Islamic conquests: Did you mean...?

Assyria began as a small trading community centered at the ancient city of Ashur and grew to become the greatest empire in the ancient world prior to the conquests of Alexander the Great and, after him, the Roman Empire. While the Assyrians'...

Osman I, also known as Osman Gazi (c. 1258 - c. 1323 CE), was the founder and first Sultan of the Ottoman Beylik, which would rise to eventually become the Ottoman Empire. He was the ruler of a small Turkic principality among many in the...

Khosrow II (aka Kosrau II, r. 590-628) was the last powerful shahanshah (king of kings) of the Sassanian Empire. Grandson of Kosrau I (r. 531-579) and near-conqueror of the Byzantine Empire in the Byzantine-Sassanian War of 602-628, Khosrow...

Rose-and-nightingale paintings and patterns (gul-u-bulbul) are a subtheme of the bird-flower (gul-u-morḡ) genre in Persian art. Bird-and-flower paintings are of Chinese origin and include pictorial elements such as flowers and plants, birds...

Mauretania was an ancient kingdom in northwest Africa, encompassing regions of modern-day Morocco and Algeria. Although it shares a name with the modern country of Mauritania, they do not overlap. Ancient Mauretania was named after the Mauri...

The Estado da India (1505-1961) was the name the Portuguese gave to that part of their empire which stretched from India to East Asia. However, in its widest sense, the name includes all Portuguese colonies east of the Cape of Good Hope and...

The Merovingian Dynasty was the ruling family of the Franks from roughly 481 when Clovis I ascended the throne of the Salian Franks until 751 when Childeric III was deposed and the Merovingians were supplanted by the Carolingian Dynasty as...

Bimbisara (c. 545/544 BCE - c. 493/492 BCE) was a king of the Magadha Kingdom who is credited with establishing imperial dominance in the Indian subcontinent. Son of a minor king called Bhattiya, he belonged to the Haryanka Dynasty, which...

The Gauda Kingdom came into being in the late 6th century CE in eastern India, as a result of the political disintegration of the Gupta Empire (3rd-6th century CE). Its core areas were situated in what is now the state of Bengal in India...

Sargon II (r. 722-705 BCE) was one of the most important kings of the Neo-Assyrian Empire as founder of the Sargonid Dynasty which would rule the empire for the next century until its fall. He was a great military leader, tactician, patron...