Empire: World History - 45. Successors to the Romans, progressive harems, and living Ottomans

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

Did the Ottomans see themselves as the successors to the Roman Empire? Was the Ottoman harem more progressive than others? How tolerant was the Ottoman Empire? And where are the descendants of the Empire today? Listen as William and Anita answer these questions and more in the very last episode in this series on the Ottomans. Sign up to The Knowledge here: www.theknowledge.com/empire/ LRB Empire offer: lrb.me/empire This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/empirepod. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mperpoduk.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durable. Yay! So, so proud of you. I'm so proud. He's all grown up.

Okay, look. This is part two of the Q&A part of proceedings. And I feel like I whanged on quite a lot last time. Would you like to whang on? No one. Possibly the beauty of that. Would you ever working on? All right.

Look, here is a question. Let's go straight into it. Okay. And this, by the way, we always do this at the end of an empire. So we've been covering the Ottoman Empire. And these are some of the questions that you have brilliant people. And we love you so much for doing this have been sending in. So Lareb Mohib says, would you categorize the Ottoman Hauri?

as more or less progressive than other empires? So I would definitely categorize it as less progressive than either the Safavids or the Mughals, who were the two immediate comparisons to the Ottomans. And here is why. First of all, the Mughals tended to marry women of equal status. So they were Rajput princesses, but also princesses from elsewhere in South Asia, Afghanistan, and beyond. and they tended to have wives who were literate, strong-minded, and well-educated. So you find, for example, Humayin's sister, writing a biography of him.

You have Shahjahan's daughter, Jahanara, composing poetry, or Rangzeb's daughter, building a library. And so my impression is that the Mughal Harim is a much more well-educated place. And we even have a whole series of mogul miniatures of the education of women with elderly scholars, old gentleman with long beard, sitting teaching circles of young princely women, how to read and write and so on. But there's also a very clear divide between the Ottomans and the moguls in the financial wealth, the sheer riches owned by mogul women. And there is an essay I've seen on the building of Shah Jahanabad by Shah Jahan in the 1640s, and three quarters of the public buildings in the city are built by women, including Jahanara, who builds the main caravansirai and the second biggest mosque, the Fatapuri Mosque.

And Jahanah being his daughter, with Shah Jahan's daughter, we should say, yeah. So my impression is that the Ottomans are unusual. I can't think of another major Islamic dynasty that marries slave girls. and have their children from slave girls, which is a very different thing to having a marriage to a princess who is, you know, however unequal, this relationship is going to be,

at least comes from Prince Lee background. But it's a diplomatic relationship, yeah, absolutely. There's some kind of parity of experience, at least. You know, Bettany Hughes, who did one of our episodes, because we were getting a bit carried away with Roxalana. We both liked doing Roxalana very much. You know, she was really interesting, and she rose and she rose and she rose

through the ranks, a beautiful slave girl. fascinating that she's from Ukraine of all places. Yeah, Ukrainian. I was thinking the same thing. But then Bettany brought us down to earth because, you know, there are now modern day excavations at Topkapi, which are revealing airing cupboards, secret notes. Like the handmaid's tail.

Help me, I want to go back to my mummy, you know, that kind of thing. So for every Roxalana, you had hundreds and hundreds of women who were dispossessed away from home, had nothing, had no agency. It's very, very important to try and get this. balance, isn't it, between, on one hand, not judging 18th century or earlier centuries dynasties by modern standards, on the other hand, not romanticising these extraordinary stories like Roxalana and forgetting the fact this is based on slavery, abduction, and basically rape.

Well, rape, yeah. Can I ask you a question? Because I have always wondered about this. So I've been slightly obsessed of late with a woman called Enhedwana. I don't know if you've even sort of come across her, but she's, no, she's from ancient antiquity. So the ruler Sargon of Akkad. So he's a Samarian leader, 24th, 23rd centuries BC. But his daughter is Enheduana, who is the high priestess, who does the history of her father's reign, who has power and agency.

She's the first writer of a historical document, so some argue. And she writes hymns and she writes poetry. and some people say that Homer, you know, himself was sort of inspired by her style of writing. You have this period of time where women did have agency, they did have power, and then you go through a whole swathes of time, where both in Asia and in Europe, women have no agency at all. You know, they are, if not as lowly as slave girls kidnapped from their homes, but still, you know, may as well be because they just have nothing to say in their future. What goes on here?

