January 30, 2007

It's a big place to get lost in A few historical links through the wild spaces of Asia, The Pax Mongolica and some images -- for that slow work week.
posted by BlueHorse 17 years ago
  • oh bluehorse this is really pinging on my historical nerd bone. thanks!! I look forward to many fine hours of exploration :D
  • had so often dreamed of pinging medusa's nerd bone. *wallows in sorrow at lost opportunity*
  • slow work week I think I'll need a month, actually. That Pax Mongolica piece is interesting - but I think it's a bit rich to say that conquered people's dislike of the Mongols was rooted in cultural prejudice!
  • pinging medusa's nerd bone . . err . . yes, well . . . um . . . so, anyway Great pics & lincs, GramMa! I'd like to print out the complete Sir John Chardin "Travels in Persia, book two (1673-1677)" from the first link. So I had a quarstion that relates to this sort of. I wondered about the name China and if it was a Western adaptation of some form of Kahn, but I was really off. A dictionary search says "Word History: Our term china for porcelain or ceramic ware is a shortening of chinaware and probably china dishes. Although the word china is identical in spelling to the name of the country, there are 16th- and 17th-century spellings like chiney, cheny, and cheney that reflect the borrowing into English of the Persian term for this porcelain, chīnī. The Persian word and the Sanskrit word cīnāḥ, "Chinese people," which gave us the English name for the country, go back to the Chinese word Qín, the name of the dynasty that ruled China from 221 to 206 B.C." So there you go. Did you notice the cheney in there?
  • Pete, it would be easier on the ol' eyeballs to have it in paper format.