Damascus: Did you mean...?

The Crusades were a series of military campaigns organised by popes and Christian western powers to take Jerusalem and the Holy Land back from Muslim control and then defend those gains. There were eight major official crusades between 1095...

The Third Crusade (1189-1192 CE) was launched to retake Jerusalem after its fall to the Muslim leader Saladin in 1187 CE. The Crusade was led by three European monarchs, hence its other name of 'the Kings' Crusade'. The three leaders were...

Ptolemy XV Caesar “Theos Philopator Philometor” (“the Father-loving Mother-loving God”) (c. 47-30 BCE), better known by his unofficial nickname Caesarion or “Little Caesar” in Greek, was the oldest son of Cleopatra VII (69-30 BCE) and was...

The Essenes were a Jewish sect that emerged in the 2nd century BCE and established the community at Qumran. They emphasized ritual purity, copied books of the Jewish Scriptures, and wrote commentaries on the Books of the Prophets. They believed...

The German Crusade of 1197 CE, also known as the 'Emperor's Crusade', was led by the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI (r. 1191-1197 CE). Although the emperor died on his way east, his army did capture Beirut from the forces of the Ayyubid dynasty...

Gezer is an ancient city and archaeological site located in central Israel where the central mountains meet the northern Shephelah, about 10 km southeast of the city of Ramleh. According to the Hebrew Bible, Gezer was one of the great cities...

The journeys of Paul the Apostle, as the New Testament relates in the Book of Acts, started with his conversion experience on the way to Damascus, after which instead of seeking to thwart the growing Christian movement, he helped spread it...

Antisemitism is a modern term that describes prejudice and hostility to Jews and Judaism. The term is derived from the later social scientific categorization of the subfamily of the Afro-Asiatic languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and Amharic...

Baalbek is an ancient Phoenician city located in what is now modern-day Lebanon, in the northern part of the Beqaa Valley, a fertile area with plentiful springs. First settled at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BCE, Baalbek was an essential...

A gold dinar of Abd al-Malik (r. 685-705 CE) minted in Damascus in 697/98 CE. Abd al-Malik introduced an independent Islamic currency in 693 CE, which initially bore depictions of the caliph before being abandoned for coins solely containing...