Silk Road splendour

THE RUINS OF XANADU, KUBLAI’S CAPITAL AND inspiration for Coleridge’s dream poem, may lie many miles to the east of Kazakhstan, but the land that bore witness to the great ruler’s armies and its legion of followers and which was once the dominion of the Ulug Ulus, now plays host to pleasure palaces truly fit for a Khan. For more than a millennium, the khanates that comprise contemporary Kazakhstan were the plains across which civilisations swept. Alexander marched his Macedonians over them weeping, wrote Plutarch, when he saw the breadth of his domain. Genghis Khan led his horsemen westward, cutting a swathe across the Steppe unto the very gates of Europe. And in both directions there trekked the merchants of the caravanserais, travelling from inn to inn along the great…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2024

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