Andrew Marr's History of the World

Lots of historical inaccuracies . The scientific knowledge possessed by Arabs , they acquired it from India ,which was never mentioned . And the atrocities done by Muslim armies to Constantinople was totally neglected .It was if the the director was deliberately trying to simply paint only the good side that came with Islam with mentioning muslim conquests with only the word 'exploding' .Arabs ,even before Mohammad had acquired certain knowledge regarding Mathematics and geometry from their constant trade and relations with India . This being referred to as "Islamic Knowledge" is totally wrong . Even the numbers known as 'Arabic numerals' are not Arabic , they are Indian . Since Europeans got to know of these knowledge with their interaction with Arabs , seems to have thought this belonged to Arabs when it didn't .

Today , when most of us already know the history , i don't understand why BBC is so desperately trying to distort the same and what does it mean by "Islamic Knowledge ". The knowledge arabs/persians got had nothing to do with Islam.

PS: This documentary can be called as world history from a European (leftist) perspective . I am surprised to see that this documentary seems to mention nothing of much importance to Jesus, while it gave Mohammad a lot of mentions.

When I was a student, I was obsessed with documentaries. This is one of the documentaries I watched back then. Enjoyable to watch.

The series opens and closes with the Ayoreo tribe from Paraguay. It conveys an outmoded view of tribal peoples straight out of a colonialist's handbook. We are told they live like our ancestors and that history has passed them by. Neither are true and it's dangerous rubbish because it's exactly the same view which has led to the destruction of tribes throughout the world. We are also told that Africa was 'always dangerous' for early man (but the script thankfully fell short of calling it the 'dark continent'). The 're-enactments' of people passing out of Africa and growing crops for the first time are pure Monty Python. Best viewed as comedy. How this was a co-production with the Open University beats me.

Thought I would watch episode 4 to see what was served up. Discovered, to my bemusement, that Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was portrayed as an Uzbek. That's news to me - the give away is in his name ak-Khwarizmi - of Khwarezm. He lived during the Abased Caliphate - circa 780 - 850 AD and is famous for al-jibr - better known as algebra. The Uzbeks were still nomadic peoples at this time. Maths had long been studied in places like Babylon and India at this time. Cordoba and Baghdad may have been large by the standards of the petty realms of Europe at that time but that didn't make them the largest cities in the world. In the West Cordoba would have vied with Byzantium for honours, and in Central Asia, several cities could easily have taken the crown - in particular Old Urgench (Konye-Urgench)capital of the Khwazemian Empire. And let's not forget the cities of China (or Song as it was then known). One could go on Misleading in important aspects

Not so much the history of the world, this series focuses on the prioritizing religion.