The “suwar al-kawakib" or the Book of Fixed Stars is a 10th century astronomical Arabic text, authored by the famed scholar Abd-al Rahman al-Sufi in the year 964 AD. It was produced by the powerful...
In translation, the term jinn can be interpreted as ‘hidden from sight’ or ‘the hidden ones.’ In Arabic, the word jinn defines a collective number and it derives from the root jnn or gnn, which means...
The people who lived in the area known as the Southern Levant - which is now recognized as Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Lebanon, and parts of Syria - during the Bronze Age (circa 3500-...
In Saudi Arabia a new international archaeology project has been announced, that could help us to understand some long-lost civilizations. Work has begun at the Al-Ula heritage site, which was once...
A hoard of coins has been uncovered at a famous temple in southern India . Hundreds of gold coins were unearthed in a pot that could date back over a millennium, to when this area was part of the...
Languages have always been the very fiber of humanity. The cornerstone of society, and the force that paved the way for civilization. Without it, societies could not have developed as they did - it...
Though this title may make many an aspiring writer think it to be instructional for forbidding the writing of on the nose dialogue, The Book of Exposition is far from the case. The Kitab al-Izah Fi'...
Archaeologists from the Norwegian Institute of Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) have recently discovered a rare and richly decorated Arabic-inspired chess piece in Tønsberg. Arabic Inspired Chess...
Around the Christmas period, the now typical jokes pile up on social media. Jesus is commended for having a “stable upbringing”. The three wise men fret: “We’re running low on Frankincense. Don’t...
Researchers from Sweden have discovered that Vikings had “Allah” and “Ali” embroidered into their funeral clothes, raising questions about the ties between the Islamic world and the Viking-era...
Writing is traditionally regarded as one of the requirements for a society to be considered as a civilization. Various writing systems have been invented by the great civilizations of the world, one...
It has been claimed that the Red Monastery, more specifically, its principal church, is one of three surviving examples of Byzantine architecture from the early period of that empire’s history, the...
The black cumin seed or “Nigella Sativa” has been revered as a miracle cure for a vast amount of illnesses and ailments throughout the ages and across many cultures. The plant is indigenous to the...
Adding to the list of names among the greatest libraries of the past, the Bayt al-Hikmah (translated as ‘The House of Wisdom’) was established in Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Empire, around...
The oldest known Arabic writing found in Saudi Arabia, from ca. 470 AD belong to a Christian context and predates the advent of Islam with 150 years. In December 2015, researchers from a French-Saudi...
Two pages from a Koran, which are believed to have been written down by a contemporary of Mohammed himself, have been found in a library in England. The folios had been in a collection in the...