Dan Snow's History Hit - Alexandria

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

This is the story of a city that laid the foundations for our modern world. Sitting at the intersection of East and West, Alexandria has been home to many of humanity's greatest architectural and cultural achievements, like the famous Lighthouse and the storied Great Library. Some of history's most illustrious figures have left their mark there, from Alexander the Great and Aristotle to Julius Caesar and Cleopatra.Dan is joined by Islam Issa, Professor of English at Birmingham City University and author of 'Alexandria: The City that Changed the World'. Islam explains how a city that started as a vision in Alexander the Great’s mind became a global capital of knowledge.This episode was first released in February 2024.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.You can sign up to watch Dan and Dr Michael Livingston's documentary series on Magna Carta on https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's history hit. Homer wrote that after Helen and Paris ran away together, wildly in love, they landed on the island of Ferros on the southern edge of the Mediterranean, what is now and what was then, Egypt. The poet also says that on her way back to Greece, having been recaptured by her husband Menelaus after the strike. of Troy, the death of Paris, she also visited that same island on the way home. This story was well known in the classical Greek world.

And that's why, when Alexander the Great became the only Greek warlord to conquer Egypt, it was very natural that this massive Homer fanboy, Alexander the Great, decided to build a huge city on the island of Feros. It was to be a totem of his new empire, sitting at the crossroads, of this mighty realm, spanning three continents. The city that he founded on that island, he gave his name to. It was Alexandria. And the city is surely one of his most enduring, most significant legacies.

Alexander was buried there in the centuries that followed his death. His city flourished. It became possibly the first city on earth to reach a million in population. It was a center of trade. and it became a centre of knowledge. It was home to the greatest library in world history to that point. A centre of study. Tell me all about Alexandria.

Tell me all about this extraordinary city. I've got a son of that city, a native of Alexandria. Islam Issa. He is a multi-award-winning author, curator and broadcaster. He's professor of literature and history at Birmingham City University. He's just written a book, Alexandria, the city that changed. changed the world. Let's hear from him. Enjoy. T-minus 10. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king.

No black white unity till there is first than black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift-off and the shuttle has cleared the power. Islam, thanks so much coming on the podcast. I'm very excited to be here. Alexander is such an obvious place to have a massive city. I mean, was there stuff there before Alexander the Great? Or is this genuinely a new foundation? I think when Alexander arrived at this location, there was probably an anticlimax.

There was an island there that was uninhabited, Feros Island. And then on the Mediterranean coast, there were some scattered fishing villages. But there was a lake to the south of the Mediterranean as well where there were some shrubby farmlands that people occupied. But no, I think it was probably a bit of an anti-climax in terms of who was there and how many people occupied the space. This was really a city that was constructed purposefully. Usually a city is founded as a result of a geographical division or a war.

This wasn't the case here. This was a place that was not organically created. It was purposely created when he arrived and realized that it had potential. Do you have a sense of where the ancient ferrod, presumably they had a big port. at the mouth of Nile. Was it where Damietta is now or a little bit further to the east? Or does this show Alexander's interest in tying Egypt in with the rest of the ancient Near East with the Greek world from which he'd sprung? Is this a big statement? It's a bit of both, I'd say. If I were to summarize Alexander and his goals, I think he wanted

world domination, to put it simply, and obviously was interested in expanding eastwards towards Persia and India and so on. Egypt is very much at the centre of his world between Europe and Asia. But also Egypt has existed as a civilisation for a long time. So when Alexander arrives there, he's halfway in the timeline between us and the Great Pyramids. So that's how long the pyramids had been there.

So Egypt's already got a reputation as a place of medical knowledge, for example, as a place of engineering feats. So I think part of it is also an ambition to control what is a not just geographically well-positioned place, but a place that has a long history and a reputation and its own traditions and cultures. Because that's what sort of really comes across with Alexandria,

but I can't work out how much of this is myth that I've just fallen for. Was it designed and set up to be somehow different from other places? First of all, when he arrives, I think it's part of Greek consciousness already as a result of Homer. So it's got this mythological prowess from the very beginning. It's mentioned in Homer's writing, this location. So the island of Faros is mentioned. Yes, exactly.

