The origins of silk
It is from the reign of the emperor Huangdi (between 2700 and 2575 BC) that the invention of silk is generally dated. In 1926, a cocoon discovered by Chinese archaeologists in a burial site dating from the Neolithic period, in the Shanxi province, confirmed this hypothesis at first. But thirty years later, a new discovery, this time in Zhejiang, allowed the exhumation of silk fabrics in a tomb dated to nearly 5,000 years before our era. These pieces are still the oldest known silk pieces in the world today. But since legends are more persistent than archaeological discoveries, let's return to the vision of the invention of silk by the Chinese. The wife of the emperor Huangdi, named Leizu, is said to be the one who brought about the miracle of silk. It is while walking under a mulberry tree, with a hot tea in her hand, that she discovered the secret of silk. A cocoon that had fallen into the cup of tea began to unwind and the empress, seduced by the quality and fineness of the thread, decided to start breeding these caterpillars to weave clothes of unequalled quality.
Silk in Rome
The Romans discovered silk through the banners of their Parthian enemies, during the battle of Carrhes. The military confrontation was followed by trade, and the Romans, so frightened by the precious fabric during the battles, quickly became fond of it. Less than half a century after the defeat of Crassus, silk was so widespread in Rome that the Senate had to forbid men to wear this transparent and "dishonorable" fabric. One can imagine the atmosphere when reading Seneca's description of silk clothes: "Once she has put them on, a woman will swear, without anyone believing her, that she is not naked; here is what, with immense expense, is brought from obscure countries..." For it is indeed money that is at stake. To reach Rome, the silk had to cross thousands of kilometers of hostile lands, leave the Chinese empire, cross the steppes and deserts where nomadic raids were rampant, cross Persia, and then the Mediterranean. Upon arrival in Rome, the product has become so valuable that the flight of capital becomes uncontrollable.
The development of the Silk Road
By the end of the first century AD, silk was already making its way from Xi'An to Antioch, then across the Mediterranean. In addition to silk, many other luxury products were added: spices, tea, cinnamon, animals, precious metals... And the caravans became more and more important, made up of several dozen or hundreds of mounts, leading to the need to create stages capable not only of accommodating them, but also of protecting them and supplying them. From that time, thanks to its geographical position, which puts it in connection with China on the one hand, and Persia on the other, Central Asia dominates the trade. The Kushan Empire, in the second century of our era, dominated not only Sogdiana but also the Ferghana Valley and Kashmir, ensuring the security of caravanners along a large part of the Silk Road.
A new player: Islam
As a new religion emerged in the Arabian Peninsula that would change the face of the world, three main actors controlled the Silk Road from Xi'an to Byzantium. The Chinese of the Tang dynasty, the Sassanid Persians, and the Eastern Roman Empire which held the gates of the Mediterranean. After the death of Mohammed in 632, Islam swept through all its lands. Persia and Transoxiana fell in no time under the Umayyad dynasty, which chose Damascus as its capital. With the advent of the Abbasids, and the choice of Baghdad as their capital, expansion resumed and the Caliphate quickly covered an empire far more extensive than that of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. Soon, the two giants that are the Abbasid Arabs and the Tang Chinese are in contact with each other and struggle for the control of the Silk Road and the wealth that continues to flow through it. After many fruitless confrontations, the battle of Talas, in present-day Kyrgyzstan, set the borders of the two empires in 753. The victory goes to the Arabs, but the losses were such that it is impossible for them to go further. Thus, the borders between the two giants were set: the Abbasids now controlled Central Asia and the precious Transoxiana, the Chinese kept the Tarim basin and the eastern part of the Silk Road.
The Golden Age
Three centuries of prosperity for China under the Tang dynasty (618-907), from their capital Xi'An, and the stability of the gigantic Abbasid empire until the Mongolian conquest allowed the Silk Road to develop as never before. The Chinese and Arabs, aware of the wealth that this extraordinary trade route brought them, did everything they could to secure the routes and to multiply its branches towards the regions that they did not control: Mongolia, India, Constantinople. Already well established in China, the Road followed the same routes as before, via Transoxiana and then Persia and Syria until it reached the royal road in Turkey. From the end of the 9th century, however, nomadic movements on the borders of the Chinese empire became a threat. Driven out by the Kirghiz tribes, the Uyghurs surged onto the Xin Jiang where, from nomads, they became sedentary, settling around the oases of Turfan or Khotan and taking control of Kashgar. The arrival in power, in Mongolia, of one of the greatest conquerors of all times, Genghis Khan, will seal and make a clean sweep of all these developments and, once established the pax mongolica, restore the lustre of the silk trade.
