ships of the desert

The Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World
by Tim Marshall
Published 14 Oct 2021

Towards the centre of the country lie Riyadh and the Najd region. Although the capital is the biggest city and Saudi’s political heart it is isolated from the other population centres, a factor which partially explains why the inhabitants practise a form of Islam that most of the population find too extreme. While the arrival of camels, the ‘ships of the desert’, had enabled traders to reach small oasis towns such as Mecca and Medina, Najd, where the Sauds lived, remained isolated by the three deserts surrounding it and the mountains separating it from Hejaz. Najd was a backwater without water. There was little reason to go there except to get to Mecca from the east, but other routes were less arduous and so for centuries the world passed it by.

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The caravans would grow, some to as many as 12,000 animals, and become the equivalent of today’s supertankers roving very different kinds of seas. ‘A camel is a horse designed by a committee’ is unfair. It may be an ungainly creature but it is superbly designed to do what no other beast of burden can and in so doing changed history. These ‘ships of the desert’ were the only means of mass transport capable of traversing what had been for centuries a land barrier between Africa and the Eurasian continent. The single-humped camel can carry four times the load of a horse and still travel 50 kilometres in a day. It can do this for more than two weeks without a drop of water, withstanding dehydration of up to 25 per cent of its body weight.

On the Trail of Genghis Khan: An Epic Journey Through the Land of the Nomads
by Tim Cope
Published 23 Sep 2013

The Last Nomad Nation 3. Wolf Totem 4. A Fine Line to the West 5. Kharkhiraa: The Roaring River Mountain Kazakhstan 6. Stalin’s Shambala 7. Zud 8. Tokym Kagu Bastan 9. Balkhash 10. Wife Stealing and Other Legends of Tasaral 11. The Starving Steppe 12. The Place That God Forgot 13. Otamal 14. Ships of the Desert 15. The Oil Road Russia 16. Lost Hordes in Europe 17. Cossack Borderlands 18. The Timashevsk Mafia Crimea 19. Where Two Worlds Meet 20. The Return of the Crimean Tatars Ukraine 21. Crossroads 22. Taking the Reins 23. Among the Hutsuls Hungary 24. The End of the World Epilogue Acknowledgments List of Maps Image Section Glossary Selected Bibliography Notes A Note on the Author By the Same Author Mongolia 1 MONGOLIAN DREAMING Only ten minutes earlier we had been bent forward over our saddles, braced against the nearly horizontal rain and hail, but now the afternoon sun had returned and the wind had gone.

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Just at dusk we came to a gorge between the Moiynkum and the mountain ridge, at the bottom of which lay a cluster of adobe homes—an aul called Karatau. I hurried down and caught the last herder on his way home for the night. I didn’t have to say a word before he led the way to a trough and invited me in. 14 SHIPS OF THE DESERT In the late autumn of 1219 Genghis Khan rode along the freezing banks of the Syr Darya leading somewhere between 90,000 and 200,000 men and probably at least twice as many horses. He was drawing close to battle after the long journey from Mongolia, and one can only imagine that the cold air would have lifted the energy and alertness of his mount.

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Nowadays only 9.6 percent of Kazakhs worked on the land, roughly 5 percent of whom, like this family, were thought to carry on a nomadic or semi-nomadic way of life. 7 Beshbarmak is customarily followed by meat broth mixed with dried curd. 8 A fatty sheep tail is the equivalent of a modern-day pacifier and is still used that way among Mongolians as well. Kazakhs also believed that touching a baby’s body with a fatty rump will bring wealth. 9 In Mongolia today, it is still in fact the custom never to compliment a baby but to call it “ugly” so as not to cast a spell of bad luck. CHAPTER 14: SHIPS OF THE DESERT 1 The Khwarezm Empire, which bordered the Mongol Empire, stretched across what is historically known as Transoxiana, which roughly includes the modern states of Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and parts of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. 2 Alexander the Great had in fact fought a famous battle on its banks in 329 BCE with Scythian nomads.