So the island is mentioned. Homer at this time isn't just literature. It's kind of like history. And in the absence of single scripture, it's got a theological importance as well. So the island of Ferros is mentioned. It's mentioned that Helen of Troy goes there, twice in Greek mythology. So it's already part of the consciousness. Plutarch writes that Alexander actually dreams of a venerable gray-haired man appearing before him and quoting Homer

an island lies where loud the billows raw, Ferros, they call it, on the Egyptian shore, and that Alexander just gets up and goes immediately to this location. So that's the first point. It's part of the consciousness already, which helps him in that quest. But I do think Alexandria is unique in its founding in that it's built on what I argue are two radical visions about how to create a city. Like I've said, it's not come about from geographical division or war. It's not organically expanded. It's purposely expanded. So the first of those visions is that gathering a uniquely diverse group of people together in one space and allowing them the freedoms of their own cultures and faiths can help the economy and create a global trading hub. And a second of these is that

knowledge equals power. That comes slightly after Alexander, but that's the idea that if you collect the world's knowledge and you are the caretaker of that knowledge and the disseminator of that knowledge that you can garner some serious soft power. So I think because of those two visions, Alexandria is quite unique in the way that it's set up. Yeah, I love that. That's such an interesting insight that it was a place in Egypt the Greeks had heard of, and therefore I guess it would have attracted their gaze. And also, it's near Greece. It opens up an artery for communication, for reinforcement. If you've got trouble in your Eastern Empire, having a big Greek city on that coast, a day's sail from Crete is probably really

useful? Yes, it's the intersection of the continents. It's a crossroads through which the Hellenistic world can connect with the, particularly with the treasures of Asia and Persia. It's uniquely connected to Africa via the Nile, the Levantan Uruk, via the Mediterranean, obviously, and then Arabia and India through the Red Sea. So Alexandria can become this link between the three continents, and that allows trade very quickly to develop. It allows the movement of people, and it also allows cultural exchange. But on that note, I don't think that Alexander, again, it's part of the unique start that the city had. He doesn't hellenize in the way that might have been expected at that time.

I think he chooses rather to harmonize. So he allows the Egyptians to continue worshipping their gods. He invites the Jews to the city with the promise of freedom of worship. There are early Buddhists. It's really quite a unique vision of society and of how. how to build a population, because the first thing you need when you create a city from scratch is people as well. So it's very exciting because Aristotle, we think, is involved in city planning, as well as some other very brilliant men. He doesn't really spend any time there, that's city that

bears his name, one of his most famous legacies. He's there for, what, a couple of months? If that really, I mean, Alexander legend has it. He arrives. He's excited, and he ecstatically gets onto his knees and scribbles the plan for the city on the sand, and it's a plan that has the public spaces and the markets and the harbour and also a shrine to the muses, which will become the library. And then he rushes off for his next adventure. He goes southwards towards the Seaward Oasis in order to find out about his parentage and where he becomes convinced that he has divine parentage and are linked to his use. So Alexander's over-excited and leaves, But his stamp on it, his stamp on the city is present through these legends, through the Alexander romance that's written in order to record some of the legends that he has and the stories of Alexander through his friend and general, Ptolemy, who is the one who is the successor to him after he dies in Egypt. He takes Egypt, Ptolemy.

But also just the fact that, as you've mentioned, Aristotle is Alexander's tutor. And that's a really quite magnificent line of knowledge. So Aristotle teaches Ptolemy and Alexander. So we have Alexander and Ptolemy. Aristotle's taught by Plato. Plato's taught by Socrates. I mean, that is quite the line of teachers. And so it makes sense for the city to be planned in a very educated way.

It's not randomly designed in terms of its urban planning. It makes sense for the city to have a library thereafter as well as a result of that. Islam, can I ask, is there any of that original street plan or planning visible in your native city today? Yes, the short answer is yes. The Greek architect Hippodomus was a champion of the grid system. His ideas were held in high regard and especially by Aristotle. And it was about having big straight streets, cut at right angles. So that's the promenade, if you like in Alexandria.

