A Brief History On August 23, 1244, the main central citadel of the city of Jerusalem, the Tower of David, fell to the invaders from the remnants of the Khwarezmian Empire, a vast polyglot land that included parts of what is now Iran and Afghanistan along with other areas in Central Asia. Afghanistan has a long history of war and fighting, and the people there have been battle hardened by centuries of conflict. In August of 2021, the lone military super power in the world, the United States of America, has found out the hard way that Afghanistan may be…
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A Brief History On an unknown date in 1405, an Albanian of renown was born, a man known to us as Skanderbeg, a feudal lord and military commander par excellence, fittingly named after Alexander the Great. Note: Thank you for recommending an article on this interesting historical figure from one of our readers. All readers are welcome to suggest people and topics for articles! Digging Deeper Born Gjergj Kastrioti Skënderbeu, we are also not sure exactly where he was born, though various small villages are usually speculated as his place of birth. Possibly a village owned by his grandfather, Pal Kastrioti,…
A Brief History On June 7, 2021, we have had the opportunity to read and review a great new historical examination of “the Roman campaign to crush the Jewish revolt,” as the book calls itself. Conquering Jerusalem, by Stephen Dando-Collins, is just about 200 pages long, long enough to address detail while compact enough to keep the reader engaged. (By the way, this reviewer has personally been to Jerusalem, a fascinating place.) Digging Deeper We found the text highly readable, while retaining academic accuracy and serious addressing of facts and events, the flow of the book is more like a…
A Brief History On December 25, 2020, people around the world celebrate the Christian holiday of Christmas, honoring the birth of Jesus Christ. During this Christmas season, we are likely to hear many Christmas carols and holiday songs, but none of them are arguably as touching and universal as “O Holy Night,” also known as “Cantique de Noël” in the original French. We take this opportunity to reflect on the song that, in our opinion, is the greatest Christmas carol. Digging Deeper While the famous carol is of course, Christian, the backgrounds of the men involved in creating the song…
A Brief History Today, as the United States and the rest of the world continues to be ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic, we look back to a previous pandemic of enormously greater proportions, the infamous Black Death of Bubonic Plague that ravaged much of the world in the 14th Century. Panicked populations, desperate for answers and solutions to the deadly plague, took to blaming Europe’s Jewish population as the cause of the calamity, a scapegoating of Jews common throughout history. The pervasive theme of blaming various catastrophes on Jews made the scapegoating of the Black Death an almost foregone conclusion! …