Summary: As life among the aristocracy in Damascus and Baghdad attained its zenith of refinement, another important cultural center was developing in Islamic Cordoba. This program focuses on the remarkable cultural contributions of Ziryab, a talented young musician who fled the East for Andalusia and became the era's preeminent arbiter of style and taste. After creating a popular new form of music and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Why was Islamic philosophy, once the epitome of Arab learning, eventually rejected by Muslims? And why, after assimilating it, did Europeans distance themselves from its formulators? This program seeks to understand the religious climate of the late Middle Ages, in which universities and madrassas became centers of power and models for evolving sociopolitical systems. The potentially heretical...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this program, art critic Waldemar Januszczak travels through the heart of the Middle East and beyond to study a wide range of Islamic architecture, decoration, and art objects. Providing helpful historical background on the faith-with an eye on the explosive spread of early Islamic culture-the program examines the pristine beauty of India's Taj Mahal as well as one of the world's oldest...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Continuing his trek across the Muslim world, art scholar Waldemar Januszczak introduces viewers to masterworks in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia-from the gigantic and surreal mud mosques of Mali; to a rare, 10th-century Egyptian ewer carved out of a single piece of rock crystal; to the inspired urban planning of the ancient city of Isfahan in Iran; to the stunning architecture of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: From the late stages of the Agricultural Revolution to the doorstep of the Scientific Revolution, this course covers western history from roughly 3000 B.C. to A.D. 1600, when the "foundations" of the modern West come into view. Beginning in the ancient Near East, moving to Greece and Rome, the course explores the shape and impact of large ancient empires, including those of Persia and...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Teaching Co. 2002
Copies Available at Woodmere
5 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 909 FOUCall number: DVD 909 FOU PART 1
Call number: DVD 909 FOU PART 2
Call number: DVD 909 FOU PART 3
Call number: DVD 909 FOU PART 4
Lewis, Bernard.
Summary: This collection of essays, written by the foremost Western expert in Islamic studies, gives essential background on present Middle Eastern conflicts with the West, and how this religion, from its first expansion to the exploits of Saddam Hussein, has been fatefully involved with the Western world.
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Open Court 2001
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 909 LEWSummary: This series covers history from 3500 B.C. to the 1780's. This course analyzes civilizations by looking at their geographic and political environments, their technologies, economies, social institutions, and cultural achievements. Students will look at history from new perspectives, come to understand the connections between human beings despite time and distance, and appreciate the lasting...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: The Teaching Company 1995
Copies Available at Woodmere
4 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 909 WORCall number: DVD 909 WOR PART 1
Call number: DVD 909 WOR PART 2
Call number: DVD 909 WOR PART 3
Summary: As the shadow of the Dark Ages fell across Europe, the scene for the advancement of Western civilization shifted to the Near East. This program charts the rise of the Arab empire, from its roots in the long-standing rivalry between the Byzantines and the Sassanids. Nodes along that timeline include the dual role of Mecca as a place of worship and as a center for trade, the life of Muhammad and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: It is perhaps the most coveted piece of real estate on the planet: the Temple Mount, as it is known to Jews and Christians, or the Noble Sanctuary, as Muslims call it. Few cameras have ever been allowed inside this guarded and controversial place-until now. Produced with exclusive permission to film within the 35-acre walled enclosure and the Dome of the Rock, this program serves to build...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: During the 10th century, people routinely journeyed from one end of the huge Arab empire to the other-and even into non-Islamic lands far to the north and the east. Who were these travelers, and what did they seek? This program captures what it was like to be a pilgrim in a caravan bound for Mecca, an official carrying out the Caliph's orders, a scholar seeking knowledge, a merchant in search...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
De Bellaigue, Christopher
Summary: A revelatory and game-changing narrative that rewrites everything we thought we knew about the modern history of the Islamic world. With majestic prose, Christopher de Bellaigue presents an absorbing account of the political and social reformations that transformed the lands of Islam in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Flying in the face of everything we thought we knew, The...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company 2017
