Nasser Khosrow, Marco Polo, Now: Cultural Travellers

Speakers: Guilia Crispiani, Summaya Kassem Ali, Golrokh Nafisi, Sam Samiee

Guilia Crispiani, Summaya Kassem Ali, Golrokh Nafisi and Sam Samiee will comment on two medieval travellers – Nasser Khosrow and Marco Polo – who engaged in mapping the worlds they knew at the time. Golrokh Nafisi and Guilia Crispiani will elaborate on Khosrow and Polo as distinct among their contemporaries: they not only engaged in market practices and mercantile activity but used these as excuses for broader interests such as culture and knowledge. Summaya Kassem Ali and Sam Samiee will respond with an elaboration of the anthropological aspects of markets and cultures, cultural mobility and histories of the market, movement, and colonial impacts on the remembering of ideational distinctions.