Abu Nasr Muhammad ibn al-Farakh al-Farabi, or Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Tarkhan ibn Uzalagh al-Farabi, was born in 870
Article
Abdul Karim Bangura
Article
Jeremy Rich
Gabonese Roman Catholic priest and scholar, was born on 19 June 1871 in Libreville in present-day Gabon to Robert Bruce Napoleon Walker and Agnourogoulé Ikoutou. Ikoutou was a female Mpongwe entrepreneur. R. B. N. Walker was an English resident of Gabon. Raponda Walker’s father, an amateur scholar and trader, took him to England for several years in the mid-1870s. After the boy returned to Libreville by 1877, his Mpongwe mother raised him. He had already learned some English, French, and Omyènè, the dominant language of the Gabonese coast and the commercial lingua franca of the entire colony, before the age of ten. Raponda Walker was so inspired by his Catholic missionary teachers that he chose in 1886 to enter the seminary and to become ordained His mother opposed his decision to become a priest on the grounds he would not be able to form his own family Although ...
Article
Daniela Dueck
Hellenistic geographer and historian, of Amasia, Pontus, was born and raised in Amasia in northern Asia Minor and educated by renowned Hellenistic Asian teachers. His ancestors on his mother’s side were companions of the kings of Pontus but supported the Romans during the Mithridatic War. In his adult life Strabo visited and lived in Rome, Alexandria, Nysa, and possibly Smyrna and Athens. In Rome (in 44 and 29 BCE) he met and socialized with Roman notables and Greek intellectuals. In 25 BCE he traveled to Egypt with Aelius Gallus the Roman governor. He probably got as far as many other regions in the world, more than he expressly reveals. After writing earlier historiographical work(s), Strabo composed his Geography sometime between 18 and 23 CE and died in Rome or, less likely, in Asia Minor.
His works included (1) History a survey of events at least from the time of ...
Article
Christine D. Baker
early Islamic historian and geographer, was born in Baghdad in the ninth century. Although commonly known as al-Yaʿqubi, his full name was Abu al-ʿAbbas Ahmad ibn Abi Yaʿqub ibn Jaʿfar ibn Wahb ibn Wadih. Little is known of his birth, early history, family, or background. He was a bureaucrat, trained as a katib, a member of the secretarial class, in Baghdad. He is believed to have been raised in Armenia. He later served under the Tahirids, a Persian dynasty of governors of Khurasan who served the Abbasid caliphate, before settling in Egypt. His precise date of death is uncertain.
Although not much detail is known about his life, al-Yaʿqubi is recognized for his historical writings, which are known for eschewing some of the dominant historiographic trends of the time. They are an example of an early proto-Shiʿi perspective on Islamic history. Three of his works survive, the Taʾrikh al-Yaʿqubi ...