Promenade is this long straight street that allows for multiple lanes. So at the time, it was multiple lanes of horses and chariots and so on. Now it's multiple lanes of cars driving in every direction. But also the one that really, you can really feel literally in Alexandria today is that the promenade should profit from the sea breeze. So the angle of the promenade is supposed to profit from the sea breeze and shelter the people from strong winds. And that's probably what's felt today from that initial design, because it's at the same angle. Amazing. So the city is, unlike some parts of Alexander's Imperial projects, it's an extraordinary success. So Alexandria starts to benefit, does it, as being the sort of key node for

Eastern trade coming into this, and I guess African trade coming into the Mediterranean basin. And the population, it balloons. Yeah. I mean, the population is obviously something that's intended to be. So I'd say two things in the very early design confirmed this. The first is the cisterns. So the fact that they really sorted a whole sewage system immediately suggests that they wanted people to live there. And the second is based also on Hippodomus's urban planning, which Aristotle and the engineer Dinocrates, who was charged of building Alexandria, believed in, was the value of uninhabited space. So the central areas were left uninhabited and unbuilt,

knowing that the city could then evolve as the population grew. So that's proof that it was supposed to grow. And then to bring people in beyond the urban planning, there was also the creation of the cult of Alexandria, if you like, in order to attract people. So you attract people through different means. One of them is obviously what I call in the book the Alexandrian dream, which is basically there's loads of work here, come and work. And the other side of that was also that Ptolemy hijacks Alexander's corpse, brings it to Alexandria and creates this mosleum around it.

So it's got this attraction, but also the creation of Cerepice is a unifying god. So the Ptolemy's bring this amalgam of a god whose Greeko Egyptian. So both the Egyptians and Greeks can worship the divine protector of the city. So these all help bring people in. And I think that's the key. That population is the key to the city becoming a trade hub because it could be well positioned at the intersection of the continents but have no one there. But once they bring everyone there, they're able to develop their trade with different,

many people working on the harbour, many people work in construction, grain is exported. among other things, and then you have the imports coming, both from Europe and from Asia, are stopping. So it becomes a kind of transit place as well. That's something I've not really seen many people discuss before. It's not just that it's a trade centre. It's also a transport hub where people can transit in between travelling east and west. And although it doesn't appear to be all Sunday uplands, it's a place where different nationalities and ethnicities seem to be able to carve a path through life, with perhaps slightly less interference they might go in other places? Yes, I mean, as far as scholars are

concerned, for example, to give one example, Alexandria is a liberal city, so whereas in Athens scholars could be evicted from the city on grounds of impiety, the fact there's no democracy in Alexandria is actually working in favor of that, because it means that people can say what they want to do what they want for the large part. And as you've mentioned, the population increases by the first century BC to hundreds of thousands and it becomes one of the most populated cities on earth, perhaps the first city to reach a million. So part of that is the jobs, that people have jobs. Part of it is this liberal city concept that people can flee there, that people can bring their communities there, that people can preach there. So for the large part,

It's a place where people are free to be themselves. Obviously, that begins to change as the centuries pass. You listen to Dan Snow's history hit. The best is yet to come. Stick with us. This episode is brought to you by Speck Sabres. Just think about everything your eyes do everyday folks. You're reading.

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from Amberlyn to her daughter Elizabeth I. But we also do lots that's not Tudors, murderers, mistresses, mistresses, pirates and witches. Clues in the title, really. So follow not just the Tudors from a history hit wherever you get your podcasts. Let's do the lighthouse. What was it about this lighthouse

that was one of the wonders of the world? Well, first of all, it's really tall. I mean, it's potentially the tallest or second tallest man-made building in the world at that time. It's the first great lighthouse from recorded history placed on right there on the island of Ferros, which Alexander had ordered to be connected to the Mediterranean coast via a causeway.

