Awesome Podcast: Islam & Middle East

Here's an awesome podcast called Head On History about Islam and the Middle East.

Ali A. Olomi produces the podcast.

He's a graduate student pursuing his doctorate in the cultural, intellectual, and religious history of the ancient Mediterranean.

Olomi just produced a special podcast about the controversy in AP World History. The College Board wants to start the course in 1450 instead of prehistory, where it has always started. Olomi provides the context for the study of world history, explaining its origin as a discipline and its relationship to Western Civilization courses.

In addition to this special podcast, Olomi produces many episodes dealing with the history of Islam. I listened to one about Al Andulus and Islamic Spain. He reviews how Muslims expanded into Spain and Portugal and how  Berbers and Moors influenced Spanish culture.

We learn, for example, that the majority of Islamic history for hundreds and hundreds of years took place outside the so-called Arab world in places like Spain and Egypt. While Arab was the "lingua franca," few in these outside places were ethnically Arab.

Here are some of the other podcasts.

Thanks to Angela Lee for tweeting the link.