Andrew Marr's History of the World (2012–…): Season 1, Episode 3 - The Word and the Sword - full transcript

March the 7th, 203 AD.

Carthage, North Africa.

A young woman called Perpetua

was waiting to be killed
in a Roman arena

because she wouldn't
reject her faith -

a faith so extreme
it was shaking the empire.

BABY WAILS

Her family had begged her
to renounce her beliefs and live.

Terrified, she refused.

CHEERING AND SHOUTING

Perpetua was one of a growing
number of spiritual rebels.



All around the world, these are
centuries when we see mass movements

of moral and religious revolt.

People who seem to want more -

more than entertainment,
more than safety, more than power.

On the world's stage,
this is an age of struggle.

A fight between the sword
and the word.

Allah!

Old Indian writings tell
a unique story, a moral revelation,

whose details were virtually
forgotten for 2,000 years.

One day, in 295 BC,

a young prince called Ashoka

was searching for
his grandfather's sword.

His grandfather had built
the Mauryan Empire,

which stretched
across northern India.



He'd warned the boy
that swords were dangerous,

but, as in all good legends,

the boy ignored the old man.

BATTLE CRY

Ashoka means "without sorrow".

GROANS IN PAIN

And the Prince was true to his name.

When his father died, he slaughtered
his brothers to capture the throne.

He then invaded
the neighbouring state of Kalinga,

killing 100,000 men,
women and children.

Frankly, so far, so dull.

History is littered with
corpses on battlefields

and wild-eyed victors.

But this story is rather different.

Because when this victor
wandered among the corpses,

he didn't feel triumph.

When Ashoka contemplated
the devastation

that he had caused
on the battlefield,

something seems to have
changed inside him.

What is this great victory?

He said, when a country is invaded,

it brings death,
slaughter and deportation.

And it's not just the soldiers -
you can break a whole society.

He said the innocent -

the priests, the teachers,
the families, the friends -

also suffer from the violence

and separation from
their loved ones.

I can't think of any other
example in history

where a great conqueror is not
remembered for his victories,

but for his remorse.

Ashoka went through
what's perhaps the most extreme

spiritual and political
conversion in history.

He turned to the peaceful
Indian values of Buddhism.

Compassion,
the alleviation of suffering,

a striving to understand
and improve life here on earth.

Ashoka began
to transform his empire.

He outlawed slavery,

established schools and hospitals...

..he even had wells dug
and trees planted

for shade to help travellers.

Ashoka may have given up
military expansion,

but he certainly wanted
to spread his ideas,

and at his capital city,
he created a sort of factory

to produce huge stone pillars
topped with his lion

and to be inscribed with his laws
and his views of the world

and sent all over central India.

This early broadcasting system
was completely forgotten,

lost to history,

until Ashoka's messages
were decoded in the 1800s

by a young Englishman
who cracked the ancient script.

ASHOKA: "No living beings are to be
slaughtered or offered in sacrifice."

"No criticising other religions.

"Show respect to elders,
towards the poor and distressed,"

"servants and employees."

You could almost
call Ashoka's edicts

a declaration of human rights,

more than 2,000 years
before the United Nations.

He also sent Buddhist missionaries
as far as Vietnam, Sri Lanka,

even the Mediterranean.

Today, Buddhists are found
on every continent on Earth.

As Ashoka grew old, he gave up
his earthly power and possessions.

When he died, it's said that
only half a mango was left.

Later on, more aggressive religions
and political leaders

virtually pushed Buddhism
out of India.

But Ashoka is a lot more
than a footnote.

Because after his rediscovery,

he became a great inspiration
in modern India.

Ashoka may not be well known
in the West,

but to tens of millions of Indians,

he is still a symbol
of tolerance and pride.

He's been an inspiration for
non-violent leaders like Gandhi...

..standing for moral,
not military, might.

I think Ashoka would have thought
that was a proper monument.

But Ashoka was the exception.

