sandr020

China’s old cities were thriving commercial centres, especially in silk production. In the later C13th, during the rule of Kublai Khan , China’s silk industry reached a great level of soph­is­tication. The guilds had established meticulous pay scales, working hours and a pricing system for silk. Silk reached the markets, in Persia and further west, via the long “ Silk Road ”. The road stretched from the western gates of Hsian in China's Chanxi Province, and passed via the southern Gobi Desert until western Turkistan. It then passed via Kashghar to the major trading cities of Samar­kand, Bukhara and Merv. Once the Silk Road crossed the length of Persia/Iran, it divided into two branches; one went tow­ard Azar­baijan, and the other ran through Ham­adan, Baghdad or Mosul, Antioch or Capadoccia, Izmir and Istanbul. Caravanserai of Shah Ab­bas, Isfahan now the Abbasi Hot­el  East-West economic exchanges required big warehouses in the trading cities, linked by camel caravans. Businessmen...

Lasting only from May-Sept 1212 , the Children’s Crusade was a popular religious movement in which thousands of young people took crusading vows and set out to rec­over Jerusalem from the Muslims. This was probably not as surprising an event back then, as it sounds to our ears. Popular movements of religious fervour appeared whenever off­icial crusades were preach­ed. Preach­ing aroused mass enthusiasm, mostly in areas with a long tradition of crusad­ing, as in and around the French town of Char­tres . From the time of the First Crusade in the late C11th and cont­in­uing into the C13th, successive waves of crusading fervour swept over this region. This was already a turbulent era. The Albig­en­sian Crusade (1209–29) was being preach­ed against the heretic­al southern Cath­ars, result­ing in strong military recruit­ment from Chart­r­es. Spain was the scene of another Crus­ad­ing crisis. A Muslim invasion from North Africa in 1210 led to the fall of Salvatierra Castle in Spain in 1211...

The Nabataean Kingdom once stretched from Dam­ascus and in­cl­uded parts of the Sinai. Located amid rugged desert canyons and mountains in what is now the SW corner of Jor­dan, Petra was once a thriving trad­ing centre and the capital of this kingdom from 400 BC–106 AD. I have spent only 1.5 days of my entire long life there, well worth the tour from Amman or Jerusalem . The Nabateans were Arabic-speaking nomads who sel­ected the best oases to set­tle in. And they used the inac­c­es­sib­le moun­tains to pro­t­ect themselves from bandits and high­way robbers. But these people were a desert people, so they had no archit­ect­ural heritage of their own. The Petra style was therefore a jumble of influences absorb­ed al­ong the trading routes: Egypt­ian, As­syrian, Hellenistic, Mesopot­amian and Roman imagery.  Monastery The treasury By the C2nd BC, Petra was already in­ternationally famous for its natural and archit­ect­ural beau­ty, for its wealth and its pink colours. Petra had c30,...

The  Rock of Gibraltar  is a nar­row sandy isthmus off the Iberian Pen­in­sula. Being limestone, the 6sq km Rock is riddled with 140+ caves. Off the eastern cliffs of the rock a flat, sandy plain stret­ched out towards the Mediterranean. The Strait of Gibraltar is the narrow neck separ­ating Europe from Africa, the only link between the Atl­ant­ic Ocean and the Med­iter­ranean Sea. Sin­ce the Prophet died in Medina in 632 AD, the pro­g­ress of Islam’s armies was rapid. Berber  Tarik-ibn-Zeyad  land­ed in 710 AD and from 742 on, the Moors defended their rock with a fort. In 1068, the Arab Gover­nor on Gib­ral­tar ordered that a strong­er  Moorish Castle  be built to watch events across the Strait. The castle had the largest keep and the tallest towers in all the Iberian Peninsula, plus buildings, gates and for­tified walls. In 1160 the Caliph of Mor­occo commissioned a fully fortif­ied city. The Rock rem­ain­ed in Arab hands until an unexp­ect­ed Spanish att...

Some history Acre/Akko was conquered by Pharaoh Ramses II (1279-1213 BC), then by the Greeks, the Persians and the Syrian Sel­eucids. Herod the Great and Roman Emperor Vespasian (69-79 AD) used Akko and Caesarea for their campaign. The town pros­pered in Byzantine times and Om­mayad times, when it was the port for their capital in Damascus. The Crusaders conquered Jerusalem in 1099 and Akko in 1104. They renamed it St Jean d'Acre and made it the head quarters of the Knights of St John. The Italian port cities est­ablished trading posts in Acre, and made it a flourishing port. After Jerusalem fell in 1187, Acre became the large capital of the Crusader kingdom. In 1219 St Fran­cis of Assisi visited the town and estab­lish­ed a nun­nery. In 1228 Emperor Freder­ick II landed here during his Crus­ade, as did Louis IX of France in 1250. Soon afterwards there was a bitter civ­il war, between the two Christian orders, The Knights Hospital­l­ers of St John and The Templars. In 1290, the Cr...

Malta (pop c370,000) is in the mid Mediterranean Sea, half way between Europe and Africa; Spain and Israel. So the country’s str­ateg­ic position attracted ev­er­y expans­ion­ist nation to take over the tiny Maltese archip­el­ago. The ancient Pho­e­nic­ians settled around the natural Grand Harb­our. But it was the Romans who govern­ed these islands for centuries and first built the city of Medina . Consider the 60 AD shipwreck of the Apostle St Paul . During his 3 months on Malta living in the Medina cata­c­ombs, he taught Christ­ian­ity and nominated Malta’s first bishop. In St Paul's Ch­urch, the catacombs were for Ch­ri­stian bur­ials and rock altars. In 535, the island was integrated into the Christine Byzantine province of Sicily. After arriving from Sicily in 870 during the Arab–Byzantine wars , Arabs ruled Malta until the Normans arrived in 1091. To con­so­l­idate their gains in Sicily and to prev­ent the Arabs from regroup­ing near Sic­ily, the Normans stayed until their ...

The Arabs de­clared war on the Tang Chin­ese forces and eventually crushed them at The Battle of Talas 751 AD. This led to the ex­pulsion of the Tang Chin­ese from Central Asia. While cros­sing Central Asia, dif­ferent routes developed. Kashgar in far Western China became the new cross­roads of Asia; from here the routes again divided, heading across the Pamirs to Sam­arkand and to the south of the Caspian Sea, or to the South into India. Eventually the road reached the shores of the Caspian Sea, via Tashkent . Thus the 8,000 km long Silk Road connected Beijing to Con­stan­tin­op­le via the movement of relig­ions and products. And Tashkent emer­ged as a major trading city en route. Friday Mosque Kukeldash Madrassah The rise of Islam impacted on Asia, separating the East and West. The Islamic State of the Gh aznavids (962-1186) extended from Persia to India, with Lahore as the capital. Timur/Tamerlane (1336–1405) was an Islamic Turco-Mongol conqueror. In 1390 Tamerlane ravaged Kash...