Medieval Africa: Did you mean...?

Artillery weapons in medieval Europe included the mounted crossbow (ballista) and single-arm torsion catapult (mangonel), both similar to ancient Roman machines. As armies battled further afield such as in the Byzantine...

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...

In medieval society a knight enjoyed a position of high status and often wealth, they were feared on the battlefield and known for their chivalry off it, but it took a long time and a lot of training to get there...

From 1940 to 1943, the desert of North Africa became an important theatre of the Second World War (1939-45) since it was the only place the British Empire, standing alone, could directly fight on land the Axis powers of Germany...

Leo Africanus (al-Hasan ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Wazzan al-Fasi al-Granati, 1485-1554) was a diplomat, merchant traveller and scholar who famously voyaged from Timbuktu to the Niger River and wrote 'The Description of Africa' (La...

Trade and commerce in the medieval world developed to such an extent that even relatively small communities had access to weekly markets and, perhaps a day's travel away, larger but less frequent fairs, where the full range...

Abbeys were a striking feature of medieval urban and rural landscapes. Their layout and architecture reflected their purpose as cut-off monastic retreats which, conversely, also served and inspired their local communities...

The Swahili Coast on the shores of East Africa was a region where Africans and Arabs mixed to create a unique identity from the 8th century called Swahili Culture. Swahili is the name of their language and means 'people of the coast.'...

Matabeleland (1838-1897), also known as the Ndebele Empire or Mthwakazi by the Ndebele themselves, was an African state covering what is today part of southern Zimbabwe and northern South Africa...

This collection of maps tells the story of World War II in Europe and Africa (1939–1945), a global conflict that emerged from unresolved tensions after World War I, economic instability, expansionist ambitions...