Babylon, the largest city of ancient Mesopotamia and capital of the Babylonian Empire. See more »

East India Company, the name given to a number of companies set up in the 17th and 18th centuries by various European countries to trade with the East Indies, India, and China. See more »

Andrews, Roy Chapman (1884 - 1960), a United States naturalist, explorer, and author. See more »

Turkestan, or Turkistan, a large, indefinite region in Central Asia. It extends eastward from the Caspian Sea through Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and southern Kazakhstan into Xinjiang in China. See more »

Arab League, an organization of Arab nations, officially called the League of Arab States. See more »

Assassins, in the original sense, members of a Muslim secret order of fanatics. The name, from the Arabic hashshashin , "hashish eaters," refers to the supposed practice of using the drug hashish to excite a religious fervor in members chosen to kill persons marked for death by the order's leaders. See more »

Black Hole of Calcutta, a military jail. During the struggle between Great Britain and France for control of India in 1756, Siraj-ud-Daula, the Muslim nabob (deputy ruler) of Bengal, attacked the British and captured Fort William at Calcutta (now Kolkata). See more »

Galatia, in ancient times, a region in central Asia Minor, mostly within present-day Turkey. See more »

Polo, Marco (1254?-1324), an Italian traveler to the Far East. Marco Polo, his father, and his uncle are the first Europeans known to have crossed the entire width of Asia. See more »

Montreux Convention, June, 1936, an international agreement signed at Montreux, Switzerland. See more »