I think there's far more history in the Islamic world than people know about powerful women ruling Islamic dynasties. There is an entire book about the woman rulers of Islam called The Forgotten Queens of Islam by Fatima Merenisi. There was a great feminist classic, I think, written in the 80s. And it deals with all sorts of women, like for example, Rasa Sultana in the Delhi Seltanate and so. on, of queens who do rule Islamic territories. So again, you know, one's got to get the balance

somehow right. And if you compare Razi Sultanah with someone who's almost her direct contemporary, which is Matilda, the Queen of England, who is the daughter, if I remember, correct, of Henry I first. And there is the period called the anarchy when Matilda and Stephen. I love the fact he's called Stephen, by the way, I never get over. That never gets old for me. Stephen. Matilda and Stephen Steve Rule over a fracturing polity And Matilda I think is a very similar person

To Razia Sultan who again succeeds initially and then is done in by a coalition of men I also just as reminding me of something else That I was very tickled with in this series I loved Which was the letters that went from the harem in Istanbul To Queen Elizabeth I first exchanging makeup tips Wasn't that lovely?

That was so nice Was that just gorgeous? Yes. Betteany brought us that. And the way that Roxalana, is it Roxalana or one of the other queens? I think it's one of the other queens. It's not Rosalana. Yeah, it's one of the other queens. It says sort of send it direct to me because she doesn't want to anybody else. Because these pilfering witches I'm surrounded by, they're just going to use it all up. Look, Charlie Harper has a question. Let me put this to you. Maybe you can deal with this.

During the rise of the Ottoman Empire, Protestants and Catholics were at each other's throats in Europe. We've sort of touched on that a little bit. How was the Ottoman Empire so successful at absorbing religions without pushing a particular doctrine? So, the Ottoman Empire was solidly Sunni Muslim. There was, in a sense, the state religion. And one of the driving forces of the Ottomans is a rivalry with the Shia Safavids in Iran. But there is a system, the Millet system, which leaves the religious minorities, the Jews, the Greek Orthodox, the Armenians, all the different religious communities under a self-governing Millet system, so that the patriarch of the Greek church is ultimately responsible legally for the behavior of the Greeks and the same across the different communities. and that's a system that works pretty well. On one hand, you don't get any equivalent in Ottoman lands

to the sort of hanging, drawing and quartering of Jesuits that are going on in Tudor, England at the same time, any given day in Tudor, London, you could turn up at the Tibern and see some Catholic priest had been pulled out of a priest's hole having his entrails ripped out in the middle of London as late as the 17th century. Nothing like that happened in Ottoman lands. On the other hand, you do get, as we also know,

these moments of terrible inter-religious violence, like 1860 Damascus, when the Christians are suddenly burnt out of their quarter. And the great art that you see in the really good writers on the Ottoman Empire is people like Eugene Rogan, who is to date, are only four times guest who manages. just to get that nuance of on one hand expressing this sort of this sort of pluralism. And on the other hand, it's enormous flaws. Okay, there's another question.

I can't find the name of it. Forgive me if I can't find your name. But it was a question, are there any descendants of the Ottomans still around today? Now, I know there are because you've been chatting to one on Twitter, on the Twitter. Yes. Well, I had connections with two in real non-Twitter life. And I never met either. So the daughter of the last Ottoman Caliph, Abdul-Majid II, was a woman called Dura Shava,

who was married off to Hyderabad and who was still living there, between there and London, when I was first writing about Hyderabad in the late 1990s. And there was a Durasheva hospital in Hyderabad to this day named after her. Dorochava was this fantastically imperious-looking woman who had very much the same hawk-noburned. nose of Mehmet the second in that wonderful Bellini, famous Bellini image of the Conqueror. And she was a princess in Hyderabad where she died. And she also had a niece who I tried once to interview and then couldn't make it. And I've always regret to it called Nilufa. So there was the two Ottoman princesses in Hyderabad. But it turns out there's another one on

