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W. Empire pod UK.com. Hello and me William Empire with me Anita Haran.

And me, William Durham.

Now, the last episode, we introduced you to a rather redoubtable woman, Lady Mary.

And this was at a time when the West still felt it had a lot to learn from the Islamic world.

It was the Ottomans, basically, who gave Europe the science of inoculation,

and she was pivotal in that role of bringing of bridging these two different cultures.

This time we're going to move forward a century to the second half of the 19th century.

A period when the Europeans were clearly dominant and the Ottoman Empire just seems to be falling apart.

It's got the pressure of Russian invasions from the North, resurgent religious nationalisms

across the Balkans, basically it is under attack from all quarters and we are going to be

focusing in on one particularly fascinating figure who I've always been

gripped by I've spent a lot of time in Istanbul poking around his palace and

he's someone that's also fascinated many novelists. He appears in novels and in movies.

I think partly because he seems to embody the difficulty is faced by many in the Islamic

world then as now.

How do you confront the West?

Do you embrace it or do you reject it as

decadent and fall back on the politics of Islam? And this is something, you know, this is

...