Podcasts about Mamluk

Fourteen centuries of enslavement, from the Prophet Muhammad's day to modern Mauritania. Justin Marozzi's fascinating book "Captives and Companions"  has as its subject the complex history of slavery across the Islamic world, challenging simplistic narratives and revealing uncomfortable truths about power, race, and religion.Our conversation touches on how Islam didn't invent slavery but incorporated existing practices while encouraging manumission. We talk about the huge diversity of slavery - from the devastating Zanj Rebellion when East African slaves revolted in Iraq, to the paradoxical power of Mamluk slave-soldiers who became sultans. I particularly liked how Justin managed to balance the brilliance and the cruelty of the concubines at the court in Baghdad at the height of its power. We also spent a lot of time discussing eunuchs. What purpose they served, the way Islam got round the prohibition on the practice and how and why the use of eunuchs lasted so long.The racial side of things was a surprise to me. Primary sources from Islam's greatest medieval intellectuals expose deeply racist attitudes toward black Africans, while white Circassian slaves commanded premium prices. And the Barbary Corsairs provided another surprise, with a surprising number of Europeans who "turned Turk" to join Muslim pirates enslaving fellow Christians across the Mediterranean.When we reach abolition, Marozzi talked about how external Western pressure, not internal Islamic reform, primarily drove formal emancipation. And his interviews with people in Mali and Mauritania document hereditary slavery continuing today, with miserable stories of those fighting for freedom in the 21st century.You can send a message to the show/feedback by clicking here. The system doesn't let me reply so if you need one please include your email.

Archives are not only sources for history but have their own histories too, which shape how historians can tell stories of the past. In Managing Paperwork in Mamluk Cairo: Archives, Waqf and Society (Edinburgh UP, 2025), Daisy Livingston explores the archival history of one of the most powerful polities of the late-medieval Middle East: the ‘Mamluk' sultanate of Cairo. Relying on surviving original documents, Livingston focuses on archival practices connected to waqf, the pious endowments that became one of the characteristic features of late-medieval Islamic societies. By centering a close exploration of documents connected to processes of endowment and property exchange, this book sheds light on a startling culture of document accumulation that was shared by the diverse social groups involved in founding and managing endowments: sultans and emirs, qadis, legal notaries, and scribes. Emphasizing the documents' life cycles from production, to preservation, to disposal and loss, it argues for the use of surviving documents to tell their own archival histories. Daisy Livingston is Associate Professor of Medieval Islamic History in the Department of History at Durham University. As a historian of the medieval Middle East, in particular Egypt between the tenth and sixteenth centuries, her research focuses on various aspects of documentary culture, especially histories of archiving. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom (2022) and The Social Movement Archive (2021), and co-editor of Armed By Design: Posters and Publications of Cuba's Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (2025). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Archives are not only sources for history but have their own histories too, which shape how historians can tell stories of the past. In Managing Paperwork in Mamluk Cairo: Archives, Waqf and Society (Edinburgh UP, 2025), Daisy Livingston explores the archival history of one of the most powerful polities of the late-medieval Middle East: the ‘Mamluk' sultanate of Cairo. Relying on surviving original documents, Livingston focuses on archival practices connected to waqf, the pious endowments that became one of the characteristic features of late-medieval Islamic societies. By centering a close exploration of documents connected to processes of endowment and property exchange, this book sheds light on a startling culture of document accumulation that was shared by the diverse social groups involved in founding and managing endowments: sultans and emirs, qadis, legal notaries, and scribes. Emphasizing the documents' life cycles from production, to preservation, to disposal and loss, it argues for the use of surviving documents to tell their own archival histories. Daisy Livingston is Associate Professor of Medieval Islamic History in the Department of History at Durham University. As a historian of the medieval Middle East, in particular Egypt between the tenth and sixteenth centuries, her research focuses on various aspects of documentary culture, especially histories of archiving. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom (2022) and The Social Movement Archive (2021), and co-editor of Armed By Design: Posters and Publications of Cuba's Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (2025). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Archives are not only sources for history but have their own histories too, which shape how historians can tell stories of the past. In Managing Paperwork in Mamluk Cairo: Archives, Waqf and Society (Edinburgh UP, 2025), Daisy Livingston explores the archival history of one of the most powerful polities of the late-medieval Middle East: the ‘Mamluk' sultanate of Cairo. Relying on surviving original documents, Livingston focuses on archival practices connected to waqf, the pious endowments that became one of the characteristic features of late-medieval Islamic societies. By centering a close exploration of documents connected to processes of endowment and property exchange, this book sheds light on a startling culture of document accumulation that was shared by the diverse social groups involved in founding and managing endowments: sultans and emirs, qadis, legal notaries, and scribes. Emphasizing the documents' life cycles from production, to preservation, to disposal and loss, it argues for the use of surviving documents to tell their own archival histories. Daisy Livingston is Associate Professor of Medieval Islamic History in the Department of History at Durham University. As a historian of the medieval Middle East, in particular Egypt between the tenth and sixteenth centuries, her research focuses on various aspects of documentary culture, especially histories of archiving. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom (2022) and The Social Movement Archive (2021), and co-editor of Armed By Design: Posters and Publications of Cuba's Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (2025). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Archives are not only sources for history but have their own histories too, which shape how historians can tell stories of the past. In Managing Paperwork in Mamluk Cairo: Archives, Waqf and Society (Edinburgh UP, 2025), Daisy Livingston explores the archival history of one of the most powerful polities of the late-medieval Middle East: the ‘Mamluk' sultanate of Cairo. Relying on surviving original documents, Livingston focuses on archival practices connected to waqf, the pious endowments that became one of the characteristic features of late-medieval Islamic societies. By centering a close exploration of documents connected to processes of endowment and property exchange, this book sheds light on a startling culture of document accumulation that was shared by the diverse social groups involved in founding and managing endowments: sultans and emirs, qadis, legal notaries, and scribes. Emphasizing the documents' life cycles from production, to preservation, to disposal and loss, it argues for the use of surviving documents to tell their own archival histories. Daisy Livingston is Associate Professor of Medieval Islamic History in the Department of History at Durham University. As a historian of the medieval Middle East, in particular Egypt between the tenth and sixteenth centuries, her research focuses on various aspects of documentary culture, especially histories of archiving. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom (2022) and The Social Movement Archive (2021), and co-editor of Armed By Design: Posters and Publications of Cuba's Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (2025). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We welcome back Prof Nasser Rabbat to discuss his latest book "Writing Egypt: Al-Maqrizi and His Historical Project," which focuses on the 14th-century historian labeled as Egypt's greatest historian. The director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT outlines the journey and reasons behind his lengthy process of writing the book, the life and works of Al-Maqrizi, his significance in chronicling Egypt's history, and his unique subjective approach to historiography. We also delve into Al-Maqrizi's relationship with the famous sociologist Ibn Khaldun and the socio-political context of Egypt during the Mamluk period. The episode explores themes of patriotism, scholarly dedication, and the historical narrative of the Arab world. 00:00 Introduction01:01 Discussing Rabbat's New Book "Writing Egypt: Al-Maqrizi and His Historical Project"05:16 The Life and Times of Al-Maqrizi17:17 Al-Maqrizi's Historical Contributions20:02 The Mamluk Era and Its Impact on Scholarship26:52 Al-Maqrizi's Legacy and Influence38:40 Al-Maqrizi's Relationship with Ibn Khaldun41:54 The End of History and Ibn Khaldun's Influence43:00 Ibn Khaldun's Theory and Its Application44:33 Al-Maqrizi's Background and Scholarly Life47:43 Humor in Historical Writings49:24 Egyptian Identity and Nationalism53:09 Al-Maqrizi's Love for Egypt55:30 Modern Interpretations of Al-Maqrizi01:10:21 Egyptian Nationalism in the 20th Century01:19:01 Future Works Nasser Rabbat is the Aga Khan Professor and the Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT.  His interests include Islamic architecture, urban history, Arab history, contemporary Arab art, heritage studies, and post-colonial criticism. He has published numerous articles and several books on topics ranging from Mamluk architecture to Antique Syria, to urbicide, such as "Imarat al-Mudun al-Mayyita" (The Architecture of the Dead Cities) (2018); and online book, "The Destruction of Cultural Heritage: From Napoléon to ISIS," co-edited with Pamela Karimi (2016).  Rabbat held several academic and research appointments in Cambridge MA, Princeton, Los Angeles, Cairo, Granada, Rome, Paris, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Munich, and Bonn. Connect with Nasser Rabbat

Join curator Carine Juvin as she discusses the fascinating topic of her new exhibition at the Louvre: The Mamluks. Listen as she goes beyond the usual discussion of war and plunder, and dives into the rich world of Mamluk culture and society: from how the sovereignty of slave-soldiers changed monumental architecture, to what that world was like for women, and from how the Mamluks affected European art, to how Mongol nobles learnt to thrive in Cairo.

The Sacking of Baghdad & Mamluk Resistance - Ml Ali Desai by Radio Islam

In this episode of Platemark, Ann talks with Susan Dackerman, a curator and art historian specializing in Northern European print culture. They discuss Susan's recent book, Dürer's Knots: Early European Print and the Islamic East, which looks at the artist's relationship to the Islamic world, revealing groundbreaking insights about the intersection of early modern printmaking and contemporary history.  Susan's book covers three of Dürer's prints or print series. The first section looks at The Sea Monster (Das Meerwunder), c. 1498, and postulates that it chronicles the return to Venice of Caterina Cornado following her forced abdication as the last queen of Cyprus in 1489. Susan pieces together the narrative, which often claims to be about the abduction of a woman on the fins of Neptune. The second section looks at a series of six woodcuts Dürer made to mimic the designs of silver inlay found in Mamluk brass bowls. Susan has an intriguing theory about the Knots's connection to a set of engravings by none other than Leonardo da Vinci. The final section looks at the iron etching Landscape with a Cannon, 1518, and answers the question why make this image as an etching rather than an engraving. The book challenges traditional narratives and recasts Dürer's prints that reference the Islamic East as much more nuanced and reflective of contemporaneous history. Susan's book is clear, concise, and thoughtful, and well worth the read. Platemark website Sign-up for Platemark emails Leave a 5-star review Support the show Get your Platemark merch Check out Platemark on Instagram Join our Platemark group on Facebook Susan's IG https://www.instagram.com/susanmdackerman/ Susan Dackerman. Dürer's Knots: Early European Print and the Islamic East. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2024. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691250441/durers-knots?srsltid=AfmBOoo2o2yjJJeOlkdsXIURAOdx595jWpEKkUllE8jpzXRidPeYLEG8 Susan Dackerman. The Painted Print: The Revelation of Color. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2002. https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-02234-5.html Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528). Sea Monster (Das Meerwunder), c. 1498. Engraving. Sheet (trimmed to platemark): 24.7 x 18.8 cm. (9 3/4 x 7 3/8 in.). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528). The First Knot (with a heart-shaped shield), probably 1506/1507. Woodcut. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528). The Third Knot (with a black circle on a white medallion), probably 1506/1507. Woodcut. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528). The Sixth Knot (combining seven small systems of knots with black centers), probably 1506/1507. Woodcut. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Attributed to Leonardo da Vinci (Italian 1452–1519). The Fifth Knot (Interlaced Roundel with Seven Six-pointed Stars), c. 1498. Engraving. Plate: 10 3/8 × 7 13/16 in. (26.4 × 19.8 cm.). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528). Landscape with the Cannon, 1518. Etching (iron). Sheet (trimmed to image): 21.9 × 32.2 cm. (8 5/8 × 12 11/16 in.). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.  

HISTORIA DEL TAROT La historia del Tarot se remonta a las primeras décadas del siglo XIII cuando los mercaderes del Mediterráneo recorrían la extensa Ruta de la Seda por China, Persia y África, trayendo entre sus pertenencias el primer mazo de cartas conocido en Occidente, llamado Mamluk. Su origen era islámico y estaba organizado en cuatro palos. Durante el siglo XV, en Europa, a los naipes se incorporó un quinto palo: los triunfos, que eran cartas con dibujos de flores o escenas variadas que resultaban superiores a las de los palos ordinarios. Sus figuras eran casi las mismas que en la actualidad conocemos como los 22 arcanos mayores del Tarot. Con la incorporación de los triunfos nació un nuevo juego llamado Tarocco o Tarocchien Italia, Tarock en Alemania y Tarot en Francia. El primer mazo completo del que se tiene registro es el bellísimo y lujoso Tarot de Visconti-Sforza, hecho a mano alrededor del 1440 por encargo del Duque de Milán, donde ya aparecían figuras emblemáticas como La Emperatriz, El Colgado o El Mago y casi todas las demás que componen hoy los arcanos mayores, con una salvedad: La Torre y El Diablo. No se sabe a ciencia cierta si faltan porque se perdieron o todavía no formaban parte del juego. A FINES DE ESTE SIGLO el mazo ya estaba organizado en 78 cartas: 22 triunfos numerados del 1 al 21, más El Loco, la carta que no tiene número (algunas versiones le ponen 0), y 56 cartas divididas en 4 palos: Oros, Bastos, Espadas y Copas que van del 1 al 10, más sus correspondientes figuras (Rey, Reina, Caballero y Paje); y empezó a tener otro uso: el adivinatorio. ARCANOS MAYORES Y MENORES Aunque los 22 arcanos mayores tienen enorme fuerza simbólica, también se deben tener en cuenta a los 56 arcanos menores para consultar o estudiar el Tarot. EL JUEGO DE CARTAS MÁS ANTIGUA DEL TAROT Las cartas de tarot más antiguas que sobreviven son las del llamado Tarot Cary-Yale (o Tarot Visconti-Modrone), que fue creado en 1442-1447 por el pintor Bonifacio Bembo para los Visconti-Sforza, la familia dominante de Milán EL SECRETO DEL TAROT DE MARSELLA A principios del siglo XX, en excavaciones realizadas en un pozo del Castillo Sforza en Milán, se encontraron cartas del siglo XV con el típico diseño del Tarot marsellés. Esto reforzó la vieja teoría de que el Tarot, el primero y verdadero, nació en Marsella. En 1998, el escritor y cineasta chileno Alejandro Jodorowsky y el maestro en cartas Philippe Camoin de la antigua Casa Camoin de Marsella, han reconstruido el Tarot de Marsella con antiguas barajas y los moldes originales detalles olvidados y colores esotéricos. TIRADA DE CARTAS Existen distintas configuraciones utilizadas para la tirada de cartas. Método sencillo o Gran Cruz La cruz mágica Tirada horoscópica El árbol de la vida Tirada céltica27​ Tirada lineal 3 cartas

A captivating journey of the expansive world of medieval travel, from London to Constantinople to the court of China and beyond. Europeans of the Middle Ages were the first to use travel guides to orient their wanderings, as they moved through a world punctuated with miraculous wonders and beguiling encounters. In this vivid and alluring history, medievalist Anthony Bale invites readers on an odyssey across the medieval world, recounting the advice that circulated among those venturing to the road for pilgrimage, trade, diplomacy, and war. Journeying alongside scholars, spies, and saints, from Western Europe to the Far East, the Antipodes and the ends of the earth, Bale provides indispensable information on the exchange rate between Bohemian ducats and Venetian groats, medieval cures for seasickness, and how to avoid extortionist tour guides and singing sirens. He takes us from the streets of Rome, more ruin than tourist spot, and tours of the Khan's court in Beijing to Mamluk-controlled Jerusalem, where we ride asses across the holy terrain, and bustling bazaars of Tabriz. We also learn of rumored fantastical places, like ones where lambs grow on trees and giant canes grow fruit made of gems. And we are offered a glimpse of what non-European travelers thought of the West on their own travels. Using previously untranslated contemporaneous documents from a colorful range of travelers, and from as far and wide as Turkey, Iceland, North Africa, and Russia, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages: The World Through Medieval Eyes (Norton, 2024) is a witty and unforgettable exploration of how Europeans understood—and often misunderstood—the larger world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

A captivating journey of the expansive world of medieval travel, from London to Constantinople to the court of China and beyond. Europeans of the Middle Ages were the first to use travel guides to orient their wanderings, as they moved through a world punctuated with miraculous wonders and beguiling encounters. In this vivid and alluring history, medievalist Anthony Bale invites readers on an odyssey across the medieval world, recounting the advice that circulated among those venturing to the road for pilgrimage, trade, diplomacy, and war. Journeying alongside scholars, spies, and saints, from Western Europe to the Far East, the Antipodes and the ends of the earth, Bale provides indispensable information on the exchange rate between Bohemian ducats and Venetian groats, medieval cures for seasickness, and how to avoid extortionist tour guides and singing sirens. He takes us from the streets of Rome, more ruin than tourist spot, and tours of the Khan's court in Beijing to Mamluk-controlled Jerusalem, where we ride asses across the holy terrain, and bustling bazaars of Tabriz. We also learn of rumored fantastical places, like ones where lambs grow on trees and giant canes grow fruit made of gems. And we are offered a glimpse of what non-European travelers thought of the West on their own travels. Using previously untranslated contemporaneous documents from a colorful range of travelers, and from as far and wide as Turkey, Iceland, North Africa, and Russia, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages: The World Through Medieval Eyes (Norton, 2024) is a witty and unforgettable exploration of how Europeans understood—and often misunderstood—the larger world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

