A 1,300 History of the Middle East in Se...

The Disney version of Johnny Appleseed has a cheerful barefoot man in a tin pot hat scattering apple seeds for grateful pioneers to bake into pies. The real John Chapman collected his seeds for free from cidery waste, planted them into strategically fenced nurseries on land he bo ... Show More

For the last 5,000 years, empires ruled the world — Rome administered hundreds of languages across three continents, and the Ottomans governed Christians, Jews, and Muslims under a single legal canopy. The nation-state as we know it is barely a century old for most of the world's ... Show More

The Cambridge Five did more damage to the Western Bloc than any other intelligence outfit of the Cold War. They were five Cambridge graduates who drank gin at the right clubs, moved through the right corridors of British intelligence at the height of WW2, and quietly handed Stali ... Show More

<p>As two of humanity's great religions, Islam and Christianity have shaped much of the world's history. Empires across the globe have risen and fallen under their influence, and there have been many occasions for them to go head-to-head on the battlefield. So what have been some ... Show More

<p>May 1453 saw the siege that would lead to the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire. It was the culmination of an age-long struggle between Christianity and Islam for control of the Eastern Mediterranean.&nbsp;The Ottoman leader Mehmed II had dreamed of possessing the city since he ... Show More

<p>May 1453 saw Constantinople under siege - the culmination of an age long struggle between Christianity and Islam for control of the Eastern Mediterranean.&nbsp;The Ottoman leader Mehmed II had dreamed of possessing the city since he was a boy, and now the shining light of Chri ... Show More

Today, the city of Jerusalem is seen as so important that people are willing to kill and die to control it. And that struggle goes back centuries. Nearly a thousand years ago, European Christians embarked on what became known as the First Crusade: an unprecedented, massive milita ... Show More

<p>Islamic, Christian and Jewish blood spilled across three centuries in the Eastern Mediterranean and Levant, all under the sanction of the Latin Church. The impact of the eight Crusades reverberated across the Medieval world. So, what was the fighting about? Were the relationsh ... Show More

<p>The first Crusade began in 1095, and launched a struggle for control of Jerusalem in a series of arduous battles spanning more than two centuries. Learn more about the origin, escalation and consequences of the Crusades in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.</p><p> </p> Learn mor ... Show More

With the Sassanian Empire defeated and the Byzantine Empire exhausted, there is a power vacuum in the centre of the world. Both of these superpowers have drained their resources fighting each other over the past 30 years, consuming many of the great cities of antiquity. To the so ... Show More

The Sunni-Shia divide is a conflict that most people have heard about - two sects with Sunni Islam being in the majority and Shia Islam the minority. Exactly how did this conflict originate and when? We go through 1400 years of history to find the moment this divide first turned ... Show More

Islamic Muslim contributions to the world Vs ‘Clash of Civilizations’ with Historian Halil Demir 

A massive Muslim Turkish force assaults the most important Christian city of the medieval world, with the future of all Christendom at stake.