Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This book was really a fun read - like travel literature plus. I never before thought about what Asia was like when Europe was in the Dark Ages. It's based on the actual journals of people who traveled during that time. There are lots of exotic places, like Bukhara and Samarkand, but I never felt lost. There are good maps and there always seemed to be a paragraph of explanation just when I needed it. The book kept coming back to themes, like common court ceremony or the shared fears of pirates. . A lot of the travelers had friends spread across much of Asia. My favorite chapter was on a man named Ibn Battuta. He went all the way from Morocco to China telling stories and bringing news to courts along the way and made it back to Morocco. It's a readable sized book, a little over 200 pages, and at the end I felt as if I'd been right along with these travelers, felt the heat and cold, and learned a lot about their world.
Click Here to see more reviews about: When Asia Was the World: Traveling Merchants, Scholars, Warriors, and Monks Who Created the "Riches of the "East"
While European civilization stagnated in the "Dark Ages," Asia flourished as the wellspring of science, philosophy, and religion. Linked together by a web of spiritual, commercial, and intellectual connections, the distant regions of Asia's vast civilization, from Arabia to China, hummed with trade, international diplomacy, and the exchange of ideas. Stewart Gordon has fashioned a compelling and unique look at Asia from AD 700 to 1500-a time when Asia was the world-by relating the personal journeys of Asia's many travelers.
