I'm not entirely sure this is the right subreddit for this question, but a previous question I made got some excellent replies.
Suppose you teleport to the library of a random 14th century university. What books and textbooks would you expect to find there? What books and authors would you expect a typical philosophy professor to be familiar with?
I understand that Hamadani was born into a Jewish family and later converted to Islam and that he was born under Mongol rule. May this have anything to do with it? Or is it more simple, like a misunderstanding of how aniconism works in Islam?
Edit: spelling
In "The Last Duel" a lawyer type character says: "it is quite common for the accused to burn for 20 to 30 minutes before they are dead."
Would they have had the means to keep track of time with such accuracy? If they did, would anyone bother to time how long a person burned before they died?
I am a history student and have been working on a term paper regarding the labour shortages in England following the Black Death and it is strikingly similar to the labour movement occurring right now. Here is a basic introduction of the topic, but a Google search will bring up plenty of results.
EDIT: Okay, you guys got me going so I'll add to this.
What's even more similar is the response for lords and other elites. They were getting nervous that no one would work for them and they were losing money. King Edward III first issued the Ordinance of Labourers (1349) which was an attempt to freeze wages at pre-plague levels and ordered every able-bodied individual to work, or else face prison.
"The king to the sheriff of Kent, greeting. Because a great part of the people, and especially of workmen and servants, late died of the pestilence, many seeing the necessity of masters, and great scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they may receive excessive wages, and some rather willing to beg in idleness, than by labor to get their living; we, considering the grievous incommodities, which of the lack especially of ploughmen and such laborers may hereafter come, have upon deliberation and treaty with the prelates and the nobles, and learned men assisting us, of their mutual counsel ordained:
That every man and woman of our realm of England, of what condition he be, free or bond, able in body, and within the age of threescore years, not living in merchandise, nor exercising any craft, nor having of his own whereof he may live, nor proper land, about whose tillage he may himself occupy, and not serving any other, if he in convenient service, his estate considered, be required to serve, he shall be bounden to serve him which so shall him require; and take only the wages, livery, meed, or salary, which were accustomed to be given in the places where he oweth to serve..."
Except the terminology was pretty loose, so the local sheriffs had no idea who to punish and just started making up their own definitions of suitable wages. Then the king issued The Statute of Labourers (1351) during British parliament's first session following the Black Death.
Basically, rich people have always hated poor people
https://preview.redd.it/df4d7ul1gme81.png?width=550&format=png&auto=webp&s=ffc6d4790d3f4660ae7310767e6a3355ba4fe164
https://preview.redd.it/61os2j85gme81.png?width=700&format=png&auto=webp&s=98b495e192d73a6a3a5b8c29ef22c00c06a14ebe
https://preview.redd.it/johp42ndgme81.png?width=594&format=png&auto=webp&s=ae93003bbdcda26f54f5c3e815ae5d77bcc6d0b3
From Pulitzer Prize winning author Barbara Tuchman's book, A Distant Mirror: "In everyday life passersby saw some criminal flogged with a knotted rope or chained upright in an iron collar. They passed corpses hanging on the gibbet and decapitated heads and quartered bodies impaled on stakes on the city walls...In village games, players with hands tied behind them competed to kill a cat nailed to a post by battering it to death with their heads, at the risk of cheeks ripped open or eyes scratched out by the frantic animal's claws. Trumpets enhanced the excitement."
More specifically, how did they levied and obtained taxes, did the nobles ignored it and if it was mostly out of taxes of the peasantry or did trade brought major revenue?
