Mary Magdalene is to simply put it an enigma. She is one of the more fascinating characters or persons from the gospels. Her devotion to Christ is second to none, which might explain our fascination or affections towards her. She is I believe an incorruptible heroine of the faith and not the sinner and fallen women that she was portrayed as during the Middle Ages. I think it’s fair to say that we are cluey enough to realise that the attempts to sully her name were done for selfish and or chauvinistic purposes. The following article is a very short study of Mary Magdalene accompanied by some of ..read more

Do not underestimate the power of historical fiction. It has its detractors but they are dwarfed by those who consume its appeal to entertain us.  It’s fair to say historical fiction is often one of the best ways to learn about history. It allows us to have an emotional connection to characters and the things that have happened. If anything, it often sends us on a search to discover more about the real lives and events depicted within the pages of historical fiction. I’m reminded of a wonderful quote by historical novelist Hilary Mantel, who once said, “History, and science too, help ..read more

Does St. Nicholas deserve his place amongst humanities most kindest, gentlest, generous and loving individuals to have walked this earth? Maybe, probably, yeah why not! It is astonishing to think that from humble beginnings, he was a man who put everyone ahead of himself, especially the poor and needy, the innocent and those who staved from famine. He also had a reputation of gift-giving. In the stories told of him he apparently provided dowries of gold to poor girls and or leaving coins in the shoes of those who left them out for him. He has inspired billions of Christians around the world to ..read more

The Christian gospels of Luke and Matthew have long described how Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem in Judea. However, we have no way of really knowing whether he was born in a house, inn, stable or cave? Where does all the confusion stem from? How do we come to an agreement, as to what really happened? If we refer back to the gospels for clues, Luke 2:7 asserts that Mary “laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.” It is interesting how generations have chosen to interpret this line. For instance, is it logical to assume that a manger would be found in a stable ..read more

There is no doubt that the Christ Pantocrator, Marian art and the passion of Christ are some of the most widely used religious art forms in Orthodox Christianity. However, the importance of the Nativity in art can be said to rival each of these forms. The scope and detail of the Nativity of Jesus in art has been well documented beginning with its first depictions in the fourth century. We have a fine example of this form of art etched on early Christian Roman sarcophagi. In the catacombs of Rome, a depiction of the Magi, presenting gifts to an infant Christ, seated on Mary’s lap, shows the car ..read more

Past The earliest nomadic herders once called Dubai and its surrounds home during ancient times. It was here that these Bronze Age herders established the first date palm plantations as a serious push into agriculture. By the fifth century CE, records reveal that the area had become a caravan station along the important trade route that linked Oman and Iraq. Interestingly, a thriving pearl trade in Dubai is mentioned in records courtesy of a Venetian pearl merchant named Gaspero Balbi. He visited the area in the late sixteenth century. Skip a few hundred years and Dubai, now a dependency of th ..read more

Sometimes it is premature to name a significant event as a turning point in history. 9/11 and its aftermath, the war on terror and so on, rightly deserves to be termed as such. On the morning of September 11, 2001, Islamic extremists from a group called al Qaeda hijacked commercial airplanes and carried out one of the most sinister suicide attacks against business and military targets in the United States. In truth, the 9/11 attacks can also be called an attack on America. In short, four coordinated airplanes attacked sites on the eastern seaboard in the United States. Two airplanes crashed in ..read more

A casual search of some of the most physical demanding jobs in history led me strangely to artist impressions of workers hauling stone blocks during the construction of the pyramids in Egypt. A more refined search in a modern context resulted in finding images of burlaks hauling barges upstream on the Volga River in the early 20th century in the Russian Empire. On first impression I was stunned by the sight of men (and women) hauling freight and other vessels and wondered if this was a uniquely Russian experience of the poor looking for work. A closer examination of this type of work revealed ..read more

The notorious events surrounding the burning of the great ancient Persian capital of Persepolis in 330 BCE by Alexander The Great is clouded mystery. It is true that Persepolis was razed to the ground. That fact is not disputed. But what is central to the question of what happened, who was to blame and why did it happen in the first place is quite intriguing. The answer to these almost impossible questions are found in ancient texts written by at least three historians, who all basically agree that the fire was started when Thaïs, a young Greek courtesan, during a drunken orgy persuaded Alexan ..read more

Relatively early in the complex state that was the Roman Empire, a man named Hadrian (Publius Aelius Hadrianus), became the fourteenth Emperor of Rome in 117 CE. He inherited a healthy empire from his predecessor Trajan, and built on Rome’s success as a capable administrator in his own right, in all aspects of order and good governance. To achieve this, one of the first things he did was abandon Trajan’s conquests of Mesopotamia and Assyria, which he considered far too expensive to maintain. With one eye on the treasury, and the other on overseeing the maintenance of the vast empire, he is rem ..read more