1,000 miles north-east
of the Mauryan Empire,

another leader relied on
the traditional route to power -

violence.

In the third century BC,

mainland Asia was a cauldron
of warring states...

..until one of the leaders
finally crushed his rivals.

He did it with
a deadly battle tactic

known as the rain of arrows.

It took him 25 years and the deaths
of a million enemy troops,

but, by 221 BC,
he'd conquered all the states.

His name was Ying Zheng,
King of the Qin.

He named himself First Emperor.

In honour of his own people,
the Qin,

he named his vast new empire China.

Ying Zheng was determined to unite
the 50 million people he'd conquered

and he would build China
as ruthlessly as he waged war.

All the old Chinese kingdoms,

with their own capital cities
and traditions and cultures,

were wiped from the planet.

The First Emperor instituted
a single system of currency

and weights and measures,
one government,

and vast armies were used to begin

the enormous project of defending
the northern frontier, which we call

the Great Wall of China.

But even more important than that,

the great emperor created

the first single system of writing
for all of China.

A single nation
could finally emerge -

not the kind Ashoka's India
would have admired.

But Ying Zheng was also interested
in the spirit world.

He had a pretty simple idea
of the afterlife.

"If I go, I'm going
to take it all with me."

Construction began on the greatest
mausoleum known to man.

The ancient historian Sima Qian
describes an underground world

built by 700,000 slaves

where a vast domed ceiling
twinkled with stars

above a bronze Imperial Palace.

Everything led to Ying Zheng's body,

lying at the centre of a series
of subterranean chambers.

A mannequin army would surround
the Emperor's tomb.

The 100 rivers of China were said
to run in miniature streams

of pure glittering mercury.

A little not-so-little China

for the Emperor to rule
through all time.

This story sounded like
over-the-top fantasy until, in 1974,

some workers were digging
water wells in Xi'an.

They broke into a vault containing
7,000 life-sized figures

made of fired clay,

now known all round the world
as the Terracotta Army.

Archaeologists believe
that the Terracotta Army

is just a small part
of the Emperor's

massive underground burial complex

covering 22 square miles.

Unless the archaeologists
are wildly wrong,

under this mound may lie
the greatest secret

the ancient world still has.

Ying Zheng kept China together

by imposing a philosophy
of law and order

known as legalism.

But it wasn't unchallenged.

Like ancient people
all around the world,

the Chinese had huge numbers of
what you might call local religions.

They respected nature spirits,
they worshipped their ancestors,

they practised shamanism.

But they also had
a social philosophy

which had been created
by the thinker Confucius,

which emphasised respect,
family, order,

but also had a message
for local kings and rulers -

be wise, be clear, be just,

but also be kind.

Not a message followed
by all of China's rulers.

Ying Zheng despised
Confucius's humanity.

An infallible sign
of a tyrant getting anxious

is when he starts destroying books.

In 213 BC,

the Emperor ordered
the great burning of the books -

Confucius's thoughts.

A year later, 460 scholars
were found still in possession

of the banned writings.

Ying Zheng had all of them
buried alive.

But ideas are harder to kill.

Confucianism still survives
in today's China.

Ying Zheng wanted to reign
for as long as he could.

He wasn't too keen
to reach his mausoleum,

and he gobbled pills
to try to cheat death.

An alchemist offered him
an elixir of eternal life.

But you can never quite
trust the doctor.

The active ingredient
in his magic potion

turned out to be
the highly toxic mercury.

RANTS IN CHINESE

Ying Zheng didn't die well.

So, just another deluded tyrant

reaching the limits
of earthly power.

Except that this was
one of the truly pivotal figures

in world history.

As the First Emperor,
harsh and brutal,

he nonetheless gave the Chinese

a sense of themselves
as a single people

in a single country,
under a single leader,

and that's very much
part of the world we still live in.

So to that extent,

Ying Zheng remains
a genuine earth-shaper.

At this time,
half the world's population

lived in one of two great empires...

...China, and a Western rival
it had barely heard of.

