💧EP048 GUEST EPISODE (2/8) Mesopotamia: Taming the Euphrates
Release Date: 04/01/2024
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Abbasid History Podcast
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...
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🖋EP056 Ali Hammoud on the life and works of Rudaki (d. 941): Father of Persian Poetry
Abbasid History Podcast
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📖EP055 Faheem Hussain on Thomas Bauer's "A Culture of Ambiguity: An Alternative History of Islam"
Abbasid History Podcast
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...
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💧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
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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:...
info_outline 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: Jaafar Jotheri. Interviewer: Edmund Hayes.
Dr. Jaafar Jotheri is Assistant Professor in Geo-Archaeology, Department of Archaeology, University of Al-Qadisiyah
https://csm-qadiss.academia.edu/JaafarJotheri
This episode was produced by Edmund Hayes and Jouke Heringa.
Further Reading
“Tigris-Euphrates River System”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/place/Tigris-Euphrates-river-system
T Wilkinson, L Rayne, J Jotheri, “Hydraulic landscapes in Mesopotamia: the role of human niche construction” Water History 7 (4), 397-418
TJ Wilkinson, J Jotheri “The Origins of Levee and Levee-Based Irrigation in the Nippur Area–Southern Mesopotamia” From Sherds to Landscapes: Studies on the Ancient Near East in Honor of McGuire Gibson, SAOC 71, edited by Mark Altaweel and Carrie Hritz (Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2021).
Edmund Hayes
https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-hayes-490913211/
https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/EdmundHayes
https://hcommons.org/members/ephayes/
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