053:EPISODE 53 - The Lothair Crystal 洛泰尔一世水晶雕刻 The Lothair Crystal, depicting Susannah and the Elders (855 - 869 AD), probably from Germany Royal divorces generally mean political trouble. The marital problems of Henry VIII plunge...
And this story from the Arabian Nights is true. Al-Mutawakkil was murdered by his Turkish commanders in 861, and his death was the beginning of the end for Samarra as a capital. Within a decade, the army had left the city, and Baghdad resumed its sta...
They show us the faces of the caliph's slaves and servants, the women and the boys of his intimate world and of his pleasures. The women housed in these rooms were slaves, but slaves that enjoyed considerable privileges. Amira Bennison, who teaches I...
The new city of Samarra was vast, with gigantic palaces by the standards of any age, built at enormous cost. Over six thousand different buildings have been identified - and a contemporary description gives some impression of the spectacular nature o...
You might think at first that these paintings are not very much to look at - they're really just scraps of paintings, and the largest is no bigger than a CD disc. They are drawn fairly simply, with black outlines on a yellow ochre background, with ju...
It's a closed society; few people ventured within its walls, and it's been said that when a pious Muslim was summoned to see the caliph, he took with him his shroud. Ordinary people rather feared what went on within the walls of the caliph's palaces,...
Today, we mostly know the Arabian Nights through the distorted filter of Hollywood and pantomime. They summon up a kaleidoscope of characters. Sinbad, Aladdin and the Thief of Baghdad, caliphs and sorcerers, viziers and merchants, and lots of girls -...
052:EPISODE 52 - Harem Wall Painting Fragments后宫壁画残片 Harem wall painting fragments (made ninth century AD), from Samarra, Iraq This week we are entering the hidden places of powerful men and women around the world, in the years about 80...
Environmental factors are a popular explanation. There is some evidence of a prolonged drought, and given the density of the population, the decline in resources a drought would cause could well have been catastrophic. But, in all events, the Maya pe...
For the Maya, blood-letting was an ancient tradition, and it marked all the major points of Maya life - especially the path to royal and sacred power. In the sixteenth century, 800 years after this lintel was carved, and long after the Maya civilisat...