The Wolf King of Murcia: Ibn Mardanish and the Second Taifa Period in Eastern Al-Andalus.

Before Game of Thrones was a thought in our imagination, literature and television there was man in medieval Iberia who would reshape trade, the borders of Kingdoms and would forever define the complicated relationship of Medieval Christians, Muslims and Jews in the Medieval World.

That man commonly known as El Rey Lobo or the Wolf King was officially known as Abu ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Mardanīš.

Surrounded by rivals and potential allies the Wolf King set out to make medieval Murcia a force to be reckoned with as he expanded and fought to ensure the prosperity of his kingdom, family and people.

From working with Christian kingdoms to going to war with fellow Islamic kingdoms he was a man who looked beyond religion and ethnic bias in order to achieve what he wanted. 

As he expanded his impact would greatly impact trade in the medieval Mediterranean, Iberian coinage, architecture, traditional borders and the way that medieval chroniclers saw powerful Muslims in medieval Iberia.

But as he grew older caliphates and dynasties came and went into the abyss of history and a new power arose. Slowly the Almoravids came under conquest of the Almohads and the old wolf found himself in a world that was changing and he foresaw a future that would not bode well for his family.

Tragically he spent his last days trying to negotiate power between his Muslim enemies and his heirs who would follow him.

From battlefields to Christian courts the wolf king left a legacy of cunning ambition and one that would never be forgotten.

This episode explores a series known as "Heroes or Villains in Medieval Iberia where the audience decides if a certain historical character is a hero, a villain or if it is more complicated than one over the other.

Video Footage attribution goes to Adam Myrie of HAMAA | The Historical African Martial Arts Association.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2AdDHTxTH9hzchUqxVeI1A

For more information on Dr. Lincoln and his awesome work check out these links below to his book and other writings!

KING ALFONSO VIII OF CASTILE : GOVERNMENT, FAMILY, AND WAR

Edited by Miguel Gómez, Kyle C. Lincoln and Damian J. Smith

https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823284146/king-alfonso-viii-of-castile/

Academia Profile: https://norwich.academia.edu/KyleLincoln

More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M. Levin argues in this carefully researched book, such claims would have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself. 

Levin explains that imprecise contemporary accounts, poorly understood primary-source material, and other misrepresentations helped fuel the rise of the black Confederate myth. Moreover, Levin shows that belief in the existence of black Confederate soldiers largely originated in the 1970s, a period that witnessed both a significant shift in how Americans remembered the Civil War and a rising backlash against African Americans’ gains in civil rights and other realms.

Levin also investigates the roles that African Americans actually performed in the Confederate army, including personal body servants and forced laborers. He demonstrates that regardless of the dangers these men faced in camp, on the march, and on the battlefield, their legal status remained unchanged. Even long after the guns fell silent, Confederate veterans and other writers remembered these men as former slaves and not as soldiers, an important reminder that how the war is remembered often runs counter to history.

In this episode Historian Kevin M. Levin the author of Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth takes us into a fascinating discussion of the roots and causes of the American Civil War, the decline and collapse of the Confederacy and more importantly the origins, development and manifestation of the Confederate Lost Cause Movement.

At the beginning he talks about what he thinks about when pondering the American Civil War before moving on into the very heart of the episode.

He begins by setting a foundation and exploring core issues and events preceding the eventual secession and war from talking about the American expansion into new territories, the question of "New States" and slavery, Bleeding Kansas and naturally the Compromise of 1850 and the collapse of the Whig Party and the beginning of the Republican Party.

But then we come to the end of the Confederacy and the origins, birth and manifestation of the Lost Cause movement and its mythical and fictional narratives that became a cancer within American historiography and the role it plays in miseducating and misinforming the public today.

He discusses slavery and the "states rights" debate while debunking many of the myths put forward in Lost Cause narratives that are still defended today by Neo Confederates such as Black Confederates a term that attempts to explain away "camp slaves" which is narrative that Neo Confederates cling to today while avoiding the truth, horror and reality of American slavery.

We discuss confederate monuments, the monument debate and the role that groups have played such as the Daughters of the Confederacy from memorial services to the very monuments that spark debates today.

From modern Americans who struggle with their Confederate ancestors to the internet and its role in misinformation and the safe space it gives "fake history" this episode truly encompasses the very heart and soul of American history and the battle that still rages involving the origins of the American Civil War and the movements that came after.

We end by asking why Americans have a fascination and almost romanticized view of Civil War and why the USA continues to struggle with its past.

Topics debunked:

That slavery wasn't the fundamental cause of secession and the eventual outbreak of war.

The myth of unlimited Northern resources over Confederate bad generalship.

The States rights narrative.

Black Confederates.

The loyal slave narrative.

The myth of Northern Aggression.

The myth of Confederate Unity.

The myth of the "morally" superior South.

In this episode Medievalist Matias Vanhanen takes us into a fascinating subject that is really obscure and one that provides immense challenges to researchers and that is slavery in the "Viking World."

