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The Bible (from Koine Greek τὰ βιβλία, tà biblía, "the books") is a canonical collection of texts
sacred in Judaism and Christianity. There is no single "Bible" and
many Bibles with varying contents exist.[1] The term Bible is shared between
Judaism and Christianity, although the contents of each of their collections of
canonical texts is not the same. Different religious groups include different
books within their Biblical canons, in different orders, and sometimes divide
or combine books, or incorporate additional material into canonical books.
The Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, contains
twenty-four books divided into three parts: the five books of the Torah
("teaching" or "law"), the Nevi'im ("prophets"),
and the Ketuvim ("writings"). Christian Bibles range from the
sixty-six books of the Protestant canon to the eighty-one books of the
Ethiopian Orthodox Church canon. The first part of Christian Bibles is the Old
Testament, which contains, at minimum, the twenty-four books of the Hebrew
Bible divided into thirty-nine books and ordered differently from the Hebrew
Bible. The Catholic Church and Eastern Christian churches also hold certain
deuterocanonical books and passages to be part of the Old Testament canon. The
second part is the New Testament, containing twenty-seven books: the four
Canonical gospels, Acts of the Apostles, twenty-one Epistles or didactic
letters, and the Book of Revelation.
Portrait at Tiananmen 1st Chairman Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China In office 1945 - 1976
Born the son of a wealthy farmer in Shaoshan,
Hunan, Mao adopted a Chinese nationalist and anti-imperialist outlook in early
life, particularly influenced by the events of the Xinhai Revolution of 1911
and May Fourth Movement of 1919. Mao converted to Marxism-Leninism while
working at Peking University and became a founding member of the Communist
Party of China (CPC), leading the Autumn Harvest Uprising in 1927. During the
Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the CPC, Mao helped to found
the Red Army, led the Jiangxi Soviet's radical land policies and ultimately
became head of the CPC during the Long March. Although the CPC temporarily
allied with the KMT under the United Front during the Second Sino-Japanese War
(1937–45), after Japan's defeat China's civil war resumed and in 1949 Mao's
forces defeated the Nationalists who withdrew to Taiwan.
Credits: Wikipedia
Mao Zedong and China's Cultural Revolution (Full Documentary)
Peter the Great officially renamed the Tsardom of Russia the Russian Empire in 1721, and himself its first emperor. He instituted the sweeping reforms and oversaw the transformation of Russia into a major European power.
Though the Empire was only officially
proclaimed by Tsar Peter I, following the Treaty of Nystad (1721), some
historians would argue that it was truly born either when Ivan III conquered
Novgorod or when Ivan IV conquered Kazan. According to another point of view,
the term Tsardom, which was used after the coronation of Ivan IV in 1547, was
already a contemporary Russian word for empire, while Peter
the Great just replaced it with a Latinized synonym. Perhaps the latter was
done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country.
Much of Russia's expansion occurred in the
17th century, culminating in the first Russian settlement of the Pacific in the
mid-17th century, the incorporation of Left-bank Ukraine and the pacification
of the Siberian tribes.
Kublai was the second son of Tolui and Sorghaghtani Beki, and a grandson
of Genghis Khan. Kublai's real power was limited to China and Mongolia. In
1271, Kublai established the Yuan Dynasty, which ruled over present-day
Mongolia, China, Korea, and some adjacent areas, and assumed the role
of Emperor of China. By 1279, the Yuan forces had overcome the last
resistance of the Southern Song Dynasty, and Kublai became the first
non-Chinese Emperor to conquer all of China. He was also the only Mongol
khan after 1260 to win new conquests. The summer garden of
Kublai Khan at Xanadu is the subject of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 1797
poem Kubla Khan. This poem and Marco Polo's earlier book brought Kublai
and his achievements to the attention of a wider audience, and today
Kublai is a well-known historical figure.
Genghis Khan, National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan
A story of the greatest conqueror ever in world history and his Mongol Empire that ruled the world a thousand years ago.
The Mongol Empire
existed during the 13th and
14th centuries, was the largest contiguous land empire in history.
Originating in the steppes of Central Asia, the Mongol Empire eventually
stretched from Central Europe to the Sea of Japan, extending northwards
into
Siberia, eastwards and southwards into the Indian subcontinent,
Indochina, and
the Iranian plateau, and westwards as far as the Levant and Arabia.
The
empire unified nomadic tribes of
historical Mongolia under the leadership of Genghis Khan, who was
proclaimed
ruler of all Mongols in 1206. The empire grew rapidly under his rule and
then
under his descendants, who sent invasions in every direction. The vast
transcontinental empire connected the east with the west with an
enforced Pax Mongolica allowing trade, technologies, commodities, and
ideologies to be disseminated and exchanged across Eurasia.
Mongol conquests resulted in some of the most
destructive wars in human history. In Iran, the Mongol invasion resulted in
extermination, disease, and destruction of irrigation systems resulting in mass
emigration, famine, and drastic population decline. Historian Steve Ward
estimates that three quarters of the population, about 10 to 15 million people,
died, and that Iran's population did not reach its pre-Mongol levels again
until the 20th century.
