N is for Nomad

Why did the Nomad cross the road?
It’s what he lives for…

Roads are created by people who walk them–a lot. The Silk Road was named for what was sent on it, but it was carried by those who traveled, not those who sent. All well and good to be the silk weaver or the wealthy owner of all the looms, but who did the actual taking? “Merchants.” Many of those merchants were also nomads or were at least escorted by the nomads.

Not to mention that standard notion of the “Barbarian of the Steppes.” I may have mentioned the 36-episode Great Course by Kenneth Harl that covers that topic in detail. The title is what Prof. Ken Harl chose, and yet what becomes eminently clear is that barbarians is what everybody else called them to make them seem primitive and less dominating.

In fact, there were dozens of tribes who ruled the steppes, many of whom migrated from the harsh, impregnable deserts and fickle grasslands to the lusher lands in the fertile basin. Thus, they came sweeping down off the steppes repeatedly, always somehow surprising though the Xiong Nu, Hittites, Pecheneges, Scythians, Parthians, Huns, Bactrians, Gok Turks, Seljuk Turks, and Mongols did this for nearly two thousand years.

They were the Powerful of the Steppes.

Modern nomadic family, with Bactrian camel. Photo from The Culture Trip.
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K is for Kushan

Vima Kadphises and Shiva, photo from columbia. edu.

You want to study the Romans?
You ought to study the Kushans.

Prof. Craig Benjamin, “Foundations of Eastern Civilization”

The Kushan dynasty may be the greatest empire that you’ve never heard of. 

The Kushans practically invented the Silk Road. At least the middle part of the road, since I noted previously that the Han dynasty forged paths across the mountains to create the road from the east and Darius’ Achmaenid dynasty had a “Royal Road” that crossed from Greece through Persia from the west. Craig Benjamin, who taught a crackerjack 45-lecture Great Course on Eastern Civilizations (yes that’s where I got some of this from), started out an ancient Rome scholar. But he ended up writing his dissertation on the Kushans, that dynasty that spread from Persia across northern Afghanistan and India, a terrain that is mountainous but traversable. 

Today, it’s known as the Hindu Kush.

The Hindu Kush is a place but also a people who spread far across the territory. Wikipedia.
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I is for Ibn Battutah

If you thought Giovanni da Pian’s 5000 miles across Asia was long, how about 73,000 miles?

Muslim scholar Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Battutah — in Arabic بُو عَبْد الله مُحَمَّد اِبْن عَبْد الله اللَّوَاتِيّ الطَّنْجِيّ اِبْن بَطُّوطَة — traveled all across the deserts of Asia Minor AND across northern Africa, southern Europe, eastern Europe, India, the southern oceans, and parts of China. It was enough to circumnavigate the globe three times. Battuta went so far, that there are multiple views of his trip, all of which could fit under the heading of “map porn,” a few of which I will include because I do just love me some maps.

Ibn Battuta traversed pieces of the Silk Route, including sea routes. Wikipedia.
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