The Book of Roads & Kingdoms is the story of the wanderers who travelled out to the edges of the known world during Islam’s fabled Golden Age; an era when the caliphs of Baghdad presided over a dominion greater than the Roman Empire at its peak, stretching from Tunisia to India. Their sudden arrival on the world stage constitutes one of the most dramatic upheavals in the history of the world.
Imperial Baghdad, founded on the Tigris River as the ‘City of Peace’, quickly became the biggest and richest metropolis on the planet. Standing atop one of the city’s four gates, its founding caliph proclaimed: Here is the Tigris, and nothing stands between it and China. In a flourishing culture of science, literature and philosophy, the book-obsessed, travel-mad people of Baghdad were fascinated by the world and everything in it. Inspired by their Prophet’s commandment to seek knowledge all over the world, these traders, diplomats, soldiers and scientists left behind the cosmopolitan pleasures of Baghdad to venture by camel, horse and boat into the unknown.
Those who returned from these distant foreign lands wrote accounts of their adventures, both realistic and fantastical. They left reports of the Great Wall of China, the trading cities of East Africa, the glittering palace of the Caesars in Constantinople, and of a Viking human sacrifice in the cold riverlands of modern-day Russia. Laid out and joined together, their stories form a crazy quilt picture of a lost world.
“Go about the Earth and look…”
Writer-broadcaster Richard Fidler is the author of the best-selling Ghost Empire and The Golden Maze, and the co-author of Saga Land with Kári Gíslason. His most recent history is The Book of Roads & Kingdoms.
Throughout the week, Richard presents the long-form, in-depth interview program Conversations on ABC Radio. Conversations has become the most popular podcast in the nation, with more than 70 million program downloads a year.
An image from an Islamic version of The Alexander Romance, showing Alexander the Great being lowered to the sea bed in a glass diving bell.
Map of imperial Baghdad, with its fabled Round City at the centre
The walls of the Ark of Bukhara
Objects found at the Fortress of the Jade Gate in western China
The Spiral Minaret of the Great Mosque of Samarra.
Reclining Buddha at the Thousand Buddha Caves near Dunhuang, photographed by James & Lucy Ho, 1943.
Praise for The Book of Roads & Kingdoms
“Richard Fidler’s bewitching book will change how you see the world … Just as The Thousand and One Nights transformed the imperial metropolis into ‘an immortal city of the imagination’, so too does Richard Fidler spin a bewitching tale consisting of stories within stories that radically tilts the Western reader’s perspective, revealing a world when all roads led to Baghdad.”
“Like a Genie it opens a wondrous world of Islam’s Golden Age ... Fidler’s skill is in enlivening this period and immersing readers as informed observers experiencing events.”
Praise for Ghost Empire
“…thanks to the stylish cleverness of an exceptionally curious and talented man, we can feast on what strange magic the city brought – and still brings today – to the world beyond. I am speechless with admiration. ”
“Fidler displays great charm in the telling of his tale, spicing it with delicious gossip.”
“Fidler’s understanding of the Byzantine contribution to our civilisation is unimpeachable.”
“Fidler’s story leaves its readers with a sense of faith in the renewing, illumination, social powers of historical narrative.”
Praise for The Golden Maze
“Fidler’s passion and love for the ancient city infuses every word, pours off every page, and if you’ve never been interested in Prague, it will find a way into your heart after reading this book … The times, the places and the people are vibrant, arresting and breathing. The Golden Maze gives us a brilliant living history of Prague, told through stories alive with hundreds of voices chiming in. This is the magic and power of this work.”
“Fidler’s narrative is compelling. He writes in short sections, arching across time, and comparing and contrasting the politics, religion and art of different eras. The entire journey is propelled by the same combination of wide-ranging general knowledge, intellectual rigour and the ease of expression of an experienced journalist. ”