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Miniature of Peter the Hermit leading the People's Crusade (Egerton 1500, Avignon, fourteenth-century)

The First Crusade (1096–1099) was the first of a series of religious wars, or Crusades, initiated, supported and at times directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The objective was the recovery of the Holy Land from Islamic rule. While Jerusalem had been under Muslim rule for hundreds of years, by the eleventh century the Seljuk takeover of the region threatened local Christian populations, pilgrimages from the West, and the Byzantine Empire itself.

Popular Article: Fu (poetry)

Song dynasty (960–1279) painting of a second-century B.C.E. literary gathering at the court of Liu Wu, Prince of Liang

Fu (Chinese: 賦), often translated "rhapsody" or "poetic exposition" is a form of Chinese rhymed prose that was the dominant literary form in China during the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E. – C.E. 220). Fu are intermediary pieces between poetry and prose in which a place, object, feeling, or other subject is described and rhapsodized in exhaustive detail and from as many angles as possible. They were not sung like songs, but were recited or chanted.

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Shuar traditionally created "tzantza" or shrunken heads to capture the soul of the deceased (source: Shuar)

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