Middle East: Did you mean...?

The monastic orders of the Middle Ages developed from the desire to live a spiritual life without the distractions of the world. Men and women who took religious vows were seeking a purity of experience they found lacking as lay people. Their...

Dogs have played a prominent role in the lives of humans going back thousands of years and, more than any other domesticated animal, this role has remained relatively unchanged. In the present day, dogs serve as guardians, perform tricks...

The English East India Company (EIC) was founded in 1600, and it came to control both trade and territories in India, as well as a trade monopoly with China. Goods the EIC traded included spices, cotton cloth, tea, and opium, all in such...

Antisemitism is a modern term that describes prejudice and hostility to Jews and Judaism. The origins of Christian antisemitism in the gospels are based on the story of a 1st-century itinerant Jewish preacher, Jesus of Nazareth, in the Roman...

The Portuguese first took an interest in East Africa from the beginning of the 16th century as their empire spread eastwards across the Indian Ocean. Trade in the region was already well-established and carried out by Africans, Indians, and...

In the early 17th century, the Dutch and English East India Companies turned their eyes towards India, as part of their grand schemes to develop extensive trade networks across the Indian and China Seas. They were faced with two significant...

Olaudah Equiano (l. c. 1745-1797, also known as Gustavus Vassa) was an African of the Igbo village of Essaka, of the Kingdom of Benin (modern Nigeria), who was enslaved around the age of ten, bought his freedom around the age of 20, and became...

In the ancient Near East, there was a social standard by which men were ideally expected to behave. In the 21st century CE, expectations still exist, albeit in different forms. Normative masculinity through ancient Mesopotamia typically concerned...

Peoples, cities and states have traded since antiquity but in the medieval period, things escalated so that goods travelled ever greater distances by land, river and sea. Great cities arose thanks to commerce and international trade such...

In this gallery, we showcase images of 30 influential women from the Middle Ages. Usually dated from c. 500 to c. 1500, this was a complex and transformative period in European history filled with political turmoil and dynamic social and...