Zheng He: Did you mean...?

Taizong (birth name, Li-Shimin, l. 598-649 CE, r. 626-649 CE) was the second emperor of the Tang Dynasty and is considered one of the greatest rulers in Chinese history for his reforms of the government and the laws, his...

Between 1200 and 1450, the trade networks linking Afro-Eurasia intensified and reached further than ever before. The Silk Roads carried silk, porcelain, and paper westward across Central Asia...

The Constantinian Excerpts, or Excerpta Constantiniana is the conventional name given to the mid-10th Century Byzantine palace encyclopedia commissioned by the scholar emperor Constantine...

Eustathios Rhomaios was a prominent Byzantine judge and jurist during the late-10th and early- to mid-11th century. He studied Roman Law and began his career under Basil II (reign 976 to 1025...

Bodo was a early 9th-century Frankish farmer. He and his family hailed from a manor owned by the monastery of St.-Germain-des-Prés near Paris and worked as its tenants. He ploughed...

Magic was ever-present in the wider Greco-Roman world. Spells and herbs, spirits and gods, curses and blessings, prophecies and oracles, they were all the domain of the...

The Warring States period (c. 475–221 BCE) represents the final and most transformative phase of the Eastern Zhou dynasty (770–256 BCE), marked by political fragmentation, sustained interstate warfare...

A silk scroll painting by Shen Du depicting a giraffe given in tribute by King Saif Al-Din Hamzah Shah of Bengal to the Yongle Emperor (r. 1403-1424 CE) of China's Ming Dynasty. The tribute was one of the many collected...

Islam is an Abrahamic-monotheistic religion based upon the teachings of Prophet Muhammad ibn Abdullah (l. 570-632 CE, after whose name Muslims traditionally add “peace be upon him” or, in writing, PBUH). Alongside Christianity and Judaism...

The Han Dynasty (202 BCE - 220 CE) was the second dynasty of Imperial China (the era of centralized, dynastic government, 221 BCE - 1912 CE) which established the paradigm for all succeeding dynasties up through 1912 CE. It succeeded...