Balkans: Did you mean...?

Michael IV the Paphlagonian was Byzantine emperor from 1034 to 1041 CE. He had an affair with Empress Zoe, then married her and was crowned emperor after the death of her first husband, Romanos III. He ran a competent regime that kept the...

John II Komnenos “the Handsome” was emperor of the Byzantine Empire from 1118 CE to 1143 CE. John, almost constantly on campaign throughout his reign, would continue the military successes of his father Alexios I with significant victories...

The First Bulgarian Empire under Simeon I the Great (893–927 CE) was the most powerful phase of medieval Bulgaria, shaped by the ruler’s ambition to claim imperial authority rivaling Byzantium. A union of Bulgars and Slavs that had adopted...

One of the most coveted projects of Italian colonial policy was to secure an African colony in the Mediterranean. For this reason, Italy fought and won the Italo-Turkish war of 1911-1912 for the control of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. These...

Elephants were thought of as fierce and frightful monsters in antiquity, very real though rarely seen until the Hellenistic period. They were deployed on the battlefield to strike terror into the enemy, however, since fear was considered...

The history of the ancient world has always been told as a history of cities, from Homer's epic poems about events just before and just after the sack of Troy, through the prose histories of wars between Athens and Sparta, Rome and Carthage...

Germanic influence reigned in the Roman Empire from the end of the 4th century CE through the 5th. Germanic individuals took important posts in the government and the military, and Germanic tribes penetrated ever further into lands that had...

Suleiman I (reigned 1520–1566), known in Europe as “the Magnificent” and within the empire as Kanuni (“the Lawgiver”), presided over the Ottoman Empire at the height of its territorial reach and administrative sophistication. As the tenth...

An illustration by Achille Beltrame showing the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1863-1914), heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 by Gavrilo Princip (1894-1918), a member of the Black Hand...

This map illustrates the reign of Krum the Fearsome (Bulgarian: Крум Страшни), the ruler of Bulgaria from c. 800 to 814. Known for his formidable military campaigns, Krum doubled the size of medieval Bulgaria, extending its borders from the...