In c. 900 the Middle East was on the eve of its domination by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which came to control much of the region with Ashurnasirpal II, king of Assyria, ruthlessly expanding his borders as far north as Phrygia and south to absorb Babylonia and Elam. The Levantine states,... More
Some of Egypt’s greatest statuary, art and literature was produced during this era (c. 2000–1523 BCE). It began with reunification and ended with enemy occupation. Amenemhat I (the first pharaoh of the Middle Kingdom) and his successors ruled Egypt for 200 years. Amenemhat, I moved the capital from Thebes to... More
Since the birth of agriculture, the settled populations of China’s great floodplains were perennial targets for nomadic raiders from the Asian steppes. The first attempts to block these depredations with walls date back almost 3,000 years, with many succeeding permutations. The Ming came to power by expelling the Mongols, who... More
The Christian concept of a ministry encompasses a journey through which someone demonstrates their faith. Jesus’s ministry began with his baptism by John the Baptist and is considered by most scholars to have ended with the Last Supper in Jerusalem. The exact timeframe of the ministry is uncertain, although most... More
Cyril and Methodius were brothers born in Thessalonika in the early 9th century. The missionary Cyril (826–69) proved a brilliant linguist, while Methodius (815–85) was a sound administrator, who had risen to become an abbot of a monastery. The patriarch of Constantinople sent both the brothers when Prince Ratislav of... More
The Missouri Pacific (MP), chartered by Missouri in 1849, was the first railroad to be built west of the Mississippi River, and was to stretch from ‘St Louis to the western boundary of Missouri and thence to the Pacific Ocean’. The gold rush in 1848 had highlighted the need for... More
The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad (MKT) operated from 1870–1988, when it was merged into the Union Pacific. It was owned by private investors and constructed to funnel goods and passengers from Missouri and Kansas to Texas, across Indian territories. The railroad was commonly referred to as the Katy, after its stock exchange... More
Before the white man, the Modoc inhabited the Oregon-California borders, fishing for salmon and baking water-lily seed popcorn. Following the Gold Rushes, settlers began arriving in floods. The Modoc began to attack these wagon trains, killing over 60 at Bloody Point (1852). In 1864, they agreed to move to a... More
Succeeding the Song dynasty and preceding the Ming dynasty, the Yuan was ancient China’s first foreign-led empire. Under the leadership of Kublai Khan (grandson of Genghis Khan), the Mongols implemented regimes and a class system that marginalized the Chinese. They focussed on foreign trade, with the Venetian trader Marco Polo... More
The Mongol tribes of northern China coalesced into the Mongol empire under the rule of Genghis Khan (? 1167–1227) in 1206. He set in motion a series of invasions that would reverberate in Europe for the following 50 years. By the time of his death, his armies had conquered as... More
Akbar the Great was a more complete Renaissance monarch than any European contemporary. While doubling the Mughal dominions through conquest, he was an innovative and tolerant ruler, even inventing (but not imposing) his own ‘fusion’ religion. The Mughals were a multifaceted dynasty: Shah Jahan erected both the Taj Mahal, in... More
The sixth Mughal Emperor, Aurangzeb, ruled from 1658–1707, and was widely regarded as the last of the great Mughal emperors. It was during his reign that the Mughal Empire reached its greatest extent, and his rule held sway over nearly all the Indian subcontinent, a population of over 158 million... More