The Cartographer of Shadows
Ibn Khordadbeh — The 9th-Century Spymaster, Dreamer, and Geographer Who Mapped the World Without Leaving ItBy Narin Hikma
Length8h 11m
About this audiobook
He never went anywhere. That is what makes the book he wrote almost impossible.
You know the feeling of doing careful, invisible work for years without recognition, holding something together that may not outlast you.
In ninth-century Baghdad, Ibn Khordadbeh spent sixty years as Director of Posts and Intelligence. The entire world arrived on his desk in pieces. From an office in western Iran, having never seen an ocean, he wrote the earliest surviving Arabic geography of the world.
This narrative biography tells the story of a mind that refused to let its map be smaller than the world.
• Meet the Jewish Radhanite traders who traveled from France to China
• Read the earliest account of Viking traders on the Volga River
• Discover why careful, unglamorous work outlasts the empire it served
This is for anyone who has done quiet, patient work and wondered if it counted.
The empire collapsed. His work is still read twelve hundred years later.
Open the first page. The lamp is lit.
Audiobook details
GenreBiography and Memoir, History
Length8 hrs 11 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateMay 17, 2021
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Epigraph
1210. The Men from the North
2Prologue
1311. The Tang Horizon
31. The Grandfather's Fire
1412. Nadim: The Companion
42. Son of a Governor
1513. The Man of Many Books
53. The Music Lessons
1614. The First Book and Its Second Life
Show all chaptersShow less
64. The City of Wonders
1715. The Invisible Empire
75. The Caliph's Network
1816. What the Roads Remember
86. Every Letter a Secret
1917. The Long Twilight
97. The Jewish Merchants Who Crossed Everything
2018. The Map That Never Ends
108. Roads of the Faithful
21Epilogue
119. The Edge of the Known
2219. Author's Note
The Disclosure of SecretsNarin Hikma7h 32m$9.99
The Conqueror Who Was TwentyNarin Hikma8h 35m$9.99
The Complete ArtNarin Hikma9h 40m$9.99
The Cartographer of EverythingNarin Hikma8h 47m$9.99
The Caliph of a Thousand NightsNarin Hikma9h 11m$9.99
The Art of Ruling YourselfNarin Hikma9h 2m$9.99
Tamerlane: The Wound That Conquered the WorldNarin Hikma9h 8m$9.99
Seventeen DinarsNarin Hikma8h 15m$9.99
Reason in the RuinsNarin Hikma9h 22m$9.99
The Water and the RoseNarin Hikma10h 7m4.5 (23)$9.99
The Sessions of WisdomNarin Hikma8h 48m$9.99
The Promenade of SoulsNarin Hikma9h 21m$9.99
The Mirror That Contains the WorldNarin Hikma9h 12m$9.99
The Keeper of StarsNarin Hikma8h 40m3.7 (17)$9.99
The Keeper of FlameNarin Hikma8h 27m$9.99 · $0.00
The Astronomer of AlamutNarin Hikma9h 19m$9.99 · $0.00
The Art of Becoming GoodNarin Hikma8h 7m$9.99 · $0.00
Prince of MedicineNarin Hikma7h 50m4.4 (17)$9.99 · $0.00
I Want FireNarin Hikma9h 24m$9.99 · $0.00
Invisible StormJason Kander6h 48m4.7 (3.2K)$24 · $0.00
Forever BoyKate Swenson9h 27m4.7 (5K)$29 · $0.00
You Are Worth ItKyle Carpenter, Don Yaeger8h 53m4.7 (4.8K)$29 · $0.00
The Happiest Man on EarthEddie Jaku3h 48m4.6 (178K)$7 · $0.00
MotherlandJulia Ioffe17h 52m4.7 (2.5K)$40 · $0.00
Evidence Not SeenDarlene Deibler Rose11h 11m4.6 (11.9K)$29 · $0.00
Where Cowards Go to DieBenjamin Sledge8h 42m4.7 (351)$20 · $0.00
Will You Love Me?Cathy Glass9h 5m4.6 (9.3K)$29 · $0.00
Designing Terry Pratchett’s DiscworldPaul Kidby3h 52m4.7 (343)$20 · $0.00
HostageEli Sharabi5h 25m4.6 (10.8K)$24 · $0.00
Finding MeViola Davis9h 15m4.6 (256.4K)$29 · $0.00
The Dangerous Truth about Today’s MarijuanaLaura Stack CSP, MBA9h 57m4.7 (385)$20 · $0.00
Birdie & HarlowTaylor Wolfe7h 50m4.6 (6.5K)$26 · $0.00
The Lives of BrianBrian Johnson9h 45m4.6 (3.5K)$29 · $0.00
I Am The StormJanice Dean9h4.6 (1.5K)$8 · $0.00