Twitter. And we've been corresponding with her. And she liked the series. I hope she still does. I hope she. Yes, I know. I noticed you were straight in there with it. I'll come around for a coffee. Not going on your own, mate. Just telling you that for three. I'm going to reply to that one. If you're still offering, I'll bring biscuits. I'd quite like to come. That'd be nice. That'd be really fascinating. Good. Look, shall we take a break? Join us after the break when we have more of your questions. Welcome back. We're doing a special Q&A on the Ottoman series that we have brought you over the last. How many weeks? It feels like we've been doing this for quite a long time. It's a while, haven't we? Most of this year. Yes, most of this year. But there's a, you know, there was a

very long rain. So, you know, I don't, I apologize for nothing. Nothing. Here's a question for you, William. This is from Abdul Kalam. Is it true that Sultan Abdul Hamid II gave up Palestinian land to the British Empire? Great podcast, by the way. So the answer is a complicated one. And the answer is yes and no. Abdul Hamid, I believe, comes to the throne in 1876. And it's in 1882 that the British get their hands in their first attempt at really taking on Egypt as part of the empire. And in 1882, there's this terrible shelling of Alexandria. When Alexander gets kind of reduced to ruins by a British naval bombardment, afterwards you get a period called the veiled protectorate, when the British are claiming to be protecting Egypt on behalf of the king of Egypt and basically keeping the Ottomans out.

and it's a complicated period because it's not a full protectorate, it's not fully part of the British Empire, but in effect it is a British territory. So yes, in one way, Abdul Hamid does lose Egypt. Yes, Ish. He does lose Egypt to the British. There are also long drawn out negotiations, which we've talked about on this series, both in the Abdul Hamid episode and in the Balfour Declaration episode, between the Zionist movement, between Herzl and Herzl, and Abdul Hamid about a Jewish Zionist attempt to buy Palestine from the Ottomans. But Abdul Hamid really, I mean, he gives us in short order, he says no. Well, no, he doesn't say no initially, and this is the important point. I mean, ultimately he doesn't sell it, correct. But he allows the negotiations to draw out. And again, the inference is drawn from this by historians rightly or wrongly, that Abdul Hamid, like Lloyd George, was a believer in the anti-Semitic idea of a

of world Jewish power who controls secretly the media and so on. And he believed that if he kept in conversation with the Zionist, the Zionist would be his ally against his increasingly bad image in public opinion in the West following the Bulgar massacres. So he, I believe these negotiations go on for a prolonged period, 10, 15 years. And in the end, he says, no, I will not sell it. Yeah, he says, I will not sell that it's not mine. I mean, he says, So it's along those lines. I'm paraphrasing terribly badly, but I have no right to sell land that, you know, belongs to another. It belongs to the people who my people who live there thousands of years, yeah. But it's, he does allow the negotiations to wrangle on and he wishes to have what he calls international jury on his side.

So, so there's an attempt to woo the Jewish people and the Zionist movement without actually giving them Palestine. That's my understanding of it. Interesting. Yeah. Look, I've got this such a gorgeous thing to read and you're going to light up. Everybody sit back, turn off your lights. William's going to light up. This is from Janet Power.

Dear Anita and William, I attended a wonderful musical performance in Sydney during the week. And I thought of your current series on the Ottoman Empire. It was a performance of Vivaldi's four seasons rearranged to include the Oud and the Bender. The Australian Chamber Orchestra performed with the superbly talented Egyptian-Australian. brothers, Joseph. Tawadros, my friend Joseph. I told you. And my friend Joseph as well. Thanks to you now, my friend as well.

But what I love, and I think you'll love too, we'll talk about them in a minute because they are fabulous. But it was a performance of Vivaldi's four seasons rearranged to include the Oud, the Rik and Bender. I'm sorry, Joseph, forgive me if I've done that all wrong. But what she says was it was a mesmerizing performance which thoroughly evoked the closeness of Venice and the East. And that is a very important point, isn't it?

The flow of culture that exists between, you know, this sort of wafer thin partition at the time when, you know, Lady Mary is zipping across and the fashions are zipping across and the face cream and the cloth merchants who leap out of Tudor, England, who want to do deals with the Ottomans. It is a very thin veil. So, so just can we rave about the Tawodos brothers? So two answers to that. One about Venice and East and one about the Tawodos brothers. So Joseph and James Tawydros are cops brought up in Sydney of, obviously, Egyptian heritage. How fabulous do they look? And they are fabulous.

