Silk Road Between China and Central Asia

Tang era merchant The Silk Road routes in this area were very complicated and usually defined by oases through passes which were open and accessible. Many goods carried across Central Asia were transported on the backs of shaggy, two-humped Bactrian camels or horses, or, in the high elevations, on yaks. The Himalayan caravan routes from India that passed through Karakoram Pass and Khunjerab Pass (on the modern Karakoram Highway) joined the Silk Road in Kashgar or Central Asia.
The two main routes that entered Central Asia from China were: 1) the northern route, which passed from western China into what is now Kazakhstan and went through or near what is now Alma Aty (Kazakhstan), Bishkek (Krygyzstan) and Tashkent (Uzbekistan); and 2) the southern route which left Kashgar and passed from western China in Central Asia through passes of the Tien Shan and Pamirs mountains that are now on China's borders with Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan.
The main route likely passed from Kashgar through Irkeshtam Pass between Kashgar and the Fergana Valley in present-day Uzbekistan. Many Silk Road tours go from Kashgar over Torugart pass to Bishkek and then Tashkent and Samarkand because modern roads traverse this route. This route however is much longer and out of the way than the direct route from Kashgar to the Fergana Valley. Marco Polo used a route through the Pamirs between China and Afghanistan.
Samarkand
Samarkand was arguably the grandest city on the Silk Road. It was located at about the halfway point between China and the Mediterranean and situated where the routes from China converged into a single main route through Afghanistan, Iran and the Middle East. Samarkand and other Central Asian, Silk Road cities such as Bukhara and Khiva were centers of art and scholarship, full of poets, astronomers, and master craftsmen.
Samarkand is said to have a history that goes back 6,000 years although 2,500 years is probably a more realistic figure. Alexander the Great captured it in 329 B.C. and reportedly exclaimed, "Everything I have heard about the beauty of Samarkand is true except it is even more beautiful than I could have imagined."
Over the years the city grew in size and was controlled at various times by Turks, Arabs, Persian Samanids, Karakhan and Seljuk Turks, Mongolian Karakitay and Khorezmshah. The Arabs called it the "City of Gems." By the 13th century Samarkand was a great city of 200,000 people nourished by an aqueduct that brought water to the arid steppe from far away mountains. It was famous for its craftsmen and products like saddles and copper and silver lamps.
Genghis Khan's attacked Samarkand. in 1220. According to one report, when his army appeared the ruling shah and 110,000 of his troops fled the city and the city noblemen opened the gates begging for mercy. Some soldiers who did not want to surrender took refuge in a mosque, where they thought they would be protected by Allah. The Mongols showed little mercy. They shot flaming arrows; hurled vessels of oil from catapults; tore down the city wall, destroyed the aqueduct, killed about 100,000 people and hauled 30,000 skilled craftsmen, including smiths, weavers, artisans, falconers, scribes and physicians, back to Mongolia.
Samarkand Under the Timurids
After the Mongol attack Samarkand remained a backwater until Tamerlane made it the capital of his new empire in 1370. At its height Tamerlane's empire stretched from Mongolia through Central Asia to Europe and Samarkand was the Athens of Central Asia and was known as the "garden of the blessed" and "the forth place."
Tamerlane patronized the arts, supported scholars and had many beautiful buildings constructed. He filled the city with booty and craftsmen brought back from his conquests. He once reportedly boasted, "Let he who doubts our power look upon our architecture."A Spanish nobleman who visited Samarkand in 1403 described communities of captive craftsmen, silk weavers, potters, glassworkers, armorers, silversmiths, "gathered from the cities of conquest."
Samarkand was further developed under Ulughbek, Tamerlane's grandson. He made Samarkand into great city of learning and brought in astronomers, mathematicians and scholars from all over the Muslim world. Ulughbek was a scholar and astronomer himself. He built a great observatory and many grand buildings. Many of the great buildings found in Samarkand today date back to Ulughbek not Tamerlane.
Samarkand went into a period of decline after the Uzbek Shavybanids came to power in the 16th century and they established their capital in Bukhara. By the 18th century Samarkand had been leveled by a series of earthquakes and was essentially a ghost town. Samarkand wasn't truly revived until the Russians arrived in the 1860s and connected it to the Trans-Caspian Railway.

Silk road I

The name Silk Road conjures up images of caravans trudging through some of the world's highest mountains and most god forsaken deserts. This was true for parts of the route but only tells part of the story. The Silk Road was not one well-established road, but a complex, constantly-changing network of land and sea routes between China, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Europe that was in operation roughly from the 1st century B.C. to the A.D. 15th century. The term Silk Road was coined in 1870 by German geographer Ferdinand van Richthofen, the uncle of the Red Baron.

The main all-land Silk Road route went from Xian in eastern China via Kashgar in Western China, Samarkand in Central Asia and Baghdad in the Middle East to coastal cities on the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean such as Alexandria, Allepo and Trabazon.

The main sea route went from China via the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean to Basra on the Persian Gulf or Suez on the Red Sea, where the goods were then carried overland across Persia and Syria or through Egypt to ports serviced by European merchants such as Alexandria.

Travelers could feed their animals off the land and find food and drink along the way. In the early stages, goods were often traded trough barter, only later was money used. Silk Road routes were often disrupted and always changing due the presence of bandits, political alliances, passes closed by snow, droughts, storms, seasonal changes, wars, plagues, horsemen raids, and natural disasters. Many Silk Road towns and caravanserais were located within fortresses for protection from bandits and marauding horsemen. Many also had security forces.

Books: The Silk Road (Odyssey Guides); Marco Polo: A Photographer's Journey by Mike Yamashita (White Star, 2002).

Television show: Silk Road 2005, a 10-episode production by China's CCTV and Japan's NHK, with music by Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, an international group of musicians from more that 20 countries. The original series was shown in 1980s.

Silk Road Route in China


Bezeklil Grottoes, near Turpan The overland Silk Road route to the west began in Xian, the capital of China during the Han, Qin and Tang dynasties. It stopped in the towns of Zhangye, Jiayuguan, Langzhou, Yumen, Anxi and Nanhu before dividing in three main routes at Dunhuang.

The three main routes between Dunhuang and Central Asia were: 1) the northern route, which went through northwest China through the towns of Hami and Turpan to Central Asia: 2) the central route, which veered southwest from Turpan and passed through Kucha, Aksu and Kashgar; and 3) the southern route, which passed through the heart of the Taklamakan Desert via the oasis towns of Miran, Khotan and Yarkand before joining with the central route in Kashgar.

On the southern route through western China the going began getting difficult near present-day Langzhou, where the "Gate of Demons," marked the approach to an area, which the writer Mildred Cable said featured "rushing rivers, cutting their way through sand...an unfathomable lake hidden among the dunes...sand-hills with a voice like thunder" and "water which could be clearly seen and yet was a deception."

The going started to get really rough around the Ravine of Baboons (Xingxing Xia), traditionally regarded as the frontier of Chinese Turkestan and entrance to the vast and inhospitable Taklamakan Desert. where Cable wrote, the desert "is a howling wilderness, and the first thing which strikes the wayfarer is the dismalness of its uniform, black, pebble strewn surface." After the Ravine of Baboons, the Silk Road followed a line of oases to Kashgar.

See Marco Polo.