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Sri Lanka, known under British colonial rule as Ceylon, is an island country in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal. The island nation has a strong cultural and historical connection to the Indian subcontinent, with a documented history spanning over 3,000 years and evidence of prehistoric human settlements from at least 125,000 years ago.<br/><br/> Sri Lanka is a strongly Buddhist nation, with writings of the Pali Canon dating back to the Fourth Buddhist council in 29 BCE. The country's constitution accords Buddhism the 'foremost place' and allows it special privileges, even though it does not have an official state religion. The current constitution is a republic with a semi-presidential system.<br/><br/> Much of the country's post colonial history has been marred by a 30-year civil war. Waged between the Sri Lanka Armed Forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers or LTTE), a militant secessionist insurgency based in northeastern Sri Lanka, the Sri Lankan Civil War was brutal and violent. It ended in 2009 with the decisive defeat of the Tamil Tigers.
Babylon (Arabic: Babil) was a significant city in ancient Mesopotamia, in the fertile plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The city was built upon the Euphrates, and divided in equal parts along its left and right banks, with steep embankments to contain the river's seasonal floods.<br/><br/> Babylon was originally a small Semitic Akkadian city dating from the period of the Akkadian Empire c. 2300 BCE. The town attained independence as part of a small city state with the rise of the First Amorite Babylonian Dynasty in 1894 BCE. Claiming to be the successor of the more ancient Sumero-Akkadian city of Eridu, Babylon eclipsed Nippur as the 'holy city' of Mesopotamia around the time Amorite king Hammurabi created the first short lived Babylonian Empire in the 18th century BC. Babylon grew and South Mesopotamia came to be known as Babylonia.<br/><br/> The empire quickly dissolved after Hammurabi's death and Babylon spent long periods under Assyrian, Kassite and Elamite domination. After being destroyed and then rebuilt by the Assyrians, Babylon became the capital of the Neo-Babylonian Empire from 609 to 539 BCE. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. After the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the city came under the rules of the Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian, Roman and Sassanid empires.
Alain Manesson Mallet (1630–1706) was a French cartographer and engineer. He started his career as a soldier in the army of Louis XIV, became a Sergeant-Major in the artillery and an Inspector of Fortifications. He also served under the King of Portugal, before returning to France, and his appointment to the court of Louis XIV. His military engineering and mathematical background led to his position teaching mathematics at court.<br/><br/> Asia's smallest and least-known nation, the Republic of Maldives, lies scattered from north to south across a 750-kilometre sweep of the Indian Ocean 500 kilometres south-west of Sri Lanka. More than 1000 islands, together with innumerable banks and reefs, are grouped in a chain of nineteen atolls which extends from a point due west of Colombo to just south of the equator.
The Swahili Coast refers to the coast or coastal area of East Africa inhabited by the Swahili people, mainly Kenya, Tanzania, and north Mozambique. The term may also include the islands such as Zanzibar, Pate or Comoros which lie off the Swahili Coast. The Swahili Coast has a distinct culture, religion and geography.
Alain Manesson Mallet (1630–1706) was a French cartographer and engineer.<br/><br/> He started his career as a soldier in the army of Louis XIV, became a Sergeant-Major in the artillery and an Inspector of Fortifications. He also served under the King of Portugal, before returning to France, and his appointment to the court of Louis XIV. His military engineering and mathematical background led to his position teaching mathematics at court.<br/><br/> His major publications were Description de L'Univers (1683) in 5 volumes, and Les Travaux de Mars ou l'Art de la Guerre (1684) in 3 volumes.<br/><br/> His Description de L'Universe contains a wide variety of information, including star maps, maps of the ancient and modern world, and a synopsis of the customs, religion and government of the many nations included in his text. It has been suggested that his background as a teacher led to his being concerned with entertaining his readers. This concern manifested itself in the charming harbor scenes and rural landscapes that he included beneath his description of astronomical concepts and diagrams. Mallet himself drew most of the figures that were engraved for this book.