James plays – Look him up. Plays an Ottoman drum at the Bender, and Joseph plays the Ood. But Joseph is also a great fashion Easter with a twirley moustache and a kind of Father Christmas beard. And I'd be lucky enough to have him play many times in my kitchen. You have. I've been there, yeah. But I've also heard him – one of the most magical things was on.

Grenda Chatter's roof where he just kind of came after our Coenour launch and he was sort of in our in our orbit and we went and it was very gracious of Grendez to let us have some time on the roof. And gracious of Joseph's play. Well, but Joseph didn't have anything to play on. He doesn't carry his Ood. You know, an Oud player doesn't necessarily have one in their pocket. But Gorinda's son was learning the ukulele. It was one of those lockdown things. So there was this busted up ukulele with one string missing and we make, we went play it, play it.

a bunch of hooligans. And didn't he make beautiful music? He should hear him on his actual loot. He's very particular about his food. He has them made in Istanbul still. There's one person he goes to who uses this very traditional techniques. And he's a wonder. I first heard him in the Rajasthan International Folk Festival, the Rift, where he was then

part of an Australian ensemble called a band of brothers. And there was Joseph and his brother. And there were two other, I think, Hispanic guitar plays with the original lineup. And they were extraordinary. And we became friends then and friends ever since. And he lives half the year in Sydney and half the year in Shep's Bush. He's just, he's awesome. Let me just say he's awesome.

Go look them up. But we should talk more seriously about Venice and the Ottomans. And this is something I've written about. There is, I've got an article in an older show, the New York Review of Books. I've got a subscription for that about the Ottomans of Venice. And it was a review of a spectacular exhibition by a man called Stefano Carboni, who had an exhibition on this subject at the Metropolitan. museum a decade ago. And it has a wonderful catalogue where you can see all the pictures. But the

exhibition itself was extraordinary because it talked about this strange symbiosis. On one hand, both the Ottomans and the Venetians relied on each other for their trade and prosperity. And war meant an end to that trade and impoverished both. However, both were after the islands of the Aegean and the Mediterranean that used to be part of the Byzantine Empire. And and Venice and the Ottomans were dividing between them. So we discussed, we had an old episode with Barnaby Rogerson talking about the siege of Cyprus, but there were also sieges of Malta and many other sieges. But what is extraordinary is the artistic interchange between the two, and it goes in both directions. If you look at the Doge's Pannis in Venice,

it is a fatomid design. The shapes of the little sort of pine cones on the roof, the shape of the mosaics are almost cuic... I was going to say the tiles. The tiling is just a giveaway as well, isn't it? And the shape of the windows. And the whole of that Venetian Gothic style is borrowed from Islamic architecture. The shape of the fondaki, the factories of the foreign merchants are very much based on caravansarise.

And it goes in reverse. And if you go to the Mamluk mosques in old Cairo, you find floors that look like they're rock churches in Venice, within laid marble from Italy, with gorgeous designs of Pietro-work. And there are extraordinary interchange of artistic ideas backwards and forth. And so much of early Italian art borrows from Ottoman and pre-Ottoman Arab exemplars. And you see this in Amalfi, in the early Amalfi Cathedral. You see it, particularly obviously in Sicily, which had been an Arab possession at one point. And you see it all mixing up during the Norman rule in the South when kings like Roger the 2nd of Sicily are using Arab craftsmen to build their palaces.

And Frederick II, Stupormundi, gets Arab craftsmen to build these extraordinary octagonal castles. I mean, I've had many happy days wandering around Sicily and southern Italy going to look at these things. And in fact, my next book, The Golden Road, is ending with Frederick II's castles in southern Italy. Well, what a brilliant question that opened a door onto so much. Just for one second, going back to the wonderful Tardross brothers, you talked about Joseph gets his udes made in a special world. Does he give them names? Like Lizzo has a violin called Sasha. No.

