I appreciate this. If there is one thing I learn from reading about history is that there's always something that can pop up as counter-examples to a narrative.

> he assumes an ultimately colonialist perspective wherein Europe has no choice but to parasitize on the East, having no capacity to produce anything of its own -- a view which can be easily dispelled by recognizing that the literal Silk Road was largely a mutually beneficial trade of goods between two regions that both had things that the other wanted. Wealth flowed both from East to West and from West to East.

I don't think I represented his ideas very well because I do remember his books talked about the two-way trade that happened. It wasn't necessarily just about two regions, unless North Africa was included in that. I remembered from other histories about trade routes going deep into Africa.

> Muslim slaves were also sold into Europe, often by steppe nomads who had more ability to raid those regions.

This one is really interesting for me, so I'll be on the lookout for that.

> For example, luxury goods did not dominate trade -- bulk goods like grain, wool, and slaves did. So the idea that luxury trade could somehow dominate the history of these whole regions is fanciful -- luxury trade couldn't even dominate trade!

It would be interesting to see how far certain commodities are carried. If trade routes are described as a directed graph, would commodities such as wool, grain, and slaves be carried between two extremes, or would they tend to be traded more regionally? If I remember this correctly, Constantinople didn't have much in the way of farmlands and depended on being supplied for food from further out. Frankopan did also gave examples of food items that were traded as exotic goods, even if they were not considered luxury goods locally.