Lesley Hazleton, “After the Prophet: The Epic...

Where does Greece belong? Many look at the ancient Greek ruins of Athens, and see the cradle of Western civilization. But much of Greece’s history actually looks eastward to the rest of the Mediterranean: to Turkey, Egypt, Israel and Palestine. In his book The New Byzantines: The ...  Show more

Persian Paradigms in Early Modern English Drama examines the concept of early modern globality and the development of European toleration discourse through English representations of Persian monarchs and Persianate conceptions of hospitality as paradigms of interreligious and int ...  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

The Sunni-Shia divide is a conflict that most people have heard about - two sects with Sunni Islam being in the majority and Shia Islam the minority. Exactly how did this conflict originate and when? We go through 1400 years of history to find the moment this divide first turned ...  Show more

The Sunni-Shia divide is a conflict that most people have heard about - two sects with Sunni Islam being in the majority and Shia Islam the minority. Exactly how did this conflict originate and when? We go through 1400 years of history to find the moment this divide first turned ...  Show more

This episode traces the early developments of Shi’ism. In it we discuss the original schism of authority, how the Shiatul Ali form and the compromise that is reached by the community. We talk about how the divisions between the different tribes reflect the alignments of Pre-Islam ...  Show more