Meet the ancestors in medieval who's who of Scotland

• Benjamin West's painting The Fury of the Stag depicts an event of 1263 when King Alexander III was almost killed

The details of thousands of medieval figures are being published online in a unique database of the country's inhabitants in the central middle ages.

The archive contains information on everyone mentioned in more than 6,000 documents from Scotland between 1093 and 1286.

University of Glasgow researchers said it was the most comprehensive database of any European kingdom's inhabitants at that time. It contains information on 15,221 people at a time when Scotland's population was about half a million.

The database shows not only who they were, but gives an insight into how they related to each other as individuals, as different parts of society and as Gaels and non-Gaels and academics insist it will be a useful tool for scholars.

Professor Dauvit Broun, principal investigator at the University of Glasgow, said: "The database will allow scholars across the world, as well as anyone with an interest in Scottish history, to study the people of a medieval kingdom in unprecedented detail.

"The project focuses on the 12th and 13th centuries as this is the period when 'Scotland' and 'Scots' first began to mean what it does today. By the end of this period it seems to have been taken for granted by the king's subjects that the kingdom consisted of a single country whose inhabitants were a single people. But this contrasts with the be-ginning of this period when the king was thought of as ruling a number of regions and peoples."

Professor Broun said it was a "fascinating" period to study as Scotland and Scots came to be radically redefined.

• Background: Life in Middle Ages not as bad as popularly portrayed

He said this could not be explained simply by the deeds of powerful men and that the people also helped created a new identity for themselves. He said: "The paradox is that, at the same time, Scotland was becoming more English, with government, church, economy, law, language and culture, it became much closer to England than before.

"However, the result was not simply an extension of England in the north. Instead, this new identity was connected umbilically to a self-conscious awareness of Scotland's status as an independent kingdom."

The database is titled The Paradox of Medieval Scotland, 1093-1286, and has been produced by the Glasgow-led Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project.

Dr Chris Brown, a medieval historian and author of Battle of Bannockburn said: "I think this will be a fantastic resource for people interested in this period. I certainly wish it had been available when I was researching my PhD.Looking at wills, court documents, land transactions will allow us to see how people develop."

Alistair Moffat, the historian and author of The Faded Map: The Story of the Lost Kingdoms of Scotland, said it was a worthwhile enterprise but would focus on the top of society.

He said: "The people they mention, the 15,000, were almost exclusively an elite, the very top tier of society, aristocrats mostly. In that list of names, there will be very few who could be called Jock Tamson's Bairns. Ordinary Scots are rarely mentioned in any kind of source from the medieval period."

ROYAL LINE

1093: Death of Malcolm III during his invasion of Northumbria. Also death of Queen Margaret, later Saint Margaret, from grief.

1130-40: Construction of St Margaret's Chapel, oldest surviving structure in Edinburgh Castle.

1136: Foundation of Melrose Abbey.

1138: The Battle of the Standard, a spectacular defeat for King David I.

1165: William the Lion becomes king.

1264: The Melrose Chronicle records the birth of Alexander III: "In this year upon the day of St Agnes (21 January) the queen of Scotland gave birth to a son."

1286: The death of Alexander III