Peter Frankopan is a British historian and writer. He earned his PhD at Cambridge, where he specialized in Byzantine history. Today, he is a professor of global history at Worcester College, Oxford, and the director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research.

Frankopan is best known for his book The Silk Roads, which was published in 2015 and received international attention. The book soon became a bestseller and was generally praised for its comprehensive exploration of world history through an alternative lens. In his book, Frankopan sets out to challenge the traditional Eurocentric narrative of world history by emphasizing the crucial role of the East, particularly Central Asia, in shaping the global landscape. In 2018, Frankopan published another book, The New Silk Roads, which examines the changes and crises of the contemporary world from the perspective of the East.

Afghanistan is a nation in Central Asia whose strategic location has made it a center of cultural exchange and trade throughout the history of the Silk Roads. Afghanistan’s modern history has been marred by conflicts, invasions, and struggles for independence, including the Soviet invasion of the 1980s and the more recent American invasion.