Joseph, he probably does. But I don't know for sure. I've just got a feeling he's the type. He might. One final, one final little thing that is rather nice is that, of course, the Venetians having invented Venetian Gothic by mixing North European Gothic with Arab architecture, it is European style of architecture, which is particularly well suited to hot tropical environments. And Ruskin then publishes the Stones of Venice, illustrating many of these buildings. And it's Ruskin's version of Venetian Gothic that then is taken to India. And in buildings like the big, is it VT, the big railway station in Mumbai and in the architecture of the Taj, which is, well, the Taj is sort of half Florentine dome.

I'm talking about the Taj Hotel, not the Taj Mahal. Yeah, I was with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there is a huge transfer of Phoenician Gothic to Mumbai, particularly, to the Prince of Wales Museum and to other great Raj buildings. what was then Bombay, through the pages of Ruskin. Thank you. I love that. Now look, this next one is just somebody telling us something. So just, I mean, sit back, fasten your seatbelt and take notes because I think this is really interesting. It's from Vene, who's very sweet and he's one of our Indian listeners.

Welcome. Thank you for a phenomenally interesting series where I keep learning things I'd never have suspected were true. Like there were Indian troops at Gallipoli and the Ottomans impersonated them to fool the Aussies. Can't believe it. So Vinay then has this wonderful etymological connection that he wants to offer us between India and Anatolia. He says, I come from Canatica in South India. There are two words in Canara, which is the language of the South, that are used generically to describe Muslims and foreigners. One is Turuka and the other one is Yavana.

And I really hadn't thought about it until I heard you guys, but I'm suddenly seeing it in a new light. The former is obviously a corruption of Turk. and the latter is a corruption of Ionian. Isn't that interesting? So I've actually, fun enough, been talking about this week in a seminar in Oxford, because my next book has a lot about Yavanas in it, and it's the whole question of who the Yavans were.

So on the west coast of India, you've got all these Buddhist caves built from about 100 BC, 150 BC, to about 200 C.E. No, beyond that, right up until the 6th and 6th. century, in fact, the janta, the last caves in the janitor is sixth century. And many of these contain dedicatory inscriptions by the merchants or the money lenders or the people who are actually paying for them, are often just simple pious nuns and monks. And there are a considerable number of inscriptions in these decany caves which are left by people who describe themselves

as yavanized, or even in one case, a Romanoi. Now, the Romanoi is almost certainly a Roman, but who the Yavanas are is disputed. In some cases, we know from Tamil literature that Yavanas can describe just foreigners, so sort of Scythians or Parthians or any of the sort of warrior folk of who've occupied northern India or what's now Afghanistan, Bactrian, Greeks and so on, are just known as Yavanus. And yes, the word comes from Ionian. And later on, it becomes the word Yunani in Udu, which is also Ionian. By Greek, by Zantan. So you have in northern India, you have Yunnani medicine, which runs parallel to Ayurvedic medicine.

And if Ayurvedic is the, if you like, the ancient Hindu medical system, so unani medicine is the ancient Galenic medical tradition, which still survives in Pakistan and North India. There's a whole university of it in Tukukhabad, not far from my house. and it's all about the pulse. And a trained Yunani physician can feel your pulse. And it doesn't just count the number of beats per minute that a Western doctor would do to take your pulse. But they have different kinds of pulses. So there's the rabbit and the stote and the leopard and the tiger, all these different names from different kinds of pulses.

And they diagnose you from that. So that's a living tradition. But the Yavanas, it used to be thought that they were specifically Greeks. converted to Buddhism or wish to dedicate a Buddhist cave for whatever reason. But now it's generally accepted that it's just a word like Ferengi today, which can just mean any sort of foreign. Any foreigner. Or Mleka is the same, but a less charming way of saying it.

I find the language transfer so very interesting. So I mean, it's something else. I'm working on another documentary at the moment, and I've been spending time with Scottish Gypsy Travelers. and I am astonished by how many Hindi words that I use are in Romani and they use. I mean, they are just the same. The numbers are very, very similar. Arc is eye, parney is water, narca's nose.