A captivating journey of the expansive world of medieval travel, from London to Constantinople to the court of China and beyond. Europeans of the Middle Ages were the first to use travel guides to orient their wanderings, as they moved through a world punctuated with miraculous wonders and beguiling encounters. In this vivid and alluring history, medievalist Anthony Bale invites readers on an odyssey across the medieval world, recounting the advice that circulated among those venturing to the road for pilgrimage, trade, diplomacy, and war. Journeying alongside scholars, spies, and saints, from Western Europe to the Far East, the Antipodes and the ends of the earth, Bale provides indispensable information on the exchange rate between Bohemian ducats and Venetian groats, medieval cures for seasickness, and how to avoid extortionist tour guides and singing sirens. He takes us from the streets of Rome, more ruin than tourist spot, and tours of the Khan's court in Beijing to Mamluk-controlled Jerusalem, where we ride asses across the holy terrain, and bustling bazaars of Tabriz. We also learn of rumored fantastical places, like ones where lambs grow on trees and giant canes grow fruit made of gems. And we are offered a glimpse of what non-European travelers thought of the West on their own travels. Using previously untranslated contemporaneous documents from a colorful range of travelers, and from as far and wide as Turkey, Iceland, North Africa, and Russia, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages: The World Through Medieval Eyes (Norton, 2024) is a witty and unforgettable exploration of how Europeans understood—and often misunderstood—the larger world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

A captivating journey of the expansive world of medieval travel, from London to Constantinople to the court of China and beyond. Europeans of the Middle Ages were the first to use travel guides to orient their wanderings, as they moved through a world punctuated with miraculous wonders and beguiling encounters. In this vivid and alluring history, medievalist Anthony Bale invites readers on an odyssey across the medieval world, recounting the advice that circulated among those venturing to the road for pilgrimage, trade, diplomacy, and war. Journeying alongside scholars, spies, and saints, from Western Europe to the Far East, the Antipodes and the ends of the earth, Bale provides indispensable information on the exchange rate between Bohemian ducats and Venetian groats, medieval cures for seasickness, and how to avoid extortionist tour guides and singing sirens. He takes us from the streets of Rome, more ruin than tourist spot, and tours of the Khan's court in Beijing to Mamluk-controlled Jerusalem, where we ride asses across the holy terrain, and bustling bazaars of Tabriz. We also learn of rumored fantastical places, like ones where lambs grow on trees and giant canes grow fruit made of gems. And we are offered a glimpse of what non-European travelers thought of the West on their own travels. Using previously untranslated contemporaneous documents from a colorful range of travelers, and from as far and wide as Turkey, Iceland, North Africa, and Russia, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages: The World Through Medieval Eyes (Norton, 2024) is a witty and unforgettable exploration of how Europeans understood—and often misunderstood—the larger world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1426, if but for a short while, Cyprus had two kings. King Janus of Cyprus and the ill-fated "Peasant King," Alexis, crowned by the people. The Peasant Revolt is a little known event in Cyprus' history but it is believed to have been triggered by the Mamluk invasion, the capture of King Janus and the sack of Nicosia. After the Muslim withdrawal, peasants revolted proclaiming the peasant Alexis as king. In short time, the rebellion was put down and Alexis was executed. Where was this rooted? How did it unfold? Join me with Dr. Chrysovalantis Kyriacou as we discuss the 1426 Peasant Revolt!

fWotD Episode 2665: Turabay dynasty Welcome to Featured Wiki of the Day, your daily dose of knowledge from Wikipedia’s finest articles.The featured article for Wednesday, 21 August 2024 is Turabay dynasty.The Turabay dynasty (Arabic: آل طرباي, romanized: Āl Ṭurabāy) was a family of Bedouin emirs in northern Palestine who served as the multazims (tax farmers) and sanjak-beys (district governors) of Lajjun Sanjak during Ottoman rule in the 16th–17th centuries. The sanjak (district) spanned the towns of Lajjun, Jenin and Haifa, and the surrounding countryside. The progenitors of the family had served as chiefs of Marj Bani Amir (the Plain of Esdraelon or Jezreel Valley) under the Egypt-based Mamluks in the late 15th century.During the conquest of the Levant and Egypt by the Ottoman Empire in 1516–1517, the Turabay chief Qaraja and his son Turabay aided the forces of Ottoman Sultan Selim I. The Ottomans kept them in their Mamluk-era role as guardians of the strategic Via Maris and Damascus–Jerusalem highways and rewarded them with tax farms in northern Palestine. Their territory became a sanjak in 1559 and Turabay's son Ali became its first governor. His brother Assaf was appointed in 1573, serving for ten years before being dismissed and exiled to Rhodes for involvement in a rebellion. His nephew Turabay was appointed in 1589 and remained in office until his death in 1601. His son and successor Ahmad, the most prominent chief of the dynasty, ruled Lajjun for nearly a half-century and repulsed attempts by the powerful Druze chief and Ottoman governor of Sidon-Beirut and Safed, Fakhr al-Din Ma'n, to take over Lajjun and Nablus in the 1620s. He consolidated the family's alliance with the Ridwan and Farrukh governing dynasties of Gaza and Nablus, which remained intact until the dynasties' demise toward the end of the century.As multazims and sanjak-beys the Turabays were entrusted with collecting taxes for the Ottomans, quelling local rebellions, acting as judges, and securing roads. They were largely successful in these duties, while keeping good relations with the peasantry and the village chiefs of the sanjak. Although in the 17th century several of their emirs lived in the towns of Lajjun and Jenin, the Turabays largely preserved their nomadic way of life, pitching camp with their Banu Haritha tribesmen near Caesarea in the winters and the plain of Acre in the summers. The eastward migration of the Banu Haritha to the Jordan Valley, Ottoman centralization drives, and diminishing tax revenues brought about their political decline and they were permanently stripped of office in 1677. Members of the family remained in Jenin at the close of the century, and descendants continue to live in present-day northern Israel and Palestine.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:59 UTC on Wednesday, 21 August 2024.For the full current version of the article, see Turabay dynasty on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm standard Joey.

Episode 186: Old Marvels, New Approaches: The Revitalization of Balāgha in Moroccan Literary Studies The science of balāgha is an Arabic scholarly discipline dealing with poetics and rhetoric, one that dates back to at least the 10th century C.E. Scholars of balāgha have long studied how poets convey intellectual and emotional content to listeners by using tools such as vivid imagery, sound play, and stylistic variation. Meanwhile, the relationship between Arabic balāgha and the Greek rhetorical tradition beginning with Aristotle has always been complicated, with some thinkers seeing the Greek emphasis on persuasive oratory as a welcome addition to Arabic-Islamic ideas about the power of language and speech, and others attempting to defend the Arabic language sciences against external influence. In the 19th and 20th centuries, balāgha was often viewed by progressive writers and thinkers as anachronistic. Its study thus tended to be confined to traditional Islamic institutions and seen as relevant only to particular “premodern” Arabic-Islamic texts. But recent decades have seen a renewed dedication to the continued vitality and value of a type of balāgha study called “The New Balāgha” that draws on Greek, Arabic, and hybrid conceptual tools. For those involved in this movement, balāgha comes to name a set of ideas about how people connect through language: how they become open to new ideas, empathetic to the struggles of those around them, and sensitive to the powers of linguistic beauty and subtlety. This scholarly movement has come to be particularly associated with Morocco, and especially with Abdelmalek Essaadi University in Tetouan, where its best-known practitioner and advocate, Dr. Mohamed Mechbal, teaches. Betty Rosen is a final-year PhD candidate in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures and the Designated Emphasis Program in Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. Originally from Cleveland, OH, she earned her A.B. in Comparative Literature Magna Cum Laude from Harvard College in 2012, as well as completing an MA in Arabic Literature at SOAS (University of London) in 2013. She was also a CASA Fellow at the American University of Cairo during the 2017-18 academic year. Betty specializes in Arabic and Hebrew poetics and theories of language, both medieval and modern. Her dissertation, entitled Language Marvels: Al-Badī‘ In and Beyond Arabic-Islamic Poetics, focuses primarily on the conceptions of al-badī‘—the “marvelous creativity of language”—developed in writings by Muslim and Jewish Arabophone writers in Egypt during the Mamluk Period (13th-15th centuries). The dissertation also asks how certain 19th-century thinkers mobilized Mamluk-era ideas about language, poetics, and creativity to envision alternative forms of Arab “modernity.” Betty's research interests also extend into the 20th and 21st centuries, particularly the ways in which contemporary Arab scholars mobilize and reimagine older ideas about the Arabic linguistic and poetic tradition. In her free time, she plays viola, writes creatively, and works on an ongoing Arabic-to-English fiction translation project. This episode was recorded on June 22, 2023 at the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM).  Recorded and edited by: Abdelbaar Mounadi Idrissi, Outreach Director, TALIM

fWotD Episode 2636: Empire of the Sultans Welcome to Featured Wiki of the Day, your daily dose of knowledge from Wikipedia’s finest articles.The featured article for Tuesday, 23 July 2024 is Empire of the Sultans.Empire of the Sultans: Ottoman Art of the Khalili Collection was a 1995–2004 touring exhibition displaying objects from the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art. Around two hundred exhibits, including calligraphy, textiles, pottery, weapons, and metalwork, illustrated the art and daily life of six centuries of the Ottoman Empire. Many of the objects had been created for the leaders of the empire, the sultans. Two of the calligraphic pieces were the work of sultans themselves.In the 1990s, the exhibition was hosted by institutions in Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Israel. It visited thirteen cities in the United States from 2000 to 2004, a period when Islam became especially controversial due to the September 11 attacks and the subsequent wars in the Middle East. Critics described the exhibition as wide-ranging and informative. They praised it for showing beautiful art works – naming the calligraphy in particular – and for presenting a fresh view of Islam. Catalogues were published in English and French.The Ottoman Empire lasted from the 13th century until 1922 and, at its peak, had territory in three continents: Asia, Europe, and Africa. In 1516 and 1517, it took over Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem, the holiest cities of Islam. Although officially an Islamic state, the empire was culturally diverse and multilingual, including Christians and Jews as well as Muslims. Through the history of the Ottoman Empire, its rulers, the sultans, were patrons of the arts. At the capital Constantinople, they created institutes to train and organise architects and artists, establishing distinctive Ottoman styles of architecture, manuscript illustration, and design. The Ottomans developed distinctive styles of Islamic calligraphy, improving its practice for nearly 500 years. In the 19th century it was routine for the sultans themselves to be trained in calligraphy. During the 16th-century reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the empire reached its greatest extent. Suleiman and his successors used their wealth to build the Topkapı Palace and other buildings in Constantinople, including large mosque complexes decorated inside with architectural inscriptions.For much of its history, Islamic sacred art has been characterised by aniconism: a prohibition against depictions of living beings. Islamic cultures and time periods differed in how they interpreted this, either as applying narrowly to religious art or to art as a whole. Islamic artists compensated for the restrictions on figurative art by using decorative calligraphy, geometric patterns, and stylised foliage known as arabesque.Sir Nasser David Khalili is a British-Iranian scholar, collector, and philanthropist who has assembled the world's largest private collection of Islamic art. The Khalili Collection of Islamic Art spans the time period from 700 to 2000 and includes religious art works and decorative objects as well as those with secular purposes. Empire of the Sultans was the first exhibition drawn entirely from this collection and the first major exhibition at the School of Oriental and African Studies' Brunei Gallery. Some of its objects had never before been put on public display.The exhibition's curators were J. M. Rogers, the collection's honorary curator; and Nahla Nassar, its acting curator and registrar. More than 200 objects were on display, covering six centuries of the Ottoman Empire. These exhibits fell into four sections. "In the service of God" displayed texts including the Quran as well as furniture and ornaments for decorating mosques. "Sultans, soldiers and scribes" included armour, banners, and documents relating to the administration of the empire. "Arts and crafts" included metalwork, textiles, glass, and ceramics. Finally, "books, paintings and scripts" included manuscript paintings, calligraphic works, tools associated with calligraphy, and book bindings. Most objects in the exhibition bore some form of calligraphy.Some venues had listening stations that let visitors listen to music from Ottoman Turkey and hear stories in Arabic and English. At Brigham Young University, carpenters recreated facades of Turkish mosques.The religious manuscripts included thirty-two calligraphed Qurans or Quran sections. These included the work of notable calligraphers including Ahmed Karahisari, Sheikh Hamdullah, Hâfiz Osman, and Mustafa Izzet Efendi. Other literary works included the Masnavi of Rumi and the Dala'il al-Khayrat, a collection of prayers. Wooden roundels, painted with Quranic quotes or the names of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and of the first caliphs, had been used to decorate mosques. Similar decorative calligraphy was embroidered on silk or satin textiles, including a black satin panel from a covering for the door of the Kaaba. Mosque furnishings on display included candlesticks and decorative door fittings in brass or copper. There were qibla compasses used to find the direction of Mecca for prayer and astrolabe quadrants for telling the time for prayer from the rising of stars.The armour on display included helmets, chain mail shirts, and a 15th century war mask. These were mainly forged from iron or steel. Some of this armour was for horses: chamfrons which protected their faces and also served an ornamental purpose. A cotton talismanic shirt was decorated with Quranic quotations, prayers, and the 99 names of God. Weapons on display included daggers, swords, and flintlock guns, many with inscriptions and fine decorative patterns created by damascening (inlaying gold and silver wires into a metal surface). The daggers and swords included the earliest surviving example of a curved Islamic sword upon which was engraved the name of Baybars, a 13th-century Mamluk sultan. The Ottomans took this from Egypt and added gold damascening. Military banners bore the names of God and Muhammad along with prayers and invocations. An image distinctive to Ottoman banners was Zulfiqar, the two-bladed sword that Muhammad is said to have taken at the Battle of Badr. A section of one such banner was included in the exhibition.The documents included grants of land and income. As official proclamations of the sultan, these used highly ornate, stylised calligraphy and incorporated the sultan's tughra, an elaborate monogram that was their official seal. The display included tughras of Suleiman the Magnificent, Selim II, Murad III, Ahmed I, Mehmed IV, Abdul Hamid I, and Abdulmecid I. Two manuscripts told histories of the sultans, illustrated with portrait paintings.The third section included metalwork, pottery, jade, and textiles. The domestic metalwork objects were made of silver, brass, or gilt copper. The textiles, from the 16th and 17th centuries, included rugs and woven silk lampas panels from locations around the Ottoman Empire.In the late 16th century, the Ottomans used Iznik pottery, with its bold colours on white, to decorate imperial palaces and mosques. Several examples from Iznik were included in the exhibition, including tiles, dishes, and vases. Other pottery on display included fritware dishes from Syria and a set of twelve fritware bowls made in 1860, each inscribed in Arabic with "Imperial Chamber" and "a gift for his excellency Abraham Lincoln". The curators were not able to establish why or where this gift was made for Lincoln, beyond that the inscription suggests they were made in Turkey. A 16th or 17th century tile panel, 207 by 112.5 centimetres (6.79 ft × 3.69 ft), bore two calligraphed statements of faith, suggesting it was made to decorate a mosque.The final section of the exhibition included calligraphic works, manuscript paintings, decorative book bindings, and tools used by calligraphers. The calligraphic works included single panels, albums, and inscriptions on leaves. Among their scribes were notable calligraphers such as Sheikh Hamdullah, Mahmud Celaleddin Efendi, and Mehmed Şevkî Efendi. The exhibition had calligraphy panels by two sultans, Abdulmejid I and Mahmud II. One type of calligraphic work special to Islam is the hilye, a description in words of the qualities of Muhammad or other prophets of Islam. On display were several examples of hilyes. Some of these followed a standard pattern with main text inside a central medallion and additional names and quotations in surrounding panels; others had unconventional layouts or textual inclusions.Among the paintings and drawings were portraits from poetry manuscripts, painted within elaborate decorative borders, and two examples of the saz style which combines fantastical foliage and creatures. The exhibition travelled to a total of sixteen venues in four countries. Some venues put on special events, including performances of Turkish music, film viewings, lectures, and demonstrations of calligraphy.Musée Rath, Geneva, Switzerland, July – September 1995Brunei Gallery, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK, July – October 1996Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel, December 1996 – June 1997Thirteen venues were in the United States, the first time an exhibition from the Khalili Collections had been held in North America.Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida, February – April 2000Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan, July – October 2000Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, Albuquerque, New Mexico, October 2000 – January 2001Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, January – April 2001Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, California, August – October 2001Bruce Museum of Arts and Science, Greenwich, Connecticut, October 2001 – January 2002Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, February – April 2002North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina, May – July 2002Museum of Art, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, August 2002 – January 2003Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, February – April 2003Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tennessee, May – August 2003Museum of Arts and Sciences, Macon, Georgia, August – November 2003Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, November 2003 – February 2004Critics described Empire of the Sultans as broad and informative. Reviewing the Geneva exhibition for the Financial Times, Susan Moore observed that "no other single collection outside Istanbul has the range of material" to put on such a wide-ranging overview of Ottoman culture. She identified its main achievement as showing how the Ottoman world was affected by its conquest of other territories. The Middle East magazine said the Brunei Gallery offered a "beautifully curated" show that "cleverly illustrates how art was an integral part of Ottoman daily life". The Columbian concluded from the Portland exhibition that "Nasser D. Khalili's collection of Islamic art treasures is so extensive it nearly brings the Ottoman Empire to life." The New York Times described "[t]his treasure trove of a show" at the Bruce Museum as having "an impressive sweep".Critics praised the beauty of the exhibited art works. The Albuquerque Tribune described Empire of the Sultans as a "stunning exhibit of treasures of the Ottoman Empire" whose 225 objects "are simply breathtaking". Reviewing for the San Francisco Chronicle, David Bonetti found all the objects "at least interesting" and the best "gorgeous", naming the carpets and ceramics as highlights. For The Capital Times, Kevin Lynch described the Milwaukee exhibition as a "serenely gorgeous show" and "a must-see for those who want clarity in these troubling times." In his review of the year for 2002, Lynch named Empire of the Sultans as the fourth best visual arts event. Reviewing the London exhibition for The Times, John Russell Taylor found it a pity that some of the most interesting objects shown in Geneva had been excluded from the Brunei Gallery (usually for lack of space), but said that the somewhat reduced display still included "many real gems of significant art".The calligraphy, in particular, attracted praise. The Associated Press wrote that its beauty could be appreciated even by visitors who do not understand Arabic writing. Alan Riding in The New York Times described the calligraphy from the later years of the Ottoman Empire as "works of extraordinary delicacy". In The Oklahoman, John Brandenburg named the calligraphy section as the strongest part of the exhibition, saying that the "magnificent blend of art and science as well as military and cultural history" may require more than one visit to take in. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution highlighted the "superb" calligraphy as well as "wonderful" miniature paintings.Empire of the Sultans was described as showing Islam in a way that contrasted with existing prejudices and with current media coverage. Describing the Brigham Young University exhibition as a "[p]art decorative art extravaganza, part cultural history lesson", The Salt Lake Tribune praised it for sharing the artistic culture of the Islamic world at a time when news mentions of Islam were dominated by war in the Middle East. The US senator John Edwards said of the North Carolina exhibition in 2002, "Since Sept. 11, Americans have been asking more questions [...] about Islam and Islamic cultures in general. The Museum of Art's exhibition offers opportunities to enhance our understanding of Islam's rich and varied cultural history, as well as the events happening today." The New Statesman recommended "an unmissable exhibition" that showed Ottoman culture on its own terms rather than following Western preconceptions. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette saw the exhibition as an alternative both to the way Islam was being portrayed in news reports and to a romanticised view of the Arabic world as mysterious and distant. A catalogue by J. M. Rogers was first published in both English and French in 1995 to coincide with the exhibition at the Musée Rath in Geneva. This included colour photographs of 203 exhibited objects. Updated English editions accompanied the Brunei Gallery exhibition in 1996. Fourth and fifth editions of the catalogue were produced for the United States tour, including 226 objects.Rogers, J. M. (1995). Empire of the Sultans: Ottoman Art from the Collection of Nasser D. Khalili. Geneva: Musée d'Art et d'Histoire. ISBN 1-898592-04-7. OCLC 34380041.Rogers, J. M. (1995). L'empire des sultans: l'art ottoman dans la collection de Nasser D. Khalili (in French). Geneva: Musée d'Art et d'Histoire. ISBN 9782830601190. OCLC 716306659.Rogers, J. M. (1996). Empire of the Sultans: Ottoman art from the collection of Nasser D. Khalili. London: Azimuth Ed. ISBN 9781898592075. OCLC 475490537.Rogers, J. M. (2000). Empire of the Sultans: Ottoman art of the Khalili Collection (4 ed.). London: Nour Foundation. ISBN 9780883971321. OCLC 471619620.Rogers, J. M. (2000). Empire of the Sultans: Ottoman art of the Khalili Collection (4 ed.). London: Nour Foundation. ISBN 9780883971321. OCLC 471619620.Official page on Khalili Collections siteOfficial video from the Israel exhibitionThis recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:00 UTC on Tuesday, 23 July 2024.For the full current version of the article, see Empire of the Sultans on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm standard Nicole.

