Middle Ages
Gedi Ruins: Lost Swahili Town in the Kenyan Forest
Gedi grew into a prosperous walled Swahili town, was abandoned in the early 17th century, and survives as one of the best-preserved medieval sites of the East African coast.
Era · c. 500 – 1500
Middle Ages
Kingdoms, crusades and plagues: the medieval world from the end of the Western Roman Empire to the fall of Constantinople.
Middle Ages
Timbuktu: Medieval City of Trade, Scholarship and Manuscripts
Timbuktu became a leading centre of Saharan trade and Islamic scholarship until the Moroccan conquest of 1591 began its long decline.
Middle Ages
Great Zimbabwe: Stone City of a Medieval African Kingdom
Great Zimbabwe became the capital of a wealthy Shona-speaking state trading gold to the Indian Ocean, then declined in the 15th century as power shifted elsewhere.
Middle Ages
Death of William Rufus (1100): Killed in the New Forest
William II was killed by an arrow while hunting; his younger brother Henry seized the treasury and was crowned within three days.
Middle Ages
Ananda Temple at Bagan: King Kyansittha's Masterpiece
The Ananda became one of the most admired temples of the Pagan kingdom and a model for later Burmese temple architecture.
Middle Ages
Knights Hospitaller: Order of St John from Jerusalem to Rhodes
A hospital brotherhood became one of the great military orders, outlived the crusader states and survives today as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
Middle Ages
Angkor Wat: Suryavarman II and the World's Largest Temple
Angkor Wat became the largest religious monument in the world, a Hindu temple later turned to Buddhist worship and now the national symbol of Cambodia.
Middle Ages
Abelard and Heloise: Love and Scandal in 12th-Century Paris
The affair ended in Abelard's castration and both lovers entering religious life; their later letters made them Europe's most famous medieval couple.
Middle Ages
Knights Templar: The Crusading Order from Founding to Downfall
The order defended the crusader states for nearly two centuries but was arrested in France in 1307 and dissolved by Pope Clement V in 1312.
Middle Ages
Moundville: The Mississippian Capital in Alabama
Moundville became the second-largest Mississippian centre after Cahokia, then turned into a ceremonial and burial centre before its decline in the 15th century.
Middle Ages
White Ship Disaster (1120): The Shipwreck That Doomed a Dynasty
About 300 people drowned, including Henry I's heir; the succession crisis that followed led to the civil war known as the Anarchy.
Middle Ages
Almohad Caliphate (1121-1269): Ibn Tumart's Reform Empire
A Berber religious movement replaced the Almoravids and ruled North Africa and al-Andalus until defeat in Spain and rebellions in Africa broke it up.