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 956 DEBSummary: London's Victoria and Albert Museum contains one of the finest collections of Islamic art in Europe or America. It is housed in the V&A's recently constructed Jameel Gallery-a facility designed to increase awareness and appreciation of Islamic art. This program highlights the beauty and complexity of the Jameel collection; it also enables viewers to closely examine individual pieces-including...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: This engrossing documentary provides a historical overview of Shiites' religious suppression in Iraq-spanning 13 centuries-then enters the heart of Iraq's holy cities to see how Shiites initially react to recent spiritual liberties. It gives firsthand accounts of Saddam Hussein's merciless campaign against Shiites in Karbala during the Gulf War, and highlights the power struggle in Najaf's...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: The precarious hopes and daily struggles of Gaza strip residents are documented in this compelling program, which focuses on the 2003 summer ceasefire-a chapter of Israeli-Palestinian history filled with American ambivalence, disappointing prisoner releases, and the eventual disintegration of the ceasefire itself. A pacifist Gazan artist, his militant-minded son, and the pragmatic widow of a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Encompassing fairy tales, romances, legends, fables, parables, and anecdotes, The Thousand and One Nights is a composite of popular oral stories that developed over several centuries, mainly during the Empire of the Caliphate. This program scrutinizes the wonderfully audacious tale of Scheherazade and what it tells the attentive reader about the dreams of Arab men and women during the empire's...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Each year millions of travelers flock to Mecca, undertaking the Haj, or pilgrimage, required of all devout Muslims. Few people outside of Islam, however, have seen this ancient and sacred city. This program offers an unprecedented look at the birthplace of Mohammed and the rituals that bring together the followers of the world's fastest-growing religion. Photographer Reza Deghati, himself a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: The victory of the Abbasids over the Umayyads signified much more than the replacement of one dynasty with another. With it, Islam saw the birth of a multiethnic concept of power, in which both Arab and non-Arab Muslims could share authority. This program presents the Abbasid Caliphate at its peak, enthroned in its prestigious capital city: Baghdad. The defining project of Caliph al-Ma'amun,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: By replacing paganism with monotheism and tribal life with empire-building, the Arabs of the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties effected a complete paradigm shift in their worldview. This program studies the codification of Islamic law and assimilation of non-Arab texts-and the ensuing competition between the ulema, or doctors of the law, and the philosophers, who saw reason as an equal to divine...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Picking up mathematics and astronomy from where the ancient Greeks had left off, Arab scholars paved the way for the Copernican revolution and the rebirth of science in Europe. This program reveals the Empire of the Caliphate's role in developing the Indo-Arabic decimal system, algebra, and algorithms and in refining the science of optics and the Ptolemaic model of the solar system. The...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: It is the summer of 2006, and a bus filled with Iranian men and women sets out on a perilous journey to the holy sites of Najaf and Karbala in war-torn Iraq. Wide Angle accompanies them on their pilgrimage-revealing many of the attitudes, beliefs, and emotions that add to the complexity of modern Islam. As the bus rolls through breathtaking desert landscapes, the five-day odyssey takes on...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program investigates the practice of medicine during the Abbasid Caliphate, offering profiles of Jurjis ibn Jibrail, personal doctor to Caliph al-Mansur; Yuhanna ibn Masawayh, head of Caliph al-Ma'amun's House of Wisdom; Rhazes, whose Kitab al-hawi outlines an exemplary clinical approach; Avicenna, universally known for his Canon of Medicine; and Abul Qasim al-Zahrawi, the father of modern...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program addresses the expansion of the Arab empire into Spain, where Muslims ruled with tolerance for more than seven centuries. The introduction and consolidation of Islamic power in Spain, the creation of the Umayyad emirate by the sole survivor of the Umayyad dynasty, the rise of Cordoba as a cultural rival of Abbasid Baghdad, and the gradual ebb of Arab rule on the Iberian Peninsula...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: As dissension mounted between the rival Arab dynasties in Baghdad, Cordoba, and Cairo, Christendom rallied to oppose the Muslims in Spain and Jerusalem. This program plots out the decline of the Empire of the Caliphate and the acquisition of Arab knowledge by Europeans starved for Islam's intellectual riches. The rise of feudalism and papal authority, the gradual defeat of the Muslim rulers in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Produced with unprecedented access to Hamas and its operations, this program takes viewers inside Gaza's Islamic fundamentalist government in the months following its civil war against Fatah. The film observes Hamas leaders as they struggle to shape policy and follows a former militant who now heads up an Executive Force police unit-carrying out orders he doesn't agree with. Archival footage...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009