The empire began to split due to wars over
succession, as the grandchildren of Genghis Khan disputed whether the royal
line should follow from his son and initial heir Ögedei, or one of his other
sons such as Tolui, Chagatai, or Jochi. The Toluids prevailed after a bloody
purge of Ögedeid and Chagataid factions, but disputes continued even among the
descendants of Tolui. After Möngke Khan died, rival kurultai councils simultaneously
elected different successors, the brothers Ariq Böke and Kublai Khan, who then
not only fought each other in the Toluid Civil War, but also dealt with
challenges from descendants of other sons of Genghis. Kublai
successfully took power, but civil war ensued as Kublai sought unsuccessfully
to regain control of the Chagatayid and Ögedeid families.
The Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260 marked the
high-water point of the Mongol conquests and was the first time a Mongol
advance had ever been beaten back in direct combat on the battlefield. Though
the Mongols launched many more invasions into the Levant, briefly occupying it
and raiding as far as Gaza after a decisive victory at the Battle of Wadi
al-Khazandar in 1299, they withdrew due to various geopolitical factors.
By the time of Kublai's death in 1294, the
Mongol Empire had fractured into four separate khanates or empires, each
pursuing its own separate interests and objectives: the Golden Horde khanate in
the northwest; the Chagatai Khanate in the west; the Ilkhanate in the
southwest; and the Yuan Dynasty based in modern-day Beijing. In 1304, the
three western khanates briefly accepted the nominal suzerainty of the Yuan
Dynasty, but when it was overthrown by the Han Chinese Ming Dynasty in
1368, the Mongol Empire finally dissolved and Mongols returned to their
homeland Mongolia.
The Vandals, art: Vandalic goldfoil jewellery from the 3rd or 4th century
Ranging far from their roots in Germany, these power-hungry pagans swept
through Spain, then across North Africa, and eventually to the gates of
Rome itself.
The Vandals were an East Germanic tribe, or
group of tribes, who were first heard of in southern Poland, but later moved
around Europe establishing kingdoms in Spain and later North Africa in the 5th
century.
The Vandals are believed to have migrated from
southern Scandinavia to the area between the lower Oder and Vistula rivers
during the 2nd century BC and to have settled in Silesia from around 120
BC. They are associated with the Przeworsk culture, and were possibly
the same people as the Lugii. Expanding into Dacia during the Marcomannic Wars
and to Pannonia during the Crisis of the Third Century, the Vandals were
confined to Pannonia by the Goths around 330 AD, where they received permission
to settle by Constantine the Great. Around 400 the Vandals were pushed
westwards again, this time by the Huns, crossing the Rhine into Gaul along with
other tribes in 406. In 409, the Vandals crossed the Pyrenees into Iberia,
where their main groups, the Hasdingi and the Silingi, settled in Galicia and Baetica
respectively. After the Visigothic invasion of Iberia, the Sarmatian Alans
and Silingi Vandals voluntarily subjected to the rule Hasdingian leader
Gunderic, who was pushed from Galicia to Baetica by a Roman-Suebi coalition in
419. In 429, under king Genseric, the Vandals entered North Africa. By 439 they
established a kingdom which included the Roman Africa province, besides the
islands of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta and the Balearics. They fended off
several Roman attempts to recapture the province, and sacked the city of Rome
in 455. Their kingdom collapsed in the Vandalic War of 533–4, in which
Justinian I managed to reconquer the Africa province for the Eastern Roman
(Byzantine) Empire. Credits: Wikipedia
Huns in battle with the Alans. An 1870s engraving after a drawing by Johann Nepomuk Geiger (1805–1880).
They
were the dreaded forces on the fringes of civilization, the bloodthirsty
warriors who defied the Roman legions and terrorized the people of
Europe. They were the Barbarians, and their names still evoke images of
cruelty and chaos. Amongst them, the Huns, the mysterious warriors who were led by man whose name
remains synonymous with bloodshed and destruction: Attila.
The Huns were anomadic
group of people known to have inhabited Eastern Europe, the Caucasus,
and Central Asia between the 1st century AD and the 7th century. They
were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was
part of Scythia at the time; the Huns' arrival is associated with the
migration westward of a Scythian people, the Alans.
They were first mentioned as Hunnoi by Tacitus. In 91 AD, the Huns were
said to be living near the Caspian Sea and by about 150 AD had migrated
southeast into the Caucasus.By 370 AD, the Huns had established a vast, if short-lived, dominion in Europe.
In
the 18th century, the French scholar Joseph de Guignes became the first
to propose a link between the Huns and the Xiongnu people, who were
northern neighbours of China in the 3rd century BC.
Since Guignes' time, considerable scholarly effort has been devoted to
investigating such a connection. However, there is no scholarly
consensus on a direct connection between the dominant element of the
Xiongnu and that of the Huns. Priscus mentions that the Huns had a language of their own;
little of it has survived and its relationships have been the subject
of debate for centuries. Numerous other languages were spoken within the
Hun Empire, including Gothic (East Germanic). Their main military technique was mounted archery.
The Huns may have stimulated the Great Migration, a contributing factor in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.
They formed a unified empire under Attila the Hun, who died in 453 AD;
their empire broke up
the next year. Their descendants, or successors with similar names, are
recorded by neighbouring populations to the south, east and west as
having occupied parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia approximately
from the 4th century to the 6th century. Variants of the Hun name are
recorded in the Caucasus until the early 8th century.
