Selim I (known also by his epithet ‘Yavuz’, which, translated from Turkish, means ‘the Grim’) was the 9th sultan of the Ottoman Empire who lived during the second half of the 15th century and the...
For proof that the ney (also spelled nay) is one of the oldest musical instruments still in use, you need look no further than the great Sumerian city of Ur. Archeologists have found the delicate...
There is a famous tomb located on Mount Zion in the ancient city of Jerusalem. A part of the Diaspora Yeshiva, this tomb receives thousands of visitors every year. Many of them go to the site with...
Even though there are hundreds of thousands of followers of pagan religions, the old beliefs haven't survived enough to be included in the group of the five major religions of the world. Officially,...
Semar is probably one of the oldest characters in Indonesian mythology who was said to not have been derived from Hindu mythology. He was made famous by performances of Wayang (Shadow Puppets) in the...
The term harem comes from the Arabic haram meaning forbidden place . This defines the sphere of women in a polygynous household and makes reference to their enclosed quarters being forbidden to men...
In 1253 CE, a breeze began to blow into Baghdad from the east. Unbeknownst to Al-Musta'sim, the Abbasid Caliph, this breeze would soon turn into a violent shamal (wind). This shamal was gaining...
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...
People in the ancient world did not always believe in the gods, a new study suggests – casting doubt on the idea that religious belief is a “default setting” for humans. “Early societies were far...
Recent tests conducted on the oldest known pages of the Quran in existence have determined they were written nearly 1,400 years ago, between 568 and 645 AD. Reports raise the possibility that the...
Sitting in a remote valley about 70km (43 miles) north of Yazd in Central Iran, is the deserted and crumbling mud-brick village of Kharanaq. The site has been occupied for approximately 4,000 years,...
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...
Efforts to restore the ancient monuments of historic Timbuktu have been successful after several years of violent strife in the region. The reconstruction of the city’s monuments is both a practical...
Religion has become associated with having a focus on morality. But that wasn’t always the case, researchers say. Academics have long suspected that the modern world’s major religions were born of...
The discovery of an unidentified text in Hungary has led to more than 200 years of attempts to determine who authored it and to decipher its contents. Many scholars have studied the text, known as...
Originating in the Bible, the Queen of Sheba is a figure featured in the stories of many cultures and religious groups. Although her exact homeland has not been agreed upon, she is known as a queen...
Written nearly a thousand years ago, the Kitab al-tabikh (book of cookery) written by Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq, is the most comprehensive work of its kind. It includes more than 600 recipes for culinary...
Located at the gateway to the Sahara desert in what is now Mali, within the confines of the fertile zone of the Sudan, Timbuktu is one of the cities of Africa whose name is the most heavily charged...
In an article authored by Craig Considine , reference has been made to the extreme historical amnesia that has taken place with regards to the achievements and contributions of the Muslim culture to...
