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Phoebe: Source I - Warwick Ball, historian’s essay on the Silk Road

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Phoebe: Source I - Warwick Ball, historian’s essay on the Silk Road

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German name: "die Seidenstrasse," or the Silk Road
No such thing as the Silk Road. Baron von Richtofen was the first person to use the name.
Edward Gibbon, writing of Roman trade with the East over 200 years ago, makes no reference to any purported "Silk Road" or route nor even any reference to China.

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Phoebe: Source G - John Major, description of impact

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Phoebe: Source G - John Major, description of impact

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Paper - Chinese invention transformed the world. Superior to previous writing tools - led to printing.
Irrigation waterwheel spread rapidly across Eurasia on Silk Road.
Food - Oranges from China to Mediterranean; grapes from west to China via Silk Road.

Ideas, inventions, devices, and techniques spread along the Silk Road. Multi way street. Affected merchants and ppl of multiple countries and cultures across Eurasia.

Bad side effects -
Black Death believed to have come from Silk Road.

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Phoebe: Source A - Marco Polo, description 

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Phoebe: Source A - Marco Polo, description 

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The Silk Road was a trade network. Tabriz (Iran) lived by trade; gold and silk cloth was woven in great quantity and value. It was a city where profits were made by travelling merchants. Came by ship from India, brought spices/pearls/silk and other wares. Sold them to others all around the world. Live by commerce and industry.

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The Great Silk Road was a system of routes from the Eurasion continent from the Mediterranean Sea to China and influencing the development of trade and cultural ties between the people located along the way.
It was a transit road with two-way movement of goods, scientific ideas and achievements, as well as cultural and religious values.
Most people assume the Silk Road first served as a route to transport silk from China to the West. However, many findings show that different goods produced in Rome, Byzantium, India, Iran, Arab Caliphate, and later Russian and European countries were imported to China(frankincense and myrrh, jasmine, amber, cardamom, nutmeg, ginseng, carpets, fabrics, dyes, jades, minerals and many more.
The Great Silk Road was not merely a route for transmitting goods, outstanding cultural pieces and standards of applied arts, architecture, wall paintings, but music art, dance and theatric performances of middle age. Performances of musicians and illusionists. No language barriers existed for wandering troupes. It was widely known the most popular music in Tang China was music of the West- from cities of Eastern Turkestan and Central Asia. For instance, terracota collection of Tan period depicts dancers and actors sitting on camels. Facial features of these artists are identified with Central Asian people. In addition, the Silk Road played a tremendous role in spreading