You can’t think about clean water without also thinking about removing dirty water and other waste. In this episode we take a deep dive into sewage (figuratively speaking) on the basis of excavations and documents that survive about cities in Muslim Spain in the Middle Ages.

Speaker: Ieva Rèklaityte. Interviewer: Edmund Hayes.

Ieva Reklaityte is an independent researcher. She graduated in Archaeology at the University of Vilnius, Lithuania, and did her PhD thesis at the University of Saragossa in Spain.

This episode was produced by Edmund Hayes and Jouke Heringa.

Further reading

Ieva Reklaityte, Vivir en una ciudad de Al-Andalus: hidraulica, saneamiento y condiciones de vida (University of Saragossa, 2012).

Ieva Rèklaityte, (ed.), Water in the Medieval Hispanic Society: Economic, Social and religious implications (Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 2019).

Ieva Rèklaityte, “Les latrines en al‑Andalus : leurs principales caractéristiques et les conditions sanitaires urbaines (The Latrine in Al‑Andalus : its Main Characteristics and the Urban Hygienic Conditions)” in “Lieux d'hygiène et lieux d'aisance en terre d'Islam (VIIe-XVe siècle)” special issue of Médiévales 70 (Spring 2016) edited by Patrice Cressier, Sophie Gilotte et Marie-Odile Rousset, https://doi.org/10.4000/medievales.7683 (and see this special issue in general).

Edmund Hayes

twitter.com/Hedhayes20

https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmund-hayes-490913211/

https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/EdmundHayes

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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.

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https://linktr.ee/abbasidhistorypodcast

Medieval Baghdad was probably home to 200,000 to 500,000 inhabitants. In this episode we look at how water functioned as the life blood of this great city, providing drink, but also transportation that supplied the city with food and connected it with trade routes in Indian Ocean and beyond.

Speakers: Hugh Kennedy, Josephine van den Bent. Interviewer: Edmund Hayes.

Hugh Kennedy is Professor of Arabic at SOAS in the University of London and from 2022 he has been teaching in the History Department at University College London.

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.

This episode was produced by Edmund Hayes and Jouke Heringa.

Further reading

Hugh Kennedy, “The Feeding of the 500.000: Cities and Agriculture in Early Islamic Mesopotamia,” Iraq 73 (2011): 177–199.

Josephine van den Bent & Peter Brown, “On Strong Vaults with Solidly Constructed Arches: Urban Waterways in the Cities of Early Islam,” Al-Masāq (2024).

Josephine van den Bent, “Caliphal Involvement in Water Provision in the Cities of the Early ʿAbbāsid Period,” Journal of Abbasid Studies (2024).

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

The bathhouse is an iconic feature of the medieval middle eastern city up until the present. But how did this come to be? In this episode we look into the origins of bathing culture in the Middle East by going back to the Roman, late antique and early Islamic development of bathhouses.

Speakers: Nathalie de Haan and Sadi Maréchal. Interviewer: Edmund Hayes.

Nathalie de Haan is an associate professor in ancient history at Radboud University, Department of History, Art History and Classics and RICH (Radboud Institute for Culture &History). She is the coordinator of the RICH research group The Ancient World. Her research interest include baths and bathing in the Roman world, Pompeii and Herculaneum and the history of classical archaeology in modern Italy (19th and 20th centuries).

Sadi Maréchal is senior postdoctoral researcher of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) based at the department of Archaeology at Ghent University, part of the Historical Archaeology Research Group, the Mediterranean Archaeology Research Unit and coordinator of the Ghent Centre for Late Antiquity.

This episode was produced by Edmund Hayes and Jouke Heringa.

Further Reading

Nathalie de Haan & Kurt Wallat, Die Zentralthermen (Terme Centrali) in Pompeji: Archäologie eines Bauprojektes, Papers of the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome, 71 (Rome: Quasar, 2023). (see: https://edizioniquasar.it/products/die-zentralthermen-terme-centrali-in-pompeji-archaologie-eines-bauprojektes)

Nathalie de Haan “Si aquae copia patiatur. Pompeian Private Baths and the Use of Water”, Chapter 4, in A.O. Koloski-Ostrow (ed.), Water Use and Hydraulics in the Roman City, Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company (Archaeological Institute of America, Colloquia and Conference Papers, Vol. 3, 2001)

Sadi Maréchal, Public Baths and Bathing Habits in Late Antiquity. A Study of the Evidence from Italy, North Africa and Palestine A.D. 285–700 (Late Antique Archaeology Supplementary Series 6), Leiden: Brill 2020.

Sadi Maréchal, Washing the Body, Cleaning the Soul : Baths and Bathing Habits in a Christianising Society, Antiquité Tardive 28 (2020): 167–176.

F. Yegül, Bathing in the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

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