Baghdad, the majestic capital city of the great Abbasid Caliphate. For centuries, the city was a center of culture, learning, ...

Emerging from rebellion, the Abbasids forged an empire of knowledge, power, and faith. Their rise marked the dawn of Islam’s greatest age.

They were keen and curious observers. More than a millennium ago merchant-informants and officials at the service of the Abbasid caliph, from Baghdad or Basra, put to paper eyewitness accounts of ...

Who she was, nobody knows. She was buried almost 1200 years ago in Birka, 25 kilometres west of modern-day Stockholm. Birka, on the strategic Björkö Island, was an important trading centre during the ...

The characteristic minaret of the Great Mosque of Samarra, the city where the Zanj Rebellion broke out. Credit: Taisir Mahdi / Wikimedia Commons Specifically, Arab traders settled in the region, ...

It’s easy to understand why the battle of Talas in 751 between the Abbasid Caliphate’s Arab-Persian army and the Chinese army is often said to be one of the most important battles in Central Asian ...