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

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

https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/EdmundHayes

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Part of the “Source of Life: Water Management in the Premodern Middle East” project (Radboud Institute for Culture and History).

Ep2. Mesopotamia: Taming the Euphrates

Mesopotamia means “the land between the rivers.” The fertile silt and life-giving waters from the rivers Tigris and Euphrates allowed the region to develop into a key area of human settlement and culture in the late Holocene around 12000 years ago. In this episode we discuss the earliest settlements in Mesopotamia and how humans have managed their rela.tionship to the rivers in Iraq up until today.

Speaker: Jaafar Jotheri. Interviewer: Edmund Hayes.

Dr. Jaafar Jotheri is Assistant Professor in Geo-Archaeology, Department of Archaeology, University of Al-Qadisiyah
https://csm-qadiss.academia.edu/JaafarJotheri

This episode was produced by Edmund Hayes and Jouke Heringa.

Further Reading

“Tigris-Euphrates River System”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/place/Tigris-Euphrates-river-system

T Wilkinson, L Rayne, J Jotheri, “Hydraulic landscapes in Mesopotamia: the role of human niche construction” Water History 7 (4), 397-418

TJ Wilkinson, J Jotheri “The Origins of Levee and Levee-Based Irrigation in the Nippur Area–Southern Mesopotamia” From Sherds to Landscapes: Studies on the Ancient Near East in Honor of McGuire Gibson, SAOC 71, edited by Mark Altaweel and Carrie Hritz (Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2021).

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

This episode was produced by Edmund Hayes and Jouke Heringa.

The cities of the medieval Middle East were some of the largest in the world, dwarfing the major cities of western Europe, for example. So how did they support large populations in relatively arid conditions? In this episode we provide an overview of the kinds of hydraulic infrastructure and social institutions that allowed pre-modern Middle Eastern cities to function.

Speakers: Maaike van Berkel and Josephine van den Bent. Interviewer: Edmund Hayes.

This episode, and this series on water history and the medieval Middle East was produced by Edmund Hayes and Jouke Heringa as part of the project, “Source of Life: Water Management in the Premodern Middle East” at Radboud University. The “Source of Life” project was funded by the Dutch NWO VICI funding scheme. Additional funding for this podcast series was supplied by the Radboud Fonds of Radboud University.

Maaike van Berkel is Professor of History at Radboud University and director of the project “Source of Life: Urban Water Management in the Premodern Middle East” funded by the Dutch NWO VICI programme.

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.

Further reading

Maaike van Berkel, “Waqf Documents on the Provision of Water in Mamluk Egypt,” in M. van Berkel, L. Buskens and P.M. Sijpesteijn (eds.), Legal Documents as Sources for the History of Muslim Societies (Brill: Leiden, 2017).

Peter Brown and Maaike van Berkel, “Water Provision in Early Islamic Cities: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Urban Water Governance,” in E Rose, M de Bruin, and R Flierman (eds) City, Citizen & Citizenship 400–1600: A Comparative Approach (Palgrave Macmillan: London, forthcoming).

Josephine van den Bent and Peter Brown, “Constructing Hydraulic Infrastructure in the Abbasid and Tulunid Capitals: Water Conduits in Baghdad, Samarra, and Cairo between the eighth and ninth centuries,” Al-Masāq, forthcoming.

Edmund Hayes, “A Late Umayyad Reform to the Water Distribution System in the Hinterland of Damascus,” Al-Masāq, forthcoming.

Edmund Hayes

https://twitter.com/Hedhayes20

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

https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/EdmundHayes

https://hcommons.org/members/ephayes/

Maaike van Berkel

https://radboud.academia.edu/MaaikevanBerkel

Josephine van den Bent

https://radboud.academia.edu/JosephinevandenBent

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