Noah Gordon · 1986 · overland

Noah Gordon's 1986 historical epic. In 11th-century London, the orphan Rob Cole is apprenticed to a travelling barber-surgeon and discovers he has a gift for sensing death. Learning of the great physician Ibn Sina, who teaches in distant Persia, he resolves to study under him, and because the school admits no Christians, he crosses all of Europe to Constantinople and disguises himself as a Jew to travel on to Isfahan. The route is one of the great overland journeys of historical fiction.

1. 1
   London

   In the London of 1020 the orphaned Rob Cole is taken in by a travelling barber-surgeon, learning showmanship and the rudiments of medicine on the roads of England.

2. 2
   Malmesbury

   In a village he meets a learned Jewish physician who tells him of the madrasas of the Muslim world, and of Ibn Sina, the prince of physicians, far away in Persia.

3. 3
   Dover

   Rob Cole makes for the coast and the crossing at Dover.

4. 4
   Calais

   Over the water to the Continent, and the long road east.

5. 5
   Constantinople

   Forbidden as a Christian to study there, Rob crosses the whole of Europe to Constantinople, where he takes on the guise of a Jew named Jesse ben Benjamin.

6. 6
   Isfahan

   He travels on with Jewish merchants across Anatolia and the Muslim lands to Isfahan, to study at the feet of Ibn Sina and become a true physician.