We explore archaeology such as Slavic pottery and what it tells us about slavery in Northern Europe as we move to Iceland and see the prominence of "Celtic" surnames that appear throughout Icelandic history as slaves, concubines and hostages are transported throughout the area.

We take a look at what the Vikings called their slaves and why... does it revolve around ethnicity? Was there a second class of people who were not slaves but were still not completely free?

From trade routes and beyond to what primary sources such as Muslim explorers and the Irish Annals we are painted a complicated and often contradictory narrative as we have to sift through what is "real" and what is not.

From slave routs to Viking Ireland and Viking raids in Africa we watch as a complicated subject becomes even more complicated.

Support our guest below!

Matias Vanhanen is an undergraduate student of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge focusing his studies on the history and languages of Northern Europe in the Viking Age. 

He is from Finland and writes a blog that you can support at http://arktikronika.eu

Follow him on twitter: https://twitter.com/Vanhasen_Matias

To my dear subscribers, thank you all. You have my love and appreciation. 

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In this episode Dr. Andrew Traver takes us into the very heart and genesis of the future Roman Emperor Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus.

From exploring his childhood in a world of uncertainty to his coming of age in the early Roman Empire, this story covers a variety of topics from his personal ailments that caused him to be scorned and oftentimes mocked by family members to his love of researching and studying the past and beyond to him being noticed by Emperor Augustus as someone who may have more potential after all.

It is a sad story, it is filled with tragedy but it ends in triumph as we see political figures rise and fall and we approach the eventual triumph of Claudius to the very heart of the Roman Empire itself and the "Emperorship" that held it together. Emperor Claudius was the Emperor that ancient Rome needed and deserved. 

Support Dr. Traver and his works at these links below!

Academia Page: https://selu.academia.edu/ATraver

Faculty Page: http://www.southeastern.edu/acad_research/depts/hist_ps/faculty/bio/traver.html

In this episode Dr. Florin Curta takes into a fascinating and controversial topic and that is the origins and history of the Bogomils and Bogomilism that originated and spread rapidly in the Medieval Balkans.

Before starting off Dr. Curta takes us into an introduction to Gnosticism and different Gnostic Sects and beliefs such as the Paulicianism, Manichaeism, Marcionism and etc, to set the foundation for this episode and different responses to these sects and those that came after.

We explore the persecution of the Paulicians under the Byzantine Empire and how their forced resettlement in places like the Balkans and the rushed Christianization of Bulgarian society could have actually created the groundwork for the rise of the Bogomils.

We discuss what their enemies thought of them including "The Treatise Against the Bogomils" and correspondence between the royal family and the church.

We talk about what they actually believed such as that God had two sons... Satan and Jesus. That Satan created all matter including human flesh in which contained trapped souls which is one of the reasons Bogomils didn't believe in engaging in sexuality or eating meat.

Lastly, we discuss... what happened to them? Are Stećci Medieval tombstones a testament to who they were? And are the Bogomils and the famous Cathars connected and if so.. then how?

Support Dr. Florin Curta at the links below!

Previous talk on the Origins and History of the Slavs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lBSm87304Q

His latest book titled "The Long Sixth Century in Eastern Europe."

https://brill.com/view/title/59822

Another important work by him titled "Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (500-1300) (2 vols.)"

https://brill.com/view/title/34623?language=en

Purchase his other books : https://www.amazon.com/Florin-Curta/e/B001HD1RW4%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Academia : https://florida.academia.edu/FlorinCurta

Alfonso I “the Battler” of Aragon: Hero, Villain, or Both?

This episode explores a series known as "Heroes or Villains in Medieval Iberia where the audience decides if a certain historical character is a hero, a villain or if it is more complicated than one over the other.

Alfonso was the son of Sancho V Ramírez. He was persuaded by Alfonso VI of Leon and Castile to marry the latter’s heiress, Urraca, widow of Raymond of Burgundy. In consequence, when Alfonso VI died (1109) the four Christian kingdoms were nominally united and Alfonso I took his father-in-law’s imperial title. The union failed, however, because Leon and Castile felt hostility toward an Aragonese emperor; because Urraca disliked her second husband; and because Bernard, the French Cluniac archbishop of Toledo, wanted to see his protégé, Alfonso Ramírez (infant son of Urraca and her Burgundian first husband), on the imperial throne. 

At Bernard’s prompting, the Pope declared the Aragonese marriage void, but Alfonso continued to be involved in civil strife in the central kingdom until he eventually gave up his claims in favour of his stepson after the death of Urraca (1126). Despite these embroilments, he achieved spectacular victories against the Moors, capturing Saragossa in 1118 and leading a spectacular military raid far into southern Andalusia in 1125. 

In his campaigns he received much help from the rulers of the counties north of the Pyrenees, resulting in the involvement of Aragon in the affairs of southern France. Alfonso was fatally wounded in battle at Fraga in 1134. Deeply religious, he bequeathed his kingdom to the Templars and the Hospitallers, but his former subjects refused to accept the donation, and the kingdoms eventually came under the control of the counts of Barcelona.

