Cities of the Middle East and North Africa: A Historical Encyclopedia

The period generally known as the “middle ages” was characterised by a number of rapid mass migrations which have scarcely any parallel in recorded human history. Only Alexander in ancient times and, possibly, the expansion of the British Empire in the late‐eighteenth/early‐nineteenth centuries can show any similarities. Small tribes of shepherds from the remote borders of China built up empires that stretched from northern India to the Baltic, while, just for example, the Vandals moved in the course of two generations from a squalid corner of the north Polish marshes, to being the dominant conquerors of Spain, to ruling most...