← Fame through time1100-1199
The 12th century
Whose working lives fell in the 12th century. Books are measured from 1800 and readers from 2015, so for this period we can say who lived then, not who was talked about then.
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 12th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Averroes22 decades - 2
Zhu Xi8 decades - 3
Chrétien de Troyes21 decades - 4
Abdul Qadir Gilani0 decades - 5
Geoffrey of Monmouth22 decades - 6
Anna Komnene1 decades - 7
Nizami Ganjavi0 decades - 8
Marie de Francenot measured- - 9
Saxo Grammaticus22 decades - 10
Attar of Nishapur0 decades - 11
Sancho I of Portugal0 decades - 12
Abraham ibn Ezra0 decades - 13
Alfonso II of Aragon0 decades - 14
William IX, Duke of Aquitainenot measured- - 15
Yue Fei3 decades - 16
Lu You8 decades - 17
Suger22 decades - 18
Hartmann von Aue22 decades - 19
Ahmad Yasawi0 decades - 20
William of Malmesbury22 decades - 21
Li Qingzhao8 decades - 22
Al-Nasir0 decades - 23
Gerard of Cremona10 decades - 24
Orderic Vitalis5 decades - 25
Niketas Choniates1 decades
How to read these rankings
- Attention, not reputation. A place on these lists reflects the attention a person still draws in the public record. It is not a judgement on the life.
- Fame in print. The curves show how often a name appeared in the books of each decade from 1800 to 2019, drawn from the Google Books Ngram corpus.
- Gaps are left as gaps. Where the record is too thin to be fair, we would rather show nothing than guess.