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The Sasanid Empire was the last pre-Islamic Persian Empire, ruled by the Sasanian Dynasty The Empire was founded by Ardashir I, after the fall of the Arsacids and the defeat of the last Arsacid king, Artabanus IV.
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According to the Mesoamerican chronology, many Maya cities reached their highest state of development during the Classic period, and continued throughout the Post-Classic period until the arrival of the Spanish.
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Ancient Ghana encompassed what is now modern Northern Senegal and Southern Mauritania.It is thought that a number of clans of the Soninke people came together under a leader with semi-divine status, called Dinga Cisse.
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Constantinople was the capital of the Byzantine Empire and when the Turks took over, it became Istanbul.
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The Byzantine Empire was centered on the capital of Constantinople and was ruled by emperors in direct succession to the ancient Roman emperors after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.
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Islam is a monotheistic religion based on the holy text known as the Qur'an (a text considered by it's follwers to be the literal word of Allah.
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The split between Sunni and Shit'ite started with a fight over who should lead the faithful after the prophet Muhammad's death in 632. One side believed that direct descendants of the prophet should take up the mantle of the caliph. The other side, the Sunnis, thought that any worthy man could lead the faithful, regardless of lineage, and favored Abu Bakr.
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The Umayyad Caliphate was the second of the four major Arab caliphates established after the death of Muhammad. Although the Umayyad family originally came from the city of Mecca, Damascus was the capital of their Caliphate.
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During an eight-year campaign most of the Iberian Peninsula was brought under Islamic rule. This territory, under the Arab name Al-Andalus, became first an Emirate and then an independent Umayyad Caliphate, the Caliphate of Córdoba, after the overthrowing of the dynasty in Damascus by the Abbasids
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was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe.
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The Abbasid Caliphate was the third of the Islamic caliphates. It was ruled by the Abbasid dynasty of caliphs, who built their capital in Baghdad after overthrowing the Umayyad caliphs from all but the Al Andalus region.
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After arriving in Asia, the Turks adopted the Persian culture and language, and established a government known as the Seljuk Dynasty.
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The Franks of France and the Holy Roman Empire waged a series of religiously sanctioned militarty campaigns to restore Christian control of the Holy Land.
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Saladin was a Muslim, who became the Ayyubid Sultan of Egypt and Syria. He led the Muslims against the Crusaders and eventually recaptured Palestine from the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem after his victory in the Battle of Hattin.
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In 1340, the Songhai took advantage of the Mali Empire's decline and successfully asserted its independence. A civil war weakened the empire after the death of Emperor Askia Daoud.
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Mongol conquests took place around the 13th century and covered much of Asia and Eastern Europe. Mongols continued to spread throughout further centuries, but remained in Asia and Eastern Europe for the 13th century.
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Genghis Khan was the founder and emperor of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death. He started the Mongol invasions that would ultimately result in the conquest of most of Eurasia.
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Delhi Sultanate is a term used to cover five short-lived Islamic kingdoms or sultanates of Turkic origin in medieval India, which ruled from Delhi between 1206 and 1526.
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The Magna Carta is an English charter that includes the most direct challenges to the monarch's authority. It required that King John to proclaim certain liberties, and accept that his will was not arbitrary, for example by explicitly accepting that no "freeman" could be punished except through the law of the land, a right which is still in existence today.
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The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries.
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A Mamluk was a soldier of slave origin. Over time, mamluks became a powerful military caste in various Muslim societies. Particularly in Egypt, but also in the Levant, Iraq, and India, mamluks held political and military power. In some cases, they attained the rank of sultan, while in others they held regional power as amirs or beys. Most notably, mamluk factions seized the sultanate for themselves in Egypt and Syria in a period known as the Mamluk Sultanate.
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Mansa Musa is a famous ruler most well-known for his indulgent hajj to Mecca with a lot of gold. Mali was strengthened by Mansa Musa in ways of education, trade, and commerce.
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Timur was a conqueror of Western, South and Central Asia, founder of the Timurid Empire and Timurid dynasty. He sought to restore the Mongol Empire, yet his heaviest blow was against the Islamized Tatar Golden Horde.
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The Hundred Years War was a series of wars waged from 1337 to 1453 by the House of Valois and the House of Plantagenet for the French throne, which had become vacant upon the extinction of the senior Capetian line of French kings.
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The Ming Empire is a Chinese dynasty following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty and was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic Hans.
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Zheng He was a Hui-Chinese mariner, explorer, diplomat and fleet admiral, who commanded voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and East Africa, collectively referred to as the "Voyages of Zheng He"
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The Renaissance is a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Florence in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism and human emotion in art.
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The Inca civilization has barely 1000 years of history, since the point of birth as a simple Inca Tribe on the heart of the Andes. The Incas expansion started with Pachacutec Inca Yupanqui, he was the ninth Inca ruler. He expands the Inca empire to the north, up to Ecuador and Colombia; and to the south until Chile, Bolivia and Argentina.
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A device operated by applying pressure toand inked surface to transfer the ink on to paper in the form of text. It was a very relolutionary invention.
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Ivan III was a Grand Prince of Moscow. Sometimes referred to as the "gatherer of the Russian lands", he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde over the Rus, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. He was one of the longest-reigning Russian rulers in history.
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The Holy Roman Empire existed in Central Europe for about a millenium.The multiethnic Empire's territorial extent varied over its history, but at its peak it encompassed the Kingdom of Germany, the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Burgundy.
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The Sui Empire was an ephemeral Imperial Chinese dynasty founded by Emperor Wen of Sui, the Sui Dynasty capital was at Luoyang. His reign saw the reunification of Southern and Northern China and the construction of the Grand Canal.
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Tang Empire founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire. The dynasty was interrupted briefly by the Second Zhou Dynasty when Empress Wu Zetian seized the throne,
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The Song Empire is a Chinese dynasty that was divided into two distinct periods: the Northern Song and Southern Song. During the Northern Song, the Song capital was in the northern city of Bianjing and the dynasty controlled most of inner China. The Southern Song refers to the period after the Song lost control of northern China to the Jin Dynasty.
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Mali was founded under the leadership of King Sundiata. Under his rule, the Mali Empire extended its territories very fast. After the death of Sundiata, Mansa Musa was the next great ruler who contributed to the meteoric rise of the ancient Mali Empire.
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Kievan Russia was a named used to identify the Medieval state of Russia. East Slavic Tribes and Scandinavian warriors were the original founders. Rus' polity is widely considered an early predecessor of three modern East Slavic nations: Belarusians, Russians and Ukrainians.