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PODCAST

Abbasid History Podcast

AbbasidHistoryPodcast.com

An audio platform for the study of the pre-modern Islamic(ate) past and beyond. We interview academics, archivists and artists on their work for peers and junior students in the field. We aim to educate, inspire, perhaps infuriate, and on the way entertain a little too. https://linktr.ee/abbasidhistorypodcast Suitable also for general listeners with an interest in geographically diverse medieval history.

history islam

All Episodes

25:29

🖋️EP061 Attar of Nishapur: the Spirit of Persian Sufi...

Abbasid History Podcast ·

2025/10/22

Farīd al-Dīn Abū Ḥamid Muḥammad ʿAṭṭār lived and died in Nishapur. Though he was little known beyond his city as a poet, his enduring legacy can perhaps be summarised by Rumi: Attar has roamed through the seven cities of love while we have barely turned down the first street. (1) Attar was born in Nishapur around 1145CE during the reign of Abbasid caliph al-Muqtafī who finally succeeded in asserting the caliphate militarily against their supposed Sunni Seljuk Turkic vassals. Ghazzali had passed away

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25:00

🖋️EP060 Ali Hammoud on the life and works of Sanai...

Abbasid History Podcast ·

2025/09/27

Hakim Abul-Majd Majdūd ibn Ādam, better known as Sanai, was an influential poet of Sufism who was attached to the Ghaznavid court in modern day Afghanistan. His major work The Walled Garden of Truth has been an enduring classic. An adaption of his verses were quoted at the end of the 2017 Hollywood film The Shape of Water. Q1. Sanai was born 1080CE. During his life the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad were clashing with internal enemies from their supposed Seljuk vassal, engaged in a Cold War with Fatimid

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25:29

🖋️EP059 Ali Hammoud on the life and works of Omar...

Abbasid History Podcast ·

2025/05/24

Writing to his brother from prison in 1949, a young African American man opens his letter citing these lines from a medieval Persian poet: Indeed the Idols I have loved so long, Have done my credit in this World much Wrong: Have dropped my Glory in a shallow Cup, And sold my Reputation for a song The writer would later achieve acclaim as the civil rights activist Malcolm X, and the lines he was citing were by Omar Khayyam, the subject of today’s episode. Q1. Omar Khayyam was born in 1048CE in

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28:50

🖊️EP058 Ali Hammoud on the life and works of Nasir...

Abbasid History Podcast ·

2025/04/06

Born 1004CE in present-day Tajikistan then under control of the Ghaznavid dynasty, Abū Muʿīn al-Dīn Nasir Khusraw was an Ismaili convert and missionary who became better known for his poetry. To discuss with us today the life, works and legacy of Nasir Khusraw is Ali Hammoud. Ali Hammoud is a PhD candidate at Western Sydney University. He is broadly interested in Shīʿīsm and Islamicate intellectual history. Welcome Ustad Ali! Q1. I think it’s important we set the scene for the socio-political

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28:20

🖊️EP057 Ali Hammoud on the life and works of Ferdowsi...

Abbasid History Podcast ·

2025/02/16

Born under the Samanid dyansty and living through the rule of the Ghaznavid dynasty in Tus located north Iran, Ferdowsi is author of the epic Shahnameh (“The Book of Kings”) of 50,000 lines taking 30 years to compose. The work is of central importance in Persian heritage. Q1. Ferdowsi was born in 940CE and died around 1019CE at around 80 years old. He lived under the Ghaznavid dynasty who at their height ruled territory spanning modern day Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Tell us about the cultural

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27:54

🖋EP056 Ali Hammoud on the life and works of Rudaki...

Abbasid History Podcast ·

2024/12/21

Living under the Samanid dyansty in modern-day Tajikistan, Rudaki is considered the first of the great classical Islamic Persian poets and the father of Tajik literature. Despite being a celebrated, patronised court poet, he would fall into poverty near the end of his life dying blind and alone. To discuss with us today the life, works and legacy of Rudaki is Ali Hammoud. Ali Hammoud is a PhD candidate at Western Sydney University. He is broadly interested in Shīʿīsm and Islamicate intellectual

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01:13:23

📖EP055 Faheem Hussain on Thomas Bauer's "A Culture of...

Abbasid History Podcast ·

2024/10/31

Thomas Bauer's "A Culture of Ambiguity" stands out as one of the most important contributions to Islamic Studies in recent decades. First published in German in 2011, it wasn't until 2021 that it became available in English. Bauer's three decades of knowledge and expertise shine through in the work, which earned him the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Award in Germany. It is rare for an academic book rich in insights for specialists to also be engaging enough for general readers, yet this is exactly what

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47:06

💧EP054 GUEST EPISDODE (8/8) The Great Valens Aqueduct...

