Since listening to “The History of Rome” by Duncan I have started to listen to “The History of Byzantium” because why not build up at least a foundation which I can later expand on (and correct if necessary)?
Thus I’ve become interested in podcasts about the history of Islam, especially the origin, conquest and golden age parts.
Problem is: I’m not sure how lib and US-brained any of the “good”/popular podcasts are. And a quick search on here didn’t yield good results.
I’d be fine with a Mike Duncan style podcast like Revolutions, where he sticks to facts an absolute majority of the time and where it’s clear when the lib brainworms come through…
English, German or Russian language podcast recommendations would be great, thank you in advance ^^
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The Making of the Islamic World is a good one. It’s a short series done by the hosts of the Ottoman History Podcast. It’s very academic and absolutely not orientalistic or eurocentric.
Thanks for the recommendation! If it ain’t leftist at least let it be academic and not just some random dude ranting his western biases. There are good exceptions OFC, but so many podcasts like that litter the media landscape; I’ve grown tired of it…
Only a partial answer, because it’s not about battles and conquest, but the history of philosophy without any gaps podcast was directly inspired by those podcasts you mentioned and also the “Fall of the Roman Empire” podcast and if I remember correctly, had all three on as guests once. It has at least 75 episodes on the history of philosophy in the Islamic world. Most episodes are scripted and 20-30 minute (high quality input, occasional jokes but stays on topic with no wasted time) with some around 1 hour interviews in-between. The host, professor Adamson is one of the world’s foremost leading experts on the history of philosophy in the Islamic world (which includes non Islamic philosophy under Islamic rule).
That one has already been staring at me from my subscribed podcasts page in Antennapod for years now. Glad to know they have so many episodes on the Islamic world
I forgot to say, it also has an additional 26 episodes on Byzantine philosophy.
Great to know as well. I really have to listen to them eventually but the length and scope scare me a bit TwT
Listening to the podcast really is a long-term project. I’ve been listening to a few episodes weekly for the last four years, and now I’m shy of 300 episodes (out of 500).
There are 2 books I liked, both have audiobooks. One is Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources, which is about him, the other is The House Divided: Sunni, Shia and the Making of the Middle East, which gets into the history of islam only as far as it needs to explain first the shia-sunni split and then the formation of each of the current political formations in the mideast
Might check out the printed versions of those then, thanks!
Not a podcast, but the book No God But God by Reza Aslan is absolutely amazing and I really wish I had read it a long time ago when it was first published.
Will look into it and it will probably land on my far too long “To read” list on Bookwyrm TwT
Empire podcast is lib but about as firmly anti imperialist as possible within the lib Overton window, they’ve never done a complete history of islam but they have done series on most of the major historical muslim nations you might like (~20 hour series on the Ottoman empire, one on Iran / Persia and a Russia series that has a lot of focus on the Great Game and it’s earlier interactions with the successor states of the Golden Horde on its borders, a ~10 hour series on the Mughal empire, a 6.5 hour series on the various wars Israel’s been involved in and a short 2.5 hour set of episodes about the Algerian Revolution - I’ve not listened to all of these but i really liked the ones i have).
Need to find something good about the medieval muslim powers though smh.
Oh I will have to check that one out then. All the things you mentioned interest me.
“We are not so different” has already been recommended here, so they might be what you are looking for?
The We’re not so different podcast might have some episodes that interest you.
They also have a 23 episode series on historical materialism.
I’ve stumbled across this one and wasn’t sure, glad you can recommend it
