The British explorer
John Wood, writing in 1838, described
Bam-i-Duniah (Roof of the World) as a "native expression" (presumably
Wakhi), 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 and wrote in Chapter IX: 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')". •
The Columbia Encyclopedia, 1942 edition: "the Pamirs (Persian = roof of the world)". •
Hachette, 1890: ,
French for "Roof of the World (Pamir)". • , Leipzig 1928–1935: (German: "roof of the world, term describing the Pamir highlands"), 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." With the awakening of public interest in Tibet, the Pamirs, "since 1875 ... probably the best explored region in High Asia", and the
Tibetan Plateau, and occasionally, especially in French (), even to
Mount Everest, but the traditional use is still alive. to the north,
Pamirs central, the
Hindu Kush to the south,
Kunlun Shan to the east, and
Karakoram,
Ladakh Range and
Himalayas to the southeast ==See also==