istoryworld
Babur in Kabul
Babur, founder of the Moghul dynasty in India, is one of history's more endearing conquerors. In his youth he is one among many impoverished princes, all descended from Timur, who fight among themselves for possession of some small part of the great man's fragmented empire. Babur even captures Samarkand itself on three separate occasions, each for only a few months. The first time he achieves this he is only fourteen. What distinguishes Babur from other brawling princes is that he is a keen oberver of ...
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Age of the palace
Men of power in other Italian cities follow suit, making the Renaissance town palace an important element in Italian architectural history. Elsewhere in Europe, nation states are now emerging. In France, Spain and Britain the notion of a palace fits very well with the self-image of the powerful monarchs of the 16th century. In England Henry VIII moves between four palaces along the banks of the Thames. In France Francis I transforms the Louvre (from a castle) and Fontainebleau (from a hunting lodge) into palaces. ...
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Greek vases
The red-figure style is a much more realistic convention. Many of the most popular scenes on vases involve mythical heroes or revelling satyrs. Such figures, to a Greek audience, seem natural if naked. The reddish-brown colour of the pottery is appropriate to Mediterranean skin, and a few linear additions to the figure provide convincing modelling for the limbs or for the suggestion of a thin garment. From about 530 to 480, the period considered the high point of the Greek ceramic achievement, the red-figure style ...
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Roman expansion in Italy
Rome reinforces this network of alliances with a sound system of communication. In 312 the first of the great Roman roads, the Via Appia, is built by Appius Claudius to link Rome with an important new ally - the city of Capua, north of Naples. Additional security is provided by small colonies planted at strategic places. In each of them 300 Roman families are settled in a walled encampment, becoming in effect a self-sufficient military outpost. Each family is given its own plot of land; ...
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Amphibious war against Japan
A significant step in the slow move north towards Japan is the US assault, in February 1944, of a strong naval base in the volcanic cluster of the Truk Islands. Eleven Japanese warships and more than 300 planes are destroyed here, in the first radar-guided night attack. After this it is clear that the next target must be the Marianas, a group of islands which the Japanese rightly regard as a crucial line of defence. From here US planes will be within bombing range of ...
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Akhenaten and Nefertiti
The most evocative single object in the tomb of Tutankahamen is the gilded throne, with its apparently intimate scene set into the back; Tutankhamen's queen, Ankhesenamen, tenderly anoints him on the shoulder, as if perhaps for his coronation. But the jumble of goods in this treasure trove also includes solid gold heads of the king inlaid with precious stones, full-length figures of him in various guises, dramatic and life-like animals, detailed alabaster boats and spectacular reliefs on a gilt shrine, together with countless other objects ...
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Byzantine icons
The earliest images of the Christian empire are the mosaics decorating the walls and domes of churches. But a different and ultimately more lasting tradition grows up in the monasteries of the eastern church. This is the tradition of the icon, from the Greek eikon meaning 'image' - a holy picture, and particularly one painted on a portable wooden panel. This form of devotional object is well suited to the needs of monks in remote desert communities. One of the greatest collections of early icons ...
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Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb
Direct provocation of this kind is untypical of Shah Jahan, but it becomes standard policy during the reign of his son Aurangzeb. His determination to impose strict Islamic rule on India undoes much of what was achieved by Akbar. An attack on Rajput territories in 1679 makes enemies of the Hindu princes; the reimposition of the jizya in the same year ensures resentment among Hindu merchants and peasants. At the same time Aurangzeb is obsessed with extending Moghul rule into the difficult terrain of southern ...
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Eastern monasticism
The monastic tradition of eastern Christianity remains true to its ascetic origins, with the discomfort of the hermitage carried to extremes in the strange tradition of the stylites. Even today the monasteries of the Coptic church of Egypt and Ethiopia, together with the Greek Orthodox communities of Mount Athos and Meteora in Greece and of St Catherine's below Mount Sinai, give the impression of subsisting at the furthest possible remove from the everyday life of fertile valleys. Celtic monasticism in the west has the same ...
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The Pala d'Oro
In addition to its Byzantine mosaics, St Mark's contains in the Pala d'Oro the most spectacular surviving altarpiece of a kind familiar in imperial Byzantine churches. Small scenes in cloisonné enamel of Jesus, the Virgin and saints are set in a gold background encrusted with jewels. Commissioned from the workshops of Constantinople by a doge of the 10th century, the original Pala d'Oro is dismantled and extended several times to incorporate new panels. It acquires its present form in 1345. Some of the added panels ...