Description above was taken from Britannica.

And so at the end we look at his achievements, his shortcomings and we put him on a scale to see who he really was and how he is viewed today.

For more information on Dr. Lincoln and his awesome work check out these links below to his book and other writings!

KING ALFONSO VIII OF CASTILE : GOVERNMENT, FAMILY, AND WAR

Edited by Miguel Gómez, Kyle C. Lincoln and Damian J. Smith

https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823284146/king-alfonso-viii-of-castile/

Academia Profile: https://norwich.academia.edu/KyleLincoln

The Muslim Conquest of Medieval Iberia has been framed as this massive expansion of Islam and a vicious Holy War to seize lands from the defensive Christian Kingdoms of Europe and Asia and no other conquest comes to mind such as the Muslim Conquest of Medieval Iberia that is modern day Spain and Portugal.

But what if..... that isn't entirely true? What if rather than it being an "invasion" we find out that it is way more complicated than that?

What if we told you that they were invited in by Visigoths themselves?

In this episode Dr. Kyle Lincoln debunks, clarifies and explains many common misconceptions and inaccurate narratives and opinions when it comes to medieval Islam, its conquests and medieval Iberia.

During this period the Visigoths were at war with each other and some of them looked to mercenary help from the outside to help them defeat their enemies and so they turned to professional soldiers who realistically may have been "Muslim" in name and minor practice only. Upon arrival they fought for their Visigoth Employers and eventually the Visigoths attempted to cheat them out of their pay. Naturally these mercenaries then proceeded to take what was theirs and eventually that lead to more armies and factions moving into Iberia and expanding across the peninsula creating what is commonly referred to as "Muslim or Islamic" Spain - Iberia.

In short.... always pay your mercenaries and lastly Dr. Lincoln gives us a list of works by actual experts that dive into this complex subject that better explains it and leaves us with a much better understanding of the past.

For more information on Dr. Lincoln and his awesome work check out these links below to his book and other writings!

KING ALFONSO VIII OF CASTILE : GOVERNMENT, FAMILY, AND WAR

Edited by Miguel Gómez, Kyle C. Lincoln and Damian J. Smith

https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823284146/king-alfonso-viii-of-castile/

Academia Profile: https://uwlax.academia.edu/KyleLincoln

In this episode PhD student takes us into a fascinating and obscure topic relating to ancient history, maritime history and military history, and that is the development and use of the battery ram in ancient naval warfare with a focus on the Greeks and Romans.  From discussing their origin and apparent unsuccessful proto rams we watch as craftsmen and experts perfect their work over time through trial and error to create a piece that would come to play a crucial war in warfare on the ancient seas.  

He explores what sources we have from ancient historians and what do they have to say.  He then approaches the history of naval rams in general categorizing them by period and giving an awesome overview on the subject.  We also explore tactics and how they were used along with what we know about how they were crafted, how they were put on the ship and lastly we approach the end of the naval ram in Mediterranean and Aegean warfare as it becomes more of a sign of power and symbolism rather than a tool of war.  

Before leaving off he talks about an upcoming project where he and his colleagues will be setting out to build a naval ram to better understand the process and how the ancients built them.    

Support our awesome guest below!  Twitter: @SDeCasien  

Website: stephendecasien.com  

In this video award winning Medievalist Dr. Kyle C. Lincoln a Medieval Iberian Historian guides us through an introduction to his upcoming series titled "Heroes or Villains of Medieval Iberia" he will examine historical figures and explore their world that we know as Medieval Iberia.

The medieval figures that this series will cover in totem:

(1) Alfonso I “the Battler” of Aragon: Hero, Villain, or Both?

(2) The Wolf King: the Life, Legend, and Legacy of Ibn Mardanish of Murcia.

(3) Gerardo sem Pavor: Portuguese Brigand or Brave Profiteer?

(4) Who Was the Evil Twin: Berenguer Ramon and Ramon Berenguer of Barcelona.

(5) “Along Came a Bear:” The Story of Sancho Fernandez of Leon.

(6) Samuel ben Naghrela: Rebel or Revolutionary of Granada. 

(7) The Count who Killed an Archbishop: Guillem Ramon de Moncada. 

(8) Abd al-Rahman of Cordoba: The Refugee Who (Re-)Founded an Empire.

(9) The Myth of El Cid: Rodrigo Diaz.

From exploring the historical setting and climate that they emerged from to their actions that sealed their place in history and beyond to their mortality and historiography this series seeks to paint these characters as they were and leaves the audience to decide was this person a hero? A Villain? Or... is it more complicated than that?

For more information on Dr. Lincoln and his awesome work check out these links below to his book and other writings!

KING ALFONSO VIII OF CASTILE : GOVERNMENT, FAMILY, AND WAR

Edited by Miguel Gómez, Kyle C. Lincoln and Damian J. Smith

https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823284146/king-alfonso-viii-of-castile/

Academia Profile: https://norwich.academia.edu/KyleLincoln

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