Sultanate of Rum: Did you mean...?

The Somaliland Protectorate, more informally and better known as British Somaliland, was created in 1884 and ruled by Great Britain until independence was won in 1960, when the Somali Republic...

Explore the early days of the Ottoman Empire, as shrewd political rulers grew the principality into an intercontinental empire. In the late 13th Century CE, Osman I established a small principality sandwiched...

The crusades of the 11th to 15th century CE have become one of the defining events of the Middle Ages in both Europe and the Middle East. The campaigns brought significant consequences wherever they occurred but...

Following the conquest of North Africa by Muslim Arabs in the 7th century CE, Islam spread throughout West Africa via merchants, traders, scholars, and missionaries, that is largely through peaceful means whereby...

Clove, nutmeg, and mace are native to only a handful of tiny islands in the middle of the vast Indonesian archipelago – cloves on five Maluku Islands (the Moluccas) about 1250 km (778 mi) west of New...

Eritrea, located on the Red Sea coast of the Horn of Africa, was the ‘firstborn’ colony of Italy. The potential of a trade centre and naval base at Assab first attracted Italian interests in 1869. The Kingdom of Italy...

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...

The Solomonic Dynasty ruled Ethiopia from the 1270s to the 1970s, and the 14th-century work, the Kebra Nagast (The Glory of the Kings) famously tells of how the dynasty of Ethiopian kings descended from King...

Throughout the 15th century, the Portuguese Crown yearned for a piece of the Far Eastern spice trade. For centuries this trade had been dominated by the Venetians who obtained pepper, cloves, nutmeg, ginger and cinnamon...

The armies of the Crusades (11th-15th centuries CE), which saw Christians and Muslims struggle for control of territories in the Middle East and elsewhere, could involve over 100,000 men on either side who came from all...