“For brief period of history, the Fatimid Caliphate based in Egypt presided over arguably the most powerful empire in the Mediterranean. Yet because the legacy of this Ismaili dynasty was erased or downplayed by its Sunni rivals and successors, the Fatimids are often misunderstood. As we show in this installment of “The Making of the Islamic World,” the Fatimid period and the sources that survive from it can in fact be critical to learning more about how pre-modern Islamic polities functioned, demonstrating that the Fatimids had a much more sophisticated state apparatus than some have assumed.” — Excerpt from article on the website Ottoman History Podcast

Fragments of the Fatimid Caliphate is episode 3 in a series of presentations on the Islamic world by Ottoman History Podcast, which has grown to be one of the largest digital resources for academic discussion concerning the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. The recorded interviews and lectures, while still largely academic in tone, provide scholarly conversation accessible to a wider public audience.

In the broadcast, narrator Chris Gratien interviews Marina Rustow, a social historian of the medieval Middle East at Princeton University. Marina has worked extensively on the documents of the Cairo Genizah, and her published works include Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate (2008) and The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Medieval Synagogue (2020).

Date posted: July 23, 2021.

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