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Incense Trail Additional Material

The GURPS 2020 PDF Challenge is on and as of this writing we've already got half the PDFs unlocked. These include both of my contributions to the project, including GURPS Hot Spots: The Incense Trail.

For those who haven't looked it up yet: the Incense Trail (one of several names for it) encompasses a collection of routes leading from southern Arabia to the Mediterranean and Persia, initially carrying a variety of immensely valuable aromatic resins but later incorporating control over trade around the Indian Ocean. Here are a few things not included in text.

Here's a satellite image of the environs of the warehouse/fortress of Sumhuram, with x marking the proverbial spot. While the condition of the wadi it overlooks surely changed over time, it was likely less silted and more accessible to the sea in antiquity. And one can see that the hills start not far away from the shore; a lot of Arabia Felix had that kind of narrow margin.


Here's a map of the fortress itself, for your dining and dancing pleasure, with hexes.


And since there wasn't room for a bibliography, here's some suggested further reading:

Robert G. Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam. This academic work, though perhaps a bit dated, is still largely authoritative on the under-studied history of pre-Islamic Arabia.

Gary Paul Nabhan, Cumin, Camels, and Spices. This accessible work is part history, part travelogue, part cookbook. It starts in Arabia Felix with the Incense trail but goes all over the world, studying a variety of trade routes and the people impacted by them.



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