The Safavid Dynasty

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Barbour's epic poem The Brus, or Bruce, which he wrote c1375. The Brus is the earliest surviving poem in Older Scots and the only source of many of the stories of King Robert I of Scotland (1274-1329), popularly known as Robert the Bruce, and ...  Afficher plus

In 1897, Gustav Klimt led a group of radical artists to break free from the cultural establishment of Vienna and found a movement that became known as the Vienna Secession. In the vibrant atmosphere of coffee houses, Freudian psychoanalysis and the music of Wagner and Mahler, the ...  Afficher plus

The Muslim world was a vast and diverse place, home to a variety of traditions and schools of thought. The Safavids began as a brotherhood of Sufi mystics, but soon transformed themselves from a religious order to the seeds of a powerful extremist state in Iran under the leade ...

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Ghazali, a major philosopher and theologian of the late 11th century. Born in Persia, he was one of the most prominent intellectuals of his age, working in such centres of learning as Baghdad, Damascus and Jerusalem. He ...  Afficher plus

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Ghazali, a major philosopher and theologian of the late 11th century. Born in Persia, he was one of the most prominent intellectuals of his age, working in such centres of learning as Baghdad, Damascus and Jerusalem. He ...  Afficher plus

Persia was the first great superpower. The empire built by Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes and the rest of the Achaemenids stretched from India in the east to the Mediterranean in the west, from Russia in the north to the Gulf of Oman in the south. It laid the foundation for empires of the ...  Afficher plus