Yan Zhitui's ancestors were originally from Linyi in modern-day Shandong Province. After the fall of the Jin Dynasty's capital city of Chang'an, the Yan family migrated south below the Yangtze River i ...
Northern Zhou's defeat of Northern Qi in 577 AD was the culminating moment in the struggle between north and south China. The southern dynasties had lost hope in conquering the north, and the situatio ...
Although paper had been known as a wrapping and padding material in China since the 2nd century BC, the first documented use of toilet paper in human history dates back to the 6th century AD, in early ...
Although Constantinople was retaken by Michael VIII Palaiologos, the Empire had lost many of its key economic resources, and struggled to survive. The palace of Blachernae in the north-west of the cit ...
The city was originally founded as a Greek colony under the name of Byzantium in the 7th century BC. It took on the name of Konstantinoupolis ("city of Constantine", Constantinople) after its re-found ...
The dome of Hagia Sophia has spurred particular interest for many art historians, architects and engineers because of the innovative way the original architects envisioned it. The cupola is carried on ...
The first church on the site was known as the Μεγ?λη ?κκλησ?α (Megálē Ekklēsíā, "Great Church"), or in Latin "Magna Ecclesia", because of its larger dimensions in comparison to the ...
In the early sixteenth century, the lanterns of Italian domes spread to Germany as a wood and copper cupola called the welsche Haube ("Italian hood"). This structure gradually adopted the bulbous cupo ...
The English word "dome" ultimately derives from the Greek and Latin domus, which was used up through the Renaissance to label a revered house, such as a Domus Dei, or "House of God", regardless of the ...
A pendentive is a constructive device permitting the placing of a circular dome over a square room or an elliptical dome over a rectangular room. The pendentives, which are triangular segments of a sp ...
The earliest record of the name of Cappadocia dates from the late 6th century BC, when it appears in the trilingual inscriptions of two early Achaemenid kings, Darius I and Xerxes, as one of the count ...
Murals of sorts date to Upper Paleolithic times such as the paintings in the Chauvet Cave in Ardèche department of southern France (around 30,000 BC). Many ancient murals have survived in Egyptian to ...
The single arch of 17 m spans between the cliffs of the rocky gorge of the Arapgir ?ay?, an affluent of the Euphrates. The bridge, along with much of the Arapgir ?ay? valley, has been submerged si ...
Possibly the oldest existing arch bridge is the Mycenaean Arkadiko bridge in Greece from about 1300 BC. The stone corbel arch bridge is still used by the local populace. The well-preserved Hellenistic ...
Posthumous Names ( Shi Hao 諡號) Born Names Period of Reigns Era Names (Nian Hao 年號) and their according ranges of yearsNorthern Wei Dynasty 386-535Convention: Northern Wei + posthumous nameThe impe ...