We're back! In the season two premiere of the Haunted Objects Podcast, a possessed tarot deck terrifies television viewers, but the devil's in the details. Plus, we give YOU a reading with the haunted deck, Dana reveals her secret tarot techniques, Greg embraces chaos, Connor learns about computers, and Keelin swears she knows what a shopping mall is. Shuffle the deck and hope for the best, because it's time to seal your fate with the Devil's Deck! See us on tour: https://www.newkirktour.com/ Join the museum: https://www.patreon.com/paramuseum Buy HOP merch: https://planetweird.store Visit our website: https://hauntedobjectspodcast.com Subscribe on YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y6kf7n2n Follow the Podcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/objectspod/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ObjectsPod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@objectspod SHOW NOTES: - More on the haunted tarot deck: https://tinyurl.com/ev872fm5 - The Rider-Waite-Smith images: https://tinyurl.com/3tbb9f54 - Mamluk playing cards: https://tinyurl.com/msmkjz4u - The Sola Busca Tarot that inspired Pixie: https://tinyurl.com/228hxmkm - More tarot history: https://tinyurl.com/3smhsexd - Pamela Coleman Smith's Zine: https://tinyurl.com/jh6aucmz - Read AE Waite's “The Pictorial Key to the Tarot”: https://tinyurl.com/fe699umb - Dana's Recommended Tarot Teacher: https://tinyurl.com/3ccry6p7 - "Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom" by Rachel Pollack: https://amzn.to/3zA44l2 - For Beginners: "The Guided Tarot" by Stefanie Caponi: https://amzn.to/3xWSJeg - "Pamela Coleman Smith: The Untold Story" by Kaplan: https://amzn.to/4eRGd0n - Tarot Cards and Copyright: https://tinyurl.com/ekh2txpw Part of the Spectrevision Radio Network Copyright 2024 Planet Weird Hosted by Greg and Dana Newkirk Produced by Connor J Randall Photography / Editing by Karl Pfeiffer Additional Research by Keelin Mathews Art by Dustin Williams Theme by Adam Hayman "The Disembodied Voice" by Chuck Fresh

We're back! In the season two premiere of the Haunted Objects Podcast, a possessed tarot deck terrifies television viewers, but the devil's in the details. Plus, we give YOU a reading with the haunted deck, Dana reveals her secret tarot techniques, Greg embraces chaos, Connor learns about computers, and Keelin swears she knows what a shopping mall is. Shuffle the deck and hope for the best, because it's time to seal your fate with the Devil's Deck! See us on tour: https://www.newkirktour.com/ Join the museum: https://www.patreon.com/paramuseum Buy HOP merch: https://planetweird.store Visit our website: https://hauntedobjectspodcast.com Subscribe on YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y6kf7n2n Follow the Podcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/objectspod/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ObjectsPod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@objectspod SHOW NOTES: - More on the haunted tarot deck: https://tinyurl.com/ev872fm5 - The Rider-Waite-Smith images: https://tinyurl.com/3tbb9f54 - Mamluk playing cards: https://tinyurl.com/msmkjz4u - The Sola Busca Tarot that inspired Pixie: https://tinyurl.com/228hxmkm - More tarot history: https://tinyurl.com/3smhsexd - Pamela Coleman Smith's Zine: https://tinyurl.com/jh6aucmz - Read AE Waite's “The Pictorial Key to the Tarot”: https://tinyurl.com/fe699umb - Dana's Recommended Tarot Teacher: https://tinyurl.com/3ccry6p7 - "Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom" by Rachel Pollack: https://amzn.to/3zA44l2 - For Beginners: "The Guided Tarot" by Stefanie Caponi: https://amzn.to/3xWSJeg - "Pamela Coleman Smith: The Untold Story" by Kaplan: https://amzn.to/4eRGd0n - Tarot Cards and Copyright: https://tinyurl.com/ekh2txpw Part of the Spectrevision Radio Network Copyright 2024 Planet Weird Hosted by Greg and Dana Newkirk Produced by Connor J Randall Photography / Editing by Karl Pfeiffer Additional Research by Keelin Mathews Art by Dustin Williams Theme by Adam Hayman "The Disembodied Voice" by Chuck Fresh Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

rWotD Episode 2600: Roger of San Severino Welcome to random Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of a random Wikipedia page every day.The random article for Sunday, 16 June 2024 is Roger of San Severino.Roger of San Severino was the bailiff of the Kingdom of Jerusalem from 1277 to 1282. He was sent to Acre, then the capital of the kingdom, with a small force by the new king Charles I of Anjou, also King of Sicily, to act as regent.Charles, an Angevin and brother of King Louis IX of France, had purchased the rights to the kingdom from Mary of Antioch, one of the claimants after the death of Conradin in 1268. The succession, however, was disputed between Mary and Hugh III of Cyprus.Roger had the support of the Knights Templar and the Republic of Venice when he landed at Acre. The bailiff at the time was Balian of Ibelin, Lord of Arsuf, who initially refused to admit him into the citadel until papers signed by Charles, Mary, and Pope John XXI were produced and the Knights Hospitallers and Patriarch of Jerusalem John of Versailles had refused to intervene. The state of the kingdom became anarchy as Roger raised Charles' standards and demanded oaths of homage from the barons, who in turn refused to accept the transferral of the royal rights without a decision of the Haute Cour. The barons requested Hugh of Cyprus to release them from their oaths, but he refused. Roger then threatened all the barons with confiscation if they did not do him homage. They did. Even Bohemond VII of Tripoli recognised him as regent in Acre.Roger governed the remnant of the Latin kingdom in the East in peace. He continued the alliance with the Mamluk sultan of Egypt, Qalawun, at the request of Charles and extended it for another ten years in May 1281. He also refused to aid the Mongol ilkhan of Persia, Abaqa, against the Mamluks at the Second Battle of Homs. He even personally congratulated Qalawun on his victory. In 1281, following the Sicilian Vespers of 30 March, Roger was recalled with his troops to Italy and he left Odo Poilechien behind as his deputy.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:10 UTC on Sunday, 16 June 2024.For the full current version of the article, see Roger of San Severino on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm Kendra Standard.

In 1319 Roger de Stangrave, a Hospitaller knight, and a Jew named Isaac arrived in England. For a ransom of 10,00 gold florins, Isaac had freed Stangrave, a stranger to him, from over 30 years of Mamluk captivity and then accompanied the knight home to be repaid. By 1322, Isaac has converted to Christianity and become Edward of St. John, with King Edward II taking him as godson. What motivated Isaac to ransom a stranger for such an exorbitant cost and leave his native Egypt and end up baptised in England which at the time had expelled all Jews with the decree of Edward I in 1290 (father of Edward II) until it was formally overturned under Oliver Cromwell in 1656? With the backdrop of the Crusades and European antisemitism, to share with us today his investigation of this curious tale is Dr. Rory MacLellan. Dr MacLellan completed his PhD in Medieval History 2019 at St. Andrews and is currently a cataloguer and manuscript researcher at the British Library. He specialises in medieval religious history, especially the crusades and the military-religious orders. His first book, ‘Donations to the Knights Hospitaller in Britain and Ireland', 1291-1400, is published by Routledge. TIMESTAMPS: 02:20 The first records of Jews in England start with William the Conqueror although one can speculate there may have been Jews prior during the Roman occupation. What many viewers may not know is that Jews were officially expelled from England by Edward I in 1290 until it was formally overturned under Oliver Cromwell in 1657. 15:37 The reign of Edward II (1284-1327) coincides with the titular caliphates of Al-Hakim I (1262 - 1302) and Al-Mustakfi I (1302-1340) and the de facto rule of a number of Mamluk sultans starting with Qalawun (1279-1290) and ending with the second reign Nasir ad-Din Muhammad (1299-1309). What was the socio-political context of Edward's reign domestically and abroad, and what was he like as a person? 20:41 He was also cucked by a Frenchman. His wife Isabella shacked up with a Roger Mortimer and declared war on her husband. What happened there? 24:27 And give us also an overview of the Crusades and how that forms the backdrop to our story. 28:43 Before we look at Isaac and his journey to England, tell us first about Stangrave and how he ended up as a prisoner of war. 30:35 Enter Isaac. What do we do know about him? 39:08 And tell us more about the Domus Conversorum: a London hospital for baptised Jews and their relatives. 44:05 Your essay is a really good example of a critical reading of the sources. Tell us what you think really happened and why. 51:30 Comparison of Jewish life in Mamluk Egypt and Christian England 1:00:08 You have also looked at how the so-called 'alt right' can manipulate medieval history for their political agenda. Tell us your views about that. For more on our guest: https://twitter.com/RFMacLellan https://bl.academia.edu/RoryMacLellan SPONSOR:  We are sponsored 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. IslamicHistory #MedievalHistory #AbbasidHistory #jewishhistory #crusades #baptism #egypt https://linktr.ee/abbasidhistorypodcast

محادثة مهمة وغنية بالمعلومات حول مدينة غزة. من ثقافتها الخاصة وتاريخها الواسع الى الأثر الزلزالي للاستعمار البريطاني. عمر ذوابه يحاور البروفيسور أباهر السقا، مؤلف كتاب "غزة: تاريخ اجتماعي في ظل الحكم الاستعماري البريطاني، 1917-1948" الذي يرسم صورة حية للحياة الاجتماعية والاقتصادية والثقافية في غزة منذ العصر المملوكي وحتى الاستعمار البريطاني. يسلط السقا الضوء على المدينة من عدسة التاريخ الاجتماعي وعلى الهوية المادية والثقافية المتعددة الأوجه لغزة وكيف تغيرت على مر العقود.سجلت هذه الحلقة في 26 أكتوبريرجى ملاحظة أننا نقوم بتسجيل حلقات بودكاست خاصة لفهم السياق التاريخي لما يحدث في فلسطين. اطلع على المحادثات الأخرى الغنية بالمعلومات مع ضيوف من تخصصات مختلفة والذين يعطون من وقتهم ويشاركون رؤيتهم بسخاء في هذه الأوقات المظلمة  A timely and vital conversation about the city of Gaza: its rich history, culture, and the seismic impact of British colonial rule. Omar Thawabeh interviews professor Abaher El-Sakka, author of Gaza: A Social History under British Colonial Rule, 1917-1948 paints a vivid picture of Gaza's social, economic and cultural life from the Mamluk period through to the British colonial rule. He illuminates the city through a social history lens, shedding light on Gaza's multifaceted physical and cultural identity and how it's changed through the decades. This episode was recorded on October 26 Please note, we're recording special podcast episodes relevant to understanding historical context to what is happening in Palestine. Make sure to check out the other highly informative conversations with guests from completely different disciplines who are generously sharing their time and insight in these dark times ****** ABOUT THE SERIES ****** afikra Conversations is our flagship program featuring long-form interviews with experts from academia, art, ‎and media who are helping document and/or shape the histories and cultures of the Arab world through their ‎work. Our hope is that by having the guest share their expertise and story, the community still walks away with new ‎found curiosity - and maybe some good recommendations about new nerdy rabbit holes to dive into head first. ‎Watch all afikra Conversations: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... **** ABOUT AFIKRA ***‎*afikra | عفكرة is a movement to convert passive interest in the Arab world to active intellectual curiosity. We aim to collectively reframe the dominant narrative of the region by exploring the histories and cultures of the region- past, present, and future - through conversations driven by curiosity. 

The late Michael Dols in his book on the Majnūn rightly asserted that when dealing with madmen in medieval Islamic societies, we need to have in mind a model of medical pluralism. He had spotted the various intersections of genres of texts and learning, and even sociological classes and behavioral norms in his examination of madness, more broadly, and lovesickness (ʿishq), in particular. In this chapter, I shall focus on the discussions on lovesickness from five medical commentaries from the Mamluk period. The focus will be not only be on illuminating how the texts and the authors engage with the work(s) of their predecessor(s), but also what we can learn about the specific intellectual landscapes in which each author operated along with their specific interests in the topic. Professor Nahyan Fancy is the Al-Qasimi Professor in Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. He received his PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Notre Dame. He taught for 17 years in the History department at DePauw University, Indiana, before joining the faculty at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at Exeter this year. He works on the intersections of philosophy, medicine, science and religion during the period between 1200 and 1520. His first book, Science and Religion in Mamluk Egypt: Ibn al-Nafis, Pulmonary Transit and Bodily Resurrection (Routledge, 2013), situated Ibn al-Nafis's proposal of the pulmonary transit of blood within the context of debates amongst philosophers and religious scholars over the proper role of reason in interpreting revelation and the possibility of bodily resurrection. He has published widely on post-classical medicine, including more recent work on pre-modern understandings of sleep and plague. His current book project examines eight medical commentaries on the Canon of Medicine and its Epitome, to reveal that neither were Ibn al-Nafis's works ignored after 1300, nor was there a decline in medical and scientific thought due to religious antagonism.

