Silk Roads
What does a mirror found in Pompeii have in common with a Buddha found in a Viking
grave? Answer: these items had travelled thousands of miles to their destinations through
the network of Central Asian trade routes known as the ‘Silk Roads’. Ian Gaspar, who has
travelled extensively in that area, visiting Armenia, Iran, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, gave a
talk on the history of the Silk Roads to an attentive audience at the Bude and District U3A
monthly meeting in July.
Bagdad became the richest city on the trade routes and also a centre of science and learning. Built of sundried bricks, it housed a large population and was at one time the largest city in the world. Lead-lined underground channels with ventilation shafts were constructed to bring water to the city and irrigate farm land. Domed cisterns known as sardoba kept the water cool, and these were also found along the trade routes which crossed mountains and deserts, east to the Chinese borders, north into the steppes, south east into India.
Bactrian camels – the two-humped kind – were sure-footed, impervious to cold, and could carry 500 lbs in weight. Caravans might include as many as a thousand camels. Caravanserai were constructed along the routes to house camels, people, and goods securely overnight. The Sogdian people in Central Asia established trading colonies, including Bukhara and Samarkand, which became centres for banking and finance. Their language became the widely established common language along the trading routes.
The ‘Silk Roads’ name was coined by a 19th century historian. Silk cloth made in China , cool to wear in hot weather but also warm in cold weather, was light in weight and therefore
easier to transport and could be used as currency. Soldiers were sometimes paid in lengths of silk cloth. Many other goods were traded – cotton, spices, lapis lazuli and jade, porcelain, metal goods, paper, horses and dogs, but these were not the only things that travelled.
Ideas, technologies, religions, all sorts of knowledge and influences spread through the
contacts with distant places. From the 7th century Islam began to spread.
In 1291 Gengis Khan attacked and destroyed Samarkand, and the trade routes came under
the control of the Mongol Empire. Trade flourished under their protection. One of Gengis’s
grandsons, Kublai Khan, became Emperor of China, and Marco Polo from Venice visited his
court after travelling the Silk Road. Another descendant, Babur, became the first Mughal
Emperor of India. He supported education and the sciences and visited the Ulugh Beg
observatory in Samarkand with its built-in 100 foot diameter sextant for accurately
calculating the positions of the sun, moon, and other heavenly bodies. The remains of the
observatory building can still be seen today.
Ian explained that when the Mongol Empire collapsed, the safety of merchants and their
goods on the Silk Road routes could no longer be guaranteed. Traders in Western Europe
began using newly developed maritime routes to India and China. Trade on the Silk Road
routes declined and the great cities on those routes no longer had a function.
Everyone enjoyed Ian’s talk and at the end several questions were asked before he was
thanked for sharing his knowledge and also the colourful photographs from his travels with
which he illustrated his talk. They included women weaving elaborate silk designs, women
dancing while wearing those designs, buildings decorated with magnificent Islamic tiling, the
remains of Ulugh Beg’s observatory, the much simpler sardoba and caravanserai structures,
the Bactrian camel itself, and of course silkworms feasting on mulberry leaves.
There is no Open Meeting in August.
At September’s Open Meeting on September 17th Annie Clements, u3a member, will be
speaking about ‘Fun and Frivols in the Theatre’.