We were just sitting there hurling words at each other. And anyway, I've just tickled. That's what I'm just sharing a tickle with you. Right, we've got one more. And then I think we're going to have to close this fantastic Q&A session. But you know what? We'll do it again because you like it. it and we like hearing your questions. And this final question comes from Robert Allen, who says,

to what extent did the Ottomans see themselves as the spiritual successors of the Roman Empire? Got a thought? This is a big theme of our wonderful guest, Mark Beyer, in his Ottoman's book. He lays great emphasis on this. And I'm not sure they saw it as a spiritual air in any religious sense, but they certainly saw themselves as the occupiers of the throne of Rome. And of course, today in the West, when we talk about Rome, we think of it as being Rome in Italy, and that's that. But we forget that the Eastern Rome was Constantinople or Istanbul. And the Seljuk Sultans who conquered Anatolia called themselves the Sultans of RUM, Jalaluddin Rumi, who originated in Balk, emigrated to Konya in what is now Turkey, and was therefore Jolaluddin Rumi.

because he came from RUM, which is Rome. And so the Caliphs regard themselves very much as the Sultans of Ruhn and the Kailiffs of Rune, by which they meant not Rome in Italy, but Rome in Istanbul. Do you know, I never put Rumi together with the Kings of Rube. That's amazing. It's just Jalalodine of Rome. Isn't that gorgeous? Look, thank you so much for your questions, and it's been an absolute privilege to do this series.

Do you mean with me, Anita, is that what you're getting out? No, what are you? I'll tell you what? What do you think? I was a bit suspicious. I mean, you know, you're fine. You're all right. But it's been a privilege to.

It's been an absolute honour and a privilege. I don't have a courage. Don't die. Oh, my God. Can you imagine if you did, if you killed over in an episode, that would be terrible. That would be sad. Particularly before I have finished my book, I am racing to the final chapters of my next book, the Golden Road and I'm not allowed to have any sort of corridory before these last two chapters.

No. Well, keep you alive. How's it going, by the way? You're all. Very nearly done. It's been quite a struggle. It's been a year. I normally do books in less, I mean, the actual writing in less than the year. And the anniversary for beginnings passed last week and I was struggling, but it's now all actually, it's very nearly there and it's very, very exciting to see it all come. I always feel the writing book is a bit like a sculpture that you, that you start up with a block of stone and it's only towards the end that it sort of ends up looking like the sculpture it's meant to, that all the rough edges remain there until you polish them off. And it would be lovely if we can do some of this book as a future episode of Empire, perhaps.

I think we could manage that. I think I have a word with the management. I know the presenters. Well, the management can be quite tricky. I can have a chat? But you know what? Can I just tell you my favourite, favourite thing about writing a book? Because I find it very, very hard as well.

Very, very hard. It is hard. It actually is hard. It really is hard. And there's lots of nice bits, but the writing bit is bloody hard. It's really bloody hard. But I was moaning and wanging on about how miserable I was. It's hard to believe.

Little Miss Sunshine was a little sad one day. And I was on at length just going on and on about my aches, my pains, my RSI, my head aching, my brain not working. And this friend of mine who you know as well, actually, the writer Damien Barr, he said, Listen, the thing you've got to remember. Remember this. And I want you to remember this as well, William. Writing a book is like reading a book, except the book is trying to kill you.

It's a brilliant line. Isn't it the best line ever? And it's so true. Anyway, anyway, listen, enough. Well, this one has really killed me, but not quite. Well, I'm glad you're still here. And I'm glad it's been a really fun end to the, Ottoman series. I love these Q&As. I know you call them flip floppy, but I love them. I love the

flip and the flop. But what are we doing next? Can you, listen, I know you're like blowing the surprise. So now is your time to actually, well, not that you haven't 100 million times already, but what are we doing next? So we're next up doing the history of slavery. And what I think is wonderful about this sort of format, both the podcast format in general, but also the way that we be doing it with these long, in-depth series really going in, is that we can look at everything. We can tell a lot of the main story, which is the transatlantic middle passage, the astonishingly brutal way in which industrialized shippers moved enslaved human beings from one part of the world, wiped out the indigenous inhabitants of another part, and replaced them with black plantation

slaves all over the Caribbean and all over the new world. But we're also going to be able to do the backstory, which is so interesting too, the story of which early empires had slaves. Were the pyramids built by slaves? What proportion of people in ancient Italy were slaves? Apparently, it's 20% of all people in Italy. That would have been a good fact to surprise. Well, the surprise is blown. Then the Vikings and the whole way in which the Vikings enslave the Slavs, which is where the English word slaves comes from, the whole story that we touched on in the Ottoman series of the enslavement of

Northern Europeans and Christian Europeans from the Northern half Mediterranean in Barbary, in Algeria, which was another slave city. We've also got some amazing characters as well. I mean, amazing characters. So you know what we love doing? We love looking through great sweeps of history, through a prism of a person, an actual person. So the producer is saying not too much detail on slavery itself.