Black History CollectionFrederick Douglass, Harriet Ann Jacobs, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois27h 9m4.6 (2.6K)$15 · $0.00
Just as I AmCicely Tyson16h 8m4.6 (99K)$33 · $0.00
Unbroken Bonds of BattleJohnny Joey Jones8h 31m4.6 (2.6K)$8 · $0.00
The Daughter of AuschwitzTova Friedman, Malcolm Brabant7h 54m4.6 (16.7K)$26 · $0.00
My Bondage and My Freedom (Annotated)Frederick Douglass15h 30m4.6 (2.4K)$2 · $0.00
A Brief History of IntelligenceMax S. Bennett12h 18m4.6 (6.6K)$29 · $0.00
Days of Love and Rage: A Story of RevolutionAnand Gopal22h 36m4.7 (584)$34 · $0.00
We Crossed a Bridge and It TrembledWendy Pearlman6h4.6 (5.2K)$24 · $0.00
Unbroken Bonds of BattleJohnny Joey Jones8h 31m4.6 (2.6K)$8 · $0.00
The Daughter of AuschwitzTova Friedman, Malcolm Brabant7h 54m4.6 (16.7K)$26 · $0.00
Lily's PromiseLily Ebert, Dov Forman8h 54m4.6 (16.1K)$29 · $0.00
On Democracies and Death CultsDouglas Murray10h 38m4.6 (6.5K)$29 · $0.00
Across the RiverKent Babb11h 40m4.6 (927)$29 · $0.00
Balcony Over Jerusalem: A Middle East Memoir - Israel, Palestine and BeyondJohn Lyons12h 37m4.6 (1.4K)$33 · $0.00
BeyondStephen Walker15h 39m4.6 (3.2K)$33 · $0.00
Kings and PawnsHoward Bryant10h 9m4.6 (678)$29 · $0.00
No EscapeNury Turkel9h 30m4.6 (809)$28 · $0.00
Jubal Stone: U.S. Marshal: Blood Trail To Hell: A Western Adventure NovelCasey Nash3h 42m4.6 (3.2K)$18 · $0.00
Fall and RiseMitchell Zuckoff17h 23m4.6 (9.8K)$40 · $0.00
The SurvivorJosef Lewkowicz, Michael Calvin9h 22m4.6 (2.5K)$29 · $0.00
Always FaithfulThomas Schueman, Zainullah Zaki12h 12m4.6 (977)$29 · $0.00
The State of Society in France Before the Revolution of 1789 (Annotated)Alexis de Tocqueville17h 25m4.6 (1.2K)$2 · $0.00
All the Gallant MenDonald Stratton, Ken Gire5h 55m4.6 (11.8K)$24 · $0.00
Saint Joan (Annotated)George Bernard Shaw6h 20m4.6 (1.2K)$1.20 · $0.00
Medgar and MyrlieJoy-Ann Reid10h 52m4.5 (27.8K)$29 · $0.00
You may also like
Italian Villas and Their GardensEdith Wharton5h 41m4.1 (280)$1 · $0.00
Bartram's TravelsWilliam Bartram17h 29m4.1 (798)$2 · $0.00
Leonardo da Vinci: Thoughts on Art & LifeLeonardo da Vinci5h 10m4.1 (1.1K)$1 · $0.00
Now We Are SixA. A. Milne54m4.4 (30K)$7
My First Summer in the Sierra (Illustrated Edition)John Muir6h 11m4.2 (1.2K)$2 · $0.00
Biographia Literaria (Unabridged) (Annotated)Samuel Taylor Coleridge15h 53m3.9 (3.5K)$1.99 · $0.00
Auguste RodinRainer Maria Rilke3h 9m4.2 (973)$13 · $0.00
Mexico City BluesJack Kerouac2h 48m4.1 (11.8K)$15
Man in ProfileThomas Kunkel11h 21m4.2 (467)$23 · $0.00
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversHenry David Thoreau12h 39m3.8 (1.4K)$25
The Poet Li PoArthur David Waley1h 40m3.9 (30)$1 · $0.00
Our Hundred Days in EuropeOliver Wendell Holmes7h 20m$1 · $0.00
Print Media Insights: 8 Books to Deepen Your UnderstandingJacob Kainen, R. J. Beedham, Joseph Kirkbride, George Somes Layard, Campbell Dodgson, Joseph Cundall, Emil H. Richter27h 44m$1.99 · $0.00
Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets (Vol. 1&2) (Annotated)William Howitt41h 29m$1.99 · $0.00
Poems on TravelRobert Louis Stevenson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordsworth, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Matthew Arnold, Oliver Goldsmith, John Henry Newman, John Keats, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Lord George Gordon Byron3h 44m4.2 (187)$2 · $0.00
The Writer's Journey: 4 Classic Books on Literary Success and AuthorshipGeorge Henry Lewes, William Spalding, Grant M. Overton19h 41m$1.99 · $0.00
Nights in LondonThomas Burke8h 53m$2 · $0.00
Robert Louis Stevenson: Memoirs, Travel Sketches & Island StudiesRobert Louis Stevenson52h 51m4.5 (20)$0.99 · $0.00
A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland (Annotated)Sarah Murray8h 58m$0.99 · $0.00
Schöne Aussicht: A Journal of Our Trip AbroadLouise Spilker2h 27m$2 · $0.00