John Vernon Lord - “The Hen-Thorir Tale” in Icelandic Sagas, Volume 2
Norway, poems, bad luck, and the fateful burning of a hall.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Grettir's Saga, translated by Jesse Byock. Oxford University Press, 2009.
Grettir's Saga, translated by Denton Fox and Hermann Palsson. University of Toronto Press, 1974.
Grettir and the Undead Old Karr - Henry Justice Ford
This is the first episode of a narrative series on the Icelandic saga of a famed outlaw. The Saga of Grettir the Strong opens with his grandfather leaving King Harald's Norway for Iceland. We follow its portrayal of Grettir's troubled childhood and his tests of strength against boulders, men, bears, and (for some Halloween appropriate listening) draugr, the undead of the burial mound.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Grettir's Saga, translated by Jesse Byock. Oxford University Press, 2009.
Grettir's Saga, translated by Denton Fox and Hermann Palsson. University of Toronto Press, 1974.
Three Icelandic Outlaw Sagas, translated by George Johnston and Anthony Faulkes. Everyman, 2001.
Fragments of 9th-Century Wall Paintings from Dar al-Khilafa, Samarra, Iraq - (Wikimedia)
Tāj al-Dīn ‘Alī ibn Anjab ibn al-Sā’ī was born in the last years of the 12th century and lived until the last quarter of the 13th. He was a prolific writer who grew up Abbasid Baghdad and saw it fall to the Mongol invasion of Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan.
His solitary work that survives in its entirety is Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad. In that book, he reaches all the way back to Hammādah bint ‘Īsā, who was married to al-Mansūr the Abbasid dynastic founder and died in 780, and all the way up to Shāhān, a contemporary of his and the concubine of al-Mustansir who died in 1242. He fills its pages with the women of the Abbasid caliphal court, women who appear there as wives, concubines, poets, and more. This episode is about some of those medieval women.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Ibn al-Sā'ī. Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad, edited by Shawkat M. Toorawa. New York University Press, 2015.
Caswell, F.M. The Slave Girls of Baghdad: The Qiyan in the Early Abbasid Era. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011.
Detail from a 15th-century illustrated telling of a Nizami story, commissioned in Herat. (Met Museum)
A standalone episode on medieval diplomacy, on the travels, career, and narrative of a 14th and 15th century Ming Dynasty diplomat and administrator, and on the history around him. Chen Cheng would suffer professional setbacks outside of his control, as the the Jianwen Emperor would be replaced by the Yongle Emperor, and he would make the overland journey from China to see Shah Rukh, the son of Timur (Tamerlane), in Timurid Herat.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Hecker, Felicia J. “A Fifteenth-Century Chinese Diplomat in Herat.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3, no. 1 (1993): 85–98.
Rossabi, Morris. “Two Ming Envoys to Inner Asia.” T’oung Pao 62, no. 1/3 (1976): 1–34.
17th-century painting by anonymous artist - (Wikimedia)
A story of medieval travel and diplomacy, the 15th-century story of Ghiyath al-Din and the other Timurid envoys, and their visit to Yongle's Beijing on behalf of Timur's son Shah Rukh.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
"Report to Mirza Baysunghur on the Timurid Legation to the Ming Court at Peking," in A Century of Princes: Sources on Timurid History and Art, selected and translated by W. M. Thackston. Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, 1989.
Ford, Graeme. "The Uses of Persian in Imperial China: The Translation Practices of the Great Ming," in The Persianate World, edited by Nile Green. University of California Press, 2019.
Hecker, Felicia J. “A Fifteenth-Century Chinese Diplomat in Herat,” in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3, no. 1 (1993): 85–98.
Lipman, Jonathan N. Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China. University of Washington Press, 2011.
Park, Hyunhee. Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds: Cross-Cultural Exchange in Pre-Modern Asia. Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Rossabi, Morris. A History of China. Wiley, 2013.
Rossabi, Morris. "Two Ming Envoys to Inner Asia," in T’oung Pao 62, no. 1/3 (1976): 1–34.
Tsai, Shih-shan Henry. Perpetual Happiness. University of Washington Press, 2011.
