The Imperial Caliphates

12/07/20 • -1 min

narrated by Chris Gratien featuring Hugh Kennedy, Joshua White, Fahad Bishara, Maryam Patton, and Jeannie Miller | The first decades of Islam were characterized by a rapid territorial expansion accompanied by conflicts over leadership following the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Despite opposition from the supporters of Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muawiya Ibn Abi Sufyan would become Caliph and establish a dynasty for his clan: the Banu Umayyah. The next centuries of Islamic history would be defined by the imperial Caliphates of the Umayyads and Abbasids, who controlled empires stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to India. This episode of The Making of the Islamic World focuses on the creation of these Islamic empires, their institutional legacy, and the intellectual life of the Abbasid Caliphate during its height. We conclude with the Abbasid luminary al-Jahiz and what his writings tell us about the changing social fabric of the Abbasid world during the 9th century. « Click for More »

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What is Islamic Law?

narrated by Chris Gratien
featuring Saadia Yacoob, Intisar Rabb, Joshua White, Fahad Bishara, and Joel Blecher | Islamic legal traditions rest on the revelations of the Qur'an and precedents attributed to the Prophet Muhammad and the early Muslim community. But they also rest on over a millennium of interpretation and debate. In our first episode of this series on "The Making of the Islamic World," we're exploring the history of Islamic legal traditions and the ways in which scholarship on the past relates to how people imagine what Islamic law is and what it can be. In addition to discussing what Islamic jurisprudence is and how it developed, we examine the extent to which Islamic law provided a framework for addressing matters that had little to do with religion as we might conventionally understand it. We also feature the voices of scholars engaged in new research that makes us rethink common misconceptions about the early history of Islam that have implications for how Muslims understand Islamic law today. « Click for More »

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Rumi's World

narrated by Chris Gratien featuring Joshua White, Neelam Khoja, Aslıhan Gürbüzel, and Maryam Patton | The political expansion of the Umayyad and Abbasid periods brought a wide range of territories into the Islamic fold. By the end of the 9th century, the Abbasid Empire could no longer exert central authority over its vast caliphate. Semi-autonomous governors throughout the Islamic world would gradually form their own dynasties. In the eastern portion of the Islamic world, this resulted in the rise of a number of Persian and Turkic dynasties that rather than displacing the Arabo-Islamic culture of early Islam, fused it with a Persianate tradition of statecraft, literature, and scholarship. In this episode, we're exploring the Turco-Persian dynasties of the 9th-13th centuries. We'll discuss the works of scholars like Ibn Sina, Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, and Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi and their far-reaching impacts in the Islamic world and beyond. In addition to examining the evolution of Islamic polities, we'll shed light on the rise of Sufism and how it tied the new regions of the Islamic world together. We'll call that world "Rumi's world" after the 13th century mystic, scholar, and poet who was born in Khorasan but rose to fame in the newly conquered lands of the Seljuk Empire in Anatolia. « Click for More »