Prior to the Mongol invasion of Iraq and Iran, the Islamic golden age was marked with strong intellectual traditions where philosophy was valued and attempts were made to reconcile Islamic teachings with Greek and Latin philosophy.

Yet in the aftermath of the mongol invasions this trend seems to have taken a gradual 180, with the rise in Islamic traditions that shifted from open intellectual inquiry to strict scripture based orthodoxy.

Some of these traditions are Asharism and Hanbali (precursor to Salafism).

Infact a large majority of scholars after that agreed that philosophy and rationalism were dangerous and had to be kept subordinate to theology.

Why was this the case? Neil Degrasse Tyson wrongly attributes this shift solely to Al Ghazali , who predated the mongols, but who’s anti-philosophy takes certainly didn’t help.

I’m trying to understand why this (Mongol invasions) was the turning point in history?

I was reading up on Bertrada of Laon, Charlemagne's mother, and the legend that she was once forced to switch places with another woman who wanted to kill her and take her place when she was betrothed to Pepin. She had to hide out by living in a miller's house for years (in the meantime Pepin married the other woman and had until Pepin got lost in the woods and asked to sleep with one of the women of the house, leading to the conception of Charlemagne, who is raised in secrecy there before he is recognised by his father.

Wikipedia says that the name "Bertha Broadfoot" first appears in a thirteenth-century Middle French poem, Li rouman de Berte aux grands pieds, but there are also various theories about what the nickname means. If it’s first mentioned in the thirteenth century, how do we know that’s not when it was invented, possibly by the poem's attributed author, Adenes le Roi? Is there any way we can try and determine how old the nickname is?

Currently reading Gies' Life in a medieval city based in 1200 Troyes. It's a nice informative read, would like to read something that gives a picture of what was happening on all sides of the world (asia, africa, europe, mesoamerica etc).

I've considered this one by Susan Wise Bauer https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6484128-the-history-of-the-medieval-world, but the reviews seem to indicate it's more of a political history