Okay, all right, but there are some great categories. Despite the producer. Sorry, Mr. Lidaka. Yeah, sorry. Malik Umba. Malik Umba. We're going to really fabulous. I mean, you're going to love this series.

You're going to love it. And we're not going to say anymore because it is Calam who is going to get upset. And we don't want to upset Callum because he's a very important man. to this series. Look, can I just tell you, though, we're going to have a special bonus week next week. Two special one-off episodes coming to you next week. I couldn't be more excited about this. Caroline Elkins on the Mau Mau, I mean, just how good was she? Caroline Elkins is just a genius, and we should come clean about when we did this. We managed to get Caroline Elkins to the Jaipo Literature Festival in January, and we recorded this, although we weren't

doing a series on, at the time, on Africa or anything related to Mamma, but she was so good at the festival that Anita and I cornered her, drove her into hotel. We jumped on the poor, bewildered woman. We just said you've got to talk to us. She had no idea. What we were doing, why would. But wasn't she amazing? She was astonishing.

You're going to love it. What's extraordinary. It's shocking. About it, not only is it extraordinary shocking. It is incredibly recent. Yes. It's during the lifetime. of all our parents and it has all sorts of familiar people popping up in it. And it's a proper

horror story when you get into the detail. So we're bringing you in one week, the ying and the yang here, because we've also, by huge popular demand, Aram Gua is coming back to us. Ram, who did that outstanding episode on Gandhi, also wrote another book, which I just thought was amazing, which was about allies. Allies of Indian Independence, white allies. of Indian independence. Those who rebelled against the British Shrash. Very counterintuitive book, very interesting, extraordinary book.

And we have Ram, who's one of the most sort of forceful and brilliant and incisive speakers on colonialism as a whole. But on these very unlikely figures, none of whom will be particularly familiar, I suspect to most of you. Honestly, he's brilliant about this,

and these characters are brilliant. And you get four amazing characters in this one episode. So Ram Gou, and Caroline Elkins, bonus week, we spoil you here at Empire. This is before the slavery series begins. This is just a little extra. Yeah, I don't know why you're still here.

I mean, you've got writing to do. What do you got some writing to do? Why are you hanging about here? Last two chapters. Back to the commands. Just very, very briefly, because I love to note, are you writing in your garden surrounded by parrots and facing your goats? Or are you inside?

Are you in the inside area? No, I'm even in the high summer, which it is now here in Delhi. And it's 42 degrees here. And it's where I'm speaking to you at 2 o'clock in the afternoon my time, which is the white midnight when it's just everything is silent. No one's outside. There isn't anything moving. It's just white heat. Even at that time, I'm outside.

And I have my little open shed. You're still outside. You're joking. I have my little open shed. And I sit there. What are you doing that for? You'll dehydrate your tend. to a husk for William?

Well, I drink lots of water when I'm there. But it just, it's some reason it concentrates my mind. I find I get distracted. Do you? No. Distracted? Never. Never.

What? I always record the podcast in the room I hear in my library. And there's so many interesting things to distract you. In that, outside, there's nothing. And it's just, it's my... You've got goats and pigeons and parrots. None of those can get in. But everything else is locked out.

It's a little enclosed space. and it's very, very nice for writing. So that's trying to spend this afternoon. Chop, chop, get writing because we can't wait for this new book. It sounds amazing. Out October. You've said it now. The publishers have heard it.

Everybody's heard it. Listen, this is all that we have time for this week. But do join us for the bonus week next week, two episodes to extraordinarily brilliant people talking to you next week. So until then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me. me, we live that room for.