Uploaded July 2022 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago
Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī was a Shʿī poet who was born in Iraq but lived much of his life in Mardin in modern day Turkey. He was an exemplar of versatility in verse for the much neglected Mamluk period of literary history.
Timestamps
01:20 Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī was born in 1278 just over a decade after the Mongol sack of Baghdad. What do we know about his socio-political context?
08:27 War and disaster forced al-Ḥillī to leave his family and move to Mardin. What do we know about his life?
13:14 Al-Ḥillī’s poetic style is described as innovative and experimental. How would you characterise his work?
19:33 Al-Ḥillī is perhaps best remembered for verses that inspired the Pan-Arab colors: "White are our deeds, black are our battles, / Green are our tents, red are our swords." How would you characterise his legacy?
25:28 Finally, let's end with a sample and translation.
This is the eleventh part of a twelve part series exploring classical Arabic poetry which can be utilised in college-level teaching programmes. For more on our guest, see kblankinship.com. Sponsored by shop.ihrc.org
Get 15% off with discount code AHP15 at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Contact IHRC Bookshop for details.
Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī was a Shʿī poet who was born in Iraq but lived much of his life in Mardin in modern day Turkey. He was an exemplar of versatility in verse for the much neglected Mamluk period of literary history.
Timestamps
01:20 Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī was born in 1278 just over a decade after the Mongol sack of Baghdad. What do we know about his socio-political context?
08:27 War and disaster forced al-Ḥillī to leave his family and move to Mardin. What do we know about his life?
13:14 Al-Ḥillī’s poetic style is described as innovative and experimental. How would you characterise his work?
19:33 Al-Ḥillī is perhaps best remembered for verses that inspired the Pan-Arab colors: "White are our deeds, black are our battles, / Green are our tents, red are our swords." How would you characterise his legacy?
25:28 Finally, let's end with a sample and translation.
This is the eleventh part of a twelve part series exploring classical Arabic poetry which can be utilised in college-level teaching programmes. For more on our guest, see kblankinship.com. Sponsored by shop.ihrc.org
Get 15% off with discount code AHP15 at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Contact IHRC Bookshop for details.
![💧EP048 GUEST EPISODE (2/8) Mesopotamia: Taming the Euphrates [AUDIO ONLY]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Rl7GTcTXFBE/mqdefault.jpg "💧EP048 GUEST EPISODE (2/8) Mesopotamia: Taming the Euphrates [AUDIO ONLY]
Part of the “Source of Life: Water Management in the Premodern Middle East” project (Radboud Institute for Culture and History).
Ep2. Mesopotamia: Taming the Euphrates
Mesopotamia means “the land between the rivers.” The fertile silt and life-giving waters from the rivers Tigris and Euphrates allowed the region to develop into a key area of human settlement and culture in the late Holocene around 12000 years ago. In this episode we discuss the earliest settlements in Mesopotamia and how humans have managed their rela.tionship to the rivers in Iraq up until today.
Speaker: Jaafar Jotheri. Interviewer: Edmund Hayes.
Dr. Jaafar Jotheri is Assistant Professor in Geo-Archaeology, Department of Archaeology, University of Al-Qadisiyah
https://csm-qadiss.academia.edu/JaafarJotheri
This episode was produced by Edmund Hayes and Jouke Heringa.
Further Reading
“Tigris-Euphrates River System”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/place/Tigris-Euphrates-river-system
T Wilkinson, L Rayne, J Jotheri, “Hydraulic landscapes in Mesopotamia: the role of human niche construction” Water History 7 (4), 397-418
TJ Wilkinson, J Jotheri “The Origins of Levee and Levee-Based Irrigation in the Nippur Area–Southern Mesopotamia” From Sherds to Landscapes: Studies on the Ancient Near East in Honor of McGuire Gibson, SAOC 71, edited by Mark Altaweel and Carrie Hritz (Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2021).
Edmund Hayes
twitter.com/Hedhayes20
https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-hayes-490913211/
https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/EdmundHayes
https://hcommons.org/members/ephayes/
Abbasid History Podcast is sponspored by IHRC Bookshop
Listeners get a 15% discount on all purchases online and in-store.
Visit IHRC bookshop at shop.ihrc.org and use discount code AHP15 at checkout.
Terms and conditions apply. Contact IHRC bookshop for details.
https://linktr.ee/abbasidhistorypodcast")
![💧EP047 GUEST EPISODE (1/8) Water History and the Pre-Modern Middle East [AUDIO ONLY]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/XGsFtLz3Ars/mqdefault.jpg "💧EP047 GUEST EPISODE (1/8) Water History and the Pre-Modern Middle East [AUDIO ONLY]
Part of the “Source of Life: Water Management in the Premodern Middle East” project (Radboud Institute for Culture and History)
This episode was produced by Edmund Hayes and Jouke Heringa.
Ep1. Water History and the Pre-Modern Middle East
The cities of the medieval Middle East were some of the largest in the world, dwarfing the major cities of western Europe, for example. So how did they support large populations in relatively arid conditions? In this episode we provide an overview of the kinds of hydraulic infrastructure and social institutions that allowed pre-modern Middle Eastern cities to function.
Speakers: Maaike van Berkel and Josephine van den Bent. Interviewer: Edmund Hayes.
This episode, and this series on water history and the medieval Middle East was produced by Edmund Hayes and Jouke Heringa as part of the project, “Source of Life: Water Management in the Premodern Middle East” at Radboud University. The “Source of Life” project was funded by the Dutch NWO VICI funding scheme. Additional funding for this podcast series was supplied by the Radboud Fonds of Radboud University.
Maaike van Berkel is Professor of History at Radboud University and director of the project “Source of Life: Urban Water Management in the Premodern Middle East” funded by the Dutch NWO VICI programme.
Josephine van den Bent is a researcher on the Source of Life project at Radboud University and assistant professor of Medieval History at the University of Amsterdam.
Further reading
Maaike van Berkel, “Waqf Documents on the Provision of Water in Mamluk Egypt,” in M. van Berkel, L. Buskens and P.M. Sijpesteijn (eds.), Legal Documents as Sources for the History of Muslim Societies (Brill: Leiden, 2017).
Peter Brown and Maaike van Berkel, “Water Provision in Early Islamic Cities: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Urban Water Governance,” in E Rose, M de Bruin, and R Flierman (eds) City, Citizen & Citizenship 400–1600: A Comparative Approach (Palgrave Macmillan: London, forthcoming).
Josephine van den Bent and Peter Brown, “Constructing Hydraulic Infrastructure in the Abbasid and Tulunid Capitals: Water Conduits in Baghdad, Samarra, and Cairo between the eighth and ninth centuries,” Al-Masāq, forthcoming.
Edmund Hayes, “A Late Umayyad Reform to the Water Distribution System in the Hinterland of Damascus,” Al-Masāq, forthcoming.
Edmund Hayes
https://twitter.com/Hedhayes20
https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-hayes-490913211/
https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/EdmundHayes
https://hcommons.org/members/ephayes/
Maaike van Berkel
https://radboud.academia.edu/MaaikevanBerkel
Josephine van den Bent
https://radboud.academia.edu/JosephinevandenBent
Abbasid History Podcast is sponspored by IHRC Bookshop
Listeners get a 15% discount on all purchases online and in-store.
Visit IHRC bookshop at shop.ihrc.org and use discount code AHP15 at checkout.
Terms and conditions apply. Contact IHRC bookshop for details.
https://linktr.ee/abbasidhistorypodcast")
