zafar n?meh was written by hamdoll?h mostoufi who was a famous iranian historian and geographer in the mongol era and his versified book covers the history of iran after islam until 1336 ad. although this is one of the important sources in the study of mongol era, it has not been considered properly, because this book went under the shadow of another well-known book on history of mongol, j?mi a...

Pottery art in Iran reached its apex during the Seljuk and Kharazmshahi eras. In these two periods, artists produced high-quality wares,with Minai decorations which were considered as masterpieces of Islamic art from an aesthetical point of view. These wares were decorated with motifs existing in manuscripts illustrated by artists from Baghdad and Seljuk miniature painting schools portraying ep...

Sitting in our offices early in the morning of September 11, 2001, we, like many across the world, watched with incredulity the twin terrorist strikes on the World Trade Centre. Riveted to the television screen, we witnessed the beginnings of a nightmare whose images will likely remain with us for a long time. September 11, and the events that followed, changed our assumptions of world terroris...

Since the late 1970s, Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Qadhafi has sought to obtain weapons of mass destruction (WMD), particularly chemical and biological weapons (CBW). By the late 1980s, Libya had developed a rudimentary capability to produce such weapons. Western experts view the pursuit of CBW as a means of bolstering Libya’s military capability, since the country lacks effective conventional...

Uncertainty about behavior: Uncertainty about behavior refers to uncertainty regarding the actions taken by others. Sometimes it is hard to know what other states are doing – in particular, if they are cooperating or defecting. Consider weapons of mass destruction. Whatever a state may say publicly, it is very difficult for others to ascertain whether it is pursuing technologies associated with...

The impact of the Mongol invasions of the Middle East has been the subject of extensive research, especially in the last few decades. Scholars have evaluated the damage and the benefits brought by the Mongols to the Islamic world in different fields such as the military, religion, politics, economy and culture. Despite this, in the case of Anatolia, the Mongol period is still under-studied when...

Even when American decision-makers were denying it, ordinary Iraqis in the neighborhoods of Baghdad fearfully anticipated the dangerous consequences of the U.S.-led invasion. We use two unique Iraq datasets to analyze the self-fulfilling neighborhood specific forces set loose following the U.S.-led invasion. Sectarian criminal violence by Shia militia disproportionately forced Sunni residents f...

The Mongol invasion of Eastern Europe, and especially its sudden withdrawal from Hungary in 1242 CE, has generated much speculation and an array of controversial theories. None of them, however, considered multifaceted environmental drivers and the coupled analysis of historical reports and natural archives. Here we investigate annually resolved, absolutely dated and spatially explicit paleocli...