Great list by an absolute expert on the subject :)
I'm hoping to do the Silk Route by bike in the next couple of years. TAD Global Cycling puts together yearly runs, and it looks amazing: https://tdaglobalcycling.com/silk-route
I traveled some of the countries along the way last year, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan (by hiking and offroad vehicles). The landscape is beautiful, but be very prepared to survive in the scorching sun and dust in the desert for days without any option to resupply food and water. We met some solo cyclists along the way, I have great respect for those individuals. For example, this is how the main road looks like in some parts of Tajikistan: https://i.imgur.com/MlZauBn.jpeg
The traffic on these roads consists mostly of Chinese trucks and an occasional crazy traveler like us. Note how a secondary track emerged along the side of the main road because the original one became so filled with potholes.
Good list. It does not include "Silk Roads" by Frankopan, which I agree with. That's a good read but much more a history of world trade (hence the plural) and strangely western-centric. I saw strangely because in the introduction Frankopan says he wanted to write a history from the point of view on central Asia, but its not that at all. Dalyrymple's "Golden Road" succeeds at Frankopan's objective and I found it much better in general. I don't want to sound too negative on "Silk Roads" but I think the title is subtly misleading if you want to learn about the trade general referred to as the Silk Road.
About this book: "Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders", and especially about this source of information:
> Shlomo Goitein used the documents that were serendipitously discovered in the geniza of the Cairo synagogue
I'm still waiting for a proper "inclusion" of their contents in the "main" historical discourse, it's a pity that there aren't much many historians going through them and using their contents. From the dedicated wiki page [1]:
> The Cairo Geniza, alternatively spelled the Cairo Genizah, is a collection of some 400,000[1] Jewish manuscript fragments and Fatimid administrative documents that were kept in the genizah or storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat or Old Cairo, Egypt. (...) comprise the largest and most diverse collection of medieval manuscripts in the world.
Tim Severin is referenced in the list, so i would suggest as an addition Tracking Marco Polo by the very same author, a fun read indeed.
From Goodreads:
Tim Severin took up the challenge offered from antiquity by Marco Polo. Using the great explorer's journals as a route guide, Severin followed him all the way from Venice to Afghanistan - on a motorbike.https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1735662.Tracking_Marco_P...
I'd add Owen Lattimore's Desert Road to Turkestan: Lattimore traveled through the Central Asian deserts with a camel caravan in the 1930's, one of few westerner's ever to do so; and also Richard Hopkirk's Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, about the first European explorers to enter that region.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 30.1 ms ] threadI'm hoping to do the Silk Route by bike in the next couple of years. TAD Global Cycling puts together yearly runs, and it looks amazing: https://tdaglobalcycling.com/silk-route
https://youtube.com/shorts/Ki4UQ20tWQk
> Shlomo Goitein used the documents that were serendipitously discovered in the geniza of the Cairo synagogue
I'm still waiting for a proper "inclusion" of their contents in the "main" historical discourse, it's a pity that there aren't much many historians going through them and using their contents. From the dedicated wiki page [1]:
> The Cairo Geniza, alternatively spelled the Cairo Genizah, is a collection of some 400,000[1] Jewish manuscript fragments and Fatimid administrative documents that were kept in the genizah or storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat or Old Cairo, Egypt. (...) comprise the largest and most diverse collection of medieval manuscripts in the world.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Geniza
Through the Jade Gate to Rome, John E. Hill. (browsed)
The Silk Road: A New History, Valerie Hansen. (yet to buy but looks awesome)