when desert castles (qusur) proliferated in the Middle East, blending military functions with more luxurious, palatial features such as farm-buildings, bath-houses and mosques.

King Henry hankered for an official title which would advertise his Christian magnificence. Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain (Henry’s parents-in-law) had been known as ‘the Catholic Monarchs’. French rulers, including Henry’s contemporary and rival Francis I, styled themselves ‘the most Christian kings’. Henry wished to be known as ‘the very defender of the Catholic faith of Christ’s Church’.