Central Africa: Did you mean...?

Cochin, located on the southwest coast of India, was a Portuguese colony from 1503 to 1663. Known to the Portuguese as Cochim, it was one of several important cities on India’s Malabar Coast and a great trade centre for spices...

The Umayyad Dynasty (661-750 CE), the first dynasty to take the title of Caliphate, was established in 661 CE by Muawiya (l. c. 602-680 CE), who had served as the governor of Syria under the Rashidun Caliphate, after the death...

The caravel (caravela in Spanish and Portuguese), was a type of medium-sized ship which, with its low draught and lateen or triangular sails, made it ideal for exploration from the 15th century onwards. Fast, manoeuvrable, and only needing...

The qanat (called foggara in North Africa and the Levant, falaj in the United Arab Emirates and Oman, kariz in Iran, and puquios in Peru) is an ancient Middle Eastern irrigation technique in which a long tunnel is dug into arid land that...

Flavius Belisarius (l. 505-565 CE) was born in Illyria (the western part of the Balkan Peninsula) to poor parents and rose to become one of the greatest generals, if not the greatest, of the Byzantine Empire. Belisarius is listed...

Egypt is a country in North Africa, on the Mediterranean Sea, and is home to one of the oldest civilizations on Earth. The name "Egypt" comes from the Greek Aegyptos, which was the Greek pronunciation...

Parthian art flourished within the Eurasian cultural corridor from the late hundreds BCE to the early 1st and 2nd centuries CE. With the Parthian Empire (247 BCE - 224 CE) stretching from India and China in the east to the Mediterranean...

The European colonization of the Americas was the process by which European settlers populated the regions of North, Central, South America, and the islands of the Caribbean. It is also recognized as the direct...

Did you know that salt was literally worth its weight in gold in ancient West Africa? This video is all about the lucrative trade of salt in West African history. Salt from the Sahara desert was one of...

The Polish-Lithuanian Republic (1569-1795) was one of the largest and most populous states in Early Modern Europe, yet in 1795, its last remnants were partitioned between Austria, Prussia, and Russia. Here we take...