
This six-part series tells the story of the birth and flourishing of civilisation in the Middle East and its huge influence on the West. From the foundation of science, monotheism, commerce, justice, civil rights and artistic expression - look Eastward. The series contends that history that starts from an ancient Greek perspective distorts the true path of civilisation. For crucial phases in world history, the political, economic and cultural centre was the Middle East.
Air Date: 2012-03-06
This episode follows the birth of civilization in Anatolia and the Middle East. We go back to the very beginnings; hu...
Air Date: 2012-04-06
Today one god is worshipped by two thirds of humanity. It is the culmination of an extraordinary story by which a sin...
Air Date: 2012-10-20
We trace the origins of the Arabs and Islam, from nomadic Bedouins to the sophisticated Nabataean cultures at Petra a...
Air Date: 2012-09-08
In this film we will reveal how a golden age of invention and scholarship thrived in the Islamic World at a time when...
Air Date: 2012-11-03
This spectacular episode explores the extraordinary powers and civilizations that have emerged from central Asia. Fir...
Air Date: 2012-09-15
At the time of Elizabeth I, the greatest power in the world was not England, France or Florence, it was the Ottoman E...
Air Date: 2012-09-15
The film looks at the wider Ottoman world, taking in superb merchants’ houses in Birgi (Anatolia) and Damascus. At th...