Today I am publishing an essay (4,000 words) about Anthony Jenkinson, an Elizabethan merchant who was the first Englishman to sail on the Caspian Sea and the first to visit the city of Bukhara. Jenkinson is famous for his superb map of Western Asia. Less well known is the story of Aru Sultan, the woman he brought back from Central Asia and who became a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth I and an innovator in fashion. Some historians argue she was an emissary from the Kazakh khanate to England, charged with opening up a trade route that would see the Silk Road traffic diverted away from the Mediterranean to England. You can read it below: