Moslem

Mohammedan

sultan

Illuminated manuscripts were hand-made books, usually on Christian scripture or practice, produced in Western Europe between c. 500-c. 1600 CE. They are so called because of the use of gold and silver which illuminates the text and accompanying illustrations.

Hand-made illuminated manuscripts were initially produced by monks in abbeys but, as they became more popular, production became commercialized and was taken over by secular book-makers. Illuminated manuscripts were quite costly to produce and only those of significant means could afford them. The most popular type was the Book of Hours which was a Christian devotional of prayers to be said at certain times throughout the day. More Books of Hours have survived than any other work of the period simply because more of them were produced. The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in c. 1440 CE signaled the beginning of the end of hand-made books generally and illuminated manuscripts specifically.

At the Battle of Tours near Poitiers, France, Frankish leader Charles Martel, a Christian, defeats a large army of Spanish Moors, halting the Muslim advance into Western Europe. Abd-ar-Rahman, the Muslim governor of Cordoba, was killed in the fighting, and the Moors retreated from Gaul, never to return in such force.

The Birth of IslamA man named Muhammad was born around 570 CE in the city of Mecca, in what is modern-day Saudi Arabia. Muhammad's parents died when he was young, and as a teenager, he was forced to work as a caravan leader. He was very good at his job; when he was older, the owner of the caravan, an older woman whose husband had died, proposed to him. Muhammad was now wealthy and had plenty of time to think about his faith. The wickedness and greed of his people worried him. He also didn't like that the people were worshiping idols, or false gods, instead of Allah so he prayed for his people. Muslims believe that Muhammad received a revelation from Allah in 610 telling him to preach to his people. These were the first revelations of the Qur'an.

Voltaire pointed out that history is a pack of tricks we play upon the dead.

the present can and does influence our knowledge of the past because past events do not any longer exist anywhere except in mind of the historian, who has now become both subject and object.

Some people have gone so far as to say that the closest we can get to what actually happened is to believe what the records say actually happened.

History, written by a contemporary, is likely to be less accurate, less truthful than the history of the past written by someone living in the present.

The distortion is the result of the Mercator map which was created in 1596 to help sailors navigate the worldIt gives the right shapes of countries but at the cost of distorting sizes in favour of the wealthy lands to the northFor instance, north America looks larger, or at least as big, as Africa, and Greenland also looks of comparable sizeIn reality, you can fit north America into Africa and still have space for India, Argentina, Tunisia and some left overMap suggests Scandinavian countries are larger than India, whereas in reality India is three times the size The biggest challenge for cartographers is that it is impossible to portray reality of spherical world on a flat map