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Islamic history is one of the most important stories in the world. And most people have never heard it properly. Archives is here to change that. Each episode, we break down a key era, event, or figure from Islamic history. From the rise of the first caliphate to the Golden Age of Baghdad to the fall of great empires, we cover it all. Whether you're learning for the first time or filling in the gaps, this is the podcast for you.
16 Episodes
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This episode covers the two-month siege of Vienna from July to September 1683. It examines Vienna's fortification system, the flight of Emperor Leopold I, and Count Starhemberg's defense with a garrison outnumbered ten to one. Without heavy artillery, Kara Mustafa turned to the lagimcilar — Ottoman military miners — to tunnel beneath the walls and plant gunpowder charges. The episode traces the underground war in detail: how defenders used water buckets and dried peas on drumheads to detect d...
This episode covers the events leading up to the 1683 Siege of Vienna. It explores the Ottoman Empire at its territorial peak, the military system that powered it — Janissaries, Sipahi cavalry, and the Devshirme child levy — and why the empire structurally needed to keep expanding. We trace the first failed siege of Vienna in 1529 under Suleiman the Magnificent, the concept of the Red Apple (Kizil Elma), the Koprulu dynasty that revived the empire from near-collapse, and the rise of Kara Must...
It is the 960s. In a palace carved into a hillside outside Cordoba, a woman sits under lamplight, annotating a manuscript of Euclid's geometry in elegant Andalusi script. Her name is Lubna. She was born a slave in this palace. The biographer Ibn Bashkuwal will later write of her: "No one in the palace was as great as her." Not the ministers. Not the generals. Not the khalifa's advisors. A woman born in chains -- and the biographer says nobody was greater. This episode traces the full arc of ...
This episode traces the full arc of Razia's reign -- from her father Iltutmish, the slave-turned-sultan who looked past every convention to choose his daughter over his sons, to the Turkic military aristocracy that allowed her to ascend but never intended to let her actually rule. We cover her extraordinary public appeal to the people of Delhi in the red garments of the wronged, her systematic dismantling of purdah conventions, her controversial appointment of the Abyssinian officer Yaqut, an...
This episode traces the full arc of Arwa bint Ahmad al-Sulayhi, from orphan girl in a highland palace to the sole sovereign of Yemen for over fifty years. It covers the education that shaped her, the assassination that shattered the Sulayhid dynasty, and the unprecedented Fatimid decree that made her Hujjah -- the Proof -- the highest spiritual rank beneath the Imam himself, a title no woman had ever held. It follows her through the great Ismaili schism of 1094, when her word alone determined...
This episode traces the full arc of her life, from the fall of Granada and the psychology of Andalusian exile, through her education in the mountain fortress of Chefchaouen, to her rise as governor of Tetouan, the city the refugees called "Granada's Daughter." We explore how she built a corsair fleet that terrorized Spanish and Portuguese shipping for nearly three decades, how she forged a strategic alliance with the legendary Ottoman admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa to put the entire Mediterrane...
This episode traces the life of a Kipchak slave girl who was swept up by the Mongol invasions, sold into the household of an Ayyubid prince, and rose to become the only woman to rule Egypt as sultan in the Islamic period. We cover the fall of Damietta to the Seventh Crusade, the death of Sultan al-Salih Ayyub in his tent at Mansourah with a Crusader army camped across the canal, and the astonishing three-month deception that Shajar al-Durr engineered to hold Egypt together. We follow the trap...
This episode tells the story of Fatimah al-Fihri, a merchant's daughter from Kairouan whose family fled to Fez as refugees in the ninth century. When her father died and left his fortune to her and her sister Mariam, both women made the same choice: build. Fatimah founded al-Qarawiyyin on one bank of the river. Mariam founded al-Andalusiyyin on the other. Two sisters, two mosques, two displaced communities given a place to pray and learn and belong. We trace the full arc: the city of exiles t...
This episode traces the full arc of the collapse: the tribal factionalism that split the army in half, the betrayal of millions of non-Arab Muslims who were promised equality and taxed like outsiders, the four khalifas in a single year, and the most sophisticated underground revolutionary movement the pre-modern world had ever seen. It follows the Battle of the Zab, where a wall of Khorasani spears broke the finest cavalry in the Arab world. It follows the Banquet of Blood, where a commander ...
This is the story of Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, the fifth Umayyad khalifa, who inherited a shattered empire and forged it into the most powerful state on earth. When he took power in 685 CE, he controlled only Syria and Egypt. He was paying daily tribute to the Byzantines. His rival held Mecca. Rebels burned through Iraq. Within twenty years, his empire stretched from the Atlantic to the borders of China. He built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, a dome of gold so bright no one could look at...
In 711 CE, Tariq ferried seven thousand men across the Strait of Gibraltar on borrowed ships, hiding an invasion in plain sight. He landed at the base of a rock the Greeks had called a Pillar of Hercules, renamed it after himself, and within months had shattered the Visigothic kingdom of Hispania - a state that had stood for three centuries. His men fought fasting, in the heat of a Ramadan summer, outnumbered at least two to one. The battle lasted eight days. This episode traces Tariq's stor...
October 10th, 680 CE. A flat, dry plain beside the Euphrates River. 72 men, plus women and children, surrounded by an army of thousands. They haven't had water in three days. The river is close enough to hear. This is the story of Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), and the stand he made at Karbala. Not the version you got in a textbook. The version built from what people actually said and did when they knew they were going to die. How a political decision t...
This episode is a summary of the Prophets 1 Era as covered in the Archives Islamic History App - https://archiveszone.app/. In the beginning, there was Adam (AS). Then came Nuh (AS), who called his people to Allah for 950 years. Then Ibrahim (AS), who walked out of a fire without a scratch and built the Kaaba with his own hands. Part 1 of the Prophets Series covers the earliest stories in all of human history - from the first human being all the way to the moment a father and son laid the fou...
This episode is a summary of the Women of Islam Era as covered in the Archives Islamic History App - https://archiveszone.app/. The Muslim world wasn't only built by men. Women carried the message, taught scholars, led empires, and shaped civilizations - from Mecca in the 7th century all the way to Morocco, Yemen, India, and Sudan. In this episode, Basel and Basma walk through the real stories of women in Islamic history. Khadijah, the first believer. Aisha, one of the greatest teachers of he...
This episode is a summary of the Rise of Islam Era as covered in the Archives Islamic History App - https://archiveszone.app/. In this episode, we explore the rise of Islam through the life of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and the world he was born into. We start in pre-Islamic Arabia, where trade, poetry, tribal loyalty, and spiritual confusion shaped daily life, then follow the first revelation in the Cave of Hira, the quiet spread of the new message, the hardship faced by the early believers, an...
This episode is a summary of the Umayyad Dynasty Era as covered in the Archives Islamic History App - https://archiveszone.app/. Most people have never heard of the Umayyads. But for nearly 90 years, they ran an empire bigger than Rome at its peak. They invented the first Islamic coin. They made Arabic the official language of government. They built the Dome of the Rock. And then - almost overnight - it all came apart. In this episode, Basel and Basma break down the full rise and fall of th...
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