Sahara: Did you mean...?

Ife (aka Ile-Ife) was an ancient African city which flourished between the 11th and 15th century CE in what is today Nigeria in West Africa. Ife was the capital and principal religious centre of the Yoruba kingdom of Ife, which prospered...

Agriculture arose independently at several locations across the world, beginning about 12,000 years ago. The first crops and livestock were domesticated in six rather diffuse areas including the Near East, China, Southeast...

The desert campaigns in North Africa during the Second World War (1939-45) provided soldiers on all sides with a set of particular challenges. Scorching day temperatures, freezing night temperatures, sand and...

From the voyages of the Portuguese navigators under the patronage of Henry the Navigator in the 15th century to the transcontinental expeditions of Henry Morton...

This prehistoric Saharan rock carving from Wadi Mathendous in the Fezzan, Libya depicts two cats fighting. Similar petroglyphs can be found in rock escarpments throughout the Sahara, providing valuable clues...

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...

Egypt is a country in North Africa, on the Mediterranean Sea, and is home to one of the oldest civilizations on Earth. The name "Egypt" comes from the Greek Aegyptos, which was the Greek pronunciation...

Great Zimbabwe is a ruined city near Masvingo, central Zimbabwe which was inhabited between c. 1100 to c. 1550 (flourishing c. 1300 - c. 1450) in the region’s Late Iron Age. Capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe of the Bantu-speaking...

A map indicating the major trans-Saharan trade routes across West Africa c. 1100-1500 CE. The darker yellow areas indicate gold fields.

Ibn Battuta (l. 1304-1368/69) was a Moroccan explorer from Tangier whose expeditions took him further than any other traveler of his time and resulted in his famous work, The Rihla of Ibn Battuta. Scholar Douglas Bullis notes that...