Rough Guide Directions Marrakesh
by Daniel Jacobs

P.132  ESSENTIALS  Atlas trekking Crystalline mountain air, snowy peaks and green valleys await trekkers and hikers in the High Atlas. P.102  ATLAS EXCURSIONS 45  Golf Morocco’s late king, Hassan II, enjoyed a spot of golf, and the country has some top-class courses, including three excellent ones around Marrakesh. P.125  THE VILLE NOUVELLE AND PALMERY  Camel riding If you’ve never tried a ride on the ship of the desert, pop up to the Palmery and be Lawrence of Arabia for the afternoon. P.86  THE VILLE NOUVELLE AND PALMERY  Windsurfing Reliable winds at Essaouira ensure some of the best windsurfing in North Africa. P.103  ESSAOUIRA  Skiing at Oukaïmeden Just two hours from Marrakesh you’ll find 20km of runs for skiers and snowboarders at all levels.

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves
by Matt Ridley
Published 17 May 2010

The European may scoff at the ridiculous legend that this lovely cloth is made from the cocoons of caterpillars; and the Chinese may guffaw at the laughable fable that this transparent ceramic is made from sand. But both of them are better off and so is the Indian middleman. All three have acquired the labour of others. In Robert Wright’s terms, this is a non-zero transaction. The collective brain has expanded across the entire Indian Ocean and lifted the standard of living at both ends. Ships of the desert But the plundering, the lack of invention, the barbarians and above all Diocletian’s red tape did for Rome in the end. As the empire disintegrated under this bureaucratic burden, at least in the west, money lending at interest stopped and coins ceased to circulate so freely. In the Dark Ages that followed, because free trade became impossible, cities shrank, markets atrophied, merchants disappeared, literacy declined and – crudely speaking – once Goth, Hun and Vandal plundering had run its course, everybody had to go back to being self-sufficient again.

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It could carry far more than a donkey could, go to places a wheeled bullock cart could not, and because it could find its own forage en route, its fuel costs were essentially zero – like a sailing ship. For a while even the Byzantine sailing ships of the Red Sea, waiting for the right winds and running the gauntlet of increasingly numerous pirates, found themselves at a competitive disadvantage compared with ‘ships of the desert’. With the route down the Euphrates disrupted by wars between Sassanid Persia and Byzantine Constantinople, the way was open for the people of Mecca, like dry Phoenicians, to become rich through trade. Spices, slaves and textiles went north and west; while metals, wine and glass went south and east.

The Wood Age: How One Material Shaped the Whole of Human History
by Roland Ennos
Published 18 Feb 2021

For this reason, most savanna mammals are hairier than their cousins that live in dense forest and tend to have particularly dense hair on their upper flanks to ward off the sun’s rays. Protected by their heavy fur coats, they have to use far less water to keep themselves cool than naked humans. In deserts the problems of keeping cool in the daytime are most acute. It is noteworthy, then, that those “ships of the desert,” the camels, have particularly heavy coats of hair on their upper flanks, while their human riders cover themselves with loose flowing robes. The shielding effect of hair also helps explain why humans have maintained a dense covering of hair on the tops of our heads; it helps us keep our most vital organ—our brains—cool.

Culture & Empire: Digital Revolution
by Pieter Hintjens
Published 11 Mar 2013

Switzerland is land-locked, nonetheless it derived great wealth from its position on the Rhine, its internal lakes, and as a crossing point for Alpine trade. In fourteenth century Africa, the Manden Kurufaba empire of Mali controlled cross-Saharan trade in salt and gold carried on camels, or "ships of the desert." The Manden Kurufaba became so wealthy that when its king, Mansa Musa, traveled to Mecca, he spent so much gold that the price of the metal was depressed for a decade. Post-genocide Rwanda, another exception, has a booming middle class and economy. There, it seems to be driven by the determination of the elites to never again allow such a horror to occur, with help from China and the US, and pillage from Congo-Kinshasa.

