The Battle of al Qasr al Kabir Contributed by Prof. Dr. Nazeer Ahmed, PhD The battle of al Qasr al Kabir must rank with the great battles in world history alongside the battles of Ayn Jalut (1261), Lepanto (1571), Plassey (1757), and Stalingrad (1942). At immediate stake was the fate of Morocco. But when the battle was over, the might of Portugal had been crushed, the Portuguese king...

The Fatimid conquest of Egypt (969) was a defining moment in Islamic history. It destroyed any semblance of central authority in the Muslim world, provoked the reaction of the Turks as defenders of orthodox (Sunni) Islam, impelled the Omayyads in Spain to declare their own Caliphate, launched the powerful Murabitun revolution in western Africa, denied the Muslims their last chance to conquer...

Abu al-Qasim Khalaf ibn al-Abbas Al-Zahrawi was born near Cordoba, Spain, when it was part of the Islamic Empire. He was a physician, surgeon and chemist. He is best remembered for his encyclopedia of medicine, the Al-Tasrif li man ajaz an-il-talif (An Aid for Those Who Lack the Capacity to Read Big Books), known as the al-Tasrif. This became a standard reference in Islamic and European...