Word: nebenzahl
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...marvels of painting, literature, religion and science. They were not mere tools, but objects of mystery and luxury, the treasures of Kings and the seducers of sailors. Yet these old maps now captivate us as much for their many errors as for what they got right. Thus Kenneth Nebenzahl's Mapping the Silk Road and Beyond: 2,000 Years of Exploring the East, an elegant compilation of many of history's finest?if arrestingly flawed?cartographic specimens, cannot help but enchant. Its dozens of plates offer fodder for hours of visual grazing...
...Nebenzahl's title somewhat misleadingly suggests, the parameters of this collection coincide roughly with those of Asia. The "silk road" here distends geographically and semantically to encompass any and all lands east of Western Europe. But the Orient is more than a geographic orientation for the collection?it is an evolving and affecting idea. Nebenzahl's mapmakers?with only two exceptions?are Westerners, and the pictures they drew of unknown lands reveal more about Europe's imagination than Asia's landscape...
...After a brief glance at the 15th century rediscovery of the monumental 2nd century opus of Claudius Ptolemy (who was responsible for the idea that Africa and Asia were linked by a southern land bridge), Nebenzahl plunges into the world of fantasy and Christian ideology that dominated mapmaking between the fall of the Greeks and their rediscovery during the Renaissance. Many of the examples from this period scarcely look like maps at all. They are too beautiful, for one thing?they teem with castles and knights, thickets of blooming vines, schools of fish, piles of jewels. They blend fact...
...Much of Nebenzahl's commentary on the maps focuses on the complex networks of patronage and scholarly collaboration that led to their creation. Inevitably, the maps sometimes flatter the rulers for whom they were drawn. The 12th century Moroccan nobleman Al-Idrisi, for example, produced a world map for Roger II of Sicily that swelled his kingdom so that it was approximately half the size of the Iberian Peninsula. Yet Al-Idrisi also achieved a new level of accuracy by integrating the knowledge of Muslim mariners with that of Christian scholars, so that Asia was at last separated from Africa...
...maps shrunk down to fit the pages of this book, is so intricate and large that much of its detail is incomprehensible, even with the help of a magnifying glass and a Latin dictionary. Another frustration is that many of the maps' most eye-catching details go unexplained because Nebenzahl's commentary focuses primarily on the historical context. But perhaps this failing is fitting. Presented like this, with their mysteries intact, the maps become, once again, invitations to further explorations. They beckon us into the shadowy waters of the past in search of shores whose edges we have only just...