Rome.

Each empire ruled roughly
the same number of people -

about 45 million at the height
of the Roman Empire,

and, according to the Han Chinese
tax records, 57 million there.

They had roughly
the same amount of territory

and both thought that,
in effect, they ruled the world.

The Romans talked about
orbis terrarum, "the whole earth",

and the Chinese about
"all under heaven".

They were both great
engineering cultures,

and their armies looked pretty
similar and were equally deadly.

And yet, separated by
four and a half thousand miles,

neither was really aware
of the other's existence.

Rome was a civilisation based on
militarism, consumerism and trade -

the financial and political capital
of the Mediterranean.

But earthly power wouldn't be enough

for its most famous
upwardly mobile soldier,

about to apply for
the position of living god.

In 48 BC, he arrived in Egypt.

He'd fought his way up through
the rough world of Roman politics,

slaughtering more than
a million people in Gaul

to win himself applause.

He was now the most powerful man
in the Mediterranean,

and his name...

Abi nunc.

..Of course, was Julius Caesar.

Egypt had once been
the glory of the world.

Now, under Greek rulers,

it was still a storehouse
of ancient learning and science.

It was weak, it was deep in debt.

But its capital city, Alexandria,

was widely considered
the greatest city on Earth.

Its library had 700,000 volumes,

virtually the entire collection
of human wisdom

so far in the classical world.

It was a centre for
the study of everything,

from engineering to medicine,
mathematics to history.

Egyptians saw their pharaohs
as living gods.

Cleopatra embraced the tradition,

but to think of her as a saucy vamp

is to grotesquely misunderstand her.

She spoke nine languages,
she was an author,

she was trained in philosophy
and the sciences.

SPEAKS IN EGYPTIAN

But she was a ruthless survivor
in a power struggle

with her little brother Ptolemy.

She needed muscle.

She needed Caesar.

Her brother had put
guards round Caesar.

But Cleopatra was not
a woman easily stopped.

The stage was set for one of the
most dramatic entrances in history.

KNOCK ON DOOR

CAESAR: Introi.

DOOR OPENS

THEY SPEAK IN EGYPTIAN

Cleopatra had just one night
to win Caesar over.

The Roman historian Plutarch
dryly notes

that Caesar was much impressed

by her intelligence,
charm and...charisma.

I'll bet he was!

Plutarch also says that Cleopatra
proved herself a bold coquette.

By the time morning came,

when her younger brother broke in,
there they were,

Caesar and Cleopatra.

Too late, little Ptolemy.

Cleopatra was back on the throne.

Caesar and Cleopatra
sealed their alliance

with a procession up the Nile.

Being seen was vital
to ancient rulers.

At 21, Cleopatra was now
sole ruler of Egypt.

And she was pregnant with
Caesar's son, Caesarion...

...a potential leader of both
the Egyptian and the Roman worlds.

And a middle-aged Caesar?

Fired by his conquest
of this living god,

Caesar decided
to become one himself.

He had his face painted red,
like the god Jupiter,

for his triumphal return to Rome.

A new religious cult
was instituted -

Jupiter Julius.

Outside his house, a special shrine
was raised to the living god

and, of course,
they named a month after him.

We call it July.

If Caesar had been
a modern politician,

we'd have had no doubt
about the trouble.

We'd have said he'd lost it.

Rome was a stroppy, political city
that had rejected the rule of kings

nearly 500 years before.

Caesar's bid to be a god
would be his undoing.

When Caesar was declared
dictator in perpetuity,

some of the senators decided to act.

WHISPERED CONVERSATION

On March the 15th, 44 BC,

Caesar entered the Theatre of Pompey

where the Senate
was meeting that day.

He was presented with
a petition as a distraction.

CAESAR GROANS IN PAIN

Caesar's one-time friend Brutus

is said to have dealt the last
of 23 dagger thrusts.

It's a rough old trade, politics.

The empire was torn apart
by civil war,

as would-be successors to Caesar
fought for supremacy for 14 years.

