PRESS PLAY
An audio platform for the study of the pre-modern Islamic(ate) past and beyond. We interview academics, archivists and artists on their work for peers and junior students in the field. We aim to educate, inspire, perhaps infuriate, and on the way entertain a little too. https://linktr.ee/abbasidhistorypodcastSuitable also for general listeners with an interest in geographically diverse medieval history.
Sana'i's mystical turn still leads back to a patron; you get the politics before the verse.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A focused portrait of Jami as scholar, Sufi master, poet, and supporter of the arts in the Timurid world.
Jami comes through as a figure shaped by scholarship, Sufi practice, and the wider Timurid world. The episode follows him from Khargerd to Herat and Samarkand, where his learning ranged across Arabic grammar, theology, tafsir, hadith, and poetic riddles, then settles into his…
A measured portrait of Hafez, where courtly history and poetic legend keep rubbing against each other.
Hafez comes through as both a celebrated Persian poet and a figure shaped by the unsettled politics of fourteenth-century Shiraz. Dalha Ahsan and Ali Hamoud trace his links to Abu Ishaq, his likely departure after Shiraz's rulers were overthrown, a possible journey to Baghdad,…
Saadi's travels, courtly candor, and lasting Persian works come into focus through poetry's public life.
Saadi comes through as a poet shaped by movement: born in Shiraz in 1210 CE, drawn to Baghdad for study in his early twenties, carried through 30 years of travel, and later returned home with the Bustan and Gulistan, works framed as gifts to Shiraz and central to his standing in…
Attar's poetry appears as a disciplined, book-shaped path into Sufi thought.
Attar of Nishapur comes through as a poet whose Sufism was formed less by a single known master than by long, serious reading. The episode traces his life in Nishapur, the stories surrounding his turn toward spiritual devotion, and the circle that listened to his poems,…
Medieval power, read with institutional gravity.
European conflict with context and consequence.
Medieval Iceland, read closely and argued warmly.
Medieval Iberia, one consequence at a time.
Medieval history, criminally examined.
Empires, sieges, and final stands.
Jami divided his life into three poetic stages, from "Fatiha al-Shabaab" to "Khatimat al-Hayat."
Hafiz's boast about bartering Bukhara and Samarkand for a Persian mole frames Abbasid History Podcast episode 64.
["Abbasid History Podcast episode 63 centers on Saadi of Shiraz, and Ali Hamid treats the Bustan and Gulistan as the core of his lasting literary reputation.", "Hamid places Saadi in the 13th century of Mongol shock and Abbasid weakening, while Salghurid Shiraz under Izz al-Din Sa'ad and Abu Bakr ibn Sa'ad gave Persian literature a stable court culture.", "He traces Saadi through Baghdad, the Nizamiya College, Tripoli, Aleppo, and Shiraz, while separating his verified study from the travel stories he tells in the Gulistan.", "The episode closes with close reading of Saadi's prose, the structure of the Bustan, the undertranslated Ghazals, and recommendations from Willa Thaxton, Professor Wickens, and Omar Khatouzian."]
["Fariduddin Abu Hamid Muhammad Attar comes through here as a Nishapur poet whose name stayed local while The Conference of the Birds and Tadhkirat al-Awliya defined his legacy.", "Host Talha Ahsan, a PhD student at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, speaks with Ali Hamood of Western Sydney University about Attar's life and works.", "Hamood places Attar in a Nishapur of more than 100,000 people, about 1,700 supporting villages, Turkmen violence in 1153, and Mongol destruction in 1221.", "The closing Sheikh San'an passage uses a Christian girl, a swineherd test, and translation notes to show how Attar builds allegory."]
Talha Asan interviews Ali Hamoud about Sana'i, the Ghaznavid-era Persian poet whose The Walled Garden of Truth became a foundational mystical masnavi.
An interview with Dr.
An interview with Dr.
An interview with Professor Christian Sana about the development of Christianity in the Middle East before and after the Arab-Islamic conquests.
Host Talha Asan interviews Dr.