Abbasid History Podcast ·

2024/10/02

The longest aqueduct of the ancient world, the Valens aqueduct brought water to the capital of the eastern Roman empire: Byzantium or Constantinople, today known as Istanbul. Monumental sections of the aqueduct bridge still majestically stride across the city. In this episode we talk about the reasons for embarking on this colossal project, its development, decline and adaptation, and its place in the cultural heritage of today’s Turkey. Speaker: Mariëtte Verhoeven. Interviewer: Edmund Hayes

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57:17

💧EP053 GUEST EPISDODE (7/8) Qanāts: Harvesting Water...

Abbasid History Podcast ·

2024/09/04

In this episode we discuss what is perhaps the most famous and distinctive invention of Middle Eastern and North African hydraulic engineering is the qanāt (also known as foggaras, khettāras, and aflāj): an underground tunnel dug horizontally into a hillside to harvest water from the water table. Speakers: Majid Labbaf Khaneiki and Louise Rayne. Majid Khaneiki is a human geographer who specializes in traditional irrigation and hydro-social cycles in rural communities. He has conducted or cooperated

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51:58

💧EP052 GUEST EPISDODE (6/8) Water and the White...

Abbasid History Podcast ·

2024/08/01

It is often difficult to reconstruct the water infrastructure at historical sites due to recent building and patchy excavation and survival. In this episode we look at a site in which we can see a great deal of the water supply as a connected system, and how it developed over time: the great late antique White Monastery on the edge of the Egyptian desert. Speaker: Louise Blanke. Interviewer: Edmund Hayes. Louise Blanke is Senior lecturer in Late Antique Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh,

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38:49

💧EP051 GUEST EPISODE (5/8) Toilets and Waste in...

Abbasid History Podcast ·

2024/07/01

You can’t think about clean water without also thinking about removing dirty water and other waste. In this episode we take a deep dive into sewage (figuratively speaking) on the basis of excavations and documents that survive about cities in Muslim Spain in the Middle Ages. Speaker: Ieva Rèklaityte. Interviewer: Edmund Hayes. Ieva Reklaityte is an independent researcher. She graduated in Archaeology at the University of Vilnius, Lithuania, and did her PhD thesis at the University of Saragossa in

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49:08

💧EP050 GUEST EPISODE (4/8) The City on The Tigris:...

Abbasid History Podcast ·

2024/06/01

Ep4. The City on The Tigris: Baghdad, Drinking and Water Transport Medieval Baghdad was probably home to 200,000 to 500,000 inhabitants. In this episode we look at how water functioned as the life blood of this great city, providing drink, but also transportation that supplied the city with food and connected it with trade routes in Indian Ocean and beyond. Speakers: Hugh Kennedy, Josephine van den Bent. Interviewer: Edmund Hayes. Hugh Kennedy is Professor of Arabic at SOAS in the University of

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01:04:19

💧EP049 GUEST EPISODE (3/8) The Beginnings of the...

Abbasid History Podcast ·

2024/05/02

The bathhouse is an iconic feature of the medieval middle eastern city up until the present. But how did this come to be? In this episode we look into the origins of bathing culture in the Middle East by going back to the Roman, late antique and early Islamic development of bathhouses. Speakers: Nathalie de Haan and Sadi Maréchal. Interviewer: Edmund Hayes. Nathalie de Haan is an associate professor in ancient history at Radboud University, Department of History, Art History and Classics and RICH

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01:08:17

💧EP048 GUEST EPISODE (2/8) Mesopotamia: Taming the...

Abbasid History Podcast ·

2024/04/01

Part of the “Source of Life: Water Management in the Premodern Middle East” project (Radboud Institute for Culture and History). Ep2. Mesopotamia: Taming the Euphrates Mesopotamia means “the land between the rivers.” The fertile silt and life-giving waters from the rivers Tigris and Euphrates allowed the region to develop into a key area of human settlement and culture in the late Holocene around 12000 years ago. In this episode we discuss the earliest settlements in Mesopotamia and how humans

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42:26

💧EP047 GUEST EPISODE (1/8) Water History and the...

Abbasid History Podcast ·

2024/03/01

This episode was produced by Edmund Hayes and Jouke Heringa. Ep1. Water History and the Pre-Modern Middle East The cities of the medieval Middle East were some of the largest in the world, dwarfing the major cities of western Europe, for example. So how did they support large populations in relatively arid conditions? In this episode we provide an overview of the kinds of hydraulic infrastructure and social institutions that allowed pre-modern Middle Eastern cities to function. Speakers: Maaike van

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