Mother Teresa Biography (1910-1997)

(baptized August 27, 1910, Skopje, Macedonia, Ottoman Empire , India; beatified October 19, 2003) founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic congregation of women dedicated to the poor, particularly to the destitute of India. She was the recipient of numerous honours, including the 1979 Nobel…

HISTORY OF TUNISIA

The Barbary coast: 16th – 20th century AD

With the decline of the local Berber dynasties in the 15th and 16th centuries, the valuable coastal strip of north Africa (known because of the Berbers as the Barbary coast) attracts the attention of the two most powerful Mediterranean states of the time – Spain in the west, Turkey in the east.

The…

HISTORY OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

Fall of Constantinople: AD 1453

A month after his twenty-first birthday, in April 1453, Mehmed II applies to Constantinople the stranglehold which has been a tacit threat for nearly a century, ever since the Ottoman capture of Adrianople (Edirne in its Turkish name) in 1362. He initiates a tight blockade of the city by both sea and land.

The inhabitants,…

HISTORY OF LIBYA

The Barbary coast: 16th – 20th century AD

With the decline of the local Berber dynasties in the 15th and 16th centuries, the valuable coastal strip of north Africa (known because of the Berbers as the Barbary coast) attracts the attention of the two most powerful Mediterranean states of the time – Spain in the west, Turkey in the east.

The…

HISTORY OF HUNGARY

Magyars: 9th – 10th century AD

The lower Danube, before the river enters the Black Sea, has been Europe’s doorway to tribal groups arriving from the north and east. Here the Visigoths and Ostrogoths and Slavs have first presented themselves to the Roman empire, requesting or demanding admission. And here there arrives, in AD 889, another group.

They differ from their…

HISTORY OF ARABIA

An empty quarter

Arabia is the huge peninsula lying between northeast Africa and the bulk of continental Asia. Its long southern coast faces across the Indian Ocean towards India. So it is well placed for trade.

But until the 20th century the region has had no other natural advantages. The centre is a desert, as inhospitable as…