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hoe

(Encyclopedia)hoe, usually a flat blade, variously shaped, set in a long wooden handle and used primarily for weeding and for loosening the soil. It was the first distinctly agricultural implement. The earliest hoe...

Ibn Batuta

(Encyclopedia)Ibn Batuta ĭˈbən bäto͞oˈtä [key], 1304?–1378?, Muslim traveler, b. Tangier. No other medieval traveler is known to have journeyed so extensively. In 30 years (from c.1325) he made a series of...

Edessa

(Encyclopedia)Edessa ĭdĕsˈə [key], ancient city of Mesopotamia, on the site of modern Şanlıurfa, Turkey. It emerged in the 4th cent. b.c. as Orrhoe, or Arrhoe, and was later named Edessa by Seleucus I of Syri...

Zenobia

(Encyclopedia)Zenobia zĭnōˈbēə [key], d. after 272, queen of Palmyra. She was of Arab stock and was the wife of Septimius Odenathus. He was murdered, probably through her contrivance, and she obtained rule of ...

Odenathus, Septimius

(Encyclopedia)Odenathus, Septimius sĕptĭmˈēəs ŏdĭnāˈthəs [key], d. 267, king of Palmyra. His family (the Septimii) had dominated Palmyra for many years, and Odenathus by his policy of cooperation with Rom...

Babylonian captivity

(Encyclopedia)Babylonian captivity, in the history of Israel, the period from the fall of Jerusalem (586 b.c.) to the reconstruction in Palestine of a new Jewish state (after 538 b.c.). After the capture of the cit...

Umar

(Encyclopedia)Umar ōˈmär [key], c.581–644, 2d caliph (see caliphate). At first hostile to Islam, he was converted by 618, becoming an adviser to Muhammad. He succeeded Abu Bakr as caliph without opposition in ...

Arabian horse

(Encyclopedia)Arabian horse, breed of light horse developed in Mesopotamia and N Africa, and probably the first true domesticated breed. Prized since earliest times for its superior beauty, spirit, speed, grace of ...

sun worship

(Encyclopedia)sun worship. Deification and adoration of the sun occurred primarily in agrarian societies. When man became a farmer, and thus dependent upon daily and seasonal changes of weather, he often turned to ...

Breasted, James Henry

(Encyclopedia)Breasted, James Henry brĕsˈtĭd [key], 1865–1935, American Egyptologist, b. Rockford, Ill., grad. North Central College, 1888, M.A. Yale, 1891, Ph.D. Univ. of Berlin, 1894. He began teaching at th...