European and Arab versions of the Crusades have little in common. For Arabs, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were years of strenuous efforts to repel a brutal and destructive …
Harun al-Rashid, the legendary caliph portrayed in The Thousand and One Nights, was the son of a Yemenite slave who cleared Harun's path to power, very probably by poisoning her …
In the space of a mere 20 years Gengis Khan rallied all the tribes of Mongolia and put Mongol society under a codified set of laws, much admired by Western travellers. At the head …
