Best of us all the best he Philosophy Podcast, brought to you with the support of the philosophy department at King's College London and the

LMU in Munich online at history of philosophy.net. Today's episode, People of the South,

by Zantium and Islam.

If you're looking for an argument, I have two places to suggest you go.

First, any room containing an analytic philosopher. Analytic philosophers love arguing so much that not content with arguing for a living,

they go out for drinks with one another after work to argue in their free time

and then go home where they get into arguments with their loved ones about

whether they are too argumentative. Second, if you can find a way to get there, the medieval

near east. Starting in late antiquity, the goddess of history devoted all of her efforts to producing the ideal conditions for disagreement.

After breaking the Roman Empire in half, so that Latin Christians could come into conflict with Greek Christians, she also oversaw

sectarian disputes between Christians in the Eastern Rome's, the Calcedonians, the meaphysites,

and the Church of the East, sometimes referred to, respectively, as Melkites, Jacobites, and Nestorians.

But she was just getting warmed up.

The rise of Islam cut the size of the Byzantine Empire in half as Syria and Egypt were lost and gave Christians a whole new set of opponents.

That rivalry was often pursued in the good old-fashioned way, namely hideous violence.

The history of Byzantium is in no small part the history of warfare with Muslim powers,

the Umayyad and Abbasid calipades, the phatimids, the Saljooks, then finally and fatally,

the Ottomans.

In many periods, annual raids were a fact of life for anyone living in striking distance of the border.

Emperors could secure legitimacy by defeating the Muslims on the field of battle or lose it by

being defeated.

And the same was true on the other side.

...