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East To West

2012

Seasons & Episodes

  • 1

EP1 Between Two Rivers Mar 06, 2012

This episode follows the birth of civilization in Anatolia and the Middle East. We go back to the very beginnings; hunter-gatherers pause in Gobekli Tepe and start to build the world’s first structures around 12,000 years ago. We follow the first stages of civilization: the rise of agriculture, governance and writing in Mesopotamia. We visit ancient Babylon (Iraq) and Mari (Syria) to explore the world’s earliest cities. The latter part of the episode explores Alexander’s arrival in Troy and his conquest of the Persian Empire – a journey that made him realise what he owed to the East. In Miletus remarkable new finds show that the Greek god Aphrodite began as the eastern god Ishtar.

EP2 The Triumph Of Monotheism Apr 06, 2012

Today one god is worshipped by two thirds of humanity. It is the culmination of an extraordinary story by which a single deity emerged from a pantheon of thousands in the crucible of religious ideas that was the ancient Middle East. In this episode we trace the birth, development and explosion of the religion of Abraham and Moses, from its very beginnings in Judaism to its triumph as Christianity within the Roman Empire. We also look at the earliest form of monotheism, as devised by Akhenaten in ancient Egypt.

EP3 A Force From The Desert Oct 20, 2012

We trace the origins of the Arabs and Islam, from nomadic Bedouins to the sophisticated Nabataean cultures at Petra and the magnificent city of Palmyra. We then follow the story of the Prophet Mohammed in Mecca and the spread of the empire through the Middle East and North Africa. This episode balances the usual images of fanatical jihadis, to reveal the surprisingly peaceful and tolerant process by which the Islamic empire spread. We travel from Mecca to Damascus, Jerusalem to Cairo, Fez to Cordoba.

EP4 The Muslim Renaissance Sep 08, 2012

In this film we will reveal how a golden age of invention and scholarship thrived in the Islamic World at a time when Europe lingered in a dark age; how Muslim scholars brought together for the first time the ideas of the Greeks and Romans with Persian and Indian mathematics and astronomy and developed it into the beginnings of modern Science. We will reveal the first contacts by which European scholars discovered this treasury of knowledge and how it was developed by generations of Arab-admirers (including Galileo & Copernicus) into modern science. This episode focuses on the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, the great university mosques of Cairo and uncovers ancient documents translated in Baghdad by Islamic scholars, now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

EP5 The Asian Crucible Nov 03, 2012

This spectacular episode explores the extraordinary powers and civilizations that have emerged from central Asia. First the Seljuk Turks took on the Byzantines, pushing their way into Anatolia. In a cave in Cappadocia we discover a long lost painting that reveals how the two cultures co-existed. Then we follow the Mongol invasions – in Bukhara we explore its destruction and in Esfahan, Iran we see how the Mongols eventually converted to Islam and began to settle. Then in Uzbekistan again the film traces the rise of Timur and the explores the glories of Samarkand. Finally the programme follows the successors of Timur as they spread south into India, creating the wonders of the Mughal Empire. The film ends at the Taj Mahal.

EP6 The Rise Of The Ottomans Sep 15, 2012

At the time of Elizabeth I, the greatest power in the world was not England, France or Florence, it was the Ottoman Empire – one of the world’s first truly global and multicultural Empires. The film follows the rise of the Ottomans in the Anatolian city of Bursa and tells the dramatic story of how they conquered Byzantium and transformed Istanbul. The great Topkapi Palace of Istanbul is the stage on which we describe the growth of the Ottoman Empire and hear of the unprecedented developments in science and the arts ushered in by the rule of enlightened Sultans.