Cleopatra found herself
on the losing side.

She was too dangerous
to be allowed to survive.

BREATHES DEEPLY

HISSING

Cleopatra refused
to give herself up.

She was, after all, a god,

and not about to let
some common mortal take her life.

HISSING

GASPS

As she died,

so died Egypt.

The world's oldest kingdom became
just another Roman province.

But it was Caesar's megalomania
that won out in the end.

Every one of his successors was
worshipped as a divine emperor.

Rome was becoming dominated
by the super-rich,

by corruption and by emperors
playing at being god.

Divinity had become corrupted
by political power.

Rome was ripe for
spiritual revolution.

And it started on
the very edge of the empire...

..when an ordinary man had
an extraordinary change of heart.

Jerusalem in the year 36 AD.

Saul was doing well for himself
supplying tents to the Roman army.

He was a local contractor,
a Roman citizen and a devout Jew.

CLAMOURING VOICES

On this particular day,
there was a man called Stephen

who'd been causing trouble here
in the market in Jerusalem.

He was saying that
the son of a carpenter,

who'd been crucified just a few
years earlier, was the son of God.

Among those watching,
nobody was more hardline than Saul.

He said himself that he was known
among the Jews of his generation

for his enthusiasm
for the traditions of his ancestors.

And to say that Christ
was the Messiah

was blasphemy, intolerable.

And for blasphemy,
there was only one punishment.

YELLING

CRUNCHING THUD

Saul watched as Stephen was killed.

YELLING AND JEERING

Stoning is still used
as a punishment for blasphemy

in some parts of the world today.

Stephen had just become
the first Christian martyr.

Did his horrible death make Saul
think again or feel squeamish?

Certainly not.

It encouraged him
to join the persecution.

He was seen breathing
threats and murder

towards the followers of Jesus.

SPEAKS IN HEBREW

And with the permission
of the high priest,

he now set off to hunt
some more of them down in Damascus.

But his manhunt was stopped
dead in its tracks.

WIND HOWLS

According to the Bible,

Saul was struck down
on the road to Damascus.

PANTING

He heard the voice of Jesus

telling him to stop
his persecution of Christians.

He came to...

blind.

In Damascus, he went for three days
without food or drink.

A Christian called Ananias
laid his hands on him

and it's said,
"the scales fell from Saul's eyes."

What happened to Paul
on the road to Damascus

sounds a bit like
a desert hallucination.

But the voice he heard
changed his life.

The persecutor got himself baptised

in the faith of the people
he'd been persecuting.

He got rid of his old Jewish name,
Saul, and he became Paul.

And he gave himself
an almost crazily ambitious job,

which was to carry news
of the new faith

not simply to Jews, but to Greeks,

to Romans, to Egyptians,
to anyone who would listen.

Because for him, this was one god

and one set of rules
for everybody on the Earth.

Paul started by heading south
into the Arabian Desert.

He was still a travelling salesman,

but now he was selling a message

which would change
the history of religion.

Up until Paul, the followers
of Jesus Christ had all been Jewish.

The story of the man from Galilee
had been a local event

but Paul's burning need to convert
convinced thousands of non-Jews

that Jesus had come
to save everyone -

Jew or pagan, slave or free man.

SPEAKS IN HEBREW

Today, there are perhaps
15 million Jews in the world,

but because of the evangelising
tradition begun by Paul,

the number of Christians
is 2 billion -

the largest religion ever known.

Paul went on the road endlessly.

He was arrested and
thrown into prison.

He was whipped, he was shipwrecked,
he suffered thirst and starvation.

He said he was beset by pagans,

Jews, brigands and wild beasts.

This was the power of the word
carried around the world

at the pace of one man's tramp.

Paul's journey came to an end
at the centre of the empire, Rome.

He was arrested for starting a riot

by preaching about Jesus
in a Jewish temple.

Now he was prepared
to use his own death

as a spiritual weapon
that would shake the whole empire.

