Michael Baizerman Author

The image of the Byzantine dromon from the Naval Encyclopedia https://www.naval-encyclopedia.com/medieval-ships/ The second chapter of my new project is titled The Galley. It tells a fascinating story of the medieval watercraft and focuses on the rowing fleet in terms of its function and service.  You can read the entire extract at my page on Scriggler: scriggler.com/Profile/michael_baizerman More chapters are about to appear but I will limit myself as my main workload is transferred to my second book, The Enchanting Encounter with the East. I have already written about 90 percent of the draft copy and is now doing additional research on medieval travelers to the East and their accounts of the weird and wonderful world that had been hidden from European intellectuals and was worth strenuous efforts to be unveiled. 

Image: The Khitans at the eagle hunt  Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khitan_people This chapter brings to light the life of Yelu Dashi, the first candidate on the role of Prester John. This Khitan prince, whose dynasty was ousted from power by a rival nomadic confederation, fled to Central Asia where he carved an empire. His outstanding victory over the Seljuk emperor caused the legend of Prester John to take root among the Latin crusaders. In their view, the confrontation with the Muslim host would qualify the opponent to be a Christian.  In reality, the Kara Khitai Empire combined the nomadic and sedentary segments who were loosely united by the imperial regime based on a standing army. The emperor declared the freedom of conscience and did not exaggerate in his demands of tribute and troops from the dependent populations.  The man, who embraced both the Buddhist and the nomadic cultures, had never dreamed of conquering the Near East ...

Dieric Bouts the Elder,  Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melchizedek#/media/File:Meeting_of_abraham_and_melchizadek.jpg This short chapter ushers in the era of Prester John, a priest-king of a gargantuan oriental realm and a potential crusader.  The fact that Otto of Freising included this tale into his account of the world history shows its immediate impact. Whether the writer took it as a fact or fiction, this yarn helped materialize the Crusaders' anxiety and expectations on the eve of the Second Crusade.  Here is a brief extract: Otto von Freising, a bishop and a prolific writer, didn't intend to amuse his readers with frivolous tales. His twelfth-century chronicle of world history features a battleground where the forces of good are pitted against the swarms of evil.  Nevertheless, he is the author who baptized our character and breathed life into his somber shadow.    ...

Thanks to the summer vacations, I've got plenty of free time on my hands.  I have started writing Unit V,  The Boots on the Ground: the Dogged Courtship after Elusive Prester John. I recount the well-known legend, trying to find out its historic core.  In the Prologue, I emphasize the distinct features of this character.  1. He is elusive; nobody knows his whereabouts. Besides, he is always in transit, attempting to carry out his ambitious plans. 2. He is a mix of reality and fiction. The value of this character for historians lies in the fact that the narrative taps into historical events, offering their garbled version.  3. He is long-lasting. Officially baptized in the twelfth century, he continued to gain supporters through the seventeenth century at least and because we pick up this topic again and again, he is still relevant to our time.  I also explain that Prester John's title, king-priest, has a Biblical origin. I allude ...

I am happy to announce that I have completed chapter 8 about the Khazars. It appeared to be one of the longest extracts in the whole book. I think that I have managed to relate the history in a non-traditional way. To start with, we still are unaware of the flow of the Khazar history; what we have got are bits and pieces and each of us is trying to glean from them a plausible plot.  I tried to use historical accounts of travelers who had visited Khazaria or whose opinion is supported by the archaeological record rather than be supported by legends. The problem is that few Khazar sources available are written in Hebrew and are rife in myths. It does not mean that the entire content is false; however, it is biased and cannot be related at face value.  With the completion of this chapter, I have nearly finished Unit IV. I tend to write the conclusion called Bottom Line. This makes about seventy percent of the book. As usual, the whole unit will be sent to the p...

Some chapters take longer than expected.  The last but one chapter of Unit IV,  Mapping Marvels and Monsters: In the Shadow of the Iron Gate , is devoted to the Khazars. I would like to link the existence of their khaganate to European persistent rumors about the Jewish empire that would eventually liberate their coreligionists from the yoke of the Christian nations.  There are too few facts and too much fiction surrounding the world of the Khazars.  Instead of recounting the more or less known myths, I decided to collect data about this mysterious ethnic group and their polity. Much of this info is controversial and one has to approach it with loads of skepticism in case his/her conception would burst in his/her hands.  I am checking the collected data and writing extracts based on it. I still have some work to do. Now and then, I inspect new sources and the scope of written pages is getting larger and larger.  At the next stage...

Chapter 7 of Unit IV entangles the plot even more by intertwining the blend of the Alexander Legend and the Saga of Gog-Magog with a tale of the Lost Tribes. The medieval continuation of the Jewish story connects the tribes with the host of the Antichrist on the eve of the Final Battle between good and evil.  The European literati feel free to replace the location of the exile of the Israelites further and further East, while their numbers skyrocket, posing the threat to the expansion of the Christendom. Some authors even hint at a secret plot between the local Jews and their distant brethren to overthrow the civilized order.  My next chapter will tell about the Khazars which many obscure observers envisioned as the Jewish kingdom.   "Back in the Early Middle Ages, the Christian literati would make exquisite efforts to conflate the entangled  Alexander legend to the no less complicated saga of the Lost Tribes.     ...

