Persia & Europe, 11th–14th century
Medicine & Forbidden Knowledge
A Christian student in Isfahan, a poisoned library, and the plague that broke a civilisation.
what's actually going on
For centuries the best medicine on earth was in Persian, and Europeans who wanted it had to smuggle themselves toward it. Then the Black Death arrived and stress-tested every institution — the church that couldn't explain it, the quarantines that worked, the scapegoats that were easier. Who owns knowledge, which experts get believed in a crisis, what a society does when the official answer fails: we ran that exact experiment again in 2020, with the same results.
the books that prove it
- The Physician10M+ copies · a phenomenon across Europe
- The Name of the Rose50M+ copies
The Library of Alexandria is history podcasting's single most-listened episode — the appetite for lost knowledge is measured, not guessed.
more through this doorway
- Doomsday Book
- Shaman
- Mistress of the Art of Death
- The Serpent's Tale
- Company of Liars
- The Owl Killers
- Year of Wonders
- The Last Hours
- Baudolino
- The Canterbury Tales
From the catalogue — matched on this period's subjects.
The scroll for this doorway isn't written yet — the books above are the way in.
Doorways with a scroll