Silk Road

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The ancient Silk Road began in the Chinese city of Changan (present-day Xi'an) and ran westward across deserts to oases and over mountain passes, through the great Central Asian trading cities of Samarqand and Bukhara in modern Uzbekistan and Merv (modern Mary) in Turkmenistan to Tyre on the Mediterranean Sea. Including all the twists and turns, it covered about 9,600 kilometers, or a quarter of the way around the globe. Scholars have considered the Silk Road one of the most significant links connecting various peoples and cultures. The term "Silk Road," which refers to the route along which silk traveled from China to the West, is modern and was coined as late as 1877 by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richtofen.

The earliest Chinese explorations of Central Asia began in the second century BCE, when a Chinese emperor sent an embassy northward to negotiate with hostile tribes on the border. The embassy was headed by Zhang Qian, who was promptly taken prisoner and who, after ten years' captivity, escaped and reported back to the emperor of the vast territories, high civilizations, and great wealth that lay beyond China.

When merchants began to travel, amber, furs, and honey came to China from northern Russia and the Baltic; pottery, coral and textiles, gold and silver, ivory, and precious stones came from Rome and elsewhere in the Mediterranean region, along with metalware from the foundries of Sidon and Tyre. In turn, China sent perfumes, silks, porcelain, tea, spices, mirrors, lacquerware, and via Samarqand the priceless gift of paper. From Central Asia came jade, cloth, and the horses of Fergana.

In reality there was no fixed road, but a series of tracks that ran through steppe and desert, branched, then converged on the many oases that offered sustenance to the traveler. The starting points in Chinawere the imperial capital cities of Luoyang and Changan (now Xi'an). From there the route turned northwest, splintering into three: Bei lu—the great North Road, leading across the Gobi Desert and passing through the oasis town of modern Turpan in western China, where Buddhist monks left their devotions in the form of painting and carvings on the walls of nearby caves; Nan lu—the South Road—passing through Hotan and Shache (Yarkant) in western China, skirting the dreaded Taklimakan Desert, whose name some translated as "You go in, you don't come out"; and a third road going due west, past the oasis town of Loulan. The three routes merged in western China at Kashgar, the last Chinese emporium between East and West. From here Chinese merchants set out on their journey to the lands of the barbarians across the Snowy Mountain, down the passes, to the fabled cities of Central Asia, to Persia (Iran), then to the cities of Antioch and Tyre on the Mediterranean coast, where their precious cargoes were shipped to Rome.

Regular caravans seldom traveled beyond the major trading centers, from which goods were transshipped by those coming from the other direction. Samarqand and Bukhara were the common endpoints for caravans arriving from Baghdad and Aleppo. Here they exchanged their cargoes with merchants from Kashgar and farther east. On the other hand, individual travelers—merchants and emissaries, pilgrims and missionaries—of necessity traversed the entire route.

The Silk Road cities supplied all the needs of travelers, commercial and otherwise: camels and provisions, brokers to draw up contracts and guarantee delivery, banking houses to supply credit and bills of exchange, and markets to buy and sell things of every description. Even so, the journey was not easy. Travelers' accounts record the corpses of people and animals seen along the way. The ever-present danger of bandits was as great a threat as the menacing forces of nature. There are vivid descriptions of sandstorms, the desert's withering heat, and the freezing winds in the high mountain passes. Away from the oases, the need for water was always pressing.

At the heart of the Silk Road, Central Asia linked the sedentary civilizations on its periphery—Rome, Persia, the Kushans of northern India, and China— and the fierce nomadic hordes of the steppes. From the time of Zhang Qian in the second century BCE, Chinese fortunes ebbed and flowed, checked at times by the Huns, whose dominions (in the fourth century CE) reached from Korea to the Ural Mountains, and by other nomads of the Altay Mountains and the Gobi Desert.

In the eighth century, just as the Chinese seemed about to conquer all of Central Asia, another power appeared on the scene: the Arabs, newly converted to Islam. Gradually the armies of Allah had been moving eastward, dispatching decadent rulers and spreading the word of the Prophet. The two worlds collided in Central Asia. In 751, the Arabs, along with their Turkish and Tibetan allies, defeated the Chinese at the battle of Talas River, marking forever the limits of Chinese dominions.

In 1219, the Mongols burst out of northeastern Asia and came to rule an empire that stretched from Moscow to Beijing. Genghis Khan, a strong protector of trade and of the Silk Road between Europe and China, ensured that merchants could travel in security. Timur (Tamerlane), who presided over the last great Mongol empire, kept the route alive until the beginning of the fifteenth century.

As an increasing number of European merchants, missionaries, and adventurers traveled to the east, they returned with tales both factual and fabulous. Paradoxically, the stories of the East partly accounted for the demise of the Silk Road. Europeans who sought to gain access to the riches of the East and wanted to avoid the long and perilous land journey eventually found the sea route around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean. The importance of the Silk Road declined, and by the sixteenth century Central Asia began to fade from the horizon of history.

Across the Silk Road East and West exchanged ideas and discoveries. The Zoroastrians of Persia may have bequeathed to the biblical religions their concept of the duality of good and evil. From the West came the early offshoots of Judaism and Christianity—the Manichaeans and Nestorians. From the east and south came Taoists and Confucians, Hindus and Buddhists, and from the north, the worldview of the shamans. And last, to overlay them all, came Islam. Today, in the ruins of long-vanished oasis settlements, Nestorian chapels stand side-by-side with Buddhist temples. Remains include wooden documents written in Kharosthi, an Indian alphabet dating back to the fifth century BCE and related to Aramaic, the language of Jesus. These artifacts are reminders that in the Silk Road oases merchants, missionaries, and other travelers exchanged their understandings of the world and shared reflections on the things beyond their understanding.

Boulnois, L. (1966) The Silk Road. Trans. by Dennis Chamberlin. New York: Dutton.

Foltz, Richard. (1999) The Religions of the Silk Road: New York: St. Martin's.

Grousset, RenÁ. (1970) The Empire of the Steppes. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

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