Welcome to The Safe House Travel Diary, a travel and music podcast that explores hip hop in misunderstood places. My name is SohaI go to the safe houses of hip hop artists for intimate conversations and try to get a sense of what life is like in their corner of the world. The idea for The Safe House comes from Kendrick Lamar's lyric about "venting in the safe house." Every season I travel to a new country and immerse myself in their hip hop scene. This is Season 1: "Three Nights in Beirut" and it takes place in my Motherland: Lebanon. The idea for The Safe House comes from Kendrick Lamar's lyric about "venting in the safe house." WATCHIf you enjoyed listening to this episode, you can also WATCH it with the full visualizer on my YouTube Channel. You'll see my walk in Mar Mkhael, Saleh, Ziggy, and I on the motorcycle, Chyno's soundcheck (shot with permission of course) and more! SOUNDTRACKE4 Soundtrack. Episode 4, "MAMLUK," features interviews with Chyno and Ziggy. They represent different generations in Lebanese rap but embody the same ethos of authenticity and immersion. I hope you enjoy some of my favorites from their catalogue as well as music produced by Aladin, whose also featured in E4. THANK YOUChyno with a Why? for agreeing to sit down for an interview on one of the most busy days of his life!Ziggy for bringing his full self to our conversationAladin for finding the W in this situation Saleh for being the best sidekick a girl could hope for! LEARN MORE Hip hop tingsArticle: How protest and resistance in Syria and Lebanon shaped a progressive rap sceneArticle: Straight Outta Syria: Meet the young refugee rappers with a messageDocumentary: 961 Underground: The Rise of Lebanese Hip Hop (2012)by DJ Lethal Skillz: The definitive documentary about the rise of Lebanese hip hop culture by the spin master himself, DJ Lethal Skillz. Documentary | El Arena: the award winning documentary by Soul House Media is a must watchEl Arena YouTube channel: watch rappers from across the MENA region converge on Beirut and go head to head. Pro-tip: if you know Arabic, watch Kalach vs. Al Darwish for some heavy duty social commentary about the tension between Syrian refugees and Lebanese citizens. The aftermath of the Beirut Port ExplosionVideo: "Walking in Mar Mikhael one Week After Beirut's Blast"Video:

I sat down with Julia Bender, a student and researcher of Islamic and medieval art, to discuss the relationship between the Venetian Republic and the Islamic powers that competed for mercantile control of the Mediterranean. Looking at the Mamluks and Ottomans, two major dynasties that coincide with the Renaissance period, we discuss what exchanges were being made, how Venice served as a transition point for Eastern goods into Europe, and the major influence of Islamic innovations in Venice. This episode also covers essential information about Aldus Manutius, his printing press, and the proliferation of printed goods as it relates to Venetian mercantilism. Further, we discuss the stylistic influences of Islamic lands on European art production, primarily through the oriental carpet trade. Instagram: @italian_renaissance_podcastGet additional content by becoming a Patron: patreon.com/TheItalianRenaissancePodcast Support the show

In this episode Elliot sits down with James Waterson, author of "The Knights of Islam: The Wars of the Mamluks." James provides an in-depth look into the history of the Mamluk Sultanate, with a special focus on the reign of Sultan Baybars.  Baybars, who ruled from 1260 to 1277, was one of the most powerful and influential Mamluk sultans. He led the Mamluks to victory against the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalut, a significant turning point in the region's history. James delves into Baybars' military strategies, and the ways in which he left a lasting impact on the region.  He also discusses the conflicts and wars that defined Baybars' reign, including the ongoing struggle against the Crusaders.  Listen in for a captivating conversation that will give you a new understanding of the complexities of the Mamluk era and the powerful leader who shaped it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello Prestigeheads! We just wanted to share Derek's grand return to podcasting over at Foreign Exchanges in the form of this great discussion of the Mamluks. Be sure to subscribe to FX for content like this, the daily World Roundups, and more. Enjoy!Hello everybody! After a very extended hiatus we're back with a real, full blown Foreign Exchanges podcast (more on that at the end of the show)! I'm joined by Carl F. Petry, Hamad ibn Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Middle East Studies and Professor of History Emeritus at Northwestern University and author of The Mamluk Sultanate: A History, a book that you can—nay, should—buy today. Professor Petry and I discuss who the Mamluks were, how they came to rule much of Egypt, Syria, and the Hejaz in the mid-13th century, and why it took until 2022 for the emergence of an accessible English language survey of their sultanate to emerge.Don't forget to pick up a copy of Professor Petry's book! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.americanprestigepod.com/subscribe

Hello everybody! After a very extended hiatus we're back with a real, full blown Foreign Exchanges podcast (more on that at the end of the show)! I'm joined by Carl F. Petry, Hamad ibn Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Middle East Studies and Professor of History Emeritus at Northwestern University and author of The Mamluk Sultanate: A History, a book that you can—nay, should—buy today. Professor Petry and I discuss who the Mamluks were, how they came to rule much of Egypt, Syria, and the Hejaz in the mid-13th century, and why it took until 2022 for the emergence of an accessible English language survey of their sultanate to emerge.Don't forget to pick up a copy of Professor Petry's book, and if you're not already subscribed to Foreign Exchanges please do: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fx.substack.com/subscribe

Mehmet II's death leads to a brief power struggle between his two sons: Bayezid and Cem. In the end, the Janissaries pick Bayezid and Cem finds himself packed off to Rome. Bayezid enlarges the Ottoman Empire picking up new territory in northern Syria. His death leads to his son, Selim I, taking the throne. Selim I expands the Ottoman Empire even further than his grandfather, ending the Mamluk Empire and extending Ottoman control to the Holy Land.Website: www.westerncivpodcast.comAd-Free Shows: www.patreon.com/westernicivpodcastWestern Civ 2.0 Free Trial: www.glow.fm/westernciv

搪瓷镀金瓶，高43.5厘米，最大直径27.9厘米，是埃及马穆鲁克（Mamluk，1250-1517年）王朝时期的产物。现藏于纽约大都会艺术博物馆。

The Delhi Sultanate was an Islamic empire based in Delhi that stretched over large parts of the Indian subcontinent for 320 years (1206–1526). Five dynasties ruled over the Delhi Sultanate sequentially: the Mamluk dynasty (1206–1290), the Khalji dynasty (1290–1320), the Tughlaq dynasty (1320–1414), the Sayyid dynasty (1414–1451), and the Lodi dynasty (1451–1526). It covered large swathes of territory in modern-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh as well as some parts of southern Nepal. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/venus-jain3/message

The Mamluk dynasty or Slave dynasty was the first dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate. Qutb ud-Din Aibak, a Turkic Mamluk slave-general of the Ghurid Empire from Central Asia, founded the Mamluk dynasty in Northern India. The Mamluk dynasty governed the Delhi Sultanate from 1206 until 1290. Qutb al-Din Aibak served as a Ghurid dynasty governor from 1192 to 1206. During this time, he led incursions into the Gangetic plain and gained control over some of the new territories. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/venus-jain3/message

As a kid, radio producer Sima Ghadirzadeh spent her summers in one of the hottest places on earth — the desert city of Yazd, Iran. “Yazd was always to me this mysterious place that had miraculously escaped the process of modernization,” Ghadirzadeh said. Here, intricate wind-catching towers rise above the alleyways — they're boxy, geometric structures that take in cooler, less dusty air from high above the city and push it down into homes below.  An ab anbar or "water reservoir" with wind catchers (openings near the top of the towers) in the central desert city of Yazd, Iran. Credit: Diego Delso/CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia Commons This 12th-century invention — known as badgir in Persian —  remained a reliable form of air-conditioning for Yazd residents for centuries. And as temperatures continue to rise around the world, this ancient way of staying cool has gained renewed attention for its emissions-free and cost-effective design. Wind catchers don't require electricity or mechanical help to push cold air into a home, just the physical structure of the tower — and the laws of nature. Cold air sinks. Hot air rises. Ghadirzadeh said she can remember as a child standing underneath one in her uncle's living room in Yazd. “Having been outside in the heat, and then suddenly, going inside and being right under the wind catcher and feeling the cool breeze on you, was so mysterious,” Ghadirzadeh said. Temperatures in Yazd can regularly reach 115 degrees Fahrenheit. But somehow, it was bearable, Ghadirzadeh said. She and her cousins spent their days exploring the city's shaded alleyways or in the basement. Evenings were spent on the rooftop under the stars. Mornings, back again in the thick-walled rooms and courtyards.Historians say wind catchers are at least 700 years old. Written records in travelers' diaries and poems reference the unique cooling structures. “From the 13th century, we have references to the wind catcher — by some estimates, they were in use in the 10th and 11th centuries,” said Naser Rabbat, director of the Aga Khan program for Islamic architecture at MIT. Most wind catchers only cooled the air by a few degrees, but the psychological impact was significant, Rabbat said. They soon appeared all over the medieval Muslim world, from the Persian Gulf to the seat of the Mamluk empire in Cairo, where they are called malqaf. In Iran, the wind catcher is a raised tower that usually opens on four sides because there's not a dominant wind direction, Rabat said. The ones in Cairo are “extremely simple in form,” usually with a slanted roof and a screen facing the direction of favorable wind, he added.Over time, wind catchers became symbols of wealth and success, growing increasingly elaborate. Homeowners would install intricate screens to keep out the birds. Water features and courtyard pools could bring the temperature down even more.  “They would even put water jars made out of clay underneath — that would cool the air further,” Rabbat said. “Or, you can put a wet cloth and allow the breeze to filter through, and carry humidity.” Many of the older techniques that kept life comfortable in the Persian Gulf fell out of favor after World War II, said New York and Beirut-based architect Ziad Jamaleddine. The leaders of these countries commissioned European architects to build cities in their image. “Partially demolishing or totally erasing the historic urban and dense fabric,” Jamaleddine said. Those shaded walkways, created by overhanging buildings and angled streets so beloved in historic cities like Yazd, were no longer considered desirable. “What they did is they substituted it with the gridded urban fabric city we are very familiar with today. Which perhaps, made sense in the cold climate of western Europe,” Jamaleddine said. But in a place like Kuwait or Abu Dhabi, mass quantities of cool air are necessary to make this type of urban planning comfortable. Attempts to re-create wind catchers occurred during the oil crisis of the 1970s and 1980s in cities like Doha, where the Qatar University campus incorporates several equally distributed wind towers. But these projects became less common when oil prices returned to normal.  Qatar University campus features new wind catcher design built into the architecture.  Credit: Sky2105, CC BY-SA 3.0/Wikimedia Commons Wind catchers are not easy to replicate without a deep understanding of the landscape and environment, Jamaleddine said. “It's closely related to the way people live, and how they inhabit a space. It can't simply be copied.”  Architects call this the principle of “passive solar design.” Today, air conditioners and fans make up more than 10% of global electricity use, according to the International Energy Agency. The air conditioners are leaking refrigerant into the atmosphere, which acts as a greenhouse gas. And they no longer function when the power goes out — as seen this summer during extreme heat waves across the world. Architect Sue Roaf thinks it's "almost criminal" to build structures that continue to rely on air-conditioning, knowing its impact on the climate. Roaf focuses on climate-adaptive building and chose to build her home using the same principles of ventilation and insulation that she learned while studying the wind catchers of Yazd. Strategically placed windows and thick, cave-like walls keep Roaf's home at a cool 69 degrees Fahrenheit without air-conditioning, even during Britain's historic heat wave this summer.“I have a vertical roof up the center of the house, and there's a roof light that I open up,” Roaf said. “So, you get the stack effect, drawing cooler air or warmer air through the house.”It's a passion project that demonstrates what's possible for building in a warming world. “The old thinking was more romantic – let us learn from the ancients,” Rabbat said. “The new thinking is [that] we have much more calibratable technology. Why don't we use it to harvest much more of the energy we can collect?” For example, mechanical pumps could spray vapor inside, cooling the air the same way the ceramic jugs of water once worked under the wind catchers of Yazd, he said. Today, Yazd is a bustling city full of motorcycles and high-rise buildings. But video editor Mohamed Bandekhoda said he likes the older parts best. “Whenever I'm sad or depressed, I go for a walk in the Old City,” he said. “The breeze in the alleys heals you.” Wind catchers dot the beautiful Yazd skyline, Bandekhoda said, but he's only seen ones that are restored and open for tourists. He's never been inside a home with one in use. “My grandmother's house, for example, has one — but no one knows where to open it,” Bandekhoda said. For now, it remains in wait, ready to inspire the next generation of climate-conscious architects.

As a kid, radio producer Sima Ghadirzadeh spent her summers in one of the hottest places on earth — the desert city of Yazd, Iran. “Yazd was always to me this mysterious place that had miraculously escaped the process of modernization,” Ghadirzadeh said. Here, intricate wind-catching towers rise above the alleyways — they're boxy, geometric structures that take in cooler, less dusty air from high above the city and push it down into homes below.  An ab anbar or "water reservoir" with wind catchers (openings near the top of the towers) in the central desert city of Yazd, Iran. Credit: Diego Delso/CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia Commons This 12th-century invention — known as badgir in Persian —  remained a reliable form of air-conditioning for Yazd residents for centuries. And as temperatures continue to rise around the world, this ancient way of staying cool has gained renewed attention for its emissions-free and cost-effective design. Wind catchers don't require electricity or mechanical help to push cold air into a home, just the physical structure of the tower — and the laws of nature. Cold air sinks. Hot air rises. Ghadirzadeh said she can remember as a child standing underneath one in her uncle's living room in Yazd. “Having been outside in the heat, and then suddenly, going inside and being right under the wind catcher and feeling the cool breeze on you, was so mysterious,” Ghadirzadeh said. Temperatures in Yazd can regularly reach 115 degrees Fahrenheit. But somehow, it was bearable, Ghadirzadeh said. She and her cousins spent their days exploring the city's shaded alleyways or in the basement. Evenings were spent on the rooftop under the stars. Mornings, back again in the thick-walled rooms and courtyards.Historians say wind catchers are at least 700 years old. Written records in travelers' diaries and poems reference the unique cooling structures. “From the 13th century, we have references to the wind catcher — by some estimates, they were in use in the 10th and 11th centuries,” said Naser Rabbat, director of the Aga Khan program for Islamic architecture at MIT. Most wind catchers only cooled the air by a few degrees, but the psychological impact was significant, Rabbat said. They soon appeared all over the medieval Muslim world, from the Persian Gulf to the seat of the Mamluk empire in Cairo, where they are called malqaf. In Iran, the wind catcher is a raised tower that usually opens on four sides because there's not a dominant wind direction, Rabat said. The ones in Cairo are “extremely simple in form,” usually with a slanted roof and a screen facing the direction of favorable wind, he added.Over time, wind catchers became symbols of wealth and success, growing increasingly elaborate. Homeowners would install intricate screens to keep out the birds. Water features and courtyard pools could bring the temperature down even more.  “They would even put water jars made out of clay underneath — that would cool the air further,” Rabbat said. “Or, you can put a wet cloth and allow the breeze to filter through, and carry humidity.” Many of the older techniques that kept life comfortable in the Persian Gulf fell out of favor after World War II, said New York and Beirut-based architect Ziad Jamaleddine. The leaders of these countries commissioned European architects to build cities in their image. “Partially demolishing or totally erasing the historic urban and dense fabric,” Jamaleddine said. Those shaded walkways, created by overhanging buildings and angled streets so beloved in historic cities like Yazd, were no longer considered desirable. “What they did is they substituted it with the gridded urban fabric city we are very familiar with today. Which perhaps, made sense in the cold climate of western Europe,” Jamaleddine said. But in a place like Kuwait or Abu Dhabi, mass quantities of cool air are necessary to make this type of urban planning comfortable. Attempts to re-create wind catchers occurred during the oil crisis of the 1970s and 1980s in cities like Doha, where the Qatar University campus incorporates several equally distributed wind towers. But these projects became less common when oil prices returned to normal.  Qatar University campus features new wind catcher design built into the architecture.  Credit: Sky2105, CC BY-SA 3.0/Wikimedia Commons Wind catchers are not easy to replicate without a deep understanding of the landscape and environment, Jamaleddine said. “It's closely related to the way people live, and how they inhabit a space. It can't simply be copied.”  Architects call this the principle of “passive solar design.” Today, air conditioners and fans make up more than 10% of global electricity use, according to the International Energy Agency. The air conditioners are leaking refrigerant into the atmosphere, which acts as a greenhouse gas. And they no longer function when the power goes out — as seen this summer during extreme heat waves across the world. Architect Sue Roaf thinks it's "almost criminal" to build structures that continue to rely on air-conditioning, knowing its impact on the climate. Roaf focuses on climate-adaptive building and chose to build her home using the same principles of ventilation and insulation that she learned while studying the wind catchers of Yazd. Strategically placed windows and thick, cave-like walls keep Roaf's home at a cool 69 degrees Fahrenheit without air-conditioning, even during Britain's historic heat wave this summer.“I have a vertical roof up the center of the house, and there's a roof light that I open up,” Roaf said. “So, you get the stack effect, drawing cooler air or warmer air through the house.”It's a passion project that demonstrates what's possible for building in a warming world. “The old thinking was more romantic – let us learn from the ancients,” Rabbat said. “The new thinking is [that] we have much more calibratable technology. Why don't we use it to harvest much more of the energy we can collect?” For example, mechanical pumps could spray vapor inside, cooling the air the same way the ceramic jugs of water once worked under the wind catchers of Yazd, he said. Today, Yazd is a bustling city full of motorcycles and high-rise buildings. But video editor Mohamed Bandekhoda said he likes the older parts best. “Whenever I'm sad or depressed, I go for a walk in the Old City,” he said. “The breeze in the alleys heals you.” Wind catchers dot the beautiful Yazd skyline, Bandekhoda said, but he's only seen ones that are restored and open for tourists. He's never been inside a home with one in use. “My grandmother's house, for example, has one — but no one knows where to open it,” Bandekhoda said. For now, it remains in wait, ready to inspire the next generation of climate-conscious architects.

