Shah Jahan: Did you mean...?

Derbent (sometimes "Derbend" or "Darbend") is an ancient city located along the Caspian Sea in what is present-day Russia. Although the area in and around Derbent has been continuously inhabited since at least the 8th century BCE, Shah Yazdegerd...

The Seventh Crusade (1248-1254 CE) was led by the French king Louis IX (r. 1226-1270 CE) who intended to conquer Egypt and take over Jerusalem, both then controlled by the Muslim Ayyubid Dynasty. Despite the initial success of capturing Damietta...

Hafez of Shiraz (also given as Hafiz, l. 1315-1390) is considered the greatest of the Persian poets and among the most famous and admired writers in world literature. He is among the most often translated poets in the present day and his...

Khatam is a decoration technique used exclusively on wooden objects and one of Iran's finest and most delicate crafts consisting of geometrical patterns. Small squares or triangles are laid next to one another in different compositions, colors...

Gold bracelet with miniature portraits of three Mughal emperors and their royal wives, watercolors on ivory by Indian Mughal miniaturists in Delhi (1860-1870). The third oval from the left is a portrait of the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur...

The East India Company (EIC) was first England's and then Britain's tool of colonial expansion in India and beyond. Revenue from trade and land taxes from territories it controlled allowed the EIC to build up its own private armies, collectively...

The game of chess has a particularly long and fascinating history of more than 1500 years. Over the centuries, there have also been hundreds of different chess variants, all of which incorporate the fundamental distinguishing feature of standard...

History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. (Mark Twain) Darband-i Basara (the Pass of Basara) is a narrow natural gorge which transects the anticlines of the upper part of the Qaradagh Mountain Range. The elevation is about 605 meters...

The Mughal Empire ruled parts of the Indian Subcontinent for more than three centuries. In that time, it transformed India into what it is today. The Mughals came as outsiders from Central Asia who conquered India with steel and gunpowder...

Shihab al-Din (also Muʿizz al-Din Muhammad ibn Sam), popularly known as Muhammad Ghori (r. 1173-1206 CE), was the Muslim ruler who laid the foundation for the subsequent Islamic ruling dynasties of India which saw its pinnacle later in the...