This podcast started as a log of my journey through multiple classical Arab histories. Listeners are now invited to join me as I construct a narrative out of the long and often contradictory accounts left to us by the earliest Arab historians. We’ll use their material - and more recent scholarship - to try and understand the political evolution of the Arabs from warring nomadic tribes at the edges of civilization, to the proud rulers of the greatest empire of their time, and then back again. Our vantage point into this world will be their leaders, the “successors to God’s prophet Mohammad”: the caliphs.
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This podcast started as a log of my journey through multiple classical Arab histories. Listeners are now invited to join me as I construct a narrative out of the long and often contradictory accounts left to us by the earliest Arab historians. We’ll use their material - and more recent scholarship - to try and understand the political evolution of the Arabs from warring nomadic tribes at the edges of civilization, to the proud rulers of the greatest empire of their time, and then back again. Our vantage point into this world will be their leaders, the “successors to God’s prophet Mohammad”: the caliphs.
We’ve reached the end of the road as far as Abbasid authority is concerned. Although it had waxed and waned before, there would be no recovering from the lows it had fell to this time. The caliph had no independent authority, helpful counselors, loyal generals, powerful armies, not even any money; all he had was the inherited legitimacy of his lineage. He largely served as a symbolic head of state while the more powerful men around him jockeyed for wealth and control. In many ways, this caliph will be the very last one.
The Caliphs
This podcast started as a log of my journey through multiple classical Arab histories. Listeners are now invited to join me as I construct a narrative out of the long and often contradictory accounts left to us by the earliest Arab historians. We’ll use their material - and more recent scholarship - to try and understand the political evolution of the Arabs from warring nomadic tribes at the edges of civilization, to the proud rulers of the greatest empire of their time, and then back again. Our vantage point into this world will be their leaders, the “successors to God’s prophet Mohammad”: the caliphs.