In Part Three of our Assassins series we discuss the Syrian Assassins, Crusaders, Saladin, yet more assassinations and Baybars the Mamluk as we continue in our examination of the Ismaili.  The blog post of the episode is here. Support the show on Patreon for just $2 a month and get access to exclusive content.     Please leave us a like and review. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays. We're on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.     Music, writing, narration, mixing all yours truly. For more information on Simone click here.   

The Siege of Acre, sometimes known in Christendom as the Fall of Acre, marked the last attempt to exert Crusader influence in the Holy ...

Korshi Dosoo is the leader of the junior research group project 'The Coptic Magical Papyri: Vernacular Religion in Late Antique and Early Islamic Egypt' at the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg. Formerly ATER (lecturer) at the University of Strasbourg and post-doctoral researcher on the Labex RESMED project Les mots de la paix. His PhD thesis, 'Rituals of Apparition on the Theban Magical Library' was completed in 2015 at Macquarie University, Australia. His research focuses on magic and lived religion in Egypt from the Ptolemaic to Mamluk periods as revealed by papyrological and epigraphic sources. In this interview, Korshi begins by explaining what magical papyri are, where they came from, how they were used, and how people would obtain these texts. He also discusses his views about the concept of magic, and whether ancient people thought differently about 'magic' than contemporary people do. Our conversation then moves to modern occult practices and ritual magic, in particular, the use of a text taken from the Theban Magical Library Codex that is now known as 'The Headless God' or 'The Bornless Rite.' Korshi also shares his experience as 'impromptu' translator of a mysterious copper plate, thought by authorities to be written in Coptic, that was originally believed to be linked to an unsolved murder case from 1970, and his involvement in the podcast dedicated to this case, 'The WVU Coed Murders.' While some might think that the scholary study of ancient languages and texts to be far removed from everyday life, this example shows the importance of academic research for real-world issues. Korshi is also part of a team that produces 'The Coptic Magical Papyri Podcast,' where interested people can learn more about this special area of research. REFERENCES Dr. Korshi Dosoo:(99+) Korshi Dosoo | University of Würzburg - Academia.eduCoptic Magical Papyri Website (podcast link available there): Coptic Magical Papyri (uni-wuerzburg.de)Facebook page: Coptic Magical Papyri | FacebookPodcast Episode - Appalachian Mysteria: Mared and Karen: The Magical Plate Decoded: Appalachian Mysteria: Mared and Karen: The Magical Plate Decoded on Apple PodcastsAbout Mared & Karen: About Mared & Karen | WVU Coed MurdersBooks and Scholars Mentioned: Dr. Bernd Christian Otto (magic): (99+) Bernd-Christian Otto | Universität Erfurt - Academia.eduDamon Zacharias Lycourinos (magic): (99+) Damon Zacharias Lycourinos - Academia.eduZora Neale Hurston (anthropology): Zora Neale HurstonMichael Cecchetelli: The Book of Abrasax: Cecchetelli, Michael: 9780990568728: Amazon.com: BooksJake Stratton-Kent: The Headless One — HADEAN PRESS (hadeanpress-eu.com)Hans Deiter Betz: (99+) The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, including the Demotic Spells | Roy Kotansky - Academia.eduCharles Wycliffe Goodwin: (PDF) Fragment Of A Graeco Egyptian Work Upon Magic Download eBOOK (bookarchive.net)Sir James Frazer: goldenbough.pdf (templeofearth.com)Allen Greenfield: The Complete Secret Cipher of the Ufonauts by Allen Greenfield (goodreads.com)  Music: Stephanie Shea

From 1313 to 1341, Özbeg Khan oversaw what is normally  described as the Golden Horde's Golden age. As our last episode on Özbeg discussed, things were not going quite so golden for old Özbeg. The appellation of golden age belies the troubles which were growing ready to rock the Golden Horde. As our last episode looked at Özbeg and the Golden Horde's relations south and east, with the other Mongol khanates and the Mamluk Sultanate, today we take you west and north, to see how Özbeg interacted with the powers of Eastern Europe and the Rus' principalities. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.   What appears almost shocking at a cursory glance, is that despite so many authors claiming Özbeg's glory, he also oversaw its first loss of Golden Horde territory. We'll begin in the Balkans, and work our way north. On his accession, Özbeg had continued the policy of the late Toqta Khan, by keeping the Bulgarian lands a part of the Horde, backed up by Mongol military presence. Özbeg's support was important for the Bulgarian tsars in this period: the Tsar from 1323 to 1330, Georgi Terter's son Michael Shishman, relied heavily on Mongol military support and kept one of his sons at Özbeg's court as a royal hostage. At the battle of Velbuzjd in 1330, a Bulgarian and Mongol army was defeated by the Serbians, in which Tsar Micheal Shishman was killed. The threat of a military response from Özbeg is probably what kept the Serbians from pressing their advantage. The journey of a Bulgarian embassy to Cairo in 1331 resulted in the Mamluk chronicler al-Umarī to report that despite fighting between the Bulgarians and Serbs, both respected Özbeg due to his great power over them. Though it was not comparable to the influence Nogai had once wielded over the region, the presentation of contemporary chronicles is that the Bulgarian lands remained dependent on the Golden Horde; Bulgaria, for example, was the base from which the Mongols launched attacks on Byzantium, rather than seen as a country they passed through. It was the eventual loss of this Mongol backing that would result in Bulgaria's vulnerability to Ottoman expansion at the end of the century.    Like Toqta, Özbeg too married an illegitimate daughter of the Byzantine Emperor, this time of Andronikos III in 1331. This wife was called by the Mongols Bayalun Khatun, and Ibn Battuta accompanied her when she returned to Constantinople to give birth. The impetus was to dissuade further attacks by Özbeg, for Özbeg had resumed raiding the Byzantine Empire. Annual attacks from 1321 to 1323, the largest coming in 1323 and causing a great deal of damage. Raids at first ceased with the marriage of 1331, but when Bayalun refused to come back to the Horde after returning to Constantinople to give birth, attacks resumed. The last recorded assault came in 1337, advancing as far as the Hellespont. Supposedly in response to the failure of Constantinople to supply its annual tribute, the Horde army spent 50 days plundering Thrace, and in the process defeated a Turkish force sent across the straits by a growing beylik in northwestern Anatolia, the Osmanoğlu. Though you may know them better as the Ottomans. So ended the last recorded attack by the Golden Horde on the Byzantine Empire. Sometimes this is compared as a symbolic act, the passing of the torch from Mongol to Ottoman, from old conqueror to new, when it came to the main threat to the region. In 1341 a Byzantine embassy was sent to the Horde to mollify Özbeg, but arrived after his death.   While in truth Özbeg's attacks on the Byzantine Empire were raids rather than efforts at conquest, he apparently played them up somewhat in his own court as great victories over Christian powers. Ibn Battuta, during his visit to Özbeg, presents the Khan as a great victor over the enemies of God who undertook jihad against Constantinople. Özbeg, it must be clarified, never showed any attempt at conquering that famous city, and his military actions against Europe all seem considerably minor efforts compared to his wars against the Ilkhanate.   Along the borders of the Hungarian Kingdom, troops of the Horde —perhaps not always with Özbeg's permission— raided regularly, especially in Transylvania. However these assaults could now be repulsed, as Hungary was rejuvenated under the skillful leadership of a new dynasty, headed by Charles I of Hungary. On occasion Charles led attacks onto dependencies of the Horde or of Bulgaria.  It is remarkable that most of these raids are known only indirectly; often only from charters, where an individual was rewarded for fighting against the Mongols, rather than through any chronicle mention. Özbeg may have preferred indirect pressure, by supporting the former Hungarian vassal, the voivode of Wallachia, a fellow named Basarab. There is no shortage of debate around Basarab and early Wallachia, and we'll avoid it here; the exact origins and timeline of the emergence of this principality is very far from agreed upon. Established on the border regions of modern Romania and Moldova, these were lands otherwise under control of the Golden Horde. Basarab himself is a target of many arguments; his name suggests a Turkic, likely Cuman origin, however contemporary sources consistently describe him as a Vlakh, a member of the Romance-language-speaking community which today mainly refers to the Romanians. Depending on how his father's name is reconstructed, it appears either recognizably Mongol, or even Hungarian. While initially a subject of the Hungarian King, by the end of the 1320s Basarab was at war with the Hungarians, and decisively defeated them at the battle of Posada in 1330. There is indirect indication that Basarab had some military support from the Golden Horde.   The independence of Wallachia appears a part of the gradual secession of authority of the Golden Horde over its westernmost border. Most dramatically was this apparent through today's Ukraine and Belarus, where the influence of Lithuania grew at the expense of the Golden Horde. Early Lithuanian-Mongol contacts over the thirteenth century seem to have consisted of raids in both directions. Several times did Nogai provide armies for Rus' princes to attack the Lithuanians, while the Lithuanians took advantage of the initial Mongol invasion in the 1240s to raid deep into the Rus' lands. The transition from the thirteenth to the fourteenth century is one of poor coverage for Lithuanian history; scattered Lithuanians princes of the 1200s appear in the 1300s unified and consolidated under the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, particularly from Duke Gediminas onwards. By the 1320s, Gediminas was in position to influence the succession over Galicia-Volhynia, in today's western Ukraine and Belarus and at the time subject to the Golden Horde. Between 1321 and 1323, the young princes of Ruthenia died without heir. The King of Poland Władysław I, the Lithuanian Duke Gedminas, and Khan  Özbeg were all very interested in the succession. While  Özbeg may have been caught up in his conflicts with the Ilkhanate, at this time the Polish King wrote to the Pope fearing a Mongol attack, and in 1324 Mongol ambassadors were in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. Threats and diplomacy, rather than open war, was the means by which the three powers came to a conclusion. An acceptable candidate to replace the deceased princes was selected in the form of Yurii II Boleslaw, a fellow of Polish, Ruthenian and Lithaunian background, a Catholic who converted to Orthodox Christianity, and who married a daughter of Duke Gediminas. And what did  Özbeg get out of it? The continuation of tribute from Galicia-Volhynia.    This willingness for diplomacy with these western neighbours seems surprising, but the sources indicate it was very much  Özbeg's preferred order of operations in this theater. In 1331, a brother of Lithuania's Duke Gediminas was installed in Kyiv, alongside a Mongol basqaq, or tax collector. In what has been termed a Lithuanain-Mongol condominium, it seems the arrangement was that these westernmost Rus' lands paid tribute and military service both to Lithuania, and the Golden Horde. As noted by historian Darius Baronas, news of this arrangement made it as far as France, where a French poet in the 1330s described Lithuania as paying tribute to the Golden Horde. It seems that  Özbeg's calculation was simple;  Özbeg wanted the income from these western Rus' principalities, but didn't desire war over them, intent as he was on focusing his forces on the Ilkhanate. The frontier with Lithuania and Poland was long, the region as a whole rather peripheral. It was cheaper and more convenient to give the administration over to the Lithuanians while still retaining the income. When necessary the threat of the Horde's horsemen could be levied; in 1333 there was a raid on Briansk, then under Lithuanian control. Meanwhile the Lithuanians could avoid open conflict with the Mongols, allowing them to deal more fully with those troublesome Teutontic Knights. It would not be until the end of  Özbeg's life that this arrangement was challenged, but until that point it proved remarkably flexible and workable to all involved, except for those at the bottom of the ladder now  being taxed twice. But  Özbeg, however clever he thought he was, had given a foothold for Lithuanian expansion which would soon push right to the Black Sea coastline.  In 1340 when Yuri Boleslaw of Galicia-Volhynia died, the King of Poland Casimir III invaded, but quickly withdrew as the threat of Mongol retaliation mounted. While border clashes with Poland, and soon Hungary, commenced,  Özbeg actually engaged in diplomacy even with Pope Benedict XII, notifying his holiness of  Özbeg's displeasure. Papa Benedict even offered to make the Kings of Poland and Hungary pay for damages Özbeg incurred because of them. A far cry from the days of the khans demanding the submission of the Popes, but the matter was not resolved before Özbeg's death in 1341.   And what of the Rus'? Here  Özbeg intervened most forcefully, particularly compared to his predecessors. On  Özbeg's enthronement in 1313, the lead prince of the Rus', Grand Prince Mikhail of Tver', spent two years cozying up to  Özbeg in his court, eager to secure his support. In his absence from the Rus' Principalities, Mikhail's rivals got to work. His main foe was his cousin, Yurii Daniilovich, the Prince of Moscow. A grandson of the famous Alexander Nevskii, Yurii was a man overflowing with ambition. While Mikhail of Tver' was with  Özbeg in his ordu, Yurii of Moscow stormed Novgorod and took it for himself. Mikhail convinced  Özbeg to give him an army, and in 1315 they retook Novgorod. Yurii of Moscow was summoned to  Özbeg, ostensibly for punishment. But the silver tongued Yurii managed to work his way into  Özbeg's favour, with this one simple trick: convincing  Özbeg that he would be able to collect more tax revenues than Mikhail. For this, he received a yarliq installing him as Grand Prince of Vladimir, the chief Prince of the Rus', as well as receiving a sister of  Özbeg in marriage. Konchaka was her name, and she was baptized a Christian, taking the name of Agatha.   Full of confidence and the Khan's blessing, Yurii then attacked Mikhail of Tver', and was promptly defeated. Yurii fled the field, while his newly betrothed Konchaka was taken captive by Mikhail. The Prince of Tver' tried to tread carefully; in the Nikonian Chronicle,  Mikhail treats the captured Mongol generals and troops respectfully, showering them with honours, gifts and releases many of them. His intention was to re-earn Özbeg's favour, and be reinstalled as the Grand Prince. Unfortunately for him,  Özbeg's sister Konchaka then died in Tver's captivity, in mysterious circumstances. As you might guess, this was not exactly beneficial to any reelection campaign. Mikhail of Tver' was put on trial on Özbeg's court, and after several months of deliberation, Mikhail was condemned and executed in 1318. Yurii of Moscow was thus confirmed as Grand Prince by  Özbeg.   The significance of this is twofold. Firstly, the khans had previously confirmed as Grand Prince whoever was presented to them, and thus followed Riurikid tradition. That is, succession as Grand Prince normally went brother-to-brother, before passing onto the next generation.  Özbeg upended this by choosing the new candidate out-of-order, generationally speaking. Yurii of Moscow, as the son of Nevskii's third son Daniil of Moscow, was very much out of place in this rota system while the previous generation was still alive. Furthermore, this was the first time that the Princes of Moscow received the title of Grand Prince. Moscow had been a minor settlement before the Mongol invasion. Because of  Özbeg's confirmation of the title onto Yurii, Moscow was put onto the steady course to, in time, ‘gather the lands of the Rus', and eventually swallow up the remnants of the Golden Horde. But that was still some centuries ahead.   Yurii was not to enjoy his position as Grand Prince for long. After being confirmed by  Özbeg he returned to Rus' where he was met with angry princes and an angry population. The late Mikhail of Tver's sons swore bloody vengeance. Unable was Yurii to provide the promised volumes of tax. In 1322  Özbeg removed Yurii from his post, and by 1325 Yurii was murdered by Dmitri the Terrible-Eyes, a son of Mikhail of Tver'. Dmitri was executed by  Özbeg the next year, but the Grand Princely title was given to Dmitri's brother, Alexander of Tver'. Nearly did it seem that Tver' would monopolize the position; Tver's wealth was then greater than Moscow's, their right to rule better recognized internally in Rus'. So it would have stayed, until 1327, when there was an uprising in Tver' which resulted in the killing of several of Özbeg's officials. Tver' was then sacked as punishment and Grand Prince Alexander Mikhailovich fled for his life. And who stepped into the vacant spot of Grand Prince? Well, the brother of Yurii of Moscow, Ivan Daniilovich. Or as he is better known to posterity, Ivan I Kalita; Ivan “the purse,” or more usually translated as money-bags.   Ivan, as you may guess by his sobriquet, proved quite adept at providing Özbeg the much desired tax revenue. Enjoying the position of Grand Prince of Vladimir until his death in the 1340s,  Ivan Kalita's lengthy time in the position solidified Moscow's monopoly over the Grand Princely title, and began in earnest its ascendency. For Kalita greatly enriched the city itself, bringing other holdings to its authority and thereby turned the once minor city into one of the most eminent of the Rus' principalities. The Metropolitan of the Rus' Orthodox Church moved to Moscow in the 1320s, which also cemented it as the centre of Rus' Christianity, politically. On his death he was succeeded by his son Simeon —confirmed of course by  Özbeg Khan— as Prince of Moscow and Grand Prince of Vladimir, and so the title remained among their line. Ivan Kalita's descendents would transform Moscow and the Rus' principalities into the Tsardom of Russia, and ruled until the sixteenth century, when the extinct Rurikids gave way to the Romanovs.   But such dreams of conquest were far off in the mid-fourteenth century. Rus' history should not be read backwards. The fourteenth century Daniilovichi, the Moscow princely line, were not in a contest for independence against the khan. Far from it. As they had in effect, usurped the succession to the Grand Principality, and had numerous rivals due to it, the Princes of Moscow relied greatly on the khans for their legitimacy. The Grand Prince was the most important tax collector for the khan, and the basis had now been established for the khan to remove him if desired. And  Özbeg was not above reminding the Rus' of his might; some ten Rus' princes were executed on  Özbeg's order, more than any of his predecessors had done combined. As long as the Princes of Moscow kept bringing in the revenue that the khan wanted, then Özbeg kept the Daniilovichi propped up against any threat. Without the Golden Horde, there was therefore, no rise of Moscow.   When it came to the succession to the Golden Horde itself, as noted in our previous episode Özbeg had violently trimmed the Jochid lineage, hoping to ensure only his sons could succeed him. His favoured heir, Temür, predeceased him, leaving Özbeg with two troublesome boys; Tini Beg, and Jani Beg. Tini Beg seems to have been the favourite to succeed Özbeg, and after the death of Qutlugh-Temür, Tini Beg became the governor of Khwarezm on behalf of his father. A possible indication of falling out between though, comes from coinage minted near the end of Özbeg's life. Then, coins begin to be minted bearing the names of Özbeg and Jani Beg, and letters from foreign rulers were addressed to Özbeg and Jani Beg, perhaps suggesting Jani Beg had taken the #2 role in the khanate. Sadly our information on the internal situation on the Jochid court is scant, preventing us from making any proper conclusions or charting its history in this time, particularly as the history of Özbeg's final years is considerably less detailed.   Possible troubles between his sons were not the only issues he faced. In 1339 a coup attempt briefly had Özbeg besieged in his palace in New Sarai before the guards broke it up, captured and killed most of the conspirators. Evidently there had been Christians involved; a letter from Pope Benedict XIII thanked Özbeg for only executing three of the Christian conspirators. As this coincides with the appearance of Jani Beg's name on the coinage in place of Tini Beg, and Tini Beg apparently showed greater favour to Christians than Jani Beg ever did, we might wonder if Tini Beg had a hand in the coup attempt. How else would conspirators be so brazen as to attack the khan in his own palace? But this is mere speculation, and the origins of the coup are unfortunately lost to history.    For a man of such a lengthy reign, and relatively well covered in the primary sources, Özbeg's final days are surprisingly unclear. One Mamluk source, aš-Šuğā'īs, has Özbeg die while leading an attack on the Chagatai Khanate in 1342, an attempt by Özbeg to take advantage of that khanate's ongoing political struggles. Another Mamluk writer, al-Asadī, mentions Özbeg dying in New Sarai in 1341. Most sources simply note the fact of his death in late 1341 or 1342, with no additional details. Regardless, Özbeg, Khan of the Golden Horde, died likely late in 1341, after 28 years on the throne. He was likely in his late 50s or 60s, making him one of the longest reigning, and longest living, Mongol khans. Only Khubilai Khaan's 34 years on the throne was longer, while Chinggis Khan himself had only 21 years as Khan of the Mongol ulus. Wealth and prosperity within the khanate, and the violent removal of rival princes, ensured Özbeg enjoyed the longest reign of any khan in the 1300s, a century when most khans hardly ruled as long as 5 years and generally died in their mid-thirties.    What do we make of Özbeg's life then? In some respects it certainly was a Golden Age, in terms of the arts, crafts and city-building in the steppe. It's a period of staggering prosperity in comparison to the anarchy which would soon follow. The internal stability of the Horde in this period alone makes it appear an oasis compared to the years on either side of his life. But Özbeg's claim to fame, his efforts at islamization, were hollow and never complete, and likely they were never intended to be. In foreign policy Özbeg largely experienced defeats, or inadvertently laid the groundwork for the rapid loss in Mongol authority in certain regions. The Golden Horde likely enjoyed its greatest period of wealth and in some respects, international prestige under Özbeg. But the precedent he had set with horrific princely slaughters would soon reign ruin upon the Jochids, as would an event far outside of any monarch's control: the Black Death.   A final remark can be made regarding the modern Uzbeks. The name is sometimes attributed, even by medieval authors, as coming from Özbeg's name.  That is, that in some sense the Uzbeks saw themselves as followers of Özbeg Khan, and thereby named themselves for him. The argument though is rather weak; the Uzbek confederation would not emerge until well after Özbeg Khan's death, and Özbeg as a name is hardly unique to the Jochid khan, for it dates back to the twelfth century, if not earlier. Much like the attribution of the Nogai Horde to the thirteenth century prince Nogai, it's an effort to attach a nomadic union to an earlier prominent figure which rests on little or no direct evidence.   With Özbeg's death, it was time for his son Tini Beg to take the throne. But things would not go well for Tini Beg, as the Jochid state was soon to experience a period of anarchy it would never recover from. So be sure to subscribe to the Kings and Generals Podcast to follow. If you enjoyed this and would like to help us continue bringing you great content, consider supporting us on patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. This episode was researched and written by our series historian, Jack Wilson. I'm your host David, and we'll catch you on the next one. 

