Travelling Across Late Mediaeval Eurasia: Travel, Curiosity and Knowledge in the Mongol Period

This chapter offers a new, brief yet cohesive introduction to travel across Mongol Eurasia. It is usually assumed that this period resulted in the movement of relatively large numbers of people across vast distances. However, previous studies of this period have not adequately distinguished between different types of movement within the wider Mongol sphere. This essay seeks to develop a thorough discussion of the different forms of movement in this period, by interrogating texts of travel accounts through the lenses of curiosity, motives and redefinition of the self within a description of geographic and social spaces. It critically reconsiders the amount of trade carried out during the so-called Pax Mongolica, and it explores an array of examples of travel writings, penned by both European and intra-Asian authors.