Martyrdom.

It's said that, in Rome,
Paul was beheaded.

He'd normally have faced the far
more agonising death of crucifixion,

but Paul was a Roman citizen,

and the Romans didn't
crucify their own.

Except, of course,
that Paul was no longer their own.

All around the Mediterranean world,

little groups of
his mysterious new sect,

the Christians, were appearing
and beginning to spread.

The execution of Christians
was turned into mass entertainment

all across the empire,

from the Colosseum in Rome

to provincial theatres
in north Africa.

CHEERING

On the morning of March 7th, 203,

a small group of prisoners
was led into the arena at Carthage.

Among them was a young woman
called Vibia Perpetua.

As a Christian,
she'd been condemned to death

for the amusement of the crowd.

Perpetua's is one
of the few female voices

that have come down to us
from the ancient world.

It was preserved from
an account she wrote

in the filth and darkness
of a Roman jail.

BABY WAILS

PERPETUA: "We were put into prison.
I was terrified."

"I'd never been in such a dark hole.

"It was crowded,
the heat was stifling,"

"and I was tortured
with worry for my baby."

These don't seem to be the words
of a historian or a priest

telling us about Perpetua.

We think these are the young woman's
words from her own mouth

at a very tough time indeed,

because her father had driven
himself almost insane,

pleading with her to recant
and save her life.

Her husband had cleared off

and, in prison, she was left
with her baby son.

BABY WAILS

"My baby was faint from hunger."

DOORS CLANG

"In my anxiety, I spoke to my mother
and brother about the child."

Huc veni. Absiste ab eis.

"And I gave the child
in their charge."

SPEAKS IN LATIN

BABY WAILS

"I was in pain because I saw them
suffering out of pity for me."

PANICKED, SOBBING BREATHS

The night before her execution,

Perpetua had an extraordinary vision
of what would happen to her.

"I gazed upon an immense crowd
who watched in amazement."

"Then, a horrible-looking Egyptian
came at me

"with his backers to fight with me."

"And there came to me as my helpers
handsome young men."

"I was stripped and became a man.

"Then my helpers began
to rub me with oil,"

"and I saw that Egyptian
rolling in the dust."

BABY WAILS

"And we began to fight."

"He tried to grab hold of my feet

"while I struck at his face
with my heels."

"And I was lifted up in the air

"and began to thrust at him
as if spurning the earth."

"I joined my hands
and I took hold upon his head

"and he fell on his face.

"And I trod upon his head."

"The people began to shout
and my supporters to exult."

"Then I awoke."

"And realised that
I was not to fight with beasts,"

"but against the Devil."

Dreams like this carry
a revolutionary Christian message -

ordinary people matter.

They are the arena of a cosmic
struggle between good and evil.

This is a rare glimpse

inside the mind of
an early Christian martyr.

Perpetua's extraordinary dream

is the last thing we have
in her own words.

But her final confrontation
with Rome came the following day,

when she was led into the arena

with another young woman
called Felicitas.

Watching was a fellow Christian,

and we have that eyewitness account
of what followed.

CHEERING

MAN: "The people demanded
they be brought forward."

"They rose and went towards
the place they would be martyred."

CLAMOURING VOICES AND CHEERING

"They remained still and
were put to the sword in silence."

CROWD QUIETENS

CENTURION GRUNTS

CROWD GROANS

SLICING AND THUDDING

SCREAMS

"Perpetua screamed
as she was struck on the bone."

"Then she took the trembling hand
of the young gladiator"

"and guided it to her throat."

GRUNTS

MUTED APPLAUSE

For the Christians,
this was less about death

than victory over death.

The Romans found this cult
of martyrdom strange and confusing.

But they did see
something they valued,

which was that to suffer bravely
was to win great honour.

And so Perpetua had taken
a humiliating public death

and turned it into
a kind of victory for faith.

The promise of Heaven
attracted more converts

than Rome could possibly kill.

