The Abbasid revolution showed what it took to overthrow a dynasty; establishing a new one brought a whole other set of challenges. The clan’s first caliph, al Saffah, took an aggressive posture to scare off any would-be challengers to his power. Legitimacy was his chief concern, ...Show more
Episode 42: The triumphant
Succession once again warrants its own episode. Al Saffah relied on three commanders to oversee different parts of his caliphate, and while the setup kept the new dynasty safe and stable, the ambitions of these three leaders clashed soon after the caliph passed away.
Inspired by events in Tunisia and Egypt young Yemenis took to the streets in January 2011. Ishraq al-Maqtari was a lawyer and women's rights activist from the southwestern city of Taiz. She took her two young daughters on the first demonstration in her home town. She has been spe ...Show more
Melvyn Bragg and guests Amira Bennison, Robert Gleave and Hugh Kennedy discuss the split between the Sunni and the Shia. This schism came to dominate early Islam, and yet it did not spring at first from a deep theological disagreement, but rather from a dispute about who should s ...Show more
A story of great myth and of huge historical significance, the foundation of Baghdad is a fundamental episode in the development of Islam. The Umayyad Caliphate, the first great Islamic empire, stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the borders of China; no dynasty had ever preside ...Show more
With the Sassanian Empire defeated and the Byzantine Empire exhausted, there is a power vacuum in the centre of the world. Both of these superpowers have drained their resources fighting each other over the past 30 years, consuming many of the great cities of antiquity. To the so ...Show more