Nubian archers in the Middle Kingdom (from the Nubian museum in Aswan, Egypt). About 2000 BC. What is a mercenary soldier? Mercenaries (MURR-sinn-air-eez) are paid volunteer soldiers: they are soldiers [...]
Flowers and Diwali lamps - the Diwali festival What does "Diwali" mean? Diwali is a Sanskrit word originally meaning "a row of lights". "Dipa" is the Sanskrit word for "light". Diwali [...]
Guru Nanak Dev How did Sikhs get started? Just before 1500 AD, a man called Nanak who lived in India had a vision where he saw that there was no caste, there was no Hindu or Buddhist or Muslim, [...]
Mughal religion: the Taj Mahal New religions reach India In the 1500s and 1600s AD, many Europeans and West Asians tried to force other people to believe in their religion [...]
Partition and Indian religion: Gandhi as a Hindu Hinduism in India After the collapse of the Mughal Empire about 1700 AD, the power of Hinduism increased as the Maratha Empire took over most of India. [...]
Nader Shah The decline of the Mughal empire in the early 1700s resulted in India splitting up into a lot of smaller countries. In the north, Afghanistan tried to set itself up as an [...]
Taj Mahal, the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal When the Mughal emperor Jahangir died in 1627, his third son, Shah Jahan, became the new emperor. He immediately imprisoned his stepmother Nur Jahan so he could [...]
Modern India: Jawaharlal Nehru in his famous Nehru hat Who ruled India and Pakistan after independence? India became independent in 1946. Jawaharlal Nehru, the son of a powerful Congress leader, was [...]
Indian National Congress (1885) with Gandhi in it Indian National Congress By the 1880s, India was becoming a very poor country. That was because the British government made all their choices [...]
Dost Mohammed Khan In 1834 AD Dost Mohammed Kahn pushed aside Ahmed Shah Durrani's grandson to become the ruler of Afghanistan. He found himself caught ruling a small, poor country [...]
