A vast economic history literature suggests that medieval institutions supporting contract enforcement were necessary for impersonal exchange to emerge. Yet this literature cannot account for the bill of exchange, an important financial instrument that had positive legal standing in both the medieval Islamic and Christian worlds but remained relegated to personal networks only in the former. Th...

the field of medieval history has produced several hundred, if not thousands of volumes on kingship in the Middle Ages. Students of medieval studies are well acquainted with much of this literature, particularly that sparked by Ernst Kantorowicz' s historiographical game changer, The King's Two Bodies (1957). Katherine Lewis's innovative study of the monarchy and masculinity of Henry V (r.1413-...

mohammad-karim pirnia, one of the most prominent scholars of the history of iranian architecture, has recorded two major achievements: the principles of iranian architecture and the stylistics of iranian architecture. in this article we will discuss his suggested principles for iranian architecture. for this purpose, we will first show how his five principles have evolved and completed through ...