ah

he finds the same fascination in the laws of physics that i find in the sights of history and their weavings in words.

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"There is yet another race of people who inhabit the mountains in that quarter, and are called Kurds. Some of them are Christians, and some of them are Saracens; but they are an evil generation, whose delight it is to plunder merchants."

"Near this province is another called Mus and Mardin, producing an immense quantity of cotton, from which they make a great deal of buckram and other cloth. The people are craftsmen and traders, and all are subject to the Tartar King."

beautiful Mardin.

"Baudas is a great city, which used to be the seat of the Calif of all the Saracens in the world, just as Rome is the seat of the Pope of all the Christians."

"In Baldach there is a manufacture of silks wrought with gold, and also of damasks, as well as of velvets ornamented with the figures of birds and beasts. Almost all the pearls brought to Europe from India have undergone the process of boring, at this place. The Mahometan law is here regularly studied , as are also magic, physics, astronomy, geometry, and physionomy. It is the noblest and most extensive city to be found in this part of the world."

Bagdad, que era para os sarracenos o mesmo que Roma era para os cristãos.

da wiki: "Baghdad eclipsed Ctesiphon, the capital of the Persian Empire, which was located some 30 km (19 mi) to the southeast. Today, all that remains of Ctesiphon is the shrine town of Salman Pak, just to the south of Greater Baghdad. Ctesiphon itself had replaced and absorbed Seleucia, the first capital of the Seleucid Empire. Seleucia had earlier replaced the city of Babylon.

In its early years, the city was known as a deliberate reminder of an expression in the Qur'an, when it refers to Paradise."

expulsos do paraíso pelos mongóis, um dos mais dramáticos eventos da humanidade.

[que salto: se tivesse de dizer quem Tolstoi deixa de fora, diria que são sem dúvida os mercadores, talvez a única classe que ele não conhece. Polo, tão diferente, é a classe que ele melhor conhece. quando entra na cidade fá-lo como mercador: por muito que tenha sido embaixador do grande Khan, Polo nunca deixa de ver como mercador. a sua descrição das cidades é semelhante à descrição que hoje poderíamos fazer da sua economia: o que valem, o que compram e vendem, as suas particularidades, não lhe interessam as cidades sem uma marca distinta. a solução para o presente está por isso em Calvino: pegar naquilo tudo e torná-lo não-transacionável, intangível-]