| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Thomas T. Allsen. Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles. (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 1997. Pp. xv, 137. $49.95.

Much scholarship on Central Asia has focused on the Silk Route as a medium of contact and cultural diffusion between Middle Eastern (later Islamic) societies and China, similar to the Mediterranean Sea's relation to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The trade routes that transverse the area have been known and used since the period of Alexander the Great and indeed have served as conduits to bring things Eastern to people in the Middle East and the West. Yet Central Asia differs vastly from the Mediterranean in that it contains large nomadic and sedentary populations who transformed many of the goods, ideas, and transit populations to fit their own needs. Thus, when they reached China or Iran, goods, ideas, and people had filtered through a Central Asian sieve and reached their destinations significantly altered. . . .

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