Abu-Lughad 2

In this second part to Abu-Lughad's passage, she focuses on the middle east and central Asia. It begins with the history of the trade routes and expeditions throughout Asia and China. She first describes how passages were used and who used them. Some brief on the routes of northern, middle, and southern Asia are also explained. Some famous explores that led these expeditions were also brought up in this passage. It showed how many explorers battled many hardships and conflicts jut to succeed in their ultimate goal. In the second chapter, we learn about Sinbad's way or also known as the "middle route." This middle route though very cheap and easy was not used by may explorers. Many key cities were also described such as Baghdad and Cairo which were two of the most powerful center cities back in that time period. But throughout these times many cities that were flourishing, eventually suffered and ended up collapsing. Finally, in the final chapter, Abu-Lughad discussed Cairo's slave movement and how much of a role it played in their success. merchants, banking, slaves, and much more all impacted the trading industry and made it boom for years to come.

Through this reading I found it very interesting how many different events had major impacts on the trading routes. I found it hard to put into perspective the whole world wide decease outbreak and just how many hundreds of thousands died. They not only had the "black death" to worry about but other sicknesses too. I mean it has such a huge impact, negative for that matter on the trading industry which makes it more impressive that people were able to survive and rebuild everything.

I just would wonder one thing. When I look back and read all of this information on the deceases, I wonder were and how it all started. Also it would be interesting to see how people actually were able to come back from such a devistation and what changes they made.