A plate from the Fatimid period (1000s AD), Egypt Some Islamic rulers bought or captured young Turkish, Mongol, Kurdish and Christian boys. The rulers took these boys away from their families to be special slaves. [...]
Medieval Islamic people: A plate from the Fatimid period (1000s AD), Egypt Children in the medieval Islamic world Children in the Islamic Empire generally did what their parents did (as many [...]
Medieval Islamic families: The Birth of Mohammed (Iran, about 1315 AD, now in Edinburgh) Did men have four wives? According to the Quran, Muslim men could have as many as four wives if they were [...]
Dancing woman from Mohenjo Daro, in what is now Pakistan Slavery in ancient India There were probably always slaves in India, but until about 1000 AD there were only a few people who were enslaved, [...]
Indian people partying: members of a high caste Why is caste important? Castes were the central feature of people's identities in ancient India. Beginning soon after the Yamnaya arrived in India, about 1500 [...]
Duryodhana (Cambodia, ca. 900s AD) - friendship in ancient India Friendship between men We don't know very much about friendships among poor people in ancient India, or among women. But [...]
Put the slips of paper in a jar To see how caste worked in ancient India, try dividing your class or your family into castes. Take a box or a [...]
Ancient Greek people: boys playingknucklebones (ca. 440-430 BC, now in the Getty Museum, Los Angeles) Like other Indo-European people, the Greeks had a general tendency to divide the world into [...]
Egyptian women spinning and weaving (Model from the Tomb of Meket-re in Luxor, 11th dynasty (ca. 2000 BC), now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo) Like other Africans, Egyptian people had [...]
An Egyptian family: Nefertiti, Akhenaten, and their daughters A typical Egyptian family Most Egyptians lived in families with a mother and a father and children, just as many people do [...]
