Cairo: Did you mean...?

Hatshepsut, whose name means "Foremost of Noble Women" or "First Among Noble Women" (royal name, Ma'at-ka-re, translated as "spirit of harmony and truth") was the fifth ruler of the 18th Dynasty (r. 1479-1458 BCE). She was the daughter of...

Following the conquest of North Africa by Muslim Arabs in the 7th century CE, Islam spread throughout West Africa via merchants, traders, scholars, and missionaries, that is largely through peaceful means whereby African rulers either tolerated...

The camel caravans which crossed the great dunes of the Sahara desert began in antiquity but reached their golden period from the 9th century CE onwards. In their heyday caravans consisted of thousands of camels travelling from North Africa...

The Suez Canal in Egypt, which links the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, was taken over by the British in 1882 and was only reluctantly released 75 years later. The seizure in the 19th century caused an international furore every bit as damaging...

The siege of Khartoum from March 1884 to January 1885 was the most dramatic episode of the Mahdist War (1881-99) in Sudan when an army led by the inspirational Muslim leader, Muhammad Ahmad, the self-proclaimed Mahdi, rebelled against colonial...

The Siege of Acre in 1291 CE was the final fatal blow to Christian Crusader ambitions in the Holy Land. Acre had always been the most important Christian-held port in the Levant, but when it finally fell on 18 May 1291 CE to the armies of...

The Graf Zeppelin was the most successful of all Zeppelin airships, making several hundred trips across the Atlantic between Europe and the Americas. In 1929, a new age of air travel dawned when the Graf Zeppelin flew around the world in...

Before Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamun's tomb, he began his career as a 17-year-old artist on an excavation in Egypt. His skills were soon recognized, and he quickly rose to be an excavator and later chief inspector for Luxor. Because...

The First World War (1914-18) stimulated a great wave of literary output, not least in the field of poetry. In an era when photography and film were still in their infancy, poems, especially those written by direct participants, were regularly...

Pepper has long been the king of spices and for almost 2,000 years dominated world trade. Originating in India, it was known in Greece by the 4th century BCE and was an integral part of the Roman diet by 30 BCE. It remained a force in Europe...