Within 100 years
of Perpetua's death,

Christianity had spread
right across the Roman world.

Shopkeepers,
administrators, merchants

and then finally, in 337,
the Emperor Constantine -

a man who'd come to power

by military coup, and was
an enthusiastic political assassin,

announced his conversion.

Christianity would never
be the same again.

Constantine was the first person

to make Christianity
a fighting religion.

Before, Christians hadn't even been
supposed to join the military.

They were, like Perpetua, pacifists.

Now, the cross became a sword.

The Roman response
to spiritual revolt

was, in the end, just so Roman -

pragmatic, shrewd.

They reached out
and they assimilated

even this revolutionary cult

and they made it Roman.

It's hard to know whether
to admire this or despise it.

The merger between
Christianity and worldly power

would long survive the Roman Empire.

It's a basic foundation
of the Western world.

But not all empires leave a legacy
when they collapse.

Around the rest of the world,

other cultures were still
trying to appease nature.

535 to 536 was known
around the world

as the year without sunshine.

From Irish monks
to historians in Byzantium

and Antarctic ice cores,
the same story emerges

of a catastrophic year
of dark skies and crop failures.

WIND HOWLS

All the mass spiritual movements

in China, India and the Roman world
could only shiver and endure.

But it proved catastrophic
to the Nazca culture

on the Pacific coast
of South America.

The Nazca were
great engineers and artists.

But they also provide
the ultimate reply to the lazy idea

that native peoples
are bound to have

a wise and harmonious
relationship with nature.

The Nazca left behind
these immense lines and pictures,

created between 200 and 600 AD.

The drawing range from hundreds
to thousands of metres in length.

Many can only be understood
from the air,

as if they were drawn
for gods to see.

The Nazca left us
a lot more than their lines.

Those little hills you can see
behind me were once pyramids

surrounded by great plazas

and dominated by one huge,
central pyramid 30 metres high.

Because this was the Nazcas'
holy city of Cahuachi.

It must have been quite a sight.
And not just the buildings.

Nazca priests
were selected as infants

and their skulls were shaped
with boards and tightened bandages

until they became bizarrely
long and pointed.

Their job was
to buy off angry gods -

a form of social insurance
paid in severed heads.

The victims were their own people.

And here is one.

This is a young man.

And this is not a model.

Out here in the desert,
very little rots.

Grisly.

But all round the world,

it seemed a good idea to kill people

and offer them to the gods,
and by doing that,

try to control the rains
or the earthquakes

or whatever the trouble was.

But there seems to have been
a sudden increase

in human sacrifice here.

And it seems to have happened

because the Nazca were making
a terrible mistake.

The key plant in the desert here
was the huarango tree.

Its roots plunge as much as
15 metres into the earth

to find water - the key to life.

Aqueducts, lined with boulders,

brought water from the mountains
to these reservoirs, called puquios.

The water irrigated the crops
and kept Cahuachi alive.

As the population grew,
they needed more food.

Huarango trees were torn down
to make way for crops.

Big mistake.

The Nazca didn't realise
that the huarango tree

was also the key
to the desert ecosystem.

Its deep roots kept the soil
and their world together.

For hundreds of years, the Nazca
kept offering up heads to the gods,

cutting down the huarango trees

and maintaining their extraordinary,
underground water system.

And the water kept flowing
and life was good.

And then came bad news from the sky.

That fateful year without sunshine,

in 535,
covered the world in a shroud.

THUNDERCLAPS

The Nazca then experienced
an apocalyptic 30 years of rain.

Without the roots
of the huarango trees,

the soil was washed away.

Then the rains were followed
by 30 years of drought.

The earth was left
hard and lifeless.

It's been suggested that
as the Nazca became more desperate,

they sacrificed
more and more of their people

and created more and more
of their lines.

But none of it worked.

The Nazca spent all that time
thinking about severed heads

when all along, it was the severed
trees that really mattered.

The Nazca vanished into
the Andes Mountains,

taking their gods with them.

