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IN OUR TIME
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PROGRAMME INFO |
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The big ideas which form the intellectual agenda of our age are illuminated by some of the best minds in the world. Melvyn Bragg and three guests investigate the history of ideas and debate their application in modern life. |
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LISTEN AGAIN |
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PRESENTER |
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BIOGRAPHY |
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| "I'm fascinated by the fact that we live in a time when so many people are doing fantastic work, and thinking in areas which it's not remotely possible for me to keep up with & and these people are prepared to talk about it. They're prepared to come on In Our Time and other programmes on Radio 4 and try and talk to the rest of us ..." |
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LATEST PROGRAMME |
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MUSLIM SPAIN
In 711 a small army of North African Berbers invaded Spain and established an Iberian Islamic culture that would last for over 700 years.
Despite periods of infighting and persecution, Muslim Spain was a land where Muslims, Jews and Christians co-existed in relative peace and harmony.
Its capital, Cordoba, although not unique amongst Spanish cities, became the centre and focus for generations of revered and respected philosophers, physicians and scholars. By the 10th century Cordoba was one of the largest cities in the world.
But what some historians refer to as Cordoba’s Golden Age came to an end in the 11th century, when the society was destabilised by new threats from Africa to the South and Christendom to the North.
However, it was not until 1492, when Granada fell to the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, that Islamic Spain was well and truly over.
In that same year the Jews were expelled from its shores and Christopher Columbus set sail to lead Spanish Christian expansionism into the new world.
But how did Muslims, Jews and Christians interact in practice?
Was this period of apparent tolerance underpinned by a respect for each other’s sacred texts? What led to the eventual collapse of Cordoba and Islamic Spain? And are we guilty of over-romanticising this so-called golden age of co-existence?
Guests
Tim Winter
a convert to Islam and lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University.
Martin Palmer
an Anglican lay preacher and theologian and author of The Sacred History of Britain.
Mehri Niknam
Executive Director of the Maimonides Foundation, a joint Jewish-Muslim Interfaith Foundation in London.
Next Week
Next week on In Our Time we’ll be looking at the Human Imagination.
Immanual Kant called it ‘a blind but indispensable function of the soul’ and David Hume considered it the glue without which human perception would fragment into chaos.
Certainly the imagination underpins our capacity for scientific learning and artistic expression but why it exists and exactly how it operates are still questions without precise answers.
Can Mahler’s 5th symphony be really explained by evolution and how does the imagination relate to perception, memory, and language?
That’s the Imagination with Steven Mithen, Susan Stuart and Semir Zecki.
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