Marco Polo, with his father and uncle, spent years traversing the Silk Road. During their travels, the Polos gained both great wealth and knowledge of Central Asia and the Middle East that allowed Marco to publish his memoirs of his extensive travels, A Description of the World, in 1298. The book was of great interest to European traders and explorers.
This route across the Sahara Desert was something of an extension of the Silk Road. Beginning in the eighth century, Berber merchants in northern Africa began using camels from the Arabian Peninsula to make regular crossings of the Sahara Desert. Carrying goods acquired from the broader Islamic trading world, they exchanged exotic materials for metal goods, gold, and slaves from such sub-Saharan states as Mali. Like the Silk Road, Europeans sought to break into this trade, which drove much of Atlantic exploration during the fifteenth and...
The Silk Road is a network of land routes connecting Asia with the Mediterranean world and Russia. Approximately 4,000 miles in length, it traverses Central Asia along several parallel tracks. It is believed to have been founded around 2,000 years ago by the Han Dynasty in China. By the late medieval period in Europe, it was used to bring exotic consumer goods into the hands of Muslim traders in the Middle East and North Africa as well as the Byzantine, Persian, and Russian empires. During the Crusades, Europeans became well acquainted with...