History Middle

As the world's attention traces the reluctant social advances in the Middle East, Princess Sultana and her female friends and family have stepped forward to rescue young women in the region who are cruelly mistreated by their husbands, their fathers, and the brutish ISIS soldiers who kidnap them. But inside the Princess' lavish Saudi Arabian palace, sparks of anger and bolts of fear crackle because of the secrets kept to forward her efforts to help women and children.

Have you ever wondered what life would be like if you were born into another time period? What about the Middle Ages? Would you have been lucky and lived as a knight, a lord or lady, or even a king or queen? Or would you have been like the majority of peasants and lived a tough life of hard labor? Did everyone live in castles? What did people do for work? And for fun? Did knights really fight dragons? You’ll find out the answers to these questions and so much more in this incredible audiobook on medieval Europe.

Revolutions, reformations, and the Renaissance—it took a lot of movements to turn medieval Europe into what we know today. The world was shaped by Europe’s contributions to art, literature, science, culture, religion, and technology.

Crescent Dawn features some of the legendary figures of the era – from Mehmet the Conqueror, and Suleiman the Magnificent on the Ottoman side, to Charles V and Vasco de Gama on the other – and some of the most exotic locales on Earth – from the sumptuous palaces of Constantinople to the bloody battlefields of the Balkans to the awe-inspiring mountains of Ethiopia. This is a colorful history that brings the great battles of the age to life and clearly shows how the western struggle against the Ottomans constituted the first truly world war.

Forgotten uncovers the hidden or neglected memorials and places in historic Palestine—now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories—and what they might tell us about the land and the people who live on the small slip of earth between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. From ancient city ruins to the Nabi 'Ukkasha mosque and tomb, acclaimed writers and researchers Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson ask: what has been memorialized, and what lies unseen, abandoned, or erased—and why?

There have been dozens of Chinese dynasties and hundreds of emperors. Different parts of the country have different customs and dialects, but they all share the same history, learning from the great men and women who shaped China and its 5,000 years of civilization. Presented in three volumes are stories of characters who shaped the history of the Chinese from past to present. By knowing them, you will begin to understand today's China.

Gertrude Bell was leaning in 100 years before Sheryl Sandberg. One of the great woman adventurers of the 20th century, she turned her back on Victorian society to study at Oxford and travel the world and became the chief architect of British policy in the Middle East after World War I. Mountaineer, archaeologist, Arabist, writer, poet, linguist, and spy, she dedicated her life to championing the Arab cause and was instrumental in drawing the borders that define today's Middle East.

In 1948, Israel’s founders sought a “national home for the Jewish people,” where Jewish life would be transformed. The state they ultimately made, says Daniel Gordis, is a place of extraordinary success and maddening disappointment, a story of both unprecedented human triumph and great suffering.

This accessible history, the first of two volumes, tells the story of the birth and expansion of the Fatimid Empire in the 10th century. Drawing upon recently available eyewitness accounts, Shainool Jiwa introduces the first four generations of Fatimid Imam-caliphs as well as the people who served them and those they struggled against. In this lively and comprehensive introduction, we discover various milestones in Fatimid history and the political and cultural achievements that continue to resonate today.

In 1925, James Henry Breasted sent a team of archaeologists to the Holy Land to excavate the ancient site of Megiddo - Armageddon in the New Testament. Their excavations made headlines around the world and shed light on one of the most legendary cities of biblical times. Digging Up Armageddon brings to life one of the most important archaeological expeditions ever undertaken, describing the site and what was found there, and providing an up-close look at the internal workings of a dig in the early years of biblical archaeology.

For a period of seven years, Wilfred Thesiger canoed through the marshes at the confluence of Iraq's Tigris and Euphrates rivers, living among the native Madan tribes and their islands made of reeds. Now extinct, their ancient way of life is speculated to have existed for 5,000 years, going back to the days of ancient Sumer, and possessed a unique culture found nowhere else in the Middle East. Thesiger documents the tribes' conflicts, traditions, cuisine, relationships, justice systems, and art, and reveals how they built their unique water-borne society

In a remote enemy-held valley in Afghanistan, a Special Forces team planned to scale a steep mountain to surprise and capture a terrorist leader. But before they found the target, the target found them. The team was caught in a deadly ambush that threatened not only their lives but the entire mission. The elite soldiers fought huddled for hours on a small rock ledge as rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine-gun fire rained down on them.

This audiobook is perfect if you love history or just want to know more cool facts. It’s like a time machine that takes you back to amazing times in history! With 1500 interesting facts bringing history to life, you’ll see the past in a whole new way.

At midnight, December 31, 1925, citizens of the newly proclaimed Turkish Republic celebrated the New Year. For the first time ever, they had agreed to use a nationally unified calendar and clock. Yet in Istanbul - an ancient crossroads and Turkey's largest city - people were looking toward an uncertain future. Never purely Turkish, Istanbul was home to generations of Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, as well as Muslims.

Imprisoned in a remote Turkish POW camp during World War I, having survived a two-month forced march and a terrifying shootout in the desert, two British officers, Harry Jones and Cedric Hill, join forces to bamboozle their iron-fisted captors. To stave off despair and boredom, Jones takes a handmade Ouija board and fakes elaborate séances for his fellow prisoners. Word gets around, and one day, an Ottoman official approaches Jones with a query: Could Jones contact the spirit world to find a vast treasure rumored to be buried nearby?

The Sumerians settled in the area known as Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, around 5,000 years ago. They produced many fundamental changes to the way in which human societies developed - these were the first city-builders, the first people to use wheeled vehicles, the first methodical astronomers, and the first people to develop a sophisticated written language. The Sumerians also produced art, music, and literature as well as created some of the first professional soldiers the world had ever seen.

In 2014, northeastern Syria might have been the last place you would expect to find a revolution centered on women's rights. But that year, an all-female militia faced off against ISIS in a little town few had ever heard of: Kobani. By then, the Islamic State had swept across vast swaths of the country, taking town after town and spreading terror as the civil war burned all around it. From that unlikely showdown in Kobani emerged a fighting force that would wage war against ISIS across northern Syria alongside the United States.

A sweeping cultural history of the Near East, from the birth of civilisation to the present day. The Near East was the cradle of civilisation: the Sumerians invented urban living and writing here, and monotheism was born and spread across the globe. Arthur Cotterell vividly sketches the extraordinary cultures that have left their mark on the region, from their early myths, deities and rituals of worship to their pioneering political systems and military conquests.

In this first work of its kind, the author draws upon two decades of experience to lay bare the calculus, structure, and execution of Iran's foreign intelligence activities, covert actions, and unconventional warfare operations. This book reveals how the regime's shadowy work is driven by a warring mixture of rampant paranoia, unshakable greed, and cold rationality. He meticulously reveals a policy toolkit wielded for self-interest and survival, supported by strategies to eliminate opposition figures, stifle dissent, and promote defense in depth around Iran.

Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Mazzetti examines secret wars over the past decade, tracking key characters from the intelligence and military communities across the world. Among the characters we meet in The Way of the Knife are a young CIA officer dropped into the tribal areas to learn the hard way how the spy games in Pakistan are played; an Air Force test pilot who fired the first drone missile in the Nevada desert; and a chain-smoking Pentagon official who ran an off-the-books spying operation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.