The Yongle Emperor
In the early 15th century, Shah Rukh, the son of Timur, sent an embassy east to the target of his father's last military campaign, Ming China. Making that journey from Timurid Herat to the home of the Yongle Emperor (with stops along the way at Samarkand, Tashkent, Hami, Ganzhou, and finally Khanbaliq) was a chronicler and painter named Ghiyāth al-Dīn. His story is one of medieval diplomacy and travel.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
"Report to Mirza Baysunghur on the Timurid Legation to the Ming Court at Peking," in A Century of Princes: Sources on Timurid History and Art, selected and translated by W. M. Thackston. Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, 1989.
Ford, Graeme. "The Uses of Persian in Imperial China: The Translation Practices of the Great Ming," in The Persianate World, edited by Nile Green. University of California Press, 2019.
Lipman, Jonathan N. Familiar Strangers A History of Muslims in Northwest China. University of Washington Press, 2011.
Park, Hyunhee. Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds: Cross-Cultural Exchange in Pre-Modern Asia. Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Rossabi, Morris. A History of China. Wiley, 2013.
Rossabi, Morris. "Two Ming Envoys to Inner Asia," in T’oung Pao 62, no. 1/3 (1976): 1–34.
Tsai, Shih-shan Henry. Perpetual Happiness. University of Washington Press, 2011.
Earthquake, and hiding kings, in Revelation, 14th century - (British Library)
Another year of drought, another of famine, and even more disasters pile on for the early-13th-century Egyptians. We also see Abd al-Latif make a surprising 20th-century appearance.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī. A Physician on the Nile: A Description of Egypt and Journal of the Famine Years. NYU Press, 2021.
Barber, Malcolm. The Crusader States. Yale University Press, 2012.
Dols, Michael Walters. The Black Death in the Middle East. Princeton University Press, 2019.
Ellis, Richard. Imagining Atlantis. Knopf, 2012.
Modern, John. Neuromatic: Or, A Particular History of Religion and the Brain. University of Chicago Press, 2021.
Image from the Luzerner Schilling, a 16th-century manuscript (Wikimedia)
What happens when the river fails to rise? In 597 (1200), Abd al-Latif found famine, crime, and cannibalism.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī. A Physician on the Nile: A Description of Egypt and Journal of the Famine Years. NYU Press, 2021.
Lev, Yaacov. Administration of Justice in Medieval Egypt: From the 7th to the 12th Century. Edinburgh University Press, 2020.
Lewicka, Paulina B. Food and Foodways of Medieval Cairenes: Aspects of Life in an Islamic Metropolis of the Eastern Mediterranean. Brill, 2011.
Traveling Through Egypt: From 450 B.C. to the Twentieth Century, edited by Deborah Manley & Sahar Abdel-Hakim. American University in Cairo Press, 2008.
The Sphinx, as it appears in Frederic Louis Norden's 1755 Voyage d'Égypte et de Nubie (Wikimedia)
Like many people ever since, and even now, Abd al-Latif was fascinated by Egypt's ancient sites and structures, the pyramids and the Sphinx. He was fascinated, but also disgusted with how their stones and contents had been treated as his contemporaries looked to them less with wonder, more with greed.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī. A Physician on the Nile: A Description of Egypt and Journal of the Famine Years. NYU Press, 2021.
Bonadeo, Cecilia Martini. ʿAbd Al-Laṭīf Al-Baġdādī’s Philosophical Journey From Aristotle’s Metaphysics to the ‘Metaphysical Science’. Brill, 2013.
Ibn Abi Usaybi'a. A Literary History of Medicine. Edited by E. Savage-Smith, S. Swain, and G.J. van Gelder. Leiden, 2020.
Joosse, Peter. The Physician as a Rebellious Intellectual. Peter Lang, 2014.
Miniature from a copy of Kitab al-hashaish, an Arabic translation of Dioscorides’s De Materia Medica. (The David Collection)
We continue the Abd al-Latif series and dig into his observations on Egypt, its plants and animals, the hybrid banana and the terrifying sea horse.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī. A Physician on the Nile: A Description of Egypt and Journal of the Famine Years. NYU Press, 2021.
Bonadeo, Cecilia Martini. ʿAbd Al-Laṭīf Al-Baġdādī’s Philosophical Journey From Aristotle’s Metaphysics to the ‘Metaphysical Science’. Brill, 2013.
Ibn Abi Usaybi'a. A Literary History of Medicine. Edited by E. Savage-Smith, S. Swain, and G.J. van Gelder. Leiden, 2020.
Joosse, Peter. The Physician as a Rebellious Intellectual. Peter Lang, 2014.
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