This encyclopedia covers the medieval world from Scandinavia to the Maghreb and Iceland to Moscow, including Byzantium, Seljuk and early Ottoman Anatolia, Armenia, the Kurds, the Levant, Syria, and Palestine. Approximately 2,000 entries offer exhaustive coverage on everything from significant personalities, archaeology, arts and architecture, institutions, literature, philosophy, and religion to economy, law, science, technology, politics, and warfare. Coverage includes: Significant individuals (Charlemagne, Gregory VII, Saladin); Archaeological artifacts of particular importance (Sutton Hoo); Economic and agricultural practices, ideas, and commodities (plough, gold, banking, usury); Institutions of church and state (papacy, parliament, commune) Scientific and technological knowledge and inventions (Roger Bacon, the compass); Items and practices from daily life (games, food, cooking); Landmark documents (Magna Carta); Artistic production, styles, techniques, themes, producers, and patrons for painting, sculpture, architecture, and the minor arts (Romanesque, Gothic, manuscript illumination); Social ideas and practice (marriage, death and burial, childhood) from all levels of society; Warfare (technology, battles, and wars); Kingship (dynasties and practices); National literary and cultural authors (Dante), monuments (Decameron), subjects (Gawain), and styles; Religious ideas and practices (simony, reform movements, heresies, saints); Cultural interchange among peoples (peaceful and violent); Theological and philosophical ideas, individuals, and movements (scholasticism, Thomas Aquinas); Travel and expansion (Eastern Europe, the Levant, geographical knowledge, ships).

V.1: A-L -- V.2: M-Z.