The arabian nights: Did you mean...?

The Mauryan Empire (322 BCE - 185 BCE) supplanted the earlier Magadha Kingdom to assume power over large tracts of eastern and northern India. At its height, the empire stretched over parts of modern Iran and almost the entire Indian subcontinent...

Alexandria is a port city on the Mediterranean Sea in northern Egypt founded in 331 BCE by Alexander the Great. It was the site of the Pharos (lighthouse), one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and the legendary Library of Alexandria...

According to biblical tradition (and some say myth), King Solomon was the third and last king in the ancient United Kingdom of Israel. Other faiths, such as Islam and Rastafarianism, also embrace the notion of Solomon as a sagacious king...

The Gupta Empire stretched across northern, central and parts of southern India between c. 320 and 550 CE. The period is noted for its achievements in the arts, architecture, sciences, religion, and philosophy. Chandragupta I (320 – 335 CE...

Vasco da Gama (c. 1469-1524) was a Portuguese navigator who, in 1497-9, sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa and arrived at Calicut (now Kozhikode) on the south-west coast of India. This was the first direct voyage from...

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...

Fatimah (born between 605 and 615 CE, died sometime in 632 CE; date of death is disputed) was the youngest daughter of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad (l. 570-632 CE) and his first wife Khadija (l. 555-619 CE). Taking up after her father, Fatimah...

The Paris Peace Conference, held from January 1919 to January 1920 and attended by the victorious Allied powers, debated and agreed the terms of the peace settlement that formally ended the First World War (1914-18). As four empires were...

Mount Sinai (Hebrew: Har Sinay, Arabic: Jabal Musa, "mountain of Moses") is a holy site for the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. It has traditionally been located in the center of the Sinai Peninsula, between Africa...

Piracy, defined as the act of attacking and robbing a ship or port by sea, had a long history in the ancient Mediterranean stretching from the time of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten (r. 1353-1336 BCE) and throughout the Middle Ages (c. 476-1500...