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Chapter 5 Encounters Along the Silk Roads History 2 Chapter 5 Encounters Along the Silk Roads Nowadays silk is found in all of the world's markets. It travels easily and cheaply by sea and air freight. This was not always so. The early trade in silk was carried on against incredible odds by great caravans of merchants and animals traveling at a snail's pace over some of the most inhospitable territory on the face of the earth - searing, waterless deserts and snowbound mountain passes. In high summer, the caravans traveled at night, less afraid of legendary desert demons than of the palpable, scorching heat. Blinding sandstorms forced both merchants and animals to the ground for days on end - their eyes, ears and mouths covered - before the fury abated. Altitude sickness and snow blindness affected both man and beast along cliff-hanging and boulder-strewn tracks. Death followed on the heels of every caravan. For protection against gangs of marauders, who were much tempted by the precious cargoes of silk, gemstones, spices and incense, merchants set aside their competitiveness and joined forces to form large caravans of as many as 1,000 camels under the protection of armed escorts. The two-humped Bactrian camel could carry 400 to 500 pounds of merchandise and was favored over the single-humped species which, although capable of the same load, could not keep up the pace. The long route was divided into areas of influence both political and economic. The Chinese traders escorted their merchandise probably as far west as Dunhuang or beyond the Great Wall to Loulan, where it was sold or bartered to Central Asian middlemen - Parthians, Sogdians, Indians and Kushans - who carried the trade on to the cities of the Persian, Syrian and Greek merchants. Each transaction increased the cost of the end product, which reached the Roman Empire in the hands of Greek and Jewish entrepreneurs. The Han-dynasty Silk Road began at the magnificent capital city of Chang'an (present-day Xi'an). The route took traders westwards into Gansu Province and along the Hexi Corridor to the giant barrier of the Great Wall. From here, many caravans favored the northern route through the Jade Gate Pass (Yumenguan) northwest of Dunhuang, along the southern foothills of the Tianshan Mountains (the “Heavenly Mountains”) and, skirting the northern rim of the Taklamakan Desert, past the rich oasis towns of Harm, Turpan, Yanqi, Korla, Kucha and Kashgar. Others chose the more arduous but direct route through Yangguan Pass southwest of Dunhuang, around the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert to Loulan, Khotan, Yarkand and Kashgar. At Kashgar, there were more choices. Some went westwards over the Terek Pass in the Heavenly Mountains into the kingdoms of Ferghana and Sogdiana (in the vicinity of Tashkent and Samarkand) and across the Oxus River to Merv (present-day Mary in Turkmenia). Others crossed the high Pamir Mountains to the south near Tashkurgan and went along the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan to Balkh, in the ancient Graeco-Iranian kingdom of Bactria, to meet up with the northern route in Merv. Still another route from Kashgar went south to Srinagar, passed over the Karakoram Pass and extended down into India. From Merv the Silk Road continued west on an easier path to the old capital of Parthia (present-day Damghan), continuing south of the Caspian Sea to Hamadan, southwest of Teheran, then on to the ancient twin cities of Seleuceia and Ctesiphon, near Baghdad on the Tigris River. From here various routes led through Syria to Antioch, Palmyra and the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea and the Roman Empire. 1. Early Travelers Zhang Qian The Silk Road was first traveled by Chinese General Zhang Qian in the second century BC while on a mission from Emperor Wudi of the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220). Zhang was sent to recruit the Yuezhi people, who had recently been defeated by the Xiongnu (Huns of Turkish descent) and driven to the western fringes of the Taklamakan Desert. The Huns had been launching aggressive raids into Chinese territory, which had prompted Emperor Qin Shihuangdi of the Qin dynasty (221-207 BC) to build the Great Wall. Eager to defeat these powerful roving marauders, Han Wudi heard that the Yuezhi were seeking revenge on the Xiongnu and would welcome help with retaliation from any ally. 2 Zhang with a caravan of 100 men set out in 138 BC from the Chinese capital of Chang'an only to be soon captured by the Huns as they passed through the Hexi Corridor in northwest Gansu. The surviving members of the caravan were treated well; Zhang married and had a son. After ten years, he and the remainder of the party managed to escape and continue their journey west along the northern Silk Road to Kashgar and Ferghana. Upon reaching the Yuezhi, Zhang found them to have settled