Roof of the World
The Roof of the World or Top of the World is a metaphoric epithet or phrase used to describe some of the highest regions in the world. The term usually refers to all or part of High-mountain Asia, the continent's mountainous interior, including the Pamirs, the Himalayas, the Tibetan Plateau, the Hindu Kush, the Tian Shan, the country of Nepal, and the Altai Mountains.
Attested usage
[edit]The British explorer John Wood, writing in 1838, described Bam-i-Duniah (Roof of the World) as a "native expression" (presumably Wakhi),[1] and it was generally used for the Pamirs in Victorian times: In 1876, another British traveler, Sir Thomas Edward Gordon, employed it as the title of a book[2] and wrote in Chapter IX:
We were now about to cross the famous "Bam-i-Dunya", "The Roof of the World" under which name the elevated region of the hitherto comparatively unknown Pamir tracts had long appeared in our maps. [...] Wood, in 1838, was the first European traveler of modern times to visit the Great Pamir.[check quotation syntax][3]
Older encyclopedias also used "Roof of the World" to describe the Pamirs:
- Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed. (1911): "PAMIRS, a mountainous region of central Asia...the Bam-i-Dunya ('The Roof of the World')".[4]
- The Columbia Encyclopedia, 1942 edition: "the Pamirs (Persian = roof of the world)".[5]
- Hachette, 1890: "Le Toit du monde (Pamir)", French for "Roof of the World (Pamir)".[6]
- Der Große Brockhaus, Leipzig 1928–1935: "Dach der Welt, Bezeichnung für das Hochland von Pamir" (German: "roof of the world, term describing the Pamir highlands"),[7] and (in translation): "Pamir highlands, the nodal point of the mountain systems of Tien-Shan, Kun-lun, Karakoram, the Himalayas and Hindukush, and therefore called the roof of the world."[8]
With the awakening of public interest in Tibet, the Pamirs, "since 1875 ... probably the best explored region in High Asia",[4] went out of the limelight and the description "Roof of the World" has been increasingly applied to Tibet[9][10] and the Tibetan Plateau, and occasionally, especially in French (toit du monde), even to Mount Everest,[11][full citation needed] but the traditional use is still alive.[12][full citation needed]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Keay, John (1983) When Men and Mountains Meet ISBN 0-7126-0196-1; p. 153
- ^ Sir Thomas Edward Gordon, The Roof of the World: being a narrative of a journey over the high plateau of Tibet to the Russian frontier and the Oxus sources on Pamir, Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1876
- ^ Gordon, p. 121f.
- ^ a b Holdich, Thomas Hungerford (1911). . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 20 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 655.
- ^ The Columbia Encyclopedia; 1942 edition, p. 1335
- ^ Guillaume Capus (1890), Le Toit du Monde (Pamir), voyage extrême orient. Illustré de 31 Vignettes et d'une Carte, Paris: Hachette et Cie. = Bibliographia Marmotarum. Ramousse R., International Marmot Network, Lyon, 1997. ISBN 2-95099-0029 Guillaume Capus
- ^ Der Große Brockhaus, 15th ed., Leipzig 1928–1935, vol. 4 (1929), p. 319.
- ^ Der Große Brockhaus, vol. 14 (1933), p. 96.
- ^ Le Sueur, Alec (2003-01-01). The Hotel on the Roof of the World: from Miss Tibet to Shangri-La. Oakland, California: RDR Books. ISBN 1571431012. OCLC 845721671.
- ^ "Tibet: Climate Action for the Roof of the World". Central Tibetan Administration. Retrieved 2017-04-17.
- ^ Encyclopédie et Dictionnaires Larousse.
- ^ The Pamirs, a region known to locals as Pomir – "the roof of the world".
Tibet is commonly known as Roof of the world, click for detail about Tibet