The Mongolian Pax
In 1218, after his conquest of China, Genghis Khan marched on the empire of the Kara Kitai, who then reigned over Eastern Turkestan, then defeated the Khorezm and took over the whole of Central Asia. When he died in 1227, he left behind an empire of 26 million km2 where more than 100 million people lived. The Mongols were masters of China, India, Central Asia, Siberia, Russia up to Kiev and Persia up to Syria! For the first time in its history, the Silk Road was controlled, from Xi'an to Constantinople, by a single empire. An empire on which the pax mongolica reigns, allowing trade to rise from its ashes, but also explorers, missionaries, ambassadors to travel safely through the empire of the Mongols.
In 1272, two Venetian merchants, Nicolo and Maffeo Polo, accompanied by their son and nephew Marco Polo, left for China, the "land of the Sisters". For Nicolo and Maffeo, this was their second trip to the East, the first having taken them to the Mongol Khan and Bukhara, where they had spent three years. This second trip was to be made by ship, but the Chinese wars in the South Seas made them change their itinerary and, to get to China, they crossed Central Asia passing through Balkh, the Pamir and Kashgar. The account of these 25 years of travel, published under the title The Unveiling of the World, is both a tale full of fantastic characters and an adventure novel.
Forgetting
For the terrestrial Silk Road, the discovery of America in 1492 had two consequences. The immense gold reserves that were discovered on the new continent pushed the Western nations to lose interest in the East and to focus their efforts on the exploitation of the riches across the Atlantic. On the other hand, the progress made in navigation allowed the great maritime routes to gradually replace the land routes, as Christopher Columbus had hoped. The compass, invented in China and brought to Europe via the Silk Road, combined with the progress of maritime construction techniques, soon gave the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the French and the British an unrivalled supremacy over trade with the Indies and, more broadly, over world trade.
From then on, the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn saw more silk shipments pass through than passed through Samarkand or Kashgar. The Silk Road exploded into a myriad of small branches serving European trading ports and trading posts on the Indian coast as well as along the Persian Gulf.
The rapid decline of the land-based Silk Road was undoubtedly matched by the rise of the European-controlled sea routes.
Traces of the Silk Road in Kyrgyzstan
If there is one country in the world that reflects the Silk Road more than any other and that has preserved its most striking and impressive vestiges, it is Uzbekistan. In the geographical heart of Central Asia and halfway along the caravan routes between Xi'an and Antioch, this country, two-thirds of which is covered by the Kyzyl Kum desert, includes the borders of ancient Transoxiana, where trade was dominated from the very beginning by the Sogdians who controlled the routes from Punjikent, in present-day Tajikistan, or Tashkent, to Bukhara. Their hold on trade was such that the official language of the caravaneers on the Silk Road was necessarily Sogdian, as evidenced by the trade registers or exchange contracts that have been found in archaeological sites. In the heart of the deserts, trade was carried out both in the forts, originally built to protect themselves from nomadic raids, and in the great oasis cities such as Bukhara or Samarkand, both of which were great commercial crossroads and centers of cultural influence, the former in the Samanid era, the latter in the Timurid era, when it became the capital of one of the greatest empires in history. If most of the caravans left Uzbekistan at Bukhara to enter the territory of today's Turkmenistan in the direction of Iranian Khorassan, some continued the road to Khiva, in the northwest of Uzbekistan, controlled by the Khorezm Shahs, who maintained an important trade with the nomadic tribes living on the territory of today's Kazakhstan and Russia. These three cities have preserved an incredible architectural heritage, linked to different periods of their history and reflecting the whole world of the Silk Road: the gigantic bazaars, the caravanserais or the domes of the covered markets as in Bukhara. In the Ferghana valley, you can meet the craftsmen who have preserved their traditional know-how, especially in silk work, in Marguilan.
