Mamluks: Did you mean...?

The Delhi Sultanate under the Mamluk (or “Slave”) Dynasty (1206–1290) marked the consolidation of centralized Muslim rule in northern India following the fragmentation of the Ghurid Empire. The term mamlūk (Arabic: “owned” or military slave...

The Crusades were a series of military campaigns organised by popes and Christian western powers to take Jerusalem and the Holy Land back from Muslim control and then defend those gains. There were eight major official crusades between 1095...

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) was a Corsican-born French general and politician who reigned as Emperor of the French with the regnal name Napoleon I from 1804 to 1814 and then again briefly in 1815. He established the largest continental...

Saladin (1137-93) was the Muslim Sultan of Egypt and Syria (r. 1174-1193) who shocked the western world by defeating an army of the Christian Crusader states at the Battle of Hattin and then capturing Jerusalem in 1187. Saladin all but destroyed...

The Abbasids were an Arabic dynasty that initially ruled over most of the Islamic empire (save some western parts) after assuming the caliphate in 750 CE, later on, their empire fragmented, however, they retained spiritual supremacy as caliphs...

The Knights Hospitaller was a medieval Catholic military order founded in 1113 CE with the full name of 'Knights of the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem'. After their base was relocated to Rhodes in the early 14th century...

The Fifth Crusade (1217-1221 CE) was called by Pope Innocent III (r. 1198-1216 CE) with the objective, like previous crusades, of recapturing Jerusalem from Muslim control; only this time the strategy was to weaken the enemy by first attacking...

The Battle of Hattin in July 1187 CE in present-day Israel was one of the great victories of Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt and Syria (r. 1174-1193 CE). The army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and its Latin allies were totally defeated and, shortly...

The Crusader States (aka the Latin East or Outremer) were created after the First Crusade (1095-1102) in order to keep hold of the territorial gains made by Christian armies in the Middle East. The four small states were the Kingdom of Jerusalem...

The Assassins (aka Nizari Ismailis), were a heretical group of Shiite Muslims who were powerful in Persia and Syria from the 11th century CE until their defeat at the hands of the Mongols in the mid-13th century CE. Secure in their fortified...