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Hardly any other region of the world exerts a stronger fascination on people in the West than the Orient. The Middle East is the cradle of the three great monotheistic world religions. Even though we associate this region with war and terror today, it was and is also the scene of cultural and religious diversity. The film tells of this little-known side of the Orient. Orientalist Daniel Gerlach sets off on an adventure to fascinating locations that shed light on the early history of Christianity. In present-day Lebanon, he visits the monumental ruins of Baalbek. Has Christianity adopted elements from other, older cultures here? In Iraq, this legacy of the ancient Orient is still alive. Here, Gerlach tracks down the Mandaeans, followers of an ancient religion whose highest prophet is John the Baptist, and who still perform some rituals as they did in the time of Christ. A little further north, near the present-day Iraqi capital Baghdad, Gerlach takes a journey back in time to the Sassanid Empire, which worshipped fire rather than the cross, in the magnificent remains of gigantic palace complexes. To this day, there are so-called Zoroastrians in Iraq, who refer to the prophet Zarathustra, who lived in the 1st or 2nd millennium BC and whose teachings had a great influence on the religions of the Orient. In the city of Mosul, destroyed by the Islamic State, and in Cairo in Egypt, Daniel Gerlach follows the traces of the Eastern Church, in which the Christians of the Middle East have preserved their specific form of faith and beliefs, which are still different from those of the West. //Chapter// 00:00 Opening credits 01:24 Istanbul and Baalbek 08:53 Mandaeans in Iraq 14:22 The Sassanids 21:33 Hatra 27:00 Mosul 30:32 Cairo 35:35 Longing for immortality 41:00 Jerusalem This video is a production of ZDF, in cooperation with Kobalt Productions. #TerraX #Orient #islam The second episode of this series can be found here ????????????https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/terr... Subscribe? Just click here – / @terraxhistory All films and information about Terra X can be found here – https://terra-x.zdf.de/#xtor=CS3-82 Terra X on Facebook – / zdfterrax Terra X on Instagram – / terrax