Western sahara: Did you mean...?

The Wolof (aka Jolof or Djolof) Empire was a state on the coast of West Africa, located between the Senegal and Gambia rivers, which thrived from the mid-14th to mid-16th century CE. The empire prospered on trade thanks to the two rivers...

The Roman Empire, at its height (c. 117), was the most extensive political and social structure in western civilization. Building upon the foundation laid by the Roman Republic, the empire became the largest and most powerful political and...

The estimated expanse of the Achaemenid Empire at its height c. 500 BCE was two million square miles. Most of this territory was conquered by Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Empire, who reigned from 559 to 530 BCE, the fourth king in...

The Western Wall in Jerusalem has been the center of Jewish learning and memory for over 2,000 years. As the only fragment of the Great Temple to survive the Roman destruction in 68 CE, the wall is omnipresent in the historical Jewish consciousness...

Germanic influence reigned in the Roman Empire from the end of the 4th century CE through the 5th. Germanic individuals took important posts in the government and the military, and Germanic tribes penetrated ever further into lands that had...

Romani is an umbrella term used to describe a diverse ethnolinguistic group of people with a historical presence in Europe and West Asia. The historically common term 'Gypsy' is based on the myth that they came from Egypt. In reality, the...

A map indicating the major trans-Saharan trade routes across West Africa c. 1100-1500 CE. The darker yellow areas indicate gold fields.

This map illustrates North and Sub-Saharan Africa during the 16th century, as described by Johannes Leo Africanus (born al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi, c. 1494–c. 1554) in his 1526 book Cosmographia et Geographia de Africa. This...

A modern camel caravan in Morocco.

A trans-Saharan camel caravan carrying salt. Agadez to Bilma, Niger.