Lonely Planet Mongolia (Travel Guide)
by Lonely Planet , Trent Holden , Adam Karlin , Michael Kohn , Adam Skolnick and Thomas O'Malley
Published 1 Jul 2018

You don't need to spend the night, however. Mandalgov 1Sights 1Byamba's Tree NurseryA1 2Dashgimpeliin KhiidC1 3Mandalgov MuseumC1 4Sleeping 4Gobi HotelC1 5Hotel MandalC1 5Eating 6Gobi AnuC2 7Urgoo RestaurantB2 3Entertainment 8Central Mongolian Concert TheatreA2 CAMELS Known as ships of the desert, Mongolian Bactrian camels are two-humped beasts with shaggy wool coats. They can still be seen today, hauling goods and people across the Gobi, as they have done for centuries. Your first encounter with a camel may be a daunting experience: it may bark, spit and smell like a sweaty armpit.

Meat: A Benign Extravagance
by Simon Fairlie
Published 14 Jun 2010

However it is not necessarily as simple as it sounds. The feral camels in the Australian bush, descended from animals imported to carry bales of wool, are now ‘the wildest camel herd in the world’, largely because nobody in the country which pioneered 120 foot transcontinental ‘road-trains’ has any use for ships of the desert any longer. There are already a million of them, and left to their own devices would double in number every ten years, so they are culled by marksmen from a helicopter. Interviewed on Radio 4, Tony Peacock of the University of Canberra commented: Nobody would like to do it with birth control more than I – but it’s not possible.

Lonely Planet Morocco (Travel Guide)
by Lonely Planet , Paul Clammer and Paula Hardy
Published 1 Jul 2014

(Click here) Figuig It’s worth trekking east to Morocco’s oasis par excellence, with palmeraies, ksour and views of Algeria. (Click here) Erg Chigaga Enlist a ‘Blue Man’ in M’Hamid, where dunes nuzzle against the guesthouses, to find this 40km stretch of sand mountains reaching 300m. (Click here) Drâa Valley Timbuktu-bound caravans once passed through this desolate valley; now you can board a ‘ship of the desert’ (read: camel) to palm-shaded oases. (Click here) Mountains With Berber villages nestling beneath snowy peaks, the High Atlas is one of the world’s most awe-inspiring mountain ranges. Whether you want to climb, trek, experience rural life or just escape the rat race far below, Morocco’s other mountains are also worth exploring.

Arabs: A 3,000 Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires
by Tim Mackintosh-Smith
Published 2 Mar 2019

But that same south coast lies in the realm of seasonal winds that would eventually take Arabian sailors and settlers round the Indian Ocean rim, in a great and growing mercantile crescent that would stretch from Mozambique to the Malacca Strait and beyond. Their camels of the sea would be as sleek and hardy as their ships of the desert, and the winds they would domesticate and make their own: ‘monsoon’ is from Arabic mawsim, ‘season for sailing’. Turning to the north, where the peninsula articulates with the main body of Eurasia, there is no barrier, no Himalaya to stop you crossing from Peninsula to Crescent and into further lands.

The scramble for Africa, 1876-1912
by Thomas Pakenham
Published 19 Nov 1991

I can’t keep my eyes open. I would give a shilling to have an hour’s sleep! Yes, of course, you say it is close at hand, you black devil.’ … ‘Hi! Stop! Catch hold of the brute … Can’t you stop the brute (noise of a body falling); well there is an end of it. I will walk now sooner than embark again on the ship of the desert.’ … Walks half a mile, boots full of sand. Then he lampooned the senior officers: Chermside to Kitchener: Any news of him? [Gordon] Kitchener to Chermside: Nothing particular; two or three more men down. Steamers at Matemma. Abuse as usual of Intelligence Department. Mahdi doing much better: he [Gordon] finds it more difficult to get his letters through, and will have time to get over his liver complaint and injustices.