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 Nishapur, Iran. The Abbasid caliph in Baghdad was al-Qāʾim which was witnessing a so-called Sunni Revival with the ousting of the Caspian Zaydi Shia Buyid de facto control of the caliphate by the Turkic Sunni Seljuks in 1055CE. The Cold War with the rival Ismaili ShiaFatimid caliphate of Cairo was still at its height. Tell us more about the world of Omar Khayyam.

Q2. He had an exemplary education becoming an authority in mathematics. He was employed as a head astronomer by the Seljuk regime and after the death of Sultan Malik-Shah, Omar Khayyam made hajj seemingly to allay suspicions about his own religious alignment. What else do we know about his life?

Q3. Omar Khayyam is known in English through the popular Victorian translation by Edward Fitzgerald. But is it misleading to limit our knowledge of him to these series of translated quatrains.

Q4. Omar Khayyam dies in 1131 aged 83 in his hometown. What has been his legacy, influence and genealogy? Q5. And finally before we end, please share with us a sample of Omar Khayyam’s work in the original Persian with the translation.

Further reading: The Wine of Wisdom: The Life, Poetry and Philosophy of Omar Khayyam — Mehdi Aminrazavi (original translations with an appendix dedicated to the Fitzgerald translations)

Ali Hammoud: https://x.com/AliHammoud7777 https://alihammoud7.substack.com/ 

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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 dynamics in which Nasir Khusraw lived. There were two major competing polities claiming to be the ultimate representatives of the Prophet’s legacy: the Ismaili Shia Fatimid caliphate in Cairo and the Sunni Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad. We can imagine it as a kind of Cold War era that existed between the Soviet and the US after WWII with smaller entities in between them having to choose a loyalty or hedge their bets.

Q2. Nasir Khusraw lived in Merv in present day Turmenistan and he worked for the Sunni Turkic Seljuk administration before his conversion to Ismailism and  joining the Fatimid court. Tell us more about his life and career.

Q3. He has a number of works philosophical and literary. Describe them for us before giving us details characterising his divan.

Q4. What further readings and resources do you recommend for us on Nasir Khusrau? 

Q5 Finally before we end, give us a sample of the work of Nasir Khusrau  in the original Persian and translation.

Ali Hammoud: https://x.com/AliHammoud7777 https://alihammoud7.substack.com/ 

We are sponsored by IHRC bookshop. Listeners get a 15% discount on all purchases. Visit IHRC bookshop at shop.ihrc.org and use discount code AHP15 at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Contact IHRC bookshop for details. 

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 context in which he was born.

Q2. Ferdowsi was born into a family of dehqan landowners. He has an elegy to an adult son inserted into the Shahnameh. He is characterised as both a Shia Muslim but also a deist. What else do we know about his life?

Q3. Ferdowsi began work on the Shahnameh around 977 and received patronage from sultan Mahmud of the Ghaznavid dynasty. Give us an overview of the Shahnameh and how readers in translation should approach it. There are also many beautifully illustrated editions too. Tell us about those too.

Q4. If people want to learn more about Ferdowsi and his Shahnameh, what resources and translations would you recommend.

Q5 Finally before we end, give us a sample of the Shahnameh in the original Persian and translation.

Ali Hammoud: https://x.com/AliHammoud7777 https://alihammoud7.substack.com/ 

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 history.

Q1. Rudaki was born around 858CE and died around 941CE at around 83 years old. He lived under the Samanid dynasty who at their height ruled much  of modern day central Asia under the auspices of the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad. Tell us about the cultural context in which he was born.

Q2. We know little about his life. We know we he was patronised by the Samaind vizier Abū al-Faḍl al-Balʿamī. What else can we say with certainty about his life?   

Q3. Rudaki was as much a musician and singer as he was a poet. How is his work characterised.

Q4. If people want to learn more about Persian literature in general, where would you recommend they start? What translations would you recommend of Rudaki?

Q5 Finally before we end, give us a sample of Rudaki's work. 

Ali Hammoud: https://x.com/AliHammoud7777 https://alihammoud7.substack.com/ 

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 Bauer has achieved. However our guest today has an essay published in the Maydan journal online journal interogating Bauer's conceptualisation of "ambiguity" and its application in the history of islamic culture.

Faheem A. Hussain is an independent researcher. He has a BA (Hons.) in Arabic and Islamic studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, a PGCE in Religious Studies from Roehampton University, and an MA in philosophy from Heythrop College, University of London. His writings can be found at https://faheemahussain.substack.com/ and https://x.com/FaheemAMHussain.