prosperously in the various oases of Central Asia and to be no longer interested in avenging themselves of the Huns. Zhang stayed one year gathering valuable military, economic, political and geographical information and returned via the southern Silk Road, only to be captured again, this time by Tibetan tribes allied with the Xiongnu; once again he escaped. In 125 BC, 13 years later, he returned to Chang'an. Of the original party only he and one other completed the trailblazing journey - the first land route between East and West and one that would eventually link Imperial China with Imperial Rome. Zhang reported on some 36 kingdoms in the Western Regions, delighting Emperor Han Wudi with detailed accounts of the previously unknown kingdoms of Ferghana, Samarkand, Bukhara and others in what are now Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Iran - as well as the city of “Li Kun” which was almost certainly Rome. Zhang recounted stories he had heard of the famous Ferghana horse, rumored to be of 'heavenly' stock. Tempted by this fast and powerful warhorse, seemingly far superior to the average steed and having the potential to defeat the marauding Huns, Han Wudi dispatched successive missions to develop political contacts and return with foreign envoys and of course horses from the courts of Ferghana, Sogdiana, Bactria, Parthia and northern India. Now extinct, these horses were immortalized by artists of both the Han (206 BC-AD 220 ) and the Tang dynasties (AD 618-907). The most famous work is the Flying Horse of Gansu, a small bronze sculpture cast by an unknown artist over 2,000 years ago and excavated in 1969 by Chinese archeologists in Wuwei County. Zhang continued seeking allies against the Xiongnu, traveling in 115 BC to the territory of the Wusun, a nomadic tribespeople who lived on the western frontier of the Huns, but again Zhang was unable to enlist support. Upon his return, Zhang died in 113 BC, bearing the Imperial Title of 'Great Traveler'. Greeks and Romans Alexander the Great's expansion into Central Asia stopped far short of Chinese Turkestan, and he appears to have gained little knowledge of the lands beyond. 3 The Romans, with only a slightly better understanding, were convinced that the Seres (the Silk People, or the Chinese) harvested silk from trees, the 'wool of the forests' according to Pliny. In 53 BC, the seven legions of Marcus Licinius Crassus were the first Romans to see silk in battle whilst pursuing the Parthians, a rough warlike tribe, across the Euphrates. They became the victims of the first 'Parthian shot', which broke the Romans' front line formation and was quickly followed by a tactic that both terrorized and amazed the Romans: the Parthians waved banners of a strange, shimmering material that towered above the defeated soldiers, blinding them in the brilliant heat of the desert. The Romans managed to obtain samples of this marvelous silk from the victorious Parthians, who had traded it for an ostrich egg and some conjurers with a member of Emperor Han Wudi's early trade missions. The Parthians along with the Sogdians, Indians and Kushans soon became prominent middlemen in the trade of silk, reaping tremendous profits, bartering with Chinese traders who escorted their merchandise to Dunhuang and as far as Loulan, in the heart of the Lop Nor Desert beyond the Great Wall, and carrying the trade on to Persian, Syrian and Greek merchants. Each transaction increased the cost of the end product, which reached the Roman Empire in the hands of Greek and Jewish entrepreneurs. Silk garments became all the rage in Roman society, so much so that in AD 14 men were no longer permitted to wear them, as they were perceived to contribute to an already decadent society. Despite the disapproval of the Empire's moral superiors and its high cost, silk was widely worn amongst even the lowest socio-economic classes. The silk trade flourished up until the second century AD, when it began to arrive in Rome via the sea trade routes. 2. Caravans and Trade Routes Silk was not the only product in the trade along the Silk Road: eastbound caravans brought gold, precious metals and stones, textiles, ivory and coral, while westbound caravans transported furs, ceramics, cinnamon bark and rhubarb as well as bronze weapons. Very few caravans, including the people, animals and goods they transported, would complete the entire route that connected the capitals of these two great empires. The oasis towns that made the overland journey possible became important trading posts, commercial centers where caravans would take on fresh merchants, animals and goods. The oasis towns prospered considerably, extracting large profits on the goods they bought and sold. 4 During the Han dynasty, the Chinese referred to the Taklamakan Desert as Liu sha, or ‘moving sands’, since the dunes are constantly moving, blown about by fierce winds.
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