Cairo: Did you mean...?

Join World History Encyclopedia as they sit down with Dr. Bob Brier to chat all about his new book Tutankhamun and the Tomb That Changed the World, published by Oxford University Press. Kelly: Welcome. Thank you so much for joining me today...

Under the Seljuk rule, Persia gained a period of economic and cultural prosperity. The innovative techniques of the Seljuk period and style in architecture and the arts had a strong influence on later artistic developments. Seljuk art is...

The Seventh Crusade (1248-1254 CE) was led by the French king Louis IX (r. 1226-1270 CE) who intended to conquer Egypt and take over Jerusalem, both then controlled by the Muslim Ayyubid Dynasty. Despite the initial success of capturing Damietta...

The Fifth Crusade (1217-1221 CE) was called by Pope Innocent III (r. 1198-1216 CE) with the objective, like previous crusades, of recapturing Jerusalem from Muslim control; only this time the strategy was to weaken the enemy by first attacking...

Giza is a plateau southwest of modern Cairo which served as the necropolis for the royalty of the Old Kingdom of Egypt. Most famous for the pyramids of Khufu (completed c. 2560 BCE) Khafre (c. 2530 BCE) and Menkaure (c. 2510 BCE) and the...

The Description of Africa is the first comprehensive book about Africa, written by Leo Africanus, an African scholar trained in the Islamic intellectual tradition, in 1526, during the Italian Renaissance. A skillful mixture of anthropology...

Shajara al-Durr (r. 1250) was the founder of the Mamluk Dynasty in Egypt, and she was the first and only woman to sit on the Islamic Egyptian throne. She held the title of sultana for only 80 days but left a lasting mark through architectural...

West Africa was one of the world's greatest producers of gold in the Middle Ages. Trade in the metal went back to antiquity but when the camel caravans of the Sahara linked North Africa to the savannah interior, the trade really took off...

Howard Carter's 1922 CE discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun was world-wide news but, following fast upon it, the story of the mummy's curse (also known as The Curse of the Pharaoh) became even more popular and continues to be in the present...

Ancient Egyptian writing is known as hieroglyphics ('sacred carvings') and developed at some point prior to the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3150 -2613 BCE). According to some scholars, the concept of the written word was first developed in...