sandr020

The Silk Road was a trade route for precious silk, but not only silk. It became an East-West network of inter-­con­necting routes linking Central Asian Kingdoms (eg Bukhara, Samarkand, Bishkek and Islamabad) in the west with major China cit­ies; especially the Han and Tang dynasty capital, Changan (modern day Xian) in the east. It was rare for individual traders to cover the whole length of the Silk Road. When each trader arrived at his region’s limit, he sold the goods ac­ross his border. Thus as the goods moved westwards from China, Chinese traders would sell to Central Asians, then to Pers­ians, to Syrians, to the Greeks and Jews, and finally to the Italians. Marco Polo mosaic, by Francesco de' Rossi Ducal Palace,   Genoa The volume of goods traded along the Silk Road increased during the Tang dynasty (618-907), in both directions. The Chin­ese imported gold, gems, per­­fumes, dyes, textiles, ivory and glass, and exported furs, ceram­ics, spices, jade, silk, bronze a...

China’s old cities were thriving commercial centres, especially in silk production. In the later C13th, during the rule of Kublai Khan , China’s silk industry reached a great level of soph­is­tication. The guilds had established meticulous pay scales, working hours and a pricing system for silk. Silk reached the markets, in Persia and further west, via the long “ Silk Road ”. The road stretched from the western gates of Hsian in China's Chanxi Province, and passed via the southern Gobi Desert until western Turkistan. It then passed via Kashghar to the major trading cities of Samar­kand, Bukhara and Merv. Once the Silk Road crossed the length of Persia/Iran, it divided into two branches; one went tow­ard Azar­baijan, and the other ran through Ham­adan, Baghdad or Mosul, Antioch or Capadoccia, Izmir and Istanbul. Caravanserai of Shah Ab­bas, Isfahan now the Abbasi Hot­el  East-West economic exchanges required big warehouses in the trading cities, linked by camel caravans. Businessmen...

The Arabs de­clared war on the Tang Chin­ese forces and eventually crushed them at The Battle of Talas 751 AD. This led to the ex­pulsion of the Tang Chin­ese from Central Asia. While cros­sing Central Asia, dif­ferent routes developed. Kashgar in far Western China became the new cross­roads of Asia; from here the routes again divided, heading across the Pamirs to Sam­arkand and to the south of the Caspian Sea, or to the South into India. Eventually the road reached the shores of the Caspian Sea, via Tashkent . Thus the 8,000 km long Silk Road connected Beijing to Con­stan­tin­op­le via the movement of relig­ions and products. And Tashkent emer­ged as a major trading city en route. Friday Mosque Kukeldash Madrassah The rise of Islam impacted on Asia, separating the East and West. The Islamic State of the Gh aznavids (962-1186) extended from Persia to India, with Lahore as the capital. Timur/Tamerlane (1336–1405) was an Islamic Turco-Mongol conqueror. In 1390 Tamerlane ravaged Kash...