Muslims never gave "sajda" (bending with their head down on ground) in front of their kings/shah. At most they bend a little while standing.
Christians were not banned form entering the Islamic world, so Robert didn't have to pretend that he was a Jew in order to get in the city.
Intolerance by Christian priests is a major theme in the early part of the film. But it happens before 1066, when the priesthood was Saxon and relatively tolerant.
Last years of Ibn Sina (Avicenna) were spent in the service of the Kakuyid ruler Muhammad ibn Rustam Dushmanziyar, also known by his surname Ala al-Dawla Muhammad. Muhammad was not defeated by Seljuq forces, but began constructing instead massive defensive walls around Isfahan which later saved it from these Turkmen nomads who sacked and plundered some places in west and central Iran in 1038/39, including the city of Hamadan.
It is assumed that human dissection was forbidden by the Shareeah in the middle age, so both Ibn Sina and Rob Cole are sentenced to death by an Islamic court. In fact, systematic dissections of the human body were performed neither in Islam nor in England not only due to religious prohibitions, but also because they were considered unnecessary, although they would be done occasionally. Today, dissecting humans is allowed in Islam and in Christian lands under certain circumstances.
In the final scene on the battlefield when Isfahan is attacked by the Sentjoeks, one of the actors who plays a dead soldier takes a very quick look at the Shah just before the camera stops to focus on him.
Rob is shown cutting ice from a block to place on Rebecca's head. There is no location from where the ice could have come that would have been easily available to the population (if at all). It would have taken a tremendous amount of ice, well insulated, in order to have survived any proposed journey from a snow covered mountain anywhere in the region. While there are snow covered mountains in the region (depending on time of year and geography), a solid ice block as depicted in the movie would have needed to be pulled from a glacier (or frozen lake/stream) which do not exist in the region.
Sailing to Cairo and then crossing to Iran via a caravan would not be an efficient itinerary. Robert should have sailed further East, to a port in modern-day Syria, Lebanon or Israel.
On TV, the title in Portuguese was incorrectly translated into "O Físico" (The Physicist), while it should have been "O Médico".
Rebecca tells a sick girl the story of Aladdin from what seems to be a pocket version of the 1001 Nights. She added that Sinbad was her favorite tale from the book. Besides it being improbable that such a book format existed then, "Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp", "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" and "The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor", while almost certainly genuine Middle Eastern folk tales, were not part of The 1001 Nights in Arabic versions, but were added into the collection by Antoine Galland and other European translators in the 17th century.
Isfahan is supposedly attacked by Seljuq (not to be confused with Seleucids) forces under the command of Tugrul Bey in the final days of Ibn Sina, 1037. But that year, Bey sacked Ghazni instead, some 1575 Kilometers away. Seljuk empire did not conquer Isfahan and made it its capital until 1051.
The main character, an Englishman born in the early 11th century, is named Robert Cole. But names like 'Robert' which are of French origin really came to be used in England only after 1066 i.e. the year of the conquest of England by the Normans. Until then, parents chose Anglo-Saxon names for their boys like Wybert, Alfred, Edgar and Harold.
The Farsi (Persian language) being spoken by the commoners and extras throughout the movie is modern day *Hebrew*, which wasn't spoken by Jews or Persians and has only been revived as the language of Jewish people in Israel beginning the late 1800s.
A few times the Barber and Rob get called out for doing witchcraft or black magic, and Barber also warns Rob against dissection because the Church burns necromancers at the stake.
Those concepts didn't exist yet in Europe (the film opens in 1021). Around this time the Catholic church fought against what it called superstitions, caused both by remnants of pre-Christian belief and the ignorance of the masses regarding proper religion. These beliefs involved people thinking they could use amulets or incantations to bind the forces of nature created by God to do their will, rather than the proper way of asking God (or more correctly, asking a priest to speak to God). The Devil wasn't involved in this.
A little later in the 1000s and 1100s, Christians started developing the notion of diabolic magic, or black magic, now believing that the actions of charms or spells called on demons. Conceptions of necromancy became popular among learned magicians in the 12th century, while full-fledged beliefs in witchcraft--in which a person undertakes a pact with the Devil (sometimes without their knowledge) to do the Devil's work in the world--did not emerge until late in the Middle Ages.
The Church also was not allowed to carry out corporal punishments of suspected magicians or witches. They had to turn suspects over to civil authorities to carry out those punishments, and burnings were relatively rare.
Those concepts didn't exist yet in Europe (the film opens in 1021). Around this time the Catholic church fought against what it called superstitions, caused both by remnants of pre-Christian belief and the ignorance of the masses regarding proper religion. These beliefs involved people thinking they could use amulets or incantations to bind the forces of nature created by God to do their will, rather than the proper way of asking God (or more correctly, asking a priest to speak to God). The Devil wasn't involved in this.
A little later in the 1000s and 1100s, Christians started developing the notion of diabolic magic, or black magic, now believing that the actions of charms or spells called on demons. Conceptions of necromancy became popular among learned magicians in the 12th century, while full-fledged beliefs in witchcraft--in which a person undertakes a pact with the Devil (sometimes without their knowledge) to do the Devil's work in the world--did not emerge until late in the Middle Ages.
The Church also was not allowed to carry out corporal punishments of suspected magicians or witches. They had to turn suspects over to civil authorities to carry out those punishments, and burnings were relatively rare.
When Rob Cole is approaching Dover and the camera pans the coastal scenery from the sea looking inland, a range of high mountains is seen behind the Cliffs of Dover. No such mountains or high hills are present. Further, the iconic "White Cliffs" are depicted as grey and dark rock rather than as the white chalk from which they are actually composed .
Robert likely only knows English, and it is not likely he would be encountering so many English-speakers in the Near and Middle East.