History is littered with gods, ideas
and civilisations which didn't last.

But at just this time,
another desert people arose

whose beliefs
would stand the test of time.

They'd achieve this
by taking the merger

between spirituality and politics

that Roman Christianity had started
and pushing it much further.

Mecca, 620 AD.

According to Islamic tradition,

Bilal Ibn Rabah
was an African slave from Ethiopia.

Allahu Akbar.

He was a secret follower
of a radical new faith called Islam.

Like Judaism and Christianity,
it believed in one god

and many of the same prophets.

Allahu Akbar.

Bilal's owner was
Umayyah Ibn Kaliff,

a tribal chief.

Umayyah's latest enemies
were followers

of a new preacher called Muhammad -

a tough guy known to his disciples
as The Prophet.

And his creed he called Islam,

which means
"submission to the will of God".

And like the Christians,

Muhammad preached equality
in the eyes of God to all people -

rich and poor, slave and free alike.

Quite rightly,
Umayyah saw this as a challenge

to his own tribal authority

and now one of
his own slaves, Bilal,

was secretly following Muhammad.

Bilal!

BIRD CRIES

Ummayah's men dragged
the young slave into the desert

and they laid him out
on the burning hot sand.

YELLS

He was pinned down and ordered

to reject Muhammad's
revolutionary message.

Like Perpetua in her prison,
Bilal refuse to submit.

Allahu Akbar.

Allahu Akbar!

He simply repeated, "God is great."

Allahu Akbar.

Allahu Akbar!

Violence couldn't stop the passion
of spiritual rebellion.

It failed to in Rome,
and it would fail to in Arabia.

But news of Bilal's suffering
and faith soon spread.

One of Muhammad's companions
bought his freedom.

(Allahu Akbar.)

(Allahu Akbar.)

As Muhammad's followers
grew more defiant,

the tribal chiefs drove them
out of Mecca.

The Muslims then fled to Medina
and took Bilal with them.

Bilal helped to build a simple place

for Muslims to come together
and to pray -

the first mosque.

And it's said that Bilal's
was the very first voice

to make that distinctive
Muslim call to prayer - the Adhan.

HE CHANTS

Allahu Akbar!

Allahu Akbar!

Allahu Akbar!

Allahu Akbar.

Wa asyhadu anna
Muhammadar rasulullah.

Allahu Akbar.

Bilal joined Muhammad's armies

as they won
one victory after another

across the Arabian Peninsula.

The Muslims took spiritual struggle

and military struggle

and they bound them together.

So, in the end, they almost
seemed to be the same thing.

SHOUTING

Muhammad's armies made invasion
a religious duty.

With one language and one God,

Islam expanded far faster
than Christianity or Buddhism.

Except that Islam
didn't really expand.

It exploded.

Within 120 yeas of Muhammad's death,

his followers had converted
and taken control of societies

from Central Asia to Spain,

an area even larger
than the Roman Empire.

Some of the most creative and
powerful civilisations

in world history would be
built in the name of Islam.

MUEZZIN'S CALL TO PRAYER

Today, 1.5 billion people around
the world obey the call to prayer -

the tradition begun by Bilal.

MUEZZIN'S CALL TO PRAYER RESOUNDS

In these 1,000 years,

the most densely populated
parts of the planet

were transformed by new beliefs
and new religions.

And the shocking,
swift impact of Islam

really does provide the correct
climax to this period.

The power of the sword is strong.

Old fact.

The power of faith is strong.

New fact.

You take the power of the sword
and of faith, and put them together

and you have the most fearsome
human force on the planet.

In the next programme -

the golden age of Islam...

..the Vikings - nation-shapers...

..Genghis Khan rewrites the story...

..and Europe emerges
as the surprising winner.

If you'd like to know a little bit
more about how the past is revealed,

you can order a free booklet
called How Do They Know That?

Just call 08453660255

or go to bbc. co. uk/history

and follow the links
to the Open University.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd