The Fall of the Roman Empire Episode 127 "The Rise and Fall of the Umayyads"

First, let me wish you a Happy New Year and I hope you had a good break if you took time off. This episode tells the story of one of the greatest empires in history – the Umayyad Caliphate. Its territories stretched from Samarkand to the Atlantic. Like the Roman Empire, it straddled three continents – Asia, Europe and Africa. But appearances can be deceptive, and to most contemporaries the Umayyad Caliphate seemed much more fragile than it does to us today with the benefit of 1,400 years of h...