S6E3: Through Uzbekistan: Histories of the Persianate World, with Fuchsia Hart

This month’s podcast takes us to the far south-west of the Islamic world, to the Inner Nigel Delta in Mali where stands the Great Mosque of Djenné in all its magnificence. Join Michelle Apotsos as she discusses the story of this vibrant place of worship built solely out of mud and wood at the centre of a town with deep historical links south to the Atlantic coast and north across the Sahara desert to the Maghreb. In the annual tradition of renovation and reconstruction, the Great Mosque offers a model of architectural renewal alongside an understanding of heritage not as a stagnant object needing to be frozen time but a living tradition.Michelle Apotsos is a Professor of Art and Architectural History at Williams College, specializing in architecture and Afro-Islamic creative production. Her current projects focus on the growth of large-scale congregational masajid on the continent and alternative contemporary religious spatial technologies and ecologies.This episode is part of our series Peripheries which seeks to push our understanding of the cultural heritage of the Islamic world away from the traditional centres that we associate with it. With a fantastic range of guests we will examine places and topics often considered peripheral to the Islamic world and understand why they are in fact of central importance to the region’s cultural heritage, from Armenia to England, from Ethiopia to West Africa.

This month’s podcast episode takes us through Uzbekistan along the route that The Barakat Trust took on our trip to the country in November 2025. We begin in Tashkent before moving to Samarkand and finishing in Bukhara, exploring a number of architectural sites, crafts and traditions along the way. In our discussion we ask how the richness of Uzbekistan’s cultural heritage came to be considered on the periphery of the Persianate world.Our guest is Fuchsia Hart is The Sarikhani Curator for the Iranian Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. She has written for the publications like The Guardian and the Oxford Review of Books, and spoke or lectured at institutions like The Wallace Collection, SOAS, and the Royal Asiatic Society. In 2025, Fuchsia completed her DPhil in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford with a thesis exploring Fath ‘Ali Shah Qajar’s patronage of the major shrines of Iran and Iraq.This episode is part of our series Peripheries which seeks to push our understanding of the cultural heritage of the Islamic world away from the traditional centres that we associate with it. With a fantastic range of guests we will examine places and topics often considered peripheral to the Islamic world and understand why they are in fact of central importance to the region’s cultural heritage, from Armenia to England, from Ethiopia to West Africa.

This month’s podcast episode takes us to Ethiopia, specifically the rock-cut church of Wuqro Cherqos in Tigray where a tantalisingly cryptic piece of carved stone can tell us a whole story of interconnection up and down the Red Sea. This is a journey of merchants, artistic ideas, and political power in a place where you may not have expected it.Our guest is Mikael Muehlbauer, Lecturer in the Discipline Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. He is a specialist in the architecture of Medieval Ethiopia and Egypt, with a broad interest in interfaith exchanges and historical memory. He received his PhD from Columbia University. He is the author of the 2023 book "Bastions of the Cross: Medieval Rock-Cut Cruciform Churches of Tigray, Ethiopia" as well as an upcoming book "Inventing late antiquity in Fatimid Egypt,". This episode is part of our series Peripheries which seeks to push our understanding of the cultural heritage of the Islamic world away from the traditional centres that we associate with it. With a fantastic range of guests we will examine places and topics often considered peripheral to the Islamic world and understand why they are in fact of central importance to the region’s cultural heritage, from Armenia to England, from Ethiopia to West Africa.

In this new podcast episode, the first in our series on Peripheries, we discuss the place of Armenian architects in the towns and cities of eastern Anatolia in the late Ottoman empire. Our guest is Alyson Wharton-Durgaryan, Honorary Senior Fellow at the University of Lincoln, where she has taught for ten years in the School of Humanities and Heritage. In 2026, she’ll take up a new two-year fellowship at the University of Oxford. Her research looks at the roles of Armenian architects hailing from the Ottoman Empire, who were key to formulating the image of the modern state in the 19th and early 20th centuries.Peripheries seeks to push our understanding of the cultural heritage of the Islamic world away from the traditional centres that we associate with it. With a fantastic range of guests we will examine places and topics often considered peripheral to the Islamic world and understand why they are in fact of central importance to the region’s cultural heritage, from Armenia to England, from Ethiopia to West Africa.

Join us in this episode as we discuss the exciting finds from the Bedale hoard in North Yorkshire, England. In 2012 a group of amateur metal detectors discovered a hoard of late 9th century Viking silver in Bedale. The items found were ingots, necklaces, arm-bands, and a sword pommel. What makes this particular collection peculiar is that when the silver used to make the items was scientifically analysed it was discovered that it was from the Islamic world. Listen to the podcast to discover how this silver travelled so far and ended up in northern England.Dr. Jane Kershaw is Gad Rausing Associate Professor of Viking Age Archaeology at the University of Oxford.

Join curator Carine Juvin as she discusses the fascinating topic of her new exhibition at the Louvre: The Mamluks. Listen as she goes beyond the usual discussion of war and plunder, and dives into the rich world of Mamluk culture and society: from how the sovereignty of slave-soldiers changed monumental architecture, to what that world was like for women, and from how the Mamluks affected European art, to how Mongol nobles learnt to thrive in Cairo.

Join Juan De Lara as he takes us on a tour through the colourful history of Arabia's Qaryat al Faw; a fascinating gem in the desert rich with treasure-laden tombs, frescoes of Egyptian goddesses, statues of Greek demigods, and marvellous inscriptions. Listen in as Juan discusses the wonders of the Incense Routes, the brilliance of the famed Nabataeans, and the importance of this site for understanding - and appreciating - the dawn of Islamic art.

Join Rizwan Iqbal as he explores how to get young people excited about Islamic art. Listen as he details the problems faced, solutions he has discovered, and the exciting work he has done as part of our Hands On Islamic Art project, which connects the wider UK to Islamic art collections, with funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Join Annabel Gallop as she takes us to the Indonesian province of Aceh, where she introduces us to the Ninefold Seal, and through it, takes us on a tour through Mughal power, Chinese trade, European conquest, and the wonderful artistic expression of the people of Sumatra.

Join Laura Hinrichsen as she walks us through her fascinating new research, reconstructing the great libraries of 16th century Tunis, once thought completely lost, by hunting down fragments scattered across the world. Listen as she explores the great conquest that destroyed these libraries, the sort of things you could read there, and the clever ways we might go about finding the contents of lost historic libraries.