A Typical Notice  https://www.juliemeek.com.au/lost-and-found/  A new chapter, The Lost and Found Tribes, seems to bypass my narrative about the Alexander Gates. However, it introduces the issue of the Ten Lost Tribes as it emerges both in history and in Biblical and post-Biblical Jewish thought.  The Lost Tribes occupy an integral part of the Alexander legend and I thought it was important to explain how this topic had emerged before interweaving it with the medieval story.  Chapter 6 of Unit IV entitled "In the Shadow of the Iron Gates" develops the following threads: the collapse of Samaria and the rise of Jerusalem, the vision of the Biblical prophets about the return of the deportees, Mount Gerizim vs. Mount Zion, and the Emergence of the Ten Tribes.  Besides helping the understanding of the peculiar twist of the medieval legend, this extract contributes to my understanding of the history of ancient Israel. You can view my...

My new chapter covers the conflation of the Hebrew myth of Gog-Magog with the Hellenistic legend of the Iron Gate. This is another step in writing a large unit, In the Shade of the Iron Gate. In this particular episode, I explain the motives of those who transformed the unpleasant experience of "barbarian" strikes into the sinister outbreak of monstrous forces on the eve of the Last Battle between the sons of light and the bastards of darkness. Here is an excerpt: "When medieval intellectuals discovered the enormous literary and ideological potential of conflating the Biblical myth of Gog-Magog with the Hellenistic legend of the Iron Gates, the romantic tale turned into a theological saga. The setting matched the everlasting conflict between the Christian realm of goodwill and learning versus the apocalyptic anti-world of evil and ignorance.                 The barrier sustains the line of demarcation bet...

Image: While in transit… Courtesy: http://www.journeymongolia.com/index.php/item?id=13 My new chapter takes a sincere look at the nomads, trying to access their contribution to the human culture as well as to understand why the pastoralist lifestyle was so hard to digest for the settled people. This extract poses an antithesis to the previous one where I picked up a choir of opinions of outsiders about the migrants.  Unit IV is going to be the largest part of my book in terms of the number of chapters. The next extract will focus on the second fusion of the legend where Alexander as the guardian of civilization is opposed the ultimate enemy of Gog-Magog.  Here is the extract from Chapter 4: How come that the settled population still puts the pastoralists to shame for adhering to the “barbarian” lifestyle?   These very people grazed their flocks on natural pasturelands of grassy plains and mountain slopes. Stock-herders turned their yurts into...

Image: A nomad is getting his herd in shape Courtesy: http://www.nationalgeographicexpeditions.com/expeditions/mongolia-tour/detail  In this chapter, I would like to share my thoughts about steppe nomads. This topic is very important for the development of my book which shows how the geographic imagination of Latin Europeans about the Far East altered. If up to the 13th century the furthest destination was India, it would later embrace China. What was in the middle? The fascinating world of the pastoralist nomads which was the antipode of Western Europe. The nomads are currently receiving a better treatment in historical research. They are no longer considered the dead end of social and economic development but rather a specific mode of production conditioned by survival strategies of existence under the harsh climate and the tough competition. Their mobility would give the steppe dwellers a fair chance to stay independent from the state authorit...

      Image: A Kazakh nomad “almost glued” to his mount       Courtesy: https://metaphorimages.photoshelter.com/image/I0000lAn3o2uAWVA My new chapter of Unit IV focuses on the treatment of nomadic pastoralists by the European literatti. I show that the pastoralist style was alien to well-educated authors and was shown as barbarian. Alexander the Great was applied as the guarding spirit of the oecumene- the civilization of the settled peoples. To match this role, he was commissioned to build the gate or the wall which was to shield the people of the sown from ugly and sinful steppe dwellers. Here's the extract:        The sober report of Arrian Flavius, a Hellenistic historian and Roman general, about Alexander’s failed attempt to overhaul King Darius at the breach in the mountain wall could not suit the sophisticated taste of adventure lovers. As a response to the challenge, an entangled legend wou...

My new chapter points out to the Greek twist of the legend which relates to Alexander putting up a wall or a gate at a mountain pass. I cite Arrian, one of our primary historical sources on Alexander, who mentions no such thing. I show that this yarn had already come into existence at the time of  Josephus Flavius, who makes it part of his narrative. I quote Pliny the Elder who testifies of a great confusion among his contemporaries concerning the location of the Caspian Gates. I'd like to give you a taste of my writing: "It was a long and breaking down chase. The bleeding but still alive Persian emperor took to flight into his eastern satrapies in the last-ditch effort to muster a new army against his victorious contender. The royal escape route passed through the Caspian Gates, a winding ground-level breach in a mountain wall. The pursuer, who would spare neither horses nor riders, was breathing down his neck in a desperate attempt to intercept the fleeting antagonist. ...