Manichaean painting (Turfan, western China, ca. 900s AD) - Who were the Manichaeans? The prophet Mani in the Sassanian Empire In the 300s and 400s AD many Christians turned to believing in [...]
Wheat and barley on the Warka Vase (Sumeria, ca. 3200-3000 BC) Why celebrate spring? When people moved out of Africa further north to West Asia and then to Europe, about 60,000 BC, they began to [...]
Castle of Edessa After the First Crusade After the First Crusade in 1096 AD set up Christian kingdoms all along the coast of Israel and Lebanon, of course the Fatimid caliphs who had ruled that area before [...]
Map of the Arabian peninsula Where is the Arabian Peninsula? The Arabian Peninsula is part of West Asia that sticks out to the south. It's only separated from Africa by the narrow Red Sea. And [...]
Pseudo-Apuleius, Herbarium (about 600 AD, now in Leiden) Papyrus came first Scribes carved the first writing on wet clay tablets, but soon after that, about 3000 BC, the Egyptians invented papyrus. By about 500 [...]
Ghaznavids: A minaret in Ghazni (Afghanistan), from about 1000 AD Abbasid soldiers Beginning in the 850s AD, the Abbasid caliphs of the Islamic Empire were looking for soldiers they would be able to trust, who [...]
Islamic government: The Umayyad caliph Muawiyah Caliphs and viziers From the beginning, the Islamic Empire was a monarchy like the Roman Empire or the Sassanian Empire before it. One man ruled the Islamic Empire. [...]
Medieval Islamic games: Muslims playing chess in Spain Chess from India The big new game of the Islamic Empire was chess. The Arabs learned to play chess from the Sassanians when [...]
Bedouin tents today in the Arabian peninsula: Islamic environment Early medieval environment We can divide the environmental history of the medieval Islamic Empire into three different phases. The early phase, [...]
Dome of the Rock mosque, Jerusalem People didn't build a lot of new buildings during the Umayyad period. They were busy getting organized after the Islamic conquests, and the Umayyad dynasty didn't [...]