EP7 The Ottomans And The West Sep 15, 2012

The film looks at the wider Ottoman world, taking in superb merchants’ houses in Birgi (Anatolia) and Damascus. At the edge of empire, on the Persian border near Mt Ararat, we discover how the Ottoman’s controlled the extremities of Empire at Ishak Pasha’s magnificent palace. The programme then explores the growing European fascination with ‘The Orient’ throughout the 19th century, both as a place of culture and also as a trading partner and market for mass produced western goods. We end by tracing the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the dying days of the19th century, a time when the Sultans still managed to achieve great feats, including the building of the great Hejaz Railway across the Arabian desert.
7.9| 0h30m| en| More Info
Released: 06 March 2012 Ended
Producted By: Lion Television
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

This six-part series tells the story of the birth and flourishing of civilisation in the Middle East and its huge influence on the West. From the foundation of science, monotheism, commerce, justice, civil rights and artistic expression - look Eastward. The series contends that history that starts from an ancient Greek perspective distorts the true path of civilisation. For crucial phases in world history, the political, economic and cultural centre was the Middle East.

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Reviews

lloyd1018 I was moved to write this review in response to the episode entitled The Triumph of Monotheism. I like the general theme of this series however I have an issue with this particular offering. It really bugged me that the narrator continually referred to Monotheism as a pre condition to the flourishing of western culture. Really!!! Why? That question was never asked which I found very disappointing. The Romans did pretty well for hundreds of years worshiping multiple gods so what's so inferior with that system of religion? I'm agnostic so religion isn't an important part of my life. In spite of that I find it disturbing that a documentary pre supposes the superiority of one form of religious belief without any evidence to back it up. Makes me question the quality of the writing in the rest of the series. And just lastly can someone please make a history doco without the gushing presence of Bettany Hughes.
Kiril Trichkov The point of this documentary seems to be introducing historically uniformed people to the legacy of civilisations they probably don't know much about, and how that legacy is intertwined with important and well-known periods of history like ancient Greece, the Renaissance, etc. Yet the narration constantly contradicts the whole 'intertwined' idea by dichotomising East and West. I know it's in the title, and is the theme of the series, but they've taken it much too far, as there are several segments in just the first episode, a few minutes long each, where every single sentence contains the words 'East' and 'West'. Even when the point is that there was no such distinction between East and West in the period/location they're talking about. It's not only bothersome, but demonstrates that whoever approved the final version of this production was not aware of or did not understand what the series was talking about.This, and some suspect pieces of information presented, lead me to believe that this documentary was not as thoroughly researched as it should have been, and instead focused on fitting whatever relevant segments it could find into its theme of 'East to West'.Still, it should be mentioned that, if you can persist through the aforementioned 'East' and 'West' heavy segments, there's a fair amount of interesting information available.
saukkomies-884-794564 It would be nice if the accuracy of such a documentary could be relied on, but there are so many mistakes and contradictory statements in this film that even the accurate information becomes suspect.Just one of many examples is in episode 3, which is giving a history of the Arabs. The narrator says in the beginning that the Arabs were a scattered group of nomadic tribes until Mohammed came along. Then for the next half hour of the episode they describe the various civilizations, kingdoms, cities, and states that the Arabs established before Mohammed came on the scene. It is hard to equate the bustling state of the Nabataeans or the city of Damascus with "nomadic tribes".It is sad, because the visual scenery and on location settings obviously took a lot of money and time to produce, but the writing is flawed. Producing a historic documentary ought to include making certain that the actual history being told is accurate and consistent.
lmahayni I recommend seeing this at least once. It's full of enlightening facts and ideologies usually obscured by Western bias. I'd give this 10 out of 10 based on how much I love this series, however, it does have some glitches.A - Although it is well thought out and written, the pacing tends to make the intensely interesting information take on a sleepy quality.B - The editing appears to have been done separately from the narration and translation to the point where some edits are outright awkward. In one instance a Turkish man describes the importance of the information on an ancient frieze. The clip is cut off just after his subtitle reads "and this is important because-." In another instance the narrator announces "the crown jewel of the Sultan's fleet," while the visual clip follows a female historian from an angle that looks straight down at her chest. In a third instance, an archaeologist explains how, in a specific region of ancient Mesopotamia, the eyes of statues were all made with shells and lapis lazuli (a blue stone) but she does not comment on whether this indicates that the people were also all blue-eyed. These instances are not frequent, but are jarring for someone who is watching closely.NONETHELESS, the visuals and the information are quite enthralling. To accommodate any more information would require the series to be twice as long. I wouldn't mind if it were longer.