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Systematised Advaita Vedanta and reorganised Hindu monasticism.

Tang poetry's exuberant genius, memorised across East Asia.

The 'poet-historian' whose verse recorded a dynasty's collapse.

Founded al-Qarawiyyin in 859, the oldest continuously operating university.

The Pillow Book invented the list-essay a millennium before the internet.

Wrote the world's first psychological novel, a thousand years ago.

Measured Earth's radius to within 1% and wrote the first comparative anthropology of India.

Wrote the medical textbook that trained Europe's doctors until 1650.

Preserved and completed Ibn Sina's corpus.

Described the magnetic compass and deduced geological deep time.

Solved cubics geometrically, reformed the calendar, wrote the Rubaiyat.

Reoriented Islamic thought toward inwardness and challenged the philosophers on their own ground.

Abbess, composer, and author of the first known European medical texts by a woman.

His Aristotle commentaries restarted European philosophy.

Guide for the Perplexed reconciled reason and revelation for Judaism.

Sufi poet whose Masnavi is among the best-selling poetry on Earth today.

Fused Aristotle with Christianity; natural-law theory still shapes law and ethics.

Made a dialect into a nation's language and mapped the moral universe.

Travelled some 120,000 km across the medieval world and wrote the Rihla.

Persia's beloved lyric poet; his divan is still consulted as an oracle.

Founded sociology and economic history with the Muqaddimah.

Made English a literary language with The Canterbury Tales.

Commissioned Hangul, the alphabet that made Korea literate.