Faheem's article: https://themaydan.com/2024/08/ambiguity-as-a-master-key-critically-reading-thomas-bauers-culture-of-ambiguity/

https://x.com/FaheemAMHussain/status/1772736085627457970

Timestamps 02:11 You say in your essay:  Now this does not pretend to be anything but a critical review of Bauer, interrogating his ideas of ambiguity, its coherence and implications, and despite my best efforts in civility, there’s no hiding my polemical intent. Even so, I wish to insist that this book is a product of a fine mind and generous soul, and that I have no doubt that if anyone reads the book, they will only leave more humbled, indebted as well as greatly enriched by reading it. Without a doubt, this is a book that should be read as well as kept on a shelf. Before we start why don't you give us an overview of the book and what he liked best about it.

16:23 At the heart of Bauer's work is this concept of Ambiguity. Tell us what he means by this and your reservations.

37:52 For me, my favourite parts were on the divergent readings of the Quran and the difference between the comfort of medieval scholars about that, particularly Ibn al-Jazari and the anxiety of modern Muslims. Though at first blush the late Saudi-Salafi cleric, Sheikh Ibn al-ʿUthaymin and the Pakistani activist al-Mawdudi, God be kind to their souls, might seem apart yet they share the same modern anxiety about ambiguity according to Bauer. It seems you are more on board with him on this then his other applications of ambiguity in the cultural history of Islam.

49:25 Like you, I wasn't convinced by his thoughts on the concept of foreigness in Islamic cultural history. You also take him to task on his take on homoerotica. I also feel that with current debate about gender and the like whether it makes sense to say there is a lack of ambiguity in contemporary culture. I feel if we had experts on medieval, early modern and modern Europe as Bauer is an expert on medieval Arabic whether we would have better insights on ambiguity as a concept.

01:03:52 And finally before we end tell us where listeners can turn next to learn more about today's topic and what are other current projects that listeners can anticipate? Works mentioned in episode: Pieter Coppens, Did Modernity End Polyvalence? Some Observations on Tolerance for Ambiguity in Sunni tafsīrhttps://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/jqs.2021.0450?role=tab Usaama al-Azami,Traditional Islam, Ideology, Immigrant Muslims, and Grievance Culture: A Review of Travelling Home: Essays on Islam in Europe by Abdal Hakim Murad https://muslimmatters.org/2021/02/05/traditional-islam-ideology-immigrant-muslims-and-grievance-culture-a-review-of-travelling-home-essays-on-islam-in-europe-by-abdal-hakim-murad/ Frank Griffel, The Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam https://www.academia.edu/47378325/The_Formation_of_Post_Classical_Philosophy_in_Islam

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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.

Mariëtte Verhoeven is university lecturer and researcher at Radboud University specialising in  the field of late antique and Byzantine cultural and architectural history and heritage.

This episode was produced by Edmund Hayes and Jouke Heringa.

Further Reading

Mariëtte Verhoeven, F. Gerritsen, & Özgün Özçakır, Revitalizing Istanbul’s Water Heritage: The Valens Aqueduct. Blue Papers, 2(1) (2023): 154–163. https://doi.org/10.58981/bluepapers.2023.1.15

Ward, Kate, James Crow and Martin Crapper. 2017. “Water-Supply Infrastructure of Byzantine Constantinople.” Journal of Roman Archaeology 30: 175–95. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1047759400074079

---

Edmund Hayes

Twitter: @Hedhayes20

https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-hayes-490913211/

https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/EdmundHayes

https://hcommons.org/members/ephayes/

Mariette Verhoeven

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariëtte-verhoeven-ba10153  

https://radboud.academia.edu/Mari%C3%ABtteVerhoeven

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 with more than 20 research projects on water issues in Oman, Iran, Iraq, India and Azerbaijan. He is the author of 13 books about traditional water management, water history, qanat system, and Indigenous water knowledge. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Nizwa in Oman, where he works in the field of socio-hydrology and conducts a research project on the interplay between water systems and social structures Oman’s local communities.

Louise Rayne is Newcastle University Academic Track Fellow in School of History Classics and Archaeology. She has a background in both Archaeology and Geography (joint PhD), especially remote sensing. Originally working in the Middle East on water management archaeology of Syria and Iraq, she is now also working in North Africa on remote sensing of land-use change, especially traditional water management and desertification.

This episode was produced by Edmund Hayes and Jouke Heringa.