And this lighthouse is, I mean, it's a spectacle. It's as much for practical purposes. So it has a mirror for reflection of the sun during the day and a furnace to guide the ships with a fire during the night. But it's also supposed to be a show of power. It stands tall and shows that this city is a rich city. It shows that this is a powerful dynasty, the Tolemus. And it shows that people, as they come into the city, they can follow that Alexandrian dream as the Ferros Lighthouse that it was called rises majestically. So at least 100 meters tall, some narrations put it around 117, 135 meters. It's white limestone, so it reflects the light.

And like I said, it costs a huge amount of money. Calling the first treasury would have cost about a tenth of the treasury, so 800 talents. And today's money, that's $16 million. pound. So it's a show of power. And it lasts for over a thousand years until the great medieval earthquake. It's so sad. We almost got to have a glimpse of that. Tell me now,

it talks about knowledge. Alexandria is so famous for the great library. Why did Alexandria become this great seat of knowledge? And how amazing was that library? How much would you like to have seen it? It's something we have very limited information about in terms of how it looked. So part of the

wonder of it is that we continue to imagine it. But it starts with the founding myth, the founding legend of Alexander getting on his knees, scribbling in the sand and adding a shrine to the muses, where we get the term museum from now. And so it's part of their early vision for the city that knowledge equals power. And it becomes something of an obsession. How did it come about the Ptolemy's, Ptolemy the first, and then it's followed by Ptolemy the second and third. they hire Demetrius, who has to found the city. He's a former Athenian governor. And his job description, if you like, is to gather all the books in the world.

We know that from a letter at the time. And it's a seemingly impossible task. It's also not a very selective task, but they go to great measures to do so because they believe that if they are the guardians of knowledge, then knowledge equals power. And they build a museum adjacent to the library, which is a kind of research center where the scholars are free to stay, they have tenure, if you like. They get free food and accommodation as long as they do research. It's a huge project, it's a huge complex. Gathering all the books in the world, there's all these scrolls, and the quest to find

these is quite intriguing. They go to great measures and lengths in order to do so. By the first century BC, it's thought there are 700,000 books, some people say over a million the second librarian is quoted as saying there are half a million scrolls there. So it's really factual description to gather all the books in the world. That's the main task of the library. Our comedies, he may have spent time there, but we do know some other extraordinarily important thinkers, mathematicians, scientists. Tell me up one or two who would have used that research centre.

Is it hypatia? Tell me about her. Well, she's the greatest female philosopher of her generation. She is interested in renewing and analyzing the early mathematicians of Alexandria. And she takes a very public role of philosopher. So a philosopher at the time in Alexandria isn't just somebody who sits in the room and philosophies as a lobe. A philosopher has an open house which people can come to to learn to seek counsel. She is involved with the governors of Alexandria. But the issue with her page is that she appears at a time where,

when Christianity is spreading in Alexandria and when there's some serious doubts placed on the philosophy, what would have been termed pagan philosophy, and she's tragically killed in a sign of how the city changed from when it started as a place where people were entitled to different opinions and to freedom of opinion, freedom of worship, to a time when there are consequences to thinking differently to the status quo. I love Ptolemy, the geographer. Second century AD, was he working? He was, and he had some really fascinating notes

where he says things like, you know, I wouldn't want to be anywhere at Alexandria. You know, he felt that he was a part of the city that it gave him the freedom to do what he wanted and to write about what he wanted. He was also very much Alexandria in the sense that he didn't stick to one thing. He was well versed on geography, as we well know,

but also on music, for example. So he advanced the sort of science of music So a lot of these scholars like Bactolemy were interested in multiple fields and try to amalgamate those fields in order to reach sort of what they would have perceived as the ultimate truth.

