Rise of Islam

It's one of history’s most compelling cold cases. What happened to the Ninth Legion, a crack unit of 5,000 Roman soldiers who vanished from the historical record without a trace?Tristan Hughes is joined by Roman historian Dr Simon Elliott to investigate the fate of the legion tha ...  Show more

Two thousand years ago, centuries before the Vikings, there was another Scandinavia. An Iron Age world.Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Marianne Hem Eriksen to uncover the deep roots of the seafaring North, journeying through a forgotten world of elite halls, Roman encounters, and ...  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

How did the expansion of Islam out of the Arab peninsular affect Gaza in the seventh century? Who was ‘Amr ibn al-As and how did he ambush the Byzantines in Gaza? Why is the Islamic Conquest described as the “invisible conquest” by some historians? William and Anita are joined on ...  Show more

Matt Lewis is joined by Professor Brian A. Catlos to explore the nearly eight centuries of Al Andalus, Islamic Spain. From a daring invasion in 711 led by Tariq ibn Ziyad to the emergence of great cities like Cordoba, Matt and Brian delve into the multicultural experiment wher ...

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