Moving in the Margins: Desert Travel and Power in Medieval Central Asia

Download or read book Moving in the Margins: Desert Travel and Power in Medieval Central Asia written by Paul D. Wordsworth and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-09-26 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Central Asia has been perceived as a landscape of connections, of Silk Roads; an endless plain across which waves of conquerors swiftly rode on horseback. In reality the region is highly fragmented and difficult to traverse, and overcoming these obstacles led to routes becoming associated with epic travel and high-value trade. Put simply, the inhabitants of these lands became experts in the art of travelling the margins. This volume seeks to unravel some of the myths of long-distance roads in Central Asia, using a desert case-study to put forward a new hypothesis for how medieval landscapes were controlled and manipulated.