Mansa Musa: Did you mean...?

The Djinguereber Mosque, Timbuktu, Mali. The mosque, made from pounded earth and wood, was built during the reign of Mansa Musa (1312-1337 CE), ruler of the Mali Empire. Photo credit: UN Photo/Marco Dormino

Caliphate (“Khilafat” in Arabic) was a semi-religious political system of governance in Islam, in which the territories of the Islamic empire in the Middle East and North Africa and the people within were ruled by a supreme...

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (also given as Jalal ad-did Muhammad Balkhi, best known as Rumi, l. 1207-1273 CE) was a Persian Islamic theologian and scholar but became famous as a mystical poet whose work focuses on the opportunity for a...

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) was an Italian poet, writer, and scholar. His most famous and influential work is the Decameron, completed by 1353, in which his ten characters present 100 tales of everyday life. The book covers...

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...

The First Agricultural Revolution, beginning c. 12-20,000 years ago, was characterized by the emergence of different agricultural systems in different parts of the world, whose common trait was the use of native species...

An 11-12th century fresco of Saint Bacchus (d. 4th century). Monastery of Saint Moses the Abyssinian, Mar Musa or Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi, Nabk, Syria.

Did you know that the Ghana king would automatically keep any gold nugget extracted that weighed between 25 grams and half a kilo? This video is all about the lucrative gold trade of ancient and medieval...

The Black Death is the name given to the plague outbreak in Europe between 1347-1352 CE. The term was only coined after 1800 CE in reference to the black buboes (growths) which erupted in the groin, armpit...

The sunbaked plain of the Alentejo region in central Portugal is called planicie dourada (golden plain) by the Portuguese, and it is dotted with cork oak forests, vineyards, olive groves...