Shah Mosque, Ishfahan, Iran (1611-38) West Asia was divided into two big empires in the 1500s AD - the Ottoman Empire and the Safavid Empire. Both the Ottomans and the Safavids followed Islam, but they followed two different kinds of [...]
Building at Gobekli Tepe (ca. 9000 BC) People have started a lot of different religions. Some of them are still practiced today; others are not. It is hard even to [...]
In the lifetime of the Prophet Mohammed, and for some years afterwards, Islam was a united faith. But by the 650s AD, Islam split into two main sects. They fought bitterly with each other. These two [...]
Tomb of Ali, the first Imam and the fourth caliph, in Iraq (it was rebuilt about 1500 AD by the Safavids) Mohammed died in 632 AD. His second wife's father, a rich [...]
Saladin Saladin started the Ayyubids When the First Crusade defeated the Fatimid Caliphs and captured Jerusalem in 1099 AD, people were very upset. People in Egypt and Syria gradually decided that the Fatimids were too weak to [...]
Minaret at Samarra, 847 AD The Abbasids built Baghdad When the Abbasid dynasty moved the capital of the Islamic Empire to Baghdad from Damascus in 762 AD, of course they needed a lot of [...]
Bamiyan Buddhas (Afghanistan, ca. 500 AD, now destroyed by the Taliban) - Central Asian religion Many different religions Central Asia's wide steppe is very easy to ride horses or camels [...]
