Tamerlane and the Battle of Ankara

After earning her first-class degree in chemistry from Oxford, Dorothy embarked on an impressive career in the new field of X-ray crystallography. She would ultimately earn many, many accolades for her work. Research: "Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin." Encyclopedia of World Biography On ... Show More

Dorothy Hodgkin's career in X-ray crystallography impacted a lot of science in the 10th century. Part one of her story covers her early life and formative experiences that led her to her field of research. Research: "Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin." Encyclopedia of World Biography Onli ... Show More

This 2023 episode covers Sarah Bradlee Fulton, sometimes called the Mother of the Boston Tea Party. But available information about her is basically a series of anecdotes, and can’t really be corroborated.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

Timur, known to many as Tamburlaine the Great from the iconic Marlowe play. Despite having a limp and struggling to get onto a horse, he erupted from what is now Uzbekistan at the head of a mounted army to conquer Persia and much of Eurasia. He delved deep into Russia, reached th ... Show More

<p>The Mongol Empire that rose in the early 13th century was fractured and in crisis by the mid-14th. But then a new warlord arose who sought to rebuild what had once been the most powerful empire in the world.&nbsp; Operating in Genghis Khan’s shadow, Tamerlane deliberately drew ... Show More

“In Herat a man can’t stretch out his leg without touching a poet’s backside” - Babur It’s 1506, and Babur leaves his beloved base in Kabul to visit his cousins in Herat, Afghanistan. But whilst he is shyly standing in the corner at parties and receiving a speedy education in po ... Show More

In the year 1258, more than 100,000 soldiers amassed outside the great Islamic city of Baghdad. They were the Mongol Army, led by the grandson of the fearsome Genghis Khan. Within weeks, they'd left the city – which had stood as the center of power and commerce in the Muslim worl ... Show More

<p>1260 - The Mongol expansion had reached the Middle East, and their power enabled them to crush the established states up to the Holy Land. The Holy Land was being claimed by an Egyptian Dynasty with Turkic origins, and as such, would also have mastery of horsemanship and arche ... Show More

Eurasia is divided into two great superpowers. Khusrow II rules the Sassanian Empire. Maurice, the last of the Justinian dynasty, rules their mighty rivals, the Byzantines. When he is overthrown, Khusrow looks to capitalise upon the chaos, invades his neighbour, and begins to swe ... Show More

We take a look around the parts of Anatolia which were controlled by Turkic peoples between 1080 and 1180 AD. We don’t have a huge amount of written sources to draw on but hopefully there’s enough information available to give you a better picture of what’s been happening there. ... Show More

For over six hundred years the Ottoman Empire ruled swathes of the Middle East, North Africa, and Southern Europe. As an Islamic superpower centred on what is now Turkey, theirs is a story of surprising alliances and enemies, trade, war and progress. But who were its leaders? How ... Show More

The Mongols were an unstoppable force through the 12th and 13th centuries, with an empire that stretched across huge swathes of land, from China to Europe. But its territory also included much of the Near East, where one aggressive power – the Mamluks – finally put a halt to thei ... Show More

In this first episode of this bonus series, we hear about Timur's devastating raid of northern India, and then follow his descendant Babur through his adventurous early years.  For this episode, I found the following publications particularly useful: William Dalrymple, The Anarc ... Show More