Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds: Cross-Cultural Exchange in Pre-Modern Asia

by Hyunhee Park

Long before Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope en route to India, the peoples of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia engaged in vigorous cross-cultural exchanges across the Indian Ocean. This book focuses on the years 700 to 1500, a period when powerful dynasties governed both regions, to document the relationship between the Islamic and Chinese worlds before the arrival of the Europeans. Through a close analysis of the maps, geographic accounts, and travelogues compiled by both Chinese and Islamic writers, the book traces the development of major contacts between people in China and the Islamic world and explores their interactions on matters as varied as diplomacy, commerce, mutual understanding, world geography, navigation, shipbuilding, and scientific exploration. When the Mongols ruled both China and Iran in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, their geographic understanding of each other s society increased markedly. This rich, engaging, and pioneering study offers glimpses into the worlds of Asian geographers and mapmakers, whose accumulated wisdom underpinned the celebrated voyages of European explorers like Vasco da Gama.

Genres: History, China

306 pages, ebook

First published August 27, 2012

Reviews

[Carlos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Take the first word of this book’s title seriously. Park chronicles the contact between Chinese and Muslim societies between the 8th and 15th centuries mainly through the impact each had on the geographical sciences of the other, as evidenced by the maps they produced. This lends itself to a prosaic, if unengaging, list of travelers that connected these two societies and the geographers that put their discoveries down on paper. In this way Park is able to highlight the commerce that both preceded and survived the Mongol empire’s conquest of both of these societies as well as the technologies that passed from one to the other. While I can’t fault the author on the information she shares with the reader I cannot say that she presents the information in the most interesting way.

[Tsai Wei-chieh · Rating 4 out of 5]

趁著作者來臺大演講時翻完一遍。