5-17: The British And Mesopotamia

Bonus episode about the history of the Caliphate. 

In this episode, we explore the fragile balance of power during the later years of the Umayyad Caliphate under Caliph Hisham ibn Abdul Malik. Between 112–114 AH (731–733 CE), the empire faced crushing defeats on nearly every frontier. Yet Hisham refused to abandon his policy of c ...  عرض المزيد

1260 - The Mongol expansion had reached the Middle East, and their power enabled them to crush the established states up to the Holy Land. The Holy Land was being claimed by an Egyptian Dynasty with Turkic origins, and as such, would also have mastery of horsemanship and arche ...

When we left off last time, King Edmund of East Anglia had paid a Danegeld to the Great Heathen Army… and rather than leaving, the army had set up camp in his Kingdom. It was a situation that would have caused all manner of havoc for virtually everyone who lived in the small east ...  عرض المزيد

In the 10th century, a succession of Byzantine rulers reversed centuries of strategic policy by embarking on a series of campaigns that dramatically reshaped their empire. This effort and its consequences for the history of the region is the focus of Anthony Kaldellis‘s Streams o ...  عرض المزيد

From the taking of the holy city of Jerusalem in the 7th century AD by Caliph Umar, to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I, Christian popes, emperors and kings, and Muslim caliphs and sultans were locked in a 1300-year battle for political, militar ...  عرض المزيد