Asia
This Turkic dynasty (977–1186 CE) emerged from the Samanid military slave system when Alp Tigin seized Ghazna, and under rulers like Sabuktigin and Mahmud of Ghazni expanded into Khorasan and northern India while adopting Persian administrative culture.
Ghaznavid Empire
This Moroccan explorer, born in Tangier in 1304, is known for documenting his extensive travels across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
Ibn Battuta
This Athenian philosopher studied both Heraclitean change and Eleatic permanence before founding the Academy near the grove of Hecademus around 383 BC.
Plato
Derived from a Greek word meaning “the East” or “sunrise,” this region lies between the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea.
Anatolia/ Asia Minor
This 10th–11th century polymath rejected astrology while advancing astronomy, argued that Earth’s rotation would not invalidate observations, and showed that the Sun’s apogee is not fixed challenging ideas associated with Ptolemy.
Al-Biruni
This Persianate Sunni Muslim dynasty, originally granted governorships under the Abbasids in 819 and later unified under Ismail Samani, ruled from Samarkand and Bukhara, made Persian the dominant court and literary language in Transoxiana, and is a key power of the “Iranian Intermezzo” preceding the rise of the Ghaznavids.
Samanid Empire
This pharaoh of Egypt’s 19th Dynasty was the father of Ramesses II, also known as Ramesses the Great.
Seti I
In late 15th-century Umbria this artist already a “master” by 1500 and trained in Pietro Perugino’s workshop was so stylistically close to his teacher that their works were often indistinguishable before he was later called to Rome by Julius II to help decorate the Vatican’s Stanza della Segnatura.
Raphael (Rafaello Sanzio da Urbino)
Alongside Khiva, this Silk Road city became known as one of the “slave capitals of the world” due to its large-scale slave trade.
Bukhara
At just 11 years old, this Timurid prince inherited the throne of Fergana, lost and regained cities like Samarkand multiple times, was forced into exile across Central Asia, and eventually went on to establish his rule in Kabul before founding an empire in India.
Babur (Zahīr ud-Dīn Muhammad)
This early 13th-century “Slave Dynasty” of the Delhi Sultanate (c. 1206–1290 CE), founded by Qutb al-Din Aibak after the death of Muhammad of Ghor, established Turkic military rule in northern India, built early Indo-Islamic monuments like the Qutb Minar complex, and ended when it was overthrown by the Khalji dynasty.
Mamluk (Slave) Dynasty of Delhi
This queen of Egypt of the 18th Dynasty during the Amarna Period (c. 14th century BC) was the Great Royal Wife of Akhenaten and a key figure in the religious shift toward Atenism; she is also widely proposed by some scholars to have ruled briefly after Akhenaten’s death
Nefertiti
This 4th-century BC king of Macedon expanded his kingdom through military reform and conquest, defeating a Greek coalition at Chaeronea in 338 BC and establishing Macedonian dominance over Greece.
Philip II
Between 1417–1449, this city became a major center of astronomy under Ulugh Beg, featuring a large observatory with a 40-meter radius sextant.
Samarkand
Which Yuan emperor launched repeated 13th-century invasions of Đại Việt (1258, 1285, and 1287), ultimately failing to impose direct control but forcing the Trần dynasty to accept nominal tributary status after major Mongol defeats?
Kublai Khan
This Bronze Age kingdom, centered in Washukanni and ruled largely by Hurrian-speaking elites, was a major power in northern Syria and southeastern Anatolia that rivaled Egypt, the Hittites, and Assyria before collapsing around the 13th century BC.
Mittani
Meaning “Saviour,” this was the title taken by the founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty after declaring himself king in 305 BC.
Soter
During the High Renaissance in Rome (1498–1499), this sculptor broke convention by becoming the only artist of his era known to sign a major Vatican commission, carving his name onto the Virgin’s sash in the Pietà, an unusual act in a period when artworks were typically left unsigned.
Michelangelo
This city, once known as “Alexandria in Opiana” after its conquest by Alexander the Great in 329 BCE, later became a key center in the region of Zabulistan.
Ghazni
This 19th-century Russian revolutionary anarchist was expelled from the International Workingmen's Association at the 1872 Hague Congress after a major ideological split with Karl Marx over centralized state socialism versus decentralized anti-state revolution, later arguing in Statism and Anarchy that Marx’s “dictatorship of the proletariat” would become authoritarian rule.
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
This 11th-century Turkic-Persianate empire reached its peak under Malik Shah I, defeated the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, and helped trigger the Turkification of Anatolia before fragmenting into smaller successor states like the Sultanate of Rum.
Seljuk Empire
Who is current president of South Africa?
Cyril Ramaphosa
n 1470s Florence during the Early Renaissance this painter apprenticed under Fra Filippo Lippi adopted a linear style of delicate figures and later worked briefly in Rome on the Sistine Chapel fresco cycle under papal commission before returning to Medici Florence where he created mythological works like The Birth of Venus and Primavera
Sandro Botticelli
Occupied successively by the Achaemenids (6th century BCE), Macedonians (326 BCE), Indo-Greeks (2nd century BCE), Indo-Parthians (20 BCE), and Kushans (1st century CE), this city declined after White Hun invasions in the 5th century CE.
Taxila
This non-royal vizier of Akhenaten and Tutankhamun held influential court titles such as “God’s Father,” performed Tutankhamun’s burial rites, and became pharaoh in the late 14th century BCE after Tutankhamun’s death, outmaneuvering the army commander Horemheb, who was widely seen as the more likely successor.
Ay