Alex > Recent Status Updates

Again, I am not sure if what he says of Clavijos inner feelings (going as far as to despair that Christendom has no Samarkand and no Timur to offer) is taken from the sources in some way or just made up

Very impressed by Guillaume le Maréchal, who held off sixty enemy warriors on his own after losing his horse.

"And if the king could but make one innovation upon this law, without arousing resistance, and being compelled to retreat from his usurpation, he would cite that innovation as a precedent for another act of the same kind; next, assert a custom; and, finally, raise a controversy as to what the Law of the Land really was."
That process should ring familiar to anyone acquanted with constitutional law.

Great insights on how to stave off demons.

This rennaissance of Timur is laughable.

I wish he'd stop trying to sell me timurid real estate already.

"Bukhara, the heart of Islam, had almost fallen to these enemies of the faith. Temur glowed with fury at the thought of it."
Really? How do we know? Marozzi seems to make certain things up.

Good examples on the previous pages of politics and religion not being friends. Ask Edmund Dudley, the hypocrite.

"It seems, moreover, hard to argue that the printing press was in some way undermining traditional Catholicism when primers, lives of saints and service books comprised the largest part of the presses’ output."

Very interesting information on late medieval church life in England, and also a very nuanced take on indulgences. They were ubiquitous, but they were not just bought out of panic for ones soul (as some would like to believe), but also for altruistic concerns.

Really interesting what activities the parishes sponsored and how much the people seem to have supported them.

"Within the portals, courtyards of white marble dazzled the eyes, which were drawn inexorably towards the giant shadow-making dome and the eight minarets which guarded it at each of the corners of the upper terrace."
Bit hard for me to get hyped enough to board the Timurtrain, but at least he didn't use prisoners as mortar this time.

"Arabshah wrote that the residents of Zaranj sued for peace, which Temur granted on condition they surrender all their weapons. ‘And as soon as they had given this guarantee, he drew the sword against them and billeted upon them all the armies of death. Then he laid the city waste, leaving in it not a tree or a wall and destroyed it utterly, no mark or trace of it remaining.’"
Timur was a good guy tho :^)

Was Marozzi paid for the page?