Richard Tada is a writer who contributed travel and history pieces to The Weekly Standard between 2009 and 2016. His articles explored diverse cultural and historical subjects across the Mediterranean, Middle East, and beyond, with particular attention to the intersections of civilizations and religious communities.
An alternate version of the Exodus story circulated in antiquity—one so bizarre it might as well have occurred in an alternate universe. In this version, the pharaoh decided to cleanse Egypt of lepers and other "unclean" people, confining these unfortunates first in quarries, then in an abandoned…
To its immense credit, the perpetually beleaguered Coptic church of Egypt has seen fit to dedicate some resources to the study of its history. The Coptic church and two lay Coptic organizations have organized a series of symposia on Christian history and archaeology in Egypt. The latest of these…
An economic miracle occurred in the fifth century: a leader was able to cut taxes and balance the budget at the same time. This improbable feat was pulled off by Anastasius, emperor of the surviving eastern half of the Roman Empire based in Constantinople. Anastasius, who ruled from 491 to 518…
A band of Muslim raiders sacked Rome in 846 a.d., plundering the city’s churches and getting clean away with their loot. They had come from Palermo, in Sicily, which had been in Muslim hands for 15 years. Sicily was then on its way to becoming a predominantly Islamic and Arabic-speaking island, and…
What if Hannibal had won? What if Carthage rather than Rome had become the dominant power in the Mediterranean?
Byzantium