The History of the World Podcast, written and presented by Chris Hasler. Volume 4, The Medieval World.

Episode 73, the Battle of Aemjalute. Shalut. Now, Myyanne Howard is a natural spring in Northern Israel just a couple of miles north of its border with the Palestinian West Bank. Its Arabic

name is Ainsjalut and this particular translation provides its name to the battle that is the subject of today's episode.

It is within the fertile crescent, an agriculturally favourable stretch of land in the Middle East. Some of the a Told Crescent from around 12,000 years ago. Settlements and domesticated crops and animals

meant growing populations. Settlements growing in population and size brought about trade and competition between the settlements.

Competition brought about technological advancement and conflict and with conflict came warfare.

All of these things put pressure on settlements to produce, whether it be materials and surplus surprise for trade or weapons and constructed defences.

Members of settlement populations became specialist farmers or traders or artisans or soldiers or architects or anything else that was required by the growing town or city.

One of the earliest cities that became a notable power in the Levant was Damascus,

the current capital of Syria, less than a hundred miles northwest of Mayan

Khahud. The Sumerians, who were one of the earliest recorded societies residing on the Iraqi coastline of the Persian Gulf,

recognized a people called the Ammarites, occupied lands of the Levant from the third millennium

B.C. E. As time advanced the most powerful settlements became kingdoms, and the most powerful kingdoms became

empires.

The lands of today's battle episode were within an area known as Canaan, very much central

to the stories of the Hebrew Bible, and the lands of Canaan would be strongly influenced by the New Kingdom of Egypt

going into the second half of the second millennium B.C. After the decline of the new kingdom, it is believed that Israel

emerged in these lands as referenced in the

first millennium, the mighty Neo-Assyrian Empire conquered the lands of Israel,

but the region didn't lose its Jewish identity. It still didn't lose its identity

when the Neo-Babylonians conquered the Neo-Assyrians and tried to exile the Jews

from Jerusalem to Babylon.

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