14th century

player are filled with checkered patterns, which could be another reference to entertainment. Is should also be noted the leaves seem to wrap around the woman, embracing her and pointing towards the half sun,which has it’s own face as well and is located at on the top of the bowl. The lip of the bowl, which subtly curves outward is lined with what could be a loose form of Iranian calligraphy, or complex markings. Even the exterior of the bowl is decorated with simple graceful vines. With this level of elegance, the bowl was most likely a finer product used only used on rare occasions, or a decorative item. According to my research of similar objects, I believe the luster bowl to have originated in Khasan, Iran anywhere from the 12th to 13th century during the Seljuk period. I began my research by finding objects of similar appearance, and managed to find an artifact with enough commonalities to assume there was a relation in origin. This bowl was found on christies.com, an online auction source known for handling artifacts of significant worth. On the site, Lot #52 is a “Kashan Lustre Tazza” which displays the same depiction of an East Asian women surrounded by vegetal themes and earthy tones (“A Kashan Lustre Tazza”). The two bowls also share a simplistic pattern of vines and loose calligraphy that obviously originated from the same region. After reading the item description and seeing that the bowl was of similar size, similar material, and of Islamic origin I decided the…

Prologue: One does not know the name of the author since the document is a simple record of a trial that occurred in the mid-14th Century. We can guess who the writer of this court record by looking who the prominent scribes for the criminal court of the Parlement of Paris in the fourteenth century were. Being the scribe of a court trial is not really relevant to who the author is though. Just copying down precedents does not quite give a voice to the document. The record describes the…

Death was a friendly neighbor to those living at the turn of the fourteenth century when rats carried a flesh eating disease across the ocean into Europe. Remember that old nursery rhyme, "Ring Around The Rosy"? It comes from plague time, when flowers were used to mask the stench. (Charles L. Mee Jr.) In the chaos of the Bubonic Plague, commonly refered to as the, "Black Death", fear of a dark and terrible end caused mass hysteria. Brother turned upon brother, and Europe almost destroyed itself.…

Today, we know how the plague was spread and why it spread from Asia to Europe. In the 14th century, no one understood it. They did not understand how they got it, or how it spread from person to person. Some people thought that looking into the eyes of the sick would make themselves sick. The doctors that would tend to the sick attempted to treat it by bloodletting and actually puncturing and trying to drain the swollen skin buboes. Many people would avoid all human contact with the sick,…

Here, the greater guild re-took their power. Overall, during the 14th century Florence claimed to fight for the freedom of all of Italy. In the mid-early (20’s and 30’s) 15th century, the threat Milan caused to the freedom of Italy joined Florence and Venice to fight them, but when Milan changed its government to a fresh new family, Florence abandoned their alliance with Venice and went with Milan instead. In 1434, Cosimo de’ Medici, part of a very wealthy family and the bank-merchant oligarchy,…

Beginning in the 14th century, ending the 19th century, for about 500 years, Europe had control of 84% of all civilization in the world (Hoffman). Europe had controlled much of Asia, much of Africa, and North as well as South America. It is very openly questioned as to how Europe became so powerful, due to the fact that Europe was a small continent. In response, there are many debates that explain how this process happened, however, there were three crucial things that the Europeans had which…

As recorded in history, the Black Death began in the fourteenth century Russia near Crimea (History of the Black Death). The diminishing supply of grains, wheat, barley, and oats was the effect of the disrupted farming and trade patterns caused by war, and adverse weather conditions. Many populations plagued by malnutrition made them more susceptible to the disease. Signs of the Black Plague in Europe first began to appear around the fall of 1347 (The Black Death). Europe seemed to be in a…

The Salem Witch Trials In the 14th century, a witch superstition broke out in Europe. When Europeans found the colonies, this belief carried over to their new lands. Many of the settlers, as the colonies gained age, still were very suspicious about the existence of witches. So, when a smallpox epidemic broke out in the mid 17th century, people once again became fearful of witches. The Salem Witch trials are a series of trials that began due to the fear that had erupted and taken place in the…

With an estimated thirty-eight million men, women, and children left dead, the Black Death that swept through Europe in the mid-fourteenth century is by and large the most devastating epidemic of medieval European history. Long thought to have been brought to the European continent by flea-carrying Asian traders, the plague left a crippling trail of death and destruction in its wake. Some scholars now challenge the source of the plague, saying it could not have come from fleas or rats but rather…

Discuss the rise and consolidation of the Ottoman dynasty in the 14th and 15th centuries. Why is 1453 considered to be a critical year in many narratives of the empire? The Ottoman Empire is considered as one of the largest and long-lasting empires in our human history. The empire is said to have spanned more than six hundred years, which subsequently ended in 1922, with the eventual rise of the Turkish Republic along with its several states in the Southeastern Europe and the Middle East. In…