The age called "dark" -- The Byzantine empire -- The fall of the Roman west -- Constantinople -- Why the East did not fall -- The West conquered -- Justinian and his laws -- Historian and traveller -- Imperial crisis -- An embattled empire -- The Byzantine system -- Byzantine Christianity -- Orthodox monks and nuns -- The nature of Christ -- The great debate -- Destroyers of images -- Church of the holy wisdom -- Paintings, textiles, and metalworks -- The art of the mosaic -- Toward the Byzantine future.
The expansion of Islam -- Rise and fall of Sassanian Persia -- Arabia -- Mohammed -- The Koran -- The conquest of the East -- From Arabia to Europe -- The Ummayad empire -- The Shi'as -- The Abbasids -- Islamic Spain -- The Islamic explosion.
The German kingdoms -- The Ostrogoths in Italy -- A culture in transition -- Gregory the Great -- The Lombards and the struggle for Italy -- The Lombard age -- Visigothic Spain -- Clovis and the Franks -- Merovingian jewelry -- Merovingian society -- The kings and their heritage -- The Carolingians -- Feudal society -- Frisia and Germany -- The conquests and coronation of Charlemagne -- The empire of Charlemagne.
The Jews in Asia and Europe -- The Jews of Mishnah and Talmud -- A minority in the Persian and Christian empires -- The Jews and Mohammed -- Prestige under the caliphs -- Western European Jewry.
Peoples of the North -- The coming of the Anglo-Saxons -- The conversion of Kent -- East Anglia: Sutton Hoo -- Northumbria -- Illuminated manuscripts -- The unification of England -- Anglo-Saxon society and literature -- Ireland and its church -- Irish poetry and prose -- The art of Ireland -- Emigrants and missionaries -- Scandinavia and its art -- Sweden -- The Swedes in the East -- Denmark and Norway -- The Viking explosion.
From Europe to the Far East -- The East Slavs -- The West and South Slavs -- Avars and Bulgars -- The Khazars -- White Huns and Turks -- Wei and Sui China -- T'ang China -- India.
