King As-Saalih Najm Ad-Deen Ayyoob took office in Egypt in 637 A.H., and the Ayyubid emirs in Shaam, as was their habit, got ready to fight with him over the successive authority of Egypt. More

Saladin, May Allaah Have mercy upon him, focused on Jihaad, and had only one goal, that is, to fight the Crusaders and make the Word of religion superior. More

The experience of the Maliki Maghrib was different. For three long centuries, the Maliki School took a back seat to Fatimid, Murabitun and Al Muhaddith ideologies. More

At the core of Islam is the idea of Tawhid, which liberates the individual from his egotistical prison and propels him into a universal mold. More

The most important reason for the fragmentation of the Maghrib-and the loss of Andalus-was the loss of legitimacy of rule. More

Agricultural production was a casualty of the drop in population. When food production dropped, many of the settled tribes became nomads. More

Islam, by contrast, liberates humankind not only from the individual ego, but also from the prison of racism, tribalism and nationalism. More

Ibn Khaldun is justly regarded as the father of sociology and the philosophy of history. He was the first to advance a general theory of the rise and fall More

The Merinides in Morocco reached their greatest strength under the Emirs Ali and Abu Inan (1331 to 1357). More

The defeat at Las Novas de Tolosa (1212) was a result of several interrelated political, religious and economic factors. More

The Crusades in Palestine ended with the victory of Salahuddin at the Battle of Hittin (1186). This was also a period when Al Muhaddith power was at its zenith in the Maghrib. More

One of the most audacious plots unfolded on March 13, 1943, when Hitler arrived at the Smolensk post of Henning von Tresckow—a disillusioned German military officer—for a brief visit. More

The first attempt on Hitler’s life occurred nearly 20 years before the start of World War II. In November 1921, the young and still largely unknown radical made a speech at Munich’s famed More

In this account of the states that were established in Palestine and Syria in the wake of the First Crusade, Malcolm Barber intriguingly bucks a trend in recent crusading studies. More

Rebel generals plagued the Roman Empire for much of its history, but few were as bold or as successful as Carausius. A skilled naval commander, he first rose to prominence around 286 A.D., when he More

History is packed with examples of generals, mercenaries and adventurers who disregarded orders and used their armies to carry out a personal agenda. More

The Crimean War of 1853–6 was, bar the Napoleonic Wars, the most significant conflict of the 19th century. It involved four major powers – Britain, France, Turkey (on one side) and Russia (on the More

In the years after the Civil War ended, thousands of defiant and disillusioned Confederates fled Reconstruction-era Dixie and headed even farther south to Latin America. More

Theodore Roosevelt was the first commander in chief to travel outside the U.S. on official business, when he sailed to Panama in November 1906. Roosevelt made the trip in order to inspect the More

October 8, 1871 is best known as the start date of the Great Chicago Fire, which leveled three square miles of property and claimed 300 lives. Yet the very same night the Windy City went up in More

Legend has it that a young Isaac Newton was sitting under an apple tree when he was bonked on the head by a falling piece of fruit, More

At the time of the American Revolutionary War, ‘Canada’ was not a single country but regions, two of the most powerful of which were Nova Scotia and former French colony of Quebec. More

The first great expansion of Islam into India came during the Umayyad Dynasty of caliphs, who were based in Damascus. In 711, the Umayyads appointed a young 17-year-old man from Ta’if to extend More

Qutuz is the son of the sister of Jalaal Ad-Deen Khuwarizm Shaah, the famous Khuwarezmid king. He resisted the Tatars and emerged victorious over them twice. More