I Do Love Maps!

I’ve got a chance to go out to Central Asia in September and I’m really looking forward to it: never been out there before, eager for a chance to piece together the middle of the Silk Road, and to have a look at the only city Genghis Khan is known ever to have entered (link), with maybe the odd peep at one of those oil pipelines that have us all so exercised at the moment.

At least I think that’s what it is about, but I’m pretty shaky at the moment. I know that Kazakhstan is that vast void of undifferentiated steppe-land, and I’ve heard of Türkmenbaşy, the (late) strongman of Turkmenistan, who renamed the month of January after himself. I think I can find Uzbekistan on a map. But other than that, I’m pretty shaky. Remind me again, which one is Kyrgystan, which one Tajikistan? And which one speaks a version of Persian? (that’s Tajikistan—ed.) (Thanks—Buce).\

But wait, there’s help—here’s Rafis Abazov, with the Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Central Asia (2008)! Maps! Forty-five of them! You’ve got your Sogdians, your Timurids, your Tokharistan (no kidding, really Tokharians?). And transport routes! And ethnic enclaves! And mineral deposits! Mmmm, bauxite! I do love maps!