Nearly 50 years ago we made our way into an inner place, a semi-subterranean room, in a peculiar college. A smallish, round-faced man was beginning to give tongue. Each week he drew multi-coloured patterns in the air, words flitting about like luminous bats in a night sky. We sat bewitched. There was suspense too, since from time to time a stammer threatened to stop all speech.
He took us back to a world far removed from our own — there was more than a touch of Pullman magic as he made an incision and we crossed into his world. First we found ourselves in the Middle East in an era of war on fronts stretching from the Red Sea to the Caucasus. Key characteristics of the two great powers involved, Byzantium and Sasanian Persia, were identified. The rise of Islam was explained in terms of social malaise in Mecca and exhaustion in the outside world.
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