The arabian nights: Did you mean...?

The history of the alphabet started in ancient Egypt. By 2700 BCE Egyptian writing had a set of some 22 hieroglyphs to represent syllables that begin with a single consonant of their language, plus a vowel (or no vowel) to be supplied by...

The city of Anjar stands as the single Umayyad site in Lebanon, located near the Litani River and 58 km from the capital of Beirut. Anjar was founded during the Umayyad period under Caliph Walid ibn 'Abd al-Malak (r. 705-715 CE) and takes...

Odin (Old Norse: Óðinn) is the main god in Norse mythology. Described as an immensely wise, one-eyed old man, Odin has by far the most varied characteristics of any of the gods and is not only the deity to call upon when war was being prepared...

Caliphate (“Khilafat” in Arabic) was a semi-religious political system of governance in Islam, in which the territories of the Islamic empire in the Middle East and North Africa and the people within were ruled by a supreme leader called...

Physicians in ancient Rome manufactured a wide variety of pharmaceuticals used to treat health concerns. Roman medicine was highly sophisticated, and Roman medical literature describes early antiseptics, narcotics, and anti-inflammatory medicines...

Umar ibn al-Khattab (r. 634-644 CE) was the second caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate (632-661 CE, as the first four caliphs are referred to by the Sunni Muslims). He was an early convert of Islam and one of the close companions of the Islamic...

Saba (also given as Sheba) was a kingdom in southern Arabia (region of modern-day Yemen) which flourished between the 8th century BCE and 275 CE when it was conquered by the neighboring Himyarites. Although these are the most commonly accepted...

The Death of Gilgamesh is a Sumerian poem relating the death and afterlife of the famous hero-king of Uruk, who had become a legendary figure. The piece is dated to before the Ur III Period (2047-1750 BCE), and although its theme informs...

Did you know the ancient history of the UAE stretches back over 130,000 years? The country now known as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was established on 2 December 1971, but the region has a long history stretching back thousands of years...

Trade and commerce were essential components of the success and expansion of the Byzantine Empire. Trade was carried out by ship over vast distances, although for safety, most sailing vessels were restricted to the better weather conditions...