Further reading

M. L. Khaneiki, Cultural Dynamics of Water in Iranian Civilization (Springer, 2020).

Rayne, L.; Gatto, M.C.; Abdulaati, L.; Al-Haddad, M.; Sterry, M.; Sheldrick, N.; Mattingly, D. Detecting Change at Archaeological Sites in North Africa Using Open-Source Satellite Imagery. Remote Sens. 2020, 12, 3694. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12223694

A. A. S., Yazdi, & M. L. Khaneiki, Qanat knowledge: Construction and maintenance (Springer, 2010).

Edmund Hayes

twitter.com/Hedhayes20

https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-hayes-490913211/

https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/EdmundHayes

https://hcommons.org/members/ephayes/

Abbasid History Podcast is sponspored by IHRC Bookshop

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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, and has written extensively on late antique and early Islamic archaeology and the archaeology of Egyptian monasticism.

This episode was produced by Edmund Hayes and Jouke Heringa.

Further reading

Louise Blanke, Archaeology of Egyptian Monasticism, Settlement, Economy and Daily Life at the White Monastery Federation (New Haven: 2019)

Louise Blanke, “Life on the Desert’s Edge: The Water Supply of a Late Antique Monastery in Egypt.” In J. Kuhlmann Madsen, N.O. Andersen and I. Thuesen (eds.) Water of Life, 130-143 (Copenhagen: Orbis, 2016).

Edmund Hayes

twitter.com/Hedhayes20

https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-hayes-490913211/

https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/EdmundHayes

https://hcommons.org/members/ephayes/

Abbasid History Podcast is sponspored by IHRC Bookshop

Listeners get a 15% discount on all purchases online and in-store. 

Visit IHRC bookshop at shop.ihrc.org and use discount code AHP15 at checkout. 

Terms and conditions apply. Contact IHRC bookshop for details.

https://linktr.ee/abbasidhistorypodcast

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 Spain.

This episode was produced by Edmund Hayes and Jouke Heringa.

Further reading

Ieva Reklaityte, Vivir en una ciudad de Al-Andalus: hidraulica, saneamiento y condiciones de vida (University of Saragossa, 2012).

Ieva Rèklaityte, (ed.), Water in the Medieval Hispanic Society: Economic, Social and religious implications (Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 2019).

Ieva Rèklaityte,  “Les latrines en al‑Andalus : leurs principales caractéristiques et les conditions sanitaires urbaines  (The Latrine in Al‑Andalus : its Main Characteristics and the Urban Hygienic Conditions)” in “Lieux d'hygiène et lieux d'aisance en terre d'Islam (VIIe-XVe siècle)” special issue of Médiévales 70 (Spring 2016) edited by Patrice Cressier, Sophie Gilotte et Marie-Odile Rousset, https://doi.org/10.4000/medievales.7683 (and see this special issue in general).

Edmund Hayes

twitter.com/Hedhayes20

https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-hayes-490913211/

https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/EdmundHayes

https://hcommons.org/members/ephayes/

Abbasid History Podcast is sponspored by IHRC Bookshop

Listeners get a 15% discount on all purchases online and in-store. 

Visit IHRC bookshop at shop.ihrc.org and use discount code AHP15 at checkout. 

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https://linktr.ee/abbasidhistorypodcast

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 London and from 2022 he has been teaching in the History Department at University College London. 

Josephine van den Bent is a researcher on the Source of Life project at Radboud University and assistant professor of Medieval History at the University of Amsterdam.

This episode was produced by Edmund Hayes and Jouke Heringa.

Further reading

Hugh Kennedy, “The Feeding of the 500.000: Cities and Agriculture in Early Islamic Mesopotamia,” Iraq 73 (2011): 177–199.

Josephine van den Bent & Peter Brown, “On Strong Vaults with Solidly Constructed Arches: Urban Waterways in the Cities of Early Islam,” Al-Masāq (2024).

Josephine van den Bent, “Caliphal Involvement in Water Provision in the Cities of the Early ʿAbbāsid Period,” Journal of Abbasid Studies (2024).

Edmund Hayes

twitter.com/Hedhayes20

https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-hayes-490913211/

https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/EdmundHayes

https://hcommons.org/members/ephayes/

Abbasid History Podcast is sponspored by IHRC Bookshop

Listeners get a 15% discount on all purchases online and in-store. 

Visit IHRC bookshop at shop.ihrc.org and use discount code AHP15 at checkout. 

Terms and conditions apply. Contact IHRC bookshop for details.

https://linktr.ee/abbasidhistorypodcast