⚔EP034 Dr. Kevin Blankinship on Abū Firās al-Ḥamdānī: the Prince, the Prisoner, the Poet. Part 8 of 12 - Spring of Classical Arabic Poetry
Release Date: 11/13/2021
💧EP054 GUEST EPISDODE (8/8) The Great Valens Aqueduct of Constantinople/ Istanbul
Abbasid History Podcast
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...
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💧EP053 GUEST EPISDODE (7/8) Qanāts: Harvesting Water on the Edge of the Desert
Abbasid History Podcast
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...
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💧EP052 GUEST EPISDODE (6/8) Water and the White Monastery: Water Management at a Single Site
Abbasid History Podcast
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...
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💧EP051 GUEST EPISODE (5/8) Toilets and Waste in Andalusia
Abbasid History Podcast
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...
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💧EP050 GUEST EPISODE (4/8) The City on The Tigris: Baghdad, Drinking and Water Transport
Abbasid History Podcast
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 London and from 2022 he has been teaching in the History Department at University College...
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💧EP049 GUEST EPISODE (3/8) The Beginnings of the Bathhouse in the Middle East, from Rome to Early Islam
Abbasid History Podcast
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 (Radboud Institute for Culture &History). She is the coordinator of the RICH research group...
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💧EP048 GUEST EPISODE (2/8) Mesopotamia: Taming the Euphrates
Abbasid History Podcast
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 have managed their rela.tionship to the rivers in Iraq up until today. Speaker:...
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💧EP047 GUEST EPISODE (1/8) Water History and the Pre-Modern Middle East. “Source of Life: Water Management in the Premodern Middle East” (Radboud Institute for Culture and History)
Abbasid History Podcast
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 Berkel and Josephine van den Bent. Interviewer: Edmund Hayes. This episode, and this series on...
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🕸EP046 Prof. Hayrettin Yücesoy on his new book "Disenchanting the Caliphate"
Abbasid History Podcast
Hayrettin Yücesoy is a historian with a specialization in the premodern Middle East. His scholarly interests revolve around the intricate realm of political thought and practice, covering themes such as political messianism, monarchy, republican practices, visions of social order throughout premodern literature, and the historiography of these subjects. In his written works and publications, Yücesoy delves into the convergence of discourse and political practice, unraveling the polyphonic and dialogic nature of texts. His research endeavors aim to uncover unconventional and dissenting...
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🖋EP045 Nasim Hassani on an illustrated manuscript of al-Maqāmāt by Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥarīrī (d.1122CE)
Abbasid History Podcast
Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥarīrī was an Arab poet, scholar and Seljuk government official who died in 1122CE aged 68 years old. His work al-Maqāmāt, a compilation of 50 highly-stylised comic anecdotes about the exploits of trickster Abū Zayd, received widespread renown in his time across the Muslim world and is regarded as a high point of Arabic literature. We are pleased to be joined by Nasim Hassani in Tehran. Ms. Hasani hold a master's degree in Islamic Studies from Shahid Beheshti University,Tehran, Iran, where her dissertation was an Analysis of Mary and Jesus' Birth and Early Life in...
info_outlineDr. Kevin Blankinship, BYU Utah, speaks about the life, works and legacy of Abū Firās al-Ḥamdānī, prince, prisoner, poet.
Al-Ḥārith b. Abū al-ʿAlā Saʿīd ibn Ḥamdān al-Taghlibī, better known by his nom de plume of Abū Firās al-Ḥamdānī, was an Arab prince and poet. He was a cousin of Sayf al-Dawla, the ruler of northern Syria, whom we mentioned in episode 33. He best known for the collection of poems titled al-Rūmiyyāt during his time as a prisoner of war with the Byzantines.
Timestamps
01:52 Abū Firās al-Ḥamdānī was born at a time when the Abbasid caliphate was beholden to de facto autonomous dynasties and facing a Byzantine foe. What do we know about his socio-political context?
06:26 Abū Firās al-Ḥamdānī was born a prince, lived a while as a prisoner, and was killed as a provocateur against a rival ruler, his own nephew in fact. What do we do know about his life?
10:14 Abū Firās al-Ḥamdānī is best known for the collection of poems titled al-Rūmiyyāt during his time as a prisoner of war with the Byzantines. Tell us about his works.
16:50 Sir Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb, the orientalist, praises Abū Firās al-Ḥamdānī’s work for its “sincerity, directness, and natural vigour". How would you characterise Abū Firās al-Ḥamdānī’s legacy?
19:45 Finally, let's end with a sample and translation.
This is the eighth part of a twelve part series exploring classical Arabic poetry which can be utilised in college-level teaching programmes.
For more on our guest, see kblankinship.com.
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