Constantinople’s other great advantage was the deimperialization, so to speak, of emperors. The word we use in English, “emperor,” derives through French from the...
Constantine, the first Christian emperor, saw the possibilities in the place. He was brilliant in both his plan for the city and its execution....
A sober contemporary of that family, the businessman Dioscoros from the modest city of Aphrodito (Aphrodite’s town, back when the landscape was given Greek...
Within the Arab community, there were more settled and prosperous tribes, reaching out into the more intractable desert, marginal desert dwell- ers—forerunners of the...
North and east of Palestine the businessman-traveler came to Edessa, a very old city (thought by Muslims to be the birthplace of Abraham) refounded...
Small wonder that they understood their world so poorly. Small wonder as well that even when we know better in principle and when we...
I have meditated and written this book in some unusual places, on travels to every continent save one, in the intermissions of my unscholarly...
An American soldier posted in Anbar province during the twilight war over the remains of Saddam’s Mesopotamian kingdom might have been surprised to learn...
