Spelade
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Islam is known in the West for its laws and community rituals, with thousands praying in neat rows. Yet the picture is not complete without the emotional or personal dimension of Islam. Arising in the first centuries of Islam, the practices of Sufism, seeking a personal, intimate relationship with God, have also shaped Muslim society. In this episode, we look at the beginnings of Sufism, its distinctive teachings and its relationships with Islamic law, philosophy and theology.
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At the height of the Islamic Golden Age, Muslim scholars debated some of the greatest Christian and Jewish theological minds on the very principles of their faith. These experts in rationalism argued that the very principles of logic and reason dictated that their faith must be true and that rational inquiry of the natural world would prove this so. Questions about the nature of God, of free will, and eternity were being examined by thinkers from many religions who developed arguably the most sophisticated answers to these issues. At a time when Europe was filled with superstition and persecution, this marked one of the greatest intellectual exchanges in history. Yet this very spirit of open inquiry and debate would produce a conservative backlash. Today, we look at the beginnings of Islamic Theology.
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The peak of Golden Age power and achievement came in the reign of the seventh Abbasid caliph, al-Ma'mun, who sponsored the arts and sciences, debated the great intellectuals of the day, considered himself the ultimate religious authority and the defender of the faith, while he also aimed to reunite the Sunni and Shi'a. Although al-Ma'mun would only achieve some of his dreams, his rule set the pattern for Sunni Islam for centuries, but also carried the seeds of decline and eventual collapse. In this episode, we examine one of the greatest, and most controversial caliphs.
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In this episode, we take a realistic look at the development of one of the most comprehensive and detailed legal codes in history, the Shar'ia of Islamic Law. Although the subject of alarmist warnings on the internet today, the Shar'ia grew as a sophisticate legal system that worked in balance with science, philosophy, and traditions in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious empire.
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Did the Muslims invent the modern sciences that fueled the European Renaissance, or were they merely translators and transmitters of knowledge from the ancient Greeks? In this episode, we consider the Islamic contributions to science in the early period of the Abbasid Caliphate and examine the claim that the Muslims developed the scientific method as we know it.
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Why was the Muslim community beset by divisions even though the Qur'an had been preserved exactly as revealed? This episode examines the emergence of the second, and most controversial source of Islamic law: the Hadith, or sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. In the early centuries of Islam, over half a million reported sayings circulated, with most experts accepting no more than 2% as accurate. Competing the hadith would become the basis of controversies over law and practice, and the science of Hadith analysis became one of the most important intellectual and legal disciplines of the Muslim empire, and remains so today.
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The Islamic intellectual movement that rescued the works of Classical Greece and Rome and sparked the European renaissance took off with the founding of Baghdad in 750 AD. The Abbasid caliphs poured vast wealth into the creation of centers of research and analysis unparalleled in the world. The beginning phase of this effort is known, rather inaccurately, as 'The Translation Movement," and is credited with saving much of the knowledge of Greece and Rome from the barbarian invasions. Yet at the center of this movement, in the famed "House of Wisdom" in Baghdad, a merging of Classical wisdom with Islam was beginning an intellectual revolution that would forever change Western thinking. In this episode, we examine the Translation Movement and one of its leading figures, the "First Arab Philosopher," Abu Yusuf al-Kindi.
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The true Golden Age of Islam is considered the Abbasid Caliphate, which lasted from 750 to 1258 AD and whose capital, Baghdad was the grandest city on earth - the center of intellectual, scientific and cultural achievement. The reality was more complicated and often didn't match the legend. In this episode, we look at how this great caliphate came to power and what made it unique.
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While Europe lay in the Dark Ages, the Umayyad Caliphate established the largest empire the world had yet seen, the political, military, economic and cultural superpower of its day. It also set the standards for what a great Muslim empire would be and set in motion trends that would dominate the world for the next 500 years and continue to influence the world today. Yet its division of the world into a realm of peace and a realm of war continues to worry some oberservers. In this episode, we look at the transformation of the growing Muslim community into a great world empire which laid the foundations for one of History's Golden Ages.
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From a small community in the desert city of Medina, the Muslim state established an empire larger than the world had yet seen. This amazing conquest--from Spain to the edge of China--was made possible by the nature of Muslim rule and set the stage for one of the greatest civilizations in history. How did this happen? Why did Islam succeed and persist when others failed or faded quickly?
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Few concepts in Islam are as misunderstood today as the split between Sunni and Shi'a. Yet this division plays a very important role in the politics and social dynamics of the Muslim world. In this episode, we examine the reasons for this split, and more importantly, its impact on the subsequent generations of Islamic history and the world today
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The first Caliphs after the Prophet Muhammad established a Muslim state that would grow to cover much of the world. These critical leaders--the Rashidun--set the precedent for what Islamic leadership and a Muslim state would be.
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The Islamic calendar begins when the first Muslim community is established in Medina. From that day forward, Islam will be not only a religion, but an independent state, with its own military and political leadership. That state will grow to rule much of the world and at its core will be this idea of a united political, military, cultural and religious community. This would shape a dramatically different world view than that of Christianity. In this episode, we explore the emergence and development of that state.
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When Europe was in the depths of the Dark Ages, a civilization emerged from the Arabian desert that would change History forever. The greatest military, political and economic power the world had seen, it would also establish one of the most brilliant intellectual, scientific and cultural traditions in History. When a humble merchant in a desert town emerged from a cave with a vision, few thought he would survive the wrath of the pagan leaders of his hometown, much less go on to reshape History. The foundations of this change are what we'll discuss today.
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In 1850, an impoverished twenty-five-year-old named Fredericka Mandelbaum came to New York in steerage and worked as a peddler on the streets of Lower Manhattan. By the 1870s she was a fixture of high society and an admired philanthropist. How was she able to ascend from tenement poverty to vast wealth?
In the intervening years, “Marm” Mandelbaum had become the country’s most notorious “fence”—a receiver of stolen goods—and a criminal mastermind. By the mid-1880s as much as $10 million worth of purloined luxury goods (nearly $300 million today) had passed through her Lower East Side shop. Called “the nucleus and center of the whole organization of crime,” she planned robberies of cash, gold and diamonds throughout the country.
But Mandelbaum wasn’t just a successful crook: She was a business visionary—one of the first entrepreneurs in America to systemize the scattershot enterprise of property crime. Handpicking a cadre of the finest bank robbers, housebreakers and shoplifters, she handled logistics and organized supply chains—turning theft into a viable, scalable business.
To discuss this story is today’s guest, Margalit Fox, author of The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum. We look at a colorful fixture of Gilded Age New York—a city teeming with nefarious rogues, capitalist power brokers and Tammany Hall bigwigs, all straddling the line between underworld enterprise and “legitimate” commerce.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