You can connect to Sally by visiting her website here http://www.sallyshalabi.comAbout Sally:سالي شلبي حكواتية محترفة ومعروفة باسم مستوحى من اسم عائلتها ومهنتها: شلبية الحكواتية. تنقب وتبحث سالي عن قصص بلاد الشام الشعبية والمعاصرة لتحكيها بعروضها. في جعبتها ومخزونها القصصي القصص الشعبية والخرافات والشهادات والقصص المعاصرة أيضا كما وتحكي القصص العالمية. تعمل سالي شلبي بالموروث الشفوي منذ ال2005 وقد قامت بعروض مختلفة ضمن مهرجانات دولية ومحلية.تبدأ سالي ممارستها بعملية بحث طويلة ومعمقة يكون العرض بحد ذاته جزء من هذه العملية وبهذا فان ممارسة البحث عندها هي عملية مستمرة من التطور والتطوير للقصص التي تعمل بها لتنتج نسخة جديدة معاصرة تعنى بإحترام وتقدير ما جاء من أسلافنا ومزجه مع ما هو يلائم عصرنا هذا من مفاهيم وقيم مناسبة.قامت سالي بعدة عروض منها “خير يا طير” الذي يروي قصة النكبة الفلسطينية من خلال شهادات التاريخ الشفوي وقد عرضت خير يا طير في عمان 2107 و2019  ونابلس 2018 والبحرين 2018 ورام الله 2019. وعرضت وروت من سيرة الظاهر بيبرص وهي تعمل على اعادة طرح هذه السيرة بشكل معاصر منذ ال 2017 لتكن بذلك اول امرأة تقوم بسرد السيرة بالحيز العام. كما قامت بترجمة  الجزء الثاني والثالث من السلسلة القصصية “حكايتنا حكاية” بالاضافة الى انها تعد وتكتب نصوص البودكاست وتؤديها ولها عدة إنتاجات صوتية: شلبيات (2015 – 2019) وحياكة الكلام (2020) ورحلة في الجنون (2021)، وكنا وما زلنا – نسخة اليافعين (2021) كما تستضيف على قناتها الخاصة “شلبية الحكواتية” مجموعة قصصية من الموروث الشعبي العربي والعالمي.حازت سالي على منحة لمشروع “حكايات شلبية” في ال 2019 من برنامج المنح والدعم لمؤسسة عبد الحميد شومان. كما حازت في ال2021 حازت على منحة من مؤسسة أفاق لمشروع بحث فني “زغاريد”.  Sally Shalabi is a professional storyteller known as Shalabieh Al Hakawtieh, a playful name inspired by her family name and her profession. Shalabieh's tells stories from Bilad Al Sham (the Levant) as well as other traditions and regions. Her repertoire includes folktales, testimonies and oral histories, contemporary stories. Sally has been working in the oral tradition since 2005 and has performed at various venues and festivals locally and internationally. Sally's practice is a continuous process of research and development of which the performance is one part. This process results in a newer version of the stories she works with. These new tellings respect the traditions and the story whilst also reflecting more contemporary concepts and values.Sally has presented various shows of including Khair Ya Tayer, a storytelling performance that tells the story of the Palestinian Nakba through testimonies and oral histories. Khair ya Tayer was performed in Amman (2017 and 2019), in Nablus (2018), Bahrain (2018), and Ramallah (2019). She has also been working on developing a contemporary telling of the bio-epic Sirat Al Thaher Baybars and has been telling stories from the epic every year since 2017, thus becoming being the first woman to tell the epic of Al Thaher Baybars (the Mamluk king) in a public space.Sally is also a writer and translator. She has translated two anthologies from the Syrian folktales series “Timeless Tales” and written various audio pieces. Some of her productions include: Shalabiyat (2015- 2019), Hiyaket Al Kalam (2020), Journey into Madness (2021), Palestine was and Is – for Youths )2021), as well as having her own storytelling channel Shalabieh Al Hakwatieh on SoundClound.Sally Shalabi has been awarded a grant for her project “Hikayat Shalabieh” by Abdulhamid Shoman Foundation in 2019 and a research grant for her project Zaghareed by AFAC in 2021.Follow Shalabieh on:Facebook: Instagram: Sound Cloud: Youtube: Patreon:بإمكانكم متابعة عمل شلبية الحكواتية على:http://www.facebook.com/hakawatieh Instagram @hakawatieh https://www.youtube.com/sallyshaabi https://www.patreon.com/hakawatieh

