Scipio africanus: Did you mean...?

Carthaginian warfare has been overshadowed by defeat to Rome in the Punic Wars, but for six centuries before that Carthage was remarkably successful in conquering lucrative territories in North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, and Sicily. By...

A map tracing the journeys of Leo Africanus (al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi, c. 1494 – c. 1554), a 16th-century Maghrebi diplomat, traveler, and geographer. His Description of Africa (1550) remains one of the most detailed early...

The North African Berber kingdom of Numidia (202-40 BCE) was originally inhabited by a tribe (or federation of tribes) known as the Masaesyli, to the west, and a coalition of smaller tribes, known as the Massylii, to the east. The meaning...

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...

This rose granite obelisk was found in Rome. Roman period, circa 50 CE. (State Museum of Egyptian Art, Munich, Germany).

Many scholars, without concrete evidence, believe that Leo Africanus 1485-1554 was the inspiration behind William Shakespeare’s Othello, shown here with Desdemona in an 1849 painting by Théodore Chassériau, currently in the Louvre Museum...

An early title page from The History and Description of Africa by Leo Africanus (1485-1554), first published in 1526.

Portrait of a Humanist by Sebastiano del Piombo c. 1520. The identity of the person is unknown. Dietrich Rauchenberger has suggested that the painting may depict Leo Africanus (1485-1554).

The armies of Carthage permitted the city to forge the most powerful empire in the western Mediterranean from the 6th to 3rd centuries BCE. Although by tradition a seafaring nation with a powerful navy, Carthage, by necessity, had to employ...

In ancient warfare open battles were the preferred mode of meeting the enemy, but sometimes, when defenders took a stand within their well-fortified city or military camp, siege warfare became a necessity, despite its high expense in money...