I love Ptolemy's maps. People should go and Google, well, they should Google all of these people who are mentioning, but Ptolemy's maps are so extraordinary. Then we've got Euclid. Euclid, it's math and geometry. This is interesting in a sense

that he was very early, so he's before Hepatia and Ptolemy. He arrives in the city within a decade of its boundary. He writes, books out, lining the basics of geometry. He writes the elements, which was a 13-volume work, and there was a key textbook for those studying mathematics until maybe about 100 years ago. And interestingly, that because the library and its research center were state endeavors, there were constant links

with the pharaoh, with the Ptolemy's. So, for example, there's a letter, we mentioned Demetrius in gathering all the books in the world. There's a letter where he reports to the king about how many books he's gathered. So they're constantly checking on. And Euclid's interesting because Ptolemy the first, who is ruling Egypt and the Ptolemaic Empire, was fascinated by this new idea, by the geometry. And he wanted to learn it. And he summoned Euclid to the palace. He said to him, you know, this is too hard. Is there a way I can learn geometry without understanding your book, the element? And there's the famous reply from Euclid, which is there is no royal road to geometry. I think it's a really neat phrase because we can put that in any subject. There's no

royal road. You know, you have to work hard and understand what's in front of you in order to be an expert in it. Let's finish off the library, sadly, literally. Is there one catastrophic moment where the library is destroyed or does it just sort of get run down? It's a slow and steady decline. There's a moment, I guess, when Julius Caesar is there and he sets fire during this war in Alexandria to the ships on the harbour and he writes so in his autobiography, a very odd autobiography that's all in third person. So the fire is set to the harbour and it expands into the city and it seems like that caused some damage to the library

and Plutarch certainly thinks so. But there is evidence that the library survives and it's a steady decline over time. The library, because it starts as a state endeavour, In some ways we could say the same about our current situation. Libraries are very much symbolic of the political situation and public spending, that kind of thing. So the more the Romans influence Egypt, the more the library declines and the less freedoms that exist. So with the rise of Christianity later with the Muslims, the more that these freedoms are restricted, the more that scholars leave and head to our

Athens or Roe. And as these stolars leave, they also take books with them. They don't just take ideas with them. They take books. So it's a slow and steady decline. I don't think there's one moment, but I think symbolically, that does start in the first century BC when Julius Caesar sets fire to the city. Caesar's trying to conquer the Ptolemaic kingdom, is he, or he's marched in there with intent to expand the empire? Yes, I mean, he's an ambitious man who's got these huge rivalries in Rome. At this stage, obviously, Rome is still a republic. It's not quite the empire that we know. And he'd read Alexander's biographies. There's even a story of him weeping under Alexander's statue, lamenting that he hadn't achieved what Alexander has in his

30s. The Ptolemy's bring it on themselves to some extent, because they borrow money from the Romans, especially Cleopatra, the famous Cleopatra, the seventh, her father, Tolemy the 12th. They borrow a lot of money from Rome, and they put collateral on that. it was Ptolemy the 10th before that who sought support from Rome and specified that in the event of dying without an heir, Egypt would go to Rome, which seems like collateral, then Ptolemy the 12th borrows a lot of money from Rome as well. And so Caesar actually says, because Ptolemy the 12th is illegitimate, people didn't quite know who his mother was, that he's not a legitimate heir to Egypt and therefore it should belong to Rome based on what Ptolemy the 10th had done. So that's how the Ptolemy's kind of brought it on themselves. And then in 48 BC, the Romans then attack Alexandria. And Cleopatra signs with Caesar against her brother and sister in that particular occasion.

And her love affair with Caesar or by the way, her relationship, begins in the city, does it? Legend has it that she gets unfurled into the palace where Caesar is. So Caesar, when he arrives in Alexandria, makes himself at home immediately in the royal palace to the extent that Cleopatra has to somehow get inside. She gets inside, whether rolled from a Persian rug or not, you know, we can't be sure. And as the Roman army besieges the Harlow in 48 BC, Caesar and Cleopatra are inside. About a year and a half later, after these major Roman reinforcements arrive, the Alexandrian army escapes, and it's a victory for Caesar. That whole time, Cleopatra is in the palace, and she now has Césaire

whose little Caesar, her son from Julius Caesar. As Alexandria is then absorbed into really big empires, Rome, the Eastern Roman Empire, so the continuation of Roman Empire and then the early Islamic empires, does it decline in importance in those bigger units? I mean, it's a fluctuating story. No doubt that the Ptolemaic period was the period where it really did expand and where it was a global knowledge capital and a global trading tactile. With, for example, Constantine building a new city in Constantinople, of course Alexandria declines in importance. The early Muslims were very much land to people. When the Muslims