Our previous episode took you through important transformations of the Golden Horde during the long-reign of Özbeg Khan; the islamization, and urbanization, of the khanate. Today we share the first part of our coverage of the political dimensions of Özbeg's nearly thirty year reign, focusing on Özbeg's interactions with the Ilkhanate and the Mamluk Sultanate, an area in which Özbeg suffered almost continual defeats.  I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.   As we covered previously, upon becoming khan of the Golden Horde in 1313, Özbeg ordered a wide purge of the Jochid princes, a two-pronged assault to both remove potential rivals and promote Islam among the elite, for those who refused to convert were punished mortally. After his first year in power Özbeg would be remarkably tolerant to other religions within his empire, but he made it abundantly clear that the religion of the Khan and the court was Islam. One of Özbeg's earliest actions was the construction of a mosque in the Crimean city of Solkhat, or as it's known for Turkic speakers, Eski Qırım, or Staryi Krym after the Russian annexation. [note for David: Qırım=Crimea, hard K sound]. Built in 1314, parts of the mosque are still extant, though in the sixteenth century parts of it were moved into a new building some distance away.   Özbeg was no idle khan. With the assistance of the powerful bey Qutlugh-Temür, Özbeg further weakened the power of the remaining Jochid princes with the establishment of the qarachi beys as the lead ministers of the empire, putting greater administrative power into the non-Chinggisid elite. The qarachi beys were headed by the beyleribey, the chief bey,  held first by Qutlugh-Temür, and later his brother ‘Isa. These two men were instrumental in Özbeg's control. Powerful, islamic lords, their early backing had not just been key in Özbeg seizing power in the first place, but in solidifying Özbeg's islamization of the khanate's upper echelons. Their support and influence among the military-elite were significant in Özbeg's centralization of authority, and in the smooth function of the empire as lands and territories were redistributed with the change in authority. And Özbeg went to great effort to ensure their loyalty, creating  a reciprocal marriage alliance with them that the Mongols called quda. Qutlugh-Temür married a Jochid princess named Turabey, while ‘Isa married one of Özbeg's daughters, and in turn Özbeg married one of ‘Isa's daughters. The brothers were then assigned some of the most economically important and lucrative regions within the khanate; Qutlugh-Temür as governor of Khwarezm, but with his authority expanded to stretch to the Lower Volga, while ‘Isa was situated in the Crimean Peninsula.  With Özbeg in the capital on the Volga River, three of them were like three weights balancing the khanate.   In 1314, only the second year of Özbeg's reign, the Khan of Chagatai Khanate, Esen Buqa reached out to Özbeg. The ten years since the Pax Mongolica in 1304 had hardly instilled the desired unity among the khanates. Esen Buqa Khan was in the midst of growing tensions with the Ilkhanate and Yuan Dynasty, and feared a combined Toluid assault on the Chagatai lands.  By then Esen-Buqa had taken captive Ilkhanid and Yuan envoys, and contacted Özbeg in an effort to bring him into an alliance, telling him that the Great Khan, Ayurburwada, saw Özbeg as illegitimate, and wished to depose him. Özbeg, likely on the council of the experienced Qutlugh-Temür, refused the request for support. The Golden Horde did not take part when Yuan forces invaded the Chagatai lands in 1316 while Esen-Buqa was campaigning in the Ilkhanate. The effort at neutrality with the khanates who had influence in Central Asia was also likely influenced by Özbeg's success at bringing the Blue Horde, the eastern wing of the Golden Horde, closely under his control, especially after 1321. The once autonomous, if not outright independent, khanate became essentially a province of the Golden Khan through Özbeg's effort. As the Blue Horde, backed by Özbeg's troops, in this period extended to the Syr Darya and incorporated former Khwarezmian cities of Otrar, Jand and others, Özbeg did not want the Yuan Dynasty intervening with this profitable expansion.   Throughout his life Özbeg retained amicable relations with the Yuan Khans, sending them tribute, gifts and his nominal allegiance in exchange for revenues from Jochid estates in China.  He valued this income higher, and was not above sending his envoys to the Yuan court to remind them to keep up the payments. Some historians have gone as far as to suggest that Özbeg, influenced by the Yuan administrative system, based his reforms in the Golden Horde upon it's two-tiered system.  Others see Özbeg's four qarachi beys an adoption of the system employed by the Yuan, where the keshig's four day-commanders had to countersign the orders of the khan. Furthermore, Özbeg encouraged and profited greatly from the great overland trade. Wares both originating from, and influenced by, China  are found within the remains of the Horde cities. The trade across Asia, from Egypt, India, China, the Chagatais and even the Ilkhanate, was the source of much of the great wealth enjoyed by the Jochid khans in the fourteenth century. For more on that, be sure to listen to our previous episode though.    But Özbeg was no man of peace. His lack of involvement in Esen Buqa's war with the Ilkhanate and Yuan was not out of a firm belief in the pax Mongolica. In 1314 Özbeg was simply not in a position of security to take part in a larger conflict, and neither did he wish to sour relations with the Great Khan. In fact, Özbeg was to take up seriously Jochid claims on the Caucasus. After his enthronement he sent envoys to the Ilkhanate demanding they cede these lands to the Golden Horde, while another letter reached the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt, urging Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad to join him in an attack on the Ilkhanate. When the opportunity presented itself, Özbeg was to commit wholeheartedly to the task.    This came after the death of Il-Khan Ölejitü in 1316, and the enthronement of the young Abu Sa'id as Il-Khan the next year. Özbeg promptly set about ordering preparations for an all-out assault; a prince of the Chagatai lineage who had recently defected to the Ilkhanate, Yasa'ur, was convinced to revolt in the eastern part of the Ilkhanate, while Özbeg rallied a great host to assault the Caucasus.  In late 1318 the invasion commenced, in what was likely the largest army put to the task since the days of Berke and Nogai almost 60 years before. In the account of the contemporary writer Wassaf, Özbeg's official pretext was that he came to rest the regency of the Ilkhanate away from Choban, the non-Chinggisid who really ran the Ilkhanate while Abu Sa'id was still in his minority. Yet, Abu Sa'id and Choban rose to the occasion. In the east, Yasa'ur's revolt was crushed, and the young Abu Sa'id and Choban defeated and repulsed Özbeg along the river Kur, though not before Abu Sa'id was nearly overcome by the Jochid forces.   Özbeg was not put aside though; in the early 1320s he resumed the effort, this time in conjunction with an army under the Chagatai Khan Kebek.  The dating is a bit uncertain; 1322 or 1325, or perhaps these were two distinct invasions. Regardless of the date, the result was the same. The Ilkhanate was victorious, Choban's skilled military mind outplaying Özbeg, and Choban even pursued Özbeg's fleeing army back into the Golden Horde. Özbeg's dreams at conquering the Caucasian pastures did not end. In 1335 Özbeg gave it another go, rumoured to have been invited by Abu Sa'id's wife, Baghdad Khatun. In the midst of riding north to meet him, Abu Sa'id died, possibly poisoned by his estranged wife. Yet here too, Özbeg was defeated by Abu Sa'id's hastily chosen successor, Arpa Khan. It may have been too that Özbeg was demoralized when news came of the death of his ally, Qutlugh-Temür, late in 1335. So ended Özbeg's final attempt to invade the lands of the Ilkhanate. No single reason is obviously apparent for the consistent defeats. It was not based on an inherent military differentiation; both armies continued to field lightly-armoured horse archers. The Ilkhans relied on knowledge of the Caucasus, fortifying and blocking the Jochids at river crossings and preempting Jochid mobility. Jochid defeats may not have necessarily been military failures, as much as an inability to advance except through strategic choke points controlled by large, well-supplied Ilkhanid armies. There is an assumption that Ilkhanid troops were on average better armed and equipped than their Jochid counterparts, even though  Özbeg may have fielded larger armies.  One factor seems to have been Özbeg himself; the Ilkhanate's commanders he faced, Choban Noyan and Arpa Khan, were simply better commanders than Özbeg.    Özbeg's repeated assaults on the Ilkhanate became a main detail of his reign in numerous medieval accounts, and was evidently well known; the Book of the Knowledge of all the Kingdoms, an anonymous, late-fourteenth century work by a Spanish Franciscan, is a source where the author claims to have travelled around the world, though generally repeats nonsensical claims. Yet even here, a recognizable account of Özbeg's invasion of the Ilkhanate is presented. A circa 1330 Franciscan account, the Book of the Estate of the Great Khaan, has Özbeg attack Abu Sa'id with 707,000 horsemen, a forced he raised “without pressing hard on his empire.” Some centuries later, Turkic histories like that of Abu'l Ghazi Bahadur Khan even retained mentions of  Özbeg's campaigns against the Ilkhanate, even when such sources are otherwise rather brisk or religion focused when it comes to describing  Özbeg's reign.     With the military front making no progress, Özbeg was not above that other favoured Jochid strategy. That is,  attempting to get the Mamluks to do the work for them. Özbeg had opened contact with the Mamluks soon after his enthronement, where he signaled his support for the alliance. Özbeg heavily promoted his conversion to Islam in his letters, as well as his successes in converting the nomadic population. Coupled with allowing the Genoese back into the Black Sea ports and reopening the slave trade with the Mamluks, Özbeg was clearly marking the time had come to move past the poor Jochid-Mamluk relations that had existed during the reign of his predecessor Toqta Khan. For the Mamluk Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad, this seemed a convincing enough transformation, and showed himself willing to commit to Özbeg's initiative. It was this detente, as well as his dreams of a glorious Qalawunid dynasty, that led al-Nasir Muhammad to make an unusual request. In 1315, his messengers arrived in Özbeg's ordu requesting a Chinggisid princess for al-Nasir Muhammad. Thus began the lengthy, and headache inducing, process of organizing the first, and only, marriage between a Chinggisid and the Mamluks of Egypt.    It should first be noted that the marriage of Chinggisid women to non-Mongol dynasties was not uncommon. Numerous examples can be found with the other khanates, but for the Golden Horde alone, shortly before al-Nasir's offer Özbeg had married his own sister Konchaka to Prince Yurii Daniilovich of Moscow, and during the 1250s the khans had offered princesses in marriage to the Hungarian king Béla IV. To the Mongols, such a marriage symbolized one thing; submission to the house of Chinggis Khan, for only a subject could have the right to marry a daughter of his lineage. And Özbeg certainly thought so. As we noted in earlier episodes, the Golden Horde likely imagined the Mamluks as their vassals, and Özbeg must have seen this as a confirmation of it, even if the Mamluks did not view it as such. Negotiations went on, and Özbeg's demands for a great dowry —some 27,000 dinars, which the Sultan had to borrow from merchants—were reluctantly met. The princess, Tulunbey, arrived in Cairo in 1320 after five years of back and forth, and the marriage was undertaken.    Unfortunately for Tulunbey, Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad was not the most loving of husbands. Al-Nasir Muhammad had, by that point in his life, lost his throne three separate times, and his youth been manhandled by greedy emirs; the consequences of these emirs resulted in the  boy sultan suffering an humiliating defeat at the hands of Ghazan Il-Khan in 1300. Extreme paranoia of all those around him was al-Nasir Muhammad's primary personality trait, and he was not exactly unjustified in this. But it seems the Sultan rather quickly came to doubt Tulunbey's heritage, and accused her of not actually being a Chinggisid. The Mamluk chronicles are confused over her background; variously, they identify her as a descendant of Batu, of Berke, or as Özbeg's daughter, sister or niece. Yet these chroniclers do not share al-Nasir Muhammad's doubt over the fact of her being a Chinggisid, and appear almost embarrassed at his accusation. As the Mamluks' general portrayal of Özbeg is as a pious and sincere Muslim monarch, such an accusation of an important ally was a bit of a needless incident. Furthermore, it seems an unusual ploy for Özbeg to play given the scenario, and his outrage over al-Nasir's treatment of her seems rather much had Özbeg in-fact sent a dummy Chinggisid.    But even before al-Nasir's suspicions of Tulunbey developed, his detente with Özbeg had already begun to fray.  Özbeg had used the marriage to make greater economic and military demands of the Mamluks, requesting that al-Nasir Muhammad attack the Ilkhanate.  As the early 1320s saw the ongoing peace talks between al-Nasir Muhammad and the Il-Khan Abu Sa'id, Özbeg's demands for military asssitance were evermore discomforting.  The frustration of Özbeg Khan resulted in him sending lower-ranking embassies to the Mamluks, beginning a spiraling game of tit-for-tat where each side further disrespected the other's envoys in an ever-escalating series of diplomatic slaps. At one point Özbeg even forbid the sale of slaves to Egypt in reaction. Perhaps not coincidentally, Özbeg also began to build up his own body of mamluk guards, according to Ibn Battuta. This fall out hardly bode well for the relationship between Sultan al-Nasir and Tulunbey.   The marriage to Tulunbey produced no children, and by 1327 al-Nasir divorced her and married her off to a lower ranking commander. It took Özbeg some time to learn of this, but once he did he was furious. In 1334 his letter arrived in Cairo, and lambasted the Sultan, telling him that Tulunbey should have been sent back to the Horde, and wrote “Someone like you should not injure the daughters of the Qa'ans!” Özbeg, like all khans, thought little of the Mamluks' origins as Qipchap slaves. For him to divorce and humiliate a Chinggisid princess was an insult beyond measure.   Al-Nasir's very thoughtful response was to claim that Özbeg had been misinformed, and that actually Tulunbey had sadly died. In fact, Tulunbey was still very much alive; her second husband had recently died though, so al-Nasir forced her to marry another commander. This fellow too predeceased her, and Tulunbey was married to a fourth husband. She never returned to the Golden Horde, and died in Cairo in the 1360s, where her tomb remains today.    Özbeg requested that al-Nasir Muhamamd provide him a daughter to marry in recompense. Just like he would do with the Ilkhanate when they made the same request, al-Nasir equivocated, claiming his daughters were too young to marry. At the same time, he was marrying them off to Mamluk emirs. The relationship between their two states remained strained. While Mamluks chronicles retain a high opinion of Özbeg, neither al-Nasir or Özbeg cared much for the other, and tension remained until both died in 1341. In effect this was the great result of much esteemed Jochid-Mamluk alliance. What initially may have proved promising, largely turned into diplomatic squabbling, annoyance at the failure of the other party to meet expected demands, and never materialized into actual cooperation against the Ilkhanate. At best it stopped the Ilkhanate from truly concentrating too greatly on the Mamluk or Golden Horde frontiers. At worst, it was coincidental diplomatic posturing with two states the Ilkhanate had gone to war with independently. Özbeg, the mighty Islamic khan, proved no more effective with the Mamluks than his non-Muslim predecessors.   Özbeg's “southern policy” with the Mamluks and the Ilkhanate then, was not one of great successes. But what of his western frontiers, with Europe and the Rus'? That will be the topic of our next episode, so be sure to subscribe to the Kings and Generals Podcast to follow. If you enjoyed this and would like to help us continue bringing you great content, consider supporting us on patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. This episode was researched and written by our series historian, Jack Wilson. I'm your host David, and we'll catch you on the next one. 

