History's Most Insane Rulers, Part 3: Ib...

Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists famously described the First Amendment as building a "wall of separation between church and State." This line has been the gold standard for those who point to the secular origins of America and the threat of funding any sort ... Show More

There’s an argument to be made that every technology advance in communication – from cave paintings to fake AI movie trailers – is at its root an attempt to tell stories. Our first night-fires created the earliest audiences for spoken stories. In time, the development of rhyme, s ... Show More

During the Holocaust, Josef Mengele discarded every medical ethic to perform horrific human experiments at Auschwitz, including non-consensual vivisections, limb transplants, and agonizing surgeries conducted without anesthesia. Japan had its own program that is less known but eq ... Show More

For the very first time in Arab history, a child became the umma’s caliph. The 13 year old had not yet left his royal harem and was totally under his mother’s control. She used her influence over al Muqtadir to to extend her personal wealth and authority. It was a fundamentally c ... Show More

The 46-year reign of Süleyman the Magnificent across central Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East was defined by territorial expansion and economic growth, as well as a flowering of art, architecture and culture.The epithet ‘magnificent’ invites us to believe the Ottoman ... Show More

Co-chairman of the Conservative party, Baroness Warsi recalls her Pakistani-born father during her Yorkshire childhood telling her about the heroic martial deeds conducted by a thirteenth century Indian princess, Razia Sultana.Descended from humble stock, the much mythologized Su ... Show More

Synopsis: Ongoing strife in Anatolia and Egypt allows Antiochus VII to campaign east against the Parthians.  His early successes inspire hopes of a resurgent Seleucid Empire, hopes shattered by his unexpected death. “In Asia, Attalos III as soon as he came to the throne began t ... Show More

Sulayman’s underwhelming time in charge ended with a twist, and Omar ibn Abdulaziz proved to be a real surprise. The famously pious Umayyad had a vision for the umma, and he used his new position to impose an order unseen since the early, predynastic days of the caliphate. Althou ... Show More

After the Fall of Constantinople, the Ottomans became the most powerful dynasty in existence. But the great empire began to decline, and in the early 20th century, a leader named Talaat and a group of radical nationalists worked to remove the ineffectual sultan and restore the Ot ... Show More

Ottoman Sultans kept a harem of hundreds of enslaved concubines to bear their children. But from 1533 to 1656 a handful of remarkable women bent the harem system to their wills and exercised extraordinary political influence and power. This period is known as the The Sultanate of ... Show More