084- Longing For Death

Antoninus's reign is often pointed to as the golden age of the Roman Empire. In many ways the assessment is correct, though unresolved issues would come back to haunt his successors. 

The Roman world was divided between slaves, freedmen, and free citizens of every economic class. Gross inequality though was the order of the day, with the Emperor himself controlling the lion's share of the Empire's wealth. 

After all our recent foreshadowing, we’ve finally arrived at the period of Abbasid collapse. It’s a relatively long period, stretching from the start of al Muqtadir’s reign in 908 until around the middle of that century, when the Abbasids were reduced to figureheads by a more com ...  Afficher plus

Al Mansur’s long reign transformed the caliphate in countless ways, most of them for the better. It provided a kind of stability the umma desperately needed to absorb the tumult of the Abbasid revolution and adjust to the new status quo. What followed was a golden age of prosperi ...  Afficher plus

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. 

216 BCE - If crossing the Alps with 37 elephants wasn't enough to impress you, then what Hannibal achieved at Cannae just a couple of years later defies belief on the deadliest day in the history of Europe before this battle.