“Account of the exalted Sultan Muhammad Uzbak Khan.  His name is Muhammad Uzbak, and Khan in their language means ‘sultan.' This sultan is mighty in sovereignty, exceedingly powerful, great in dignity, lofty in station, victor over the enemies of God, the people of Constantinople the Great, and diligent in the jihad against them. His territories are vast and his cities great; they include al-Kafa, al-Kirim, al-Machar, Azaq, Sudaq and Khwarezm, and his capital is al-Sara. He is one of the seven kings who are the great and mighty kings of the world. [...] this sultan when he is on the march, travels in a separate mahalla, accompanied by his mamluks and his officers of state, and each one of his khatuns travels separately in her own mahalla. When he wishes to be with any one of them, he sends to her to inform her of this, and she prepares to receive him.”   So the great traveller Ibn Battuta describes Özbeg, Khan on the Golden Horde, during his visit to that khan's camp. From 1313 until his death in 1341, Özbeg enjoyed the lengthiest of reigns of a Mongol ruler, second only to his distant cousin Khubilai Khaan. The powerful Özbeg would be long remembered as the mightiest of Jochid rulers, and his life was  a watershed for the Horde. After him, all khans were Muslims, and his life would be a model, the marker of the Horde's Golden Age. Yet, despite the proclamations of his excellence, tensions bubbled under the surface, and Özbeg's great power did not translate into great success. In today's episode, we take you through the transformation of the Golden Horde under Özbeg, looking specifically at islamization and urbanization. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.   Özbeg was a son of To'rilcha, a grandson of Möngke-Temür Khan, a great-great-grandson of Batu, a great-great-great-grandson of Jochi, and thereby a descendant of Chinggis Khan. Özbeg's father To'rilcha had been a part of the four-wary princely junta that ruled the Horde from 1287 to 1291 under Tele-Buqa Khan. As one of the top princes of this union, and one of the sons of the prestigious Möngke-Temür Khan, To'rilcha had certainly been a powerful prince within the horde. It seems Özbeg drew much of his initial legitimacy from this, and retained a great distaste for his uncle Toqta Khan, who had To'rilcha and the other princes  killed in the 1291 coup with the aid of Nogai. Toqta then married Özbeg's stepmother, To'rilcha's chief wife Bayalun Khatun, and apparently exiled Özbeg to Khwarezm, which cemented Özbeg's hatred for his uncle. It's not surprising then that Özbeg is often accused of being behind Toqta's somewhat mysterious death in 1312. As we covered in our episode last week, the sources are contradictory over what immediately followed. Though Mamluk sources tend to have Toqta's sons predecease him, a number of other accounts have Özbeg battle one of Toqta's surviving sons. Regardless, by the start of 1313 Özbeg was duly enthroned as Khan of the Golden Horde, and if he had not done so already, made public his conversion to Islam.    Özbeg had a particular view on how to hold onto power, which involved executing a great number of potential rivals to the throne. At least one hundred princes and members of the military elite were killed in perhaps the largest princely massacre of the Mongol Empire and its successor khanates. The justification for many of the deaths was the failure of the given princes to convert to Islam, but this was almost certainly little more than an excuse to substantially trim the branches of the aristocracy. Özbeg wanted to ensure that there would be not only no rivals to his own position, but that only his own sons would be able to succeed him.   Certainly, islamization was a key part of Özbeg's reign. There can be no doubt over its spread amongst the Jochid elite from these years onwards, and accounts like Ibn Battuta not only stress the piety of Özbeg and his court, but how islamic institutions were now seeped into the actual administration of the Golden Horde. This ranged from readers of the quran accompanying the royal family everywhere, to Islamic qadi courts now operating alongside the initial justice system established by the dynasty, the jarquchi courts. From Özbeg's coinage, we know he took the Islamic title and name of Sultan Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad, and in his contacts with the Mamluk Sultanate he expressed loudly the notice of his conversion, and his success in converting the nomads of his empire to Islam. The specific mentions of him killing shamans and Buddhist lamas also indicates an effort to actively uproot the old ways.   Yet there remains considerable evidence to continued religious plurality within the Golden Horde and for Özbeg himself. For example, at the very start of his reign he wedded his step-mother, Bayalun Khatun, a widow of both Toqta and his father To'rilcha. An experienced political player with many contacts, her support was important in Özbeg's ascension. Yet wedding his own step-mother was quite against Islamic law and practice. Here Özbeg's qadis conveniently found a loophole; as neither of her previous husbands had  been Muslims, neither marriage was thus legal, and hence technically Özbeg was not marrying his own step-mother. We can't know if that convinced anyone, but noone had the power to tell Özbeg “no.”    Moreover, we know that Özbeg did not seek to convert the Christian populations of his realm to Islam. The Rus' chronicles mention no effort on the part of Özbeg to do so, and only rarely do they even remark on his status as a Muslim. One of his earliest actions as khan, even in the midst of the most zealous period after his conversion, was going out of his way to welcome the Genoese back to Caffa, and in 1332 granted the Venetians right to build a quarter at Tana, on the mouth of the Don River. In quick order he confirmed tax exemptions for the local Franciscan community and gave them permission to build a cathedral in Caffa. Even when a nominal order went out banning the ringing of church bells, it seems there was little enforcement of it, given that this Franciscan cathedral continued to ring them according to other sources. These were not the only privileges they were granted, for the Franciscans were also given freedom to perform missionary activities deep within Horde lands. A Franciscan letter from 1320 indicates that their missionaries had reached as far as Bashkiria, only six years into Özbeg's reign.  A number of extant Franciscan letters survive speaking of the success of their missions due not just to Özbeg's tolerance, but of even his family. Özbeg's chief khatun after Bayalun's death was Taydula, who was specifically noted for her patronage of Christian communities. In fact, letters remain from Pope John XXII and Pope Benedict XII thanking Özbeg and Taydula for their favourable treatment of Christians in the Horde.   Though Christians received privileges from Özbeg, there is also references to his treatment of other religious groups. During his trip to the Golden Horde, Ibn Battuta met a Jewish person from Spain. Buddhist Uyghurs remained a part of Özbeg's court. And from other evidence too we know of the continued practice of non-Islamic beliefs well after Özbeg. The Golden Horde's powerful beylerbeyi, Edigü, who took power some fifty years after Özbeg's death, also made a name for himself having to stamp out Buddhism and shamanism. And in the fifteenth century a few eye witness reports, such as Johann Schiltberger, indicate a limited presence of traditional folk religions. In other lands of the former Golden Horde, such as in what is now Kazakhstan, the advance of Islam among the Kazakhs remains a topic of debate, with some arguing that it was not until late in the nineteenth century that the islamization was really complete among the nomads there. Özbeg, much like his predecessors Berke and Töde-Möngke, could make a show of the islamization of their states in diplomacy with the Mamluks, but nomads clung, often quite stubbornly, to their old ways.   Yet no mistake should be made; for Özbeg and his successors, their government was now Islamic, and there was no question about that. Özbeg's active promotion of Islam, and invitation of Islamic administrators to his cities and government did a considerable amount to promote the religion and bring more converts. Moreover, Özbeg actively had much of his support come from Islamic beys within the Horde, such as his powerful ally Qutlugh-Temür, the governor of Khwarezm. And the effort stuck. Every khan to succeed Özbeg seems to have been a Muslim. According to the Mamluk chroniclers ibn Taghriberdi and al-Safadi, Özbeg ceased to wear his hair in traditional Mongol fashion or to Mongolian hats. Contemporary accounts from the Ilkhanate written before the 1330s such as Wassaf and Qashani portray Özbeg as a pious Muslim, who strictly punished soldiers who harassed sufis. Özbeg's first embassy to the Mamluks arrived in Cairo in April 1314 and loudly proclaimed their lord's conversion to Islam. And of course Ibn Battuta, traveling and meeting Özbeg in the 1330s, present Özbeg unambiguously as a Muslim, albeit one who enjoyed large feasts and drinking during ramadan.  The image that comes across then, is a relatively adaptable monarch when it came to religion, who knew how to press hard when he could and thus promote Islam, but when necessary to remain flexible to local custom, and keep his empire running smoothly.  The fact that Özbeg would sit on the Jochid throne for thirty years speaks much to his success in these matters, compared to the very short reigns of many contemporary khans.    Of course, nothing can be said about Özbeg's islam without mentioning Baba Tükles. This famous sufi became, in legend, the man who converted Özbeg to Islam. The story goes that he and Özbeg's shamans were to hold a competition to prove whose religion was true by seeing who could survive inside a hot oven. The shaman, as most humans would, burnt to death, but when they checked on Baba Tükles, he was sitting comfortably in the oven wearing nothing but a suit of maille and reciting prayers. Seeing that they had opened the oven's entrance, Baba Tükles asked what the hurry was. Thus was everyone amazed at this miracle, and converted happily to Islam, mashallah.  This conversion narrative, masterfully explored in an excellent monograph by Devin DeWeese, became hugely popular in Turkic and Tatar accounts from the sixteenth century onwards. However, Baba Tükles is a mythic figure, not appearing until centuries after Özbeg's death. Sources contemporary to Özbeg name several other individuals, such as a Bukharan sufi named Ibn ‘Abd-ul-Hamid, as the leading men who converted Özbeg. Perhaps one of them became the inspiration for Baba Tükles, though no fourteenth century account references men burnt inside ovens.   After the massacres of the Jochid princes, Özbeg set about reorganizing the Jochid administration.  In short, the power of the princes was broken, and Özbeg ruled through the non-Chinggisid noyad. For Özbeg, these were the four ulus emirs, called also qarachu begs or ulus begs. Essentially, the four most powerful clan leaders within the Golden Horde not of the dynasty of Chinggis Khan. The head of these four was the beylerbeyi,  who acted like the viceroy of the khan. Essentially, these four men discussed and carried out policy with the khan, and their stamp or signature was necessary on all official documents. The origins of the institution are unclear. Similar institutions are recorded in the other khanates; in the Ilkhanate, we know that chancellery documents had to be signed off by the heads of the keshig day guards, powerful, prestigious and hereditary positions. There is some argument that the positions actually were always a part of the Mongol Empire, while others see it as an innovation of Khubilai Khaan, and during the detente between the various khanates after 1304, it spread to other khanates. In the Golden Horde though, the qarachu begs appear distinct from the keshig, and appears as a formal institution throughout all of its successor khanates. For Özbeg, his first beylerberyi was Qutlugh-Temür, the skilled governor of Khwarezm who had been such a stalwart ally of Özbeg in his rise to power. Until his death in the 1330s, Qutlugh-Temür was the number two man in the Golden Horde. Together they led an administrative transformation, redistributing lands, islamicizing parts of government and greatly strengthening the central might of the khan.  The Blue Horde, the khanate of the line of Orda east of the Ural River, was nearly totally subsumed in this period and lost its autonomy.    Özbeg's new government also fostered the growth of cities within the steppe. The urbanisation of the Horde in the Volga Steppes had been ongoing steadily for years. In a trade network based along the major rivers of the steppe, important camps of the khans and princes, or those few-existing steppe settlements, had flourished under the stability wrought by the Jochids. It should be noted that the nomads of the Golden Horde did not aimlessly wander from one side of the khanate to another. Instead, the entire empire was divided into appanages, and allotted to minghaans. A given minghaan, meaning a thousand men and their families, was given access to pastures and natural resources within that appanage to provide for themselves. When nomadizing, they travelled between these allotted pastures, and were forbidden from accessing those of another minghaan without permission or paying a fee. These minghaans were placed under the control of princes and the military elite, essentially like a feudal estate. What this meant was that the lands of the Eurasian steppe were kept remarkably stable, and no longer divided between warring factions where each sought to claim more land from another.   No longer concerned about raiding by Qipchaps, and rivers now marked by permanent ferries sponsored by the khans, merchants moved relatively freely across the steppes, paying taxes and tribute but able to make a tidy profit for a bit of work. With then came either imports from Europe, Mediterranean, Central Asia or China, to exports, such as grains, horses, glass, beads, pottery Siberian furs, honeys, horses and slaves, which travelled to the Rus', Ilkhanate, Mamluk Egypt and as far as India. Indeed, as the Horde's cities grew, so did its ability to manufacture goods for both internal and external trade. And industries grew around them to support these networks, either by importing the materials needed for manufacture, to feeding the employees and housing the merchants who transported it. A wetter climate in the early fourteenth century coupled with the careful control the Jochids kept of land allowances also allowed for a wider cultivation of farmland within the steppes to better feed growing settlements. Then these people's spiritual and entertainment needs had to be met, requiring the construction of mosques and other places of worship, market places, bath houses, manors for the elite and more, which made steady work for builders and stone masons.   Altogether this fostered a veritable explosion in the growth of the Horde's major cities during the reign of Özbeg, recorded both in written sources and the extensive archaeological work in the former Horde lands.  Well over a hundred such Golden Horde settlements are now known. The most important of these were along the lower reaches of the Volga River, towards the Delta where it meets the Caspian Sea. Here lay the Horde's capitals; the first of these was Sarai, founded by Batu after the withdrawal from Europe. Berke had apparently founded a settlement further upstream, and Özbeg moved the capital there. It is assumed it was to better lay out his desired city, and avoid the flooding which plagued old Sarai, for the Caspian Sea was rising every year of the 1320s. Hence, the new capital was called Berke's Sarai, or Sarai al-Jadid, “New Sarai.” While originally made up of a few hundred felt gers and a handful of permanent structures, these cities rapidly transformed. Felt gers were replaced with immobile homes, originally maintaining the same shape before over time becoming polygonal, then square. Most of the Horde's major cities followed a similar layout as evidenced by archaeological study; one or more main squares surrounded by large buildings, with streets radiating out from it in rectangular districts. They contained great complex manor houses for the nobility; numerous craft workshops, from bone carving, pottery, iron works, glass-blowing, brick making, bronze casting, and jewellery production, as well as bathhouses, mosques, madrassas, necropolises, and orchards.    The largest of the ruins is the site known as Selitrennoe, which scholarship currently associates with Sarai al-Jadid, the second capital of the Golden Horde. Its remains stretch over 7 kilometres along the Akhtuba River, a minor branch off the Volga, and 2 kilometres into the steppe, and at its height in the mid-fourteenth century some estimates give it a population of 75,000. Ibn Battuta visited the city in the 1330s, and his description is as follows:   “The city of [Sarai] is one of the finest of cities, of boundless size, situated in a plain, choked with the throng of its inhabitants, and possessing good bazaars and broad streets. We rode out one day with one of its principal men, intending to make a circuit of the city and find out its extent. Our lodging place was at one end of it and we set out from it in the early morning, and it was after midday when we reached the other end. We then prayed the noon prayer and ate some food, and we did not get back to our lodging until the hour of the sunset prayer. One day we went on foot across the breadth of the town, going and returning, in half a day, this too through a continuous line of houses, where there were no ruins and no gardens. The city has thirteen mosques for the holding of Friday prayers, [...]; as for the other mosques, they are exceedingly numerous. There are various groups of people among its inhabitants; these include the [Mongols], who are the dwellers in this country and its Sultans, and some of whom are Muslims, then the [Alans], the [Qipchaqs], the [Circassians], the Rus' and [Greeks]. Each group lives in a separate quarter with its own bazaars. Merchants and strangers from the two ‘Iraqs, Egypt, Syria and elsewhere, live in a quarter which is surrounded by a wall for the protection of the properties of the merchants. The sultan's palace in it is called Altun Tash, altun meaning ‘gold,' and tash ‘head.'”   The remains of the palace of Altan Tash have likely been identified, and what a magnificent structure it was. As the largest building found within the Golden Horde, the palace in its glory must have been over 32 metres long and over 40 metres wide. Made of fired brick and timber, its great hall alone was 5.8 by 9.4 metres across, with tiled floors and elegant, gilded polychromatic mosaics along the walls. Some 35 rooms have been identified, including a child's room where children's drawings were found carved into the plastered walls. Unlike the palaces of Qaraqorum or Khubilai's capitals at Shangdu or Dadu, the palace of Sarai was not influenced by Chinese design, but Islamic. Seljuq, Khwarezmian and Iranian influences are detected throughout the remains. Similar layouts and designs, albeit on smaller scale, are found in both Sarai itself and the other cities of the Horde.   While Özbeg continued to live in nomadic encampments travelling hither and yon across the Horde, he certainly stopped in Sarai when business demanded it, and he sought to ensure he lived in style. The lower Volga from New Sarai down to Hajji Tarkhan on the Volga Delta became the densest part of a  new urban network, with these major centres each surrounded by dozens and dozens of smaller settlements, pitted with orchards, farmland and surrounded by the endless grass sea where herds of the nomads still roamed. Typical of these settlements, is that before 1360 they were built without fortifications; no enemy would march across the steppe, and if he did he would have to face the Khan's horsemen. Only when the Horde fragmented, were there foes who could march on Sarai.   The growth of the Horde's cities was not caused by Özbeg Khan. Rather, it was a long running process which evolved out of several developments laid down by his predecessors. But Özbeg took advantage of it, and cultivated it. Or at least, his knowledgeable ministers did, and Özbeg supported them, happy to see goods and coins fill up his warehouses while leaving the trouble of collecting it to others. He actively encouraged settlement and trade, welcoming craftsmen, merchants and administrators from across the Middle East and Central Asia to bring their knowledge and wares to his cities. As already mentioned, he granted quarters in cities along the Black Sea to Italian merchants. On their ships the goods of the Golden Horde, particularly grains and slaves, could be sold across the Mediterranean, while desired imports were brought into his empire. From those port cities merchant caravans could travel east to the Volga cities like Sarai al-Jadid; there a merchant could exchange his wares and rest, before returning home, or travelling south to the Ilkhanate, or even eastwards into Khwarezm. Here Gurganj, once destroyed by Özbeg's ancestor Jochi, was restored to prominence and was the Jochid's chief city in the east, a staging point for those travellers going deeper into Central Asia, or perhaps even to Yuan China. Özbeg certainly maintained contacts with the Great Khans, and routinely requested the delivery of the tribute owed him from the Jochid's injü lands in China. Özbeg could take advantage of, and capitalize on, the development of the Jochid lands and the normalization of contacts with the other Chinggisid states. In short, he enjoyed the fruits of a tree grown generations before.  And at each ferry crossing, in each city, and each border, every passing merchant paid tax to the Khan of the Golden Horde, in coins minted in Jochid cities and bearing the names of the Jochid Khan. In this manner,  Özbeg became a wealthy man indeed.   It was a system reliant extensively on wider Eurasian trade networks; thus the Jochid economy would face a terrible consequence were something to happen to that network. But that's a matter for another episode. Having looked at the transformation of the Golden Horde, our next episode will look at the politics and campaigns of Özbeg Khan, so be sure to subscribe to the Kings and Generals Podcast to follow. If you enjoyed this and would like to help us continue bringing you great content, consider supporting us on patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. This episode was researched and written by our series historian, Jack Wilson. I'm your host David, and we'll catch you on the next one. 

In this third installment of the Jerusalem's Old Past series, Dr Valentina Covaci takes us back to medieval Jerusalem, mostly in the period when the city was under Mamluk rule. We first discussed what medieval Jerusalem means in terms of chronology and of local inhabitants and how the demographic picture changed throughout the medieval centuries. We then moved to discuss Franciscan presence in Jerusalem which started as early as the 13th century, a presence that influenced both the Order and the city. Valentina reminded us that Franciscans created the Via Crucis which so much has influenced the topography and understanding of Jerusalem in Christian thought; not to mention that Franciscans elaborated their perceptions of Jerusalem and exported them around Europe. We then moved to talk about processions, while forbidden by the Mamluk rulers, these became part of Jerusalem and its daily life. Some processions occurred within churches - like the daily Latin procession within the Holy Sepulchre - but others took place and brought European pilgrims to Jerusalem. Valentina told us about these pilgrims, who they were and how they travelled, how they related to the city and what brought back. Lastly we discussed liturgy and how this aspect of religion influenced Jerusalem, but also the famous question of the graffiti at the Holy Sepulchre. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/jerusalemunplugged. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Have you ever wondered what life was like for Mamluk farmers? In this episode, Lucie Laumonier talks with Omar Abdel-Ghaffar, a PhD candidate at Harvard University about Nile floods, landscapes and village communities in late medieval Egypt. You can support this podcast on Patreon - go to https://www.patreon.com/medievalists

Where did it all begin, and why? What the heck is Mamluk? We find out just how much of a party Spiritualism was, and just when I think I've finished, Lily Dale rears its head! So don't shut it off too soon! Twitter: PodPinky IG pinky_pod_cast --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sroit/support

In conversation with Chyno With a Why? about Mamluk, his recently released album with Warner Music Middle East. Chyno shares his early journey into hip hop and creative process as well as his struggles and accomplishments. Follow and support Chyno With a Why?: https://warnermusicme.lnk.to/Mamluk YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/chynovation Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chynowithawhy twitter: https://twitter.com/chynowithawhy Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/chynowithawhy/sets/mamluk --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/963podcast/message

narrated by Chris Gratien featuring Joshua White, Zoe Griffith, Amina Elbendary, and Kristina Richardson | Military slavery was critical to the function of most imperial states in the medieval Islamic world. But in a moment of crisis during the 13th century, the cadre of enslaved military personnel or mamluks employed by the Ayyubid dynasty in Egypt overthrew that dynasty, establishing their own sultanate that governed Egypt, Syria, and the Hijaz for more than two centuries. In this episode, we're examining the making of the Mamluk Sultanate and life in its capital of Cairo. We discuss the institutions and structures established in the city of Cairo as displays of power and charity by Mamluk elite, and we consider the role of urban protest and contention between the streets and the citadel as an integral facet of politics in Mamluk cities. We also shed light on the little-studied community of Ghurabā' who lived on the city's margins and engaged in one of the earliest examples of printing in the Islamic world. « Click for More »

narrated by Chris Gratien featuring Joshua White, Zoe Griffith, Amina Elbendary, and Kristina Richardson | Military slavery was critical to the function of most imperial states in the medieval Islamic world. But in a moment of crisis during the 13th century, the cadre of enslaved military personnel or mamluks employed by the Ayyubid dynasty in Egypt overthrew that dynasty, establishing their own sultanate that governed Egypt, Syria, and the Hijaz for more than two centuries. In this episode, we're examining the making of the Mamluk Sultanate and life in its capital of Cairo. We discuss the institutions and structures established in the city of Cairo as displays of power and charity by Mamluk elite, and we consider the role of urban protest and contention between the streets and the citadel as an integral facet of politics in Mamluk cities. We also shed light on the little-studied community of Ghurabā' who lived on the city's margins and engaged in one of the earliest examples of printing in the Islamic world. « Click for More »

We catch up with Lyra as she lies her way through a tense cup of chamomile with Mrs Coulter, simultaneously trying to persuade her that she is still on Mrs Coulter's side whilst attempting to wheedle out some information from her about why the staff at Bolvangar are doing such horrible things to children in her name.Join us as this week, as Iain fails to pick up on puns, Amy provides some dubious Lyra impressions and both of us battle it out for The Ultimate Sibirsk Regiment Theory.------You can see full version of Amy's artwork for our episodes and our quotes for the week here.Check out Robert Darby's fascinating (and SPOILER HEAVY) essay on His Dark Materials and genital mutilation here.Want to see for yourself just how ugly or cute a polecat is? Here is an image of a particularly unhappy one…Help us settle the discussion on whether the Sibirsk Regiment are a product of nature or nurture! We certainly can't agree on our own…let us know what you think by voting on our Twitter poll on the topic!You can also find out more about the extreme measures which the Spartans used to train young soldiers here, or find about more about the fascinating Mamluk soldiers here.------Music by: Jaymen Persaudwww.thedarkmaterialpodcast.comPatreon: www.patreon.com/darkmaterialpodcastTwitter: @darkmaterialpodInstagram: @thedarkmaterialpodcastFacebook: www.facebook.com/thedarkmaterialpodcast

Among the great Muslim warriors of history, few could match Baybars al-Bunduqari.  A slave in the empire of Salah al-Din, born neither Arab nor Muslim, he would defeat the Crusaders, stop the Mongols and establish the new state that would lead the Muslim world for centuries.  Seen as the true founder of the Mamluk empire, he helped changed the nature of the Muslim world up to the modern era, for better and worse.