On February 11, 1979, the Iranian state collapsed—not gradually, not through constitutional maneuvering, but in a sudden, cascading failure that left one of the Middle East’s most powerful monarchies dissolved almost overnight. That day, revolutionary forces seized key military installations in Tehran, senior officers…
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On October 31, 683 A.D., fire consumed the holiest sanctuary in Islam. During the bloody Siege of Mecca—the climax of the Second Fitna, or second great Muslim civil war—the Kaaba itself was set ablaze amid fierce fighting between the Umayyad Caliphate and the rebel…
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On July 27, 1299, a frontier chieftain named Osman I led his warriors across the Byzantine border and launched a raid into the territory of Nicomedia, a strategic outpost in northwestern Anatolia. According to Edward Gibbon, the English historian best known for The History…
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On June 7, 1099, after a brutal journey across Europe and the Levant, the weary but determined Crusader army arrived outside the walls of Jerusalem. Their arrival marked the beginning of one of the defining and bloodiest chapters of the First Crusade. The Crusaders,…
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When Sultan Mehmed II encamped outside the Theodosian Walls on April 6, 1453, beginning what would become the final siege of Constantinople, few could have anticipated that the confrontation would not merely end a millennium of Byzantine rule, but also inaugurate a new political…
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