take Egypt, the Caliph Orders, Caliph Omar, orders that the capital be moved. And that's the moment when it loses its status as a capital. He orders for it to be moved because they don't like water. First of all, there's the Nile separating. you know, Mecca and the Red Sea separating Mecca from Alexandria says it's quite a distance, but also they don't have a Navy to start with, they're unsure about naval battles, and also they're unsure how to deal with a diverse population like Alexandria. So it declines in importance then, and then as more empires, it often serves their cities and serves their empires rather than being important in and of itself.

Those are two examples of that. What about modern Alexandria? That's what I like from your book. It's clear that it's not just the street plan that endures. There are characteristics as a feel in the city, which does hark back to its sort of founding principles and really. The difficulty is so much of the ancient city is absent. Some of it is under the city, physically under the city.

Some of it is in the depths of the ocean. But I think there's something about the name, believe it or not, that just reminds people of how all the city is. is and who the founder is, there are multiple periods present in it. So you might find a Roman theatre on one corner and a Mamluk mosque on another corner. So there's an expansive period of history in Alexandria as well. There's something of a unique character. So in the same way that it was called Alexandria by Egypt at the beginning, not in Egypt.

And in the same way that many people during the early centuries saw it as slightly separate to Egypt. And then Greek saw it as separate to Greece. And the Jews of Jerusalem, they saw the Jews of Alexandria to be these liberal Jews who, to quote, were more interested in theater than the synagogue. So Alexandria is always being a kind of odd one out. And I think that still remains. Alexandrians today have their own cultural traditions that are quite different to other. Mediterranean locations to the rest of Egypt, to the Arab region, Alexandria's still got those unique moments, you know. So for example, on the New Year, as it turns midnight, Alexandrians

throw pottery and throw glass out of their windows and balconies, and you can just hear it effing around the city until today, you know, that's something that Alexandria's doing on the New Year, and that comes from a Jewish and Greek and Hellenistic tradition. So there are these kind of quirks that you do feel that Alexandria is quite different. Alexandrians today will refer to Cairo as Egypt. They don't say Cairo. They say Egypt. So, yeah, there is something of that still in the air, for sure.

And I should ask, when's the last time we knew where Alexander was buried? Will he be unearthed one day by archaeologists in Alexandria? Or was his tomb looted and stolen? The fascinating thing is that so many Roman rulers visit Alexander's two, one after the other and then suddenly it stops even his people

know not where he is right straight blue so there's a sudden moment where people just seem to lose sight of where he is and could that be because it was so obvious that it didn't need to be recorded

or is it that it was lost to time it's a real mystery but the thing is Alexandrians do have their own theories so if you walk around Alexandria today people will have local legends about where Alexander is.

Many think he's near the Prophet Daniels Street, which is a lovely street because it has a big mosque, a big church and a big synagogue all on one road. There are people who think it's near the Roman ruins that had been found under the ground. There are small wall paintings of Alexander as well in some of the areas. So people have theories about it. And I'm sitting at cafes during the research process.

I heard so many theories about where Alexander is buried. Alexandrians will tell you, yes, he's still there, but where? Well, I mean, it's a similar question for Cleopatra and Anthony's tune as well. Sounds like a very nice research process, buddy, sitting in delicious cafes watching the world go by, as sophisticated Alexandrians chat about the possible whereabouts of the founder. Now, tell everyone what the book is called. It's Alexandria, the city that changed the world. world. Nice. Good luck with it, Islam. Thank you very much, indeed. Thank you so much.

Thanks so much for listening, folks. We really hope that this has helped you better understand what's going on, give me a bit of context. And if you think your friends, family, colleagues would enjoy that, then please, please do share with them. Whatever your podcast player, whatever you're listening on, it will let you share this as a link or even a WhatsApp message. That's sharing the lifeblood of this podcast and what keeps us going. So thank you for listening and thanks for sharing. next time for another episode of Dan Snow's Historyhead.