Great Silk Road

The Great Silk Road: a fascinating path through history, culture and adventure

The Great Silk Road is a special phenomenon in the history of human development, the quest for unity and exchange of cultural values, the conquest of living space and markets for goods. In the East, they say: “He who sits is a mat, he who walks is a river”. Movement is life, and travel, knowledge of the world, has always been the driving force of progress.

This largest transcontinental trade route in human history connected Europe and Asia and used to stretch from ancient Rome to the ancient capital of Japan, Nara. Of course, there had always been trade between East and West, but these were separate segments of the future great road. The development of deposits of semi-precious stones prized in the East, such as lapis lazuli, nephrite, carnelian and turquoise, created trade links in the Central Asian mountains. Thus, there was a “lapis lazuli” route that brought this stone from Central Asia to Iran, Mesopotamia and even Egypt. At the same time, there was a jade route that connected the Hotan and Yarkant regions with northern China. Carnelian was also exported to Western Asia from Sogdia and Bactria, and turquoise from Khwarazm. All these routes eventually merged to form the Great Silk Road.

The actual beginning of the Great Highway, which connected the caravan routes from Central Asia to the west and south, and the roads leading from China to East Turkestan, refers to the middle of the second century BC, when the western region – the lands of Central Asia – was first opened to the Chinese.

It should be noted that this route was never a single trunk road, but included various routes that branched out like the crown of a mighty tree. Thus, one of the main roads that crossed Asia from east to west began in the capital of ancient China, Chang’an, and followed it to the northwestern borders along the Gobi Desert, across the Tarim Basin and on through East Turkestan. After crossing the Tian Shan, some caravans went through the Fergana Valley and the Tashkent Oasis to Samarkand – the capital of Sogdia, Bukhara, Khwarazm and on to the shores of the Caspian Sea. Some caravans from Samarkand went to Bactria and reached Termez through the valley of Kashkadarya, from where, after crossing the Amudarya, they went south to Bactria and India.

Another branch of the Tarim Basin Road bypassed the Taklamakan Desert from the south and passed through Hotan and Yarkant to Bactria (northern Afghanistan) and Merv, from where it passed through Persia, Syria to the Mediterranean, and some goods reached Rome and Greece by sea.

As the name suggests, the main commodity traded along the caravan routes was silk, which was highly valued everywhere on the moon. In the early Middle Ages, for example, silk was the most popular unit of payment and even replaced gold. In Sogdia, for example, the price of a horse was equal to the cost of ten pieces of silk. Silk was used as payment for work done and the maintenance of mercenaries, and it was used as payment for punishment for a crime.

These caravan routes were first called “Silk Roads” by the Venetian merchant Marco Polo, who was the first European to reach the borders of the Chinese Empire. And the scientific turnaround term “Great Silk Road” was arrived at in 1877 by the German explorer Ferdinand von Richthofen in his seminal work “China”.

Silk was the most important commodity transported on the transcontinental route, but by no means the only one. Horses, camels, which were highly prized in China, military equipment, gold and silver, semi-precious stones and glassware, leather and wool, carpets and cotton fabrics, gold embroidery fabrics, exotic fruits such as watermelons, melons and peaches, sheep and hunting dogs, leopards and lions were exported from Central Asia. From China, caravans brought porcelain and metal goods, lacquerware and cosmetics, tea and rice. Elephant tusks, rhino horns, tortoise shells, spices and much more were found in the merchants’ travelling bags.

Not only trade caravans travelled along the Great Silk Road, but also cultural achievements of the peoples, spiritual values and religious ideas spread along the road. Buddhism was along with other religions of the Kushan Kingdom, and from here it spread to China. Christianity penetrated from Asia Minor in the first centuries of our era. The fierce warriors of the Arab Caliphate in the VII century brought the teachings of Islam. Along the roads laid by traders and preachers, from the Mongolian steppes to the European plains, swept the hordes of Genghis Khan. The great military leader of the medieval East, Temur, launched his campaigns from the heart of the Great Silk Road – Samarkand.

Finally, scientists and explorers travelled along the caravan routes for centuries. From travel notes and scholarly works by the Chinese monk Xuan Jiang and the Venetian merchant Marco Polo, the Arab traveller and merchant Ahmed ibn Fadlan and the Bavarian warrior Shiltberger, the Hungarian explorer Armin Vamberi and the Swedish geographer Sven Hedin, Russian scholar Alexei Fedchenko and French journalist Ella Maillard, American geologist Raphael Pumpelly and French traveller Joseph Martin, we know about the history, customs and traditions of the peoples who inhabited the lands along the Great Silk Road.

The historic Uzbek cities of Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva, Shakhrisabz, Termez and Tashkent, with their architectural monuments embodying centuries of Great Silk Road history, are a living reminder of the peoples who built this unique route connecting the East and the West.