Medicine Along the Musk Route | Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim

E336 | How did people in Tibet view the Islamic World, and vice versa? How did a figure like Galen travel from Ancient Greece, through the Islamic World, and end up as a founding father in Tibetan medical history? In this episode, we speak to Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim about the exchange of knowledge, and especially medicine, between these regions. We discuss objects like musk, which originated in Tibet but played a huge role in the Muslim world, and scholars like Rashid al-Din al-Tabib, who wrote about Buddhism and Chinese medicine from Il-Khanid Iran. The silk road is often thought of as a trade route connecting China and Greece, but Ronit uses a new framework, the "Musk Route," for looking at the transmission of knowledge between Tibet and the Islamic world. She also describes the role of some important archives in shaping our understandings of these connections, like Dunhuang and the Cairo Geniza. More at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/11/ronit-yoeli-tlalim.html Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim is a Senior Lecturer in the History Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research deals with the transmission of medical ideas along the so-called ‘Silk-Roads.’ Taylor M. Moore is a PhD Candidate in Modern Middle Eastern History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is interested in the interconnected histories of medicine, magic, and ethnographic museums in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Egypt. Shireen Hamza is a PhD student in the History of Science department at Harvard University. Her research focuses broadly on the history of science and medicine in the Islamicate Middle Ages, especially in the Indian Ocean World. Episode No. 336 Release Date: 3 November 2017 Recording Location: International Congress of Traditional Asian Medicines, Kiel, Germany Audio editing by Shireen Hamza Music: "Eeyori jon" and "Tchaman" by Hadar Maoz Bibliography courtesy of Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim available at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/11/ronit-yoeli-tlalim.html