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Mary in Scotland
Darnley is handsome and charming, and his royal lineage means that any child of Mary's and his will have an enhanced claim to the English throne (Henry VII's daughter Margaret Tudor is grandmother to Mary by her first marriage and to Darnley by her second). But these turn out to be Darnley's only merits. Idle, deceitful and unscrupulous, he soon earns Mary's hatred. The combination of his defects and her impulsiveness prompts a spiral of disaster. The first significant event is the murder, with Darnley's ...
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Abu Simbel
When the pharaoh Ramses II decides to create a great monument to himself at the first cataract of the Nile (as if to dominate the defeated southern province of Cush), he conceives the earliest and probably the most impressive of all rock-cut shrines adorned with statuary.At Abu Simbel a sloping sandstone rock rises high above the Nile. Ramses' sculptors and labourers are given the task of hacking into the rock face - to expose first four colossal seated statues of the pharaoh himself (each some ...
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Karnak and Luxor
These temples are built and added to over a long period. But the grandeur which now remains is mainly from the two centuries after 1500 BC (much of it designed to celebrate the military victories of pharaohs of the New Kingdom, as is the extraordinary rock-cut temple of Abu Simbel). Greek architecture will later refine the ponderous elements in this ancient Egyptian style, slimming the fat pillars, formalizing the decoration, introducing better balance and proportion. As a result the most lasting of all architectural conventions ...
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Wives of Henry VIII
It is not known whether there is any basis to this accusation, but those accused of being her lovers (including her own brother) are executed on May 17. Anne is beheaded on May 19. On the very next day Henry is betrothed to one of Anne's ladies-in-waiting, Jane Seymour. They marry on May 30. The following year, in October, Jane does at last produce the long-awaited male heir, the future Edward VI. But she herself dies twelve days later. Henry's next marriage also leads to ...
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The Carolingian inheritance
Charlemagne intends, in the tradition of the Franks, to divide his territory equally between his sons. But the two eldest die, in 810 and 811, leaving only Louis - who succeeds as sole emperor in 814. His subsequent name, Louis the Pious, reveals a character different from his father's; he is more interested in asserting authority through the medium of church and monastery than on the battlefield. Charlemagne's great empire remains precariously intact for this one reign after his death. Its fragmentation begins when Louis ...
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Wise men of the east
The Magi, who in the Christian story bring gifts to the infant Jesus, travel from a Persia ruled by the Parthians, in origin a dynasty of nomads. But the region has been culturally under the influence of Greece ever since the conquests of Alexander the Great. The Greeks are tolerant of other religions, and the Parthians adopt much of Zoroastrianism - even erecting fire altars in honour of Ahura Mazda. So the religion survives, though not with the status which it enjoyed under the Achaemenids. ...
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Descendants of Thutmose
Like his predecessors, Thutmose III is a passionate builder, adding greatly to the splendours of Karnak. His great grandson Amenhotep III continues the tradition, diverting attention to the southern part of Thebes, at Luxor, where he begins the great temple to Amen-Re.During a century and a half Thutmose I and his descendants have done great honour to this traditional god of the pharaohs, the blend of Amen (the local god of Thebes) and the earlier sun god Re. But the status of the Theban god ...
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Archbishop and martyr
Politically the murder of Becket loses Henry the wider argument about ecclesiastical control. In the mood following the assassination he has to concede, at any rate in the short term, all the points on which Becket was opposing him. But in other contexts Henry has notable successes. Within months of the murder, in the autumn of 1171, he travels through Wales and on into Ireland. In each he makes settlements greatly to the English advantage. In 1174 (after vigorously suppressing rebellions both in England and ...
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Council of Constance
The council deals with the matter of heresy more speedily than it succeeds in reducing three popes to one. The ideas of Wycliffe and Huss are discussed and rapidly condemned. Huss is burnt at the stake in July 1415. By that time Jerome of Prague has with equal courage travelled to Constance to defend his master. He too is arrested. In May 1416 he is burnt on the same patch of ground as Huss. To ensure that there are no relics of heresy, the council ...
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Hargreaves and Crompton
Crompton's machine combines the principles of Hargreaves' jenny and of Arkwright's water frame. The name which it acquires - Crompton's mule - is a pun on that fact. As the offspring of a jenny (a female donkey) and of another creature, the new arrival is clearly a mule.Crompton's machine is capable of spinning almost every kind of yarn at considerable speed. The flying shuttle in the 1750s put pressure on the spinners to catch up. Now the mule challenges the weavers. They respond in 1785 ...
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