Customer Reviews

The Historical Geography of Asia Minor

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I picked up this book several years ago in hardback, when it was out of print. It is good to see it available again. This work was Mr. Ramsay's passion, and while there may be more recent scholarship, this is a survey of roads in Asia Minor through the classical and Byzantine periods in one volume. It is incomplete--sadly, the original manuscript was lost and Ramsay worked to repeat his efforts but was not able to do so fully.

This volume has quality, well researched maps not available elsewhere. These show mountains, rivers, roads, towns and administrative boundaries in good detail. One weakness is that there is only one set of maps, so one must read the accompanying text to determine which routes are active during any given historical period. Charts list place names & their changes over time and the organization of administrative regions.

If you are interested in changes in the importance of towns, trading and settlement patterns, or researching what were the established road nets, this is a useful addition to standard histories. If you are developing maps for these historical periods, I think it is an essential reference.

I read about halfway before I couldn't go any farther. I read hard-core academic material for pleasure, but his was more than I bargained for. The book deals *almost entirely* with the roads in what is now Turkey, starting from ancient times up to the Byzantine period. I learned some things, but overall, it was too detailed to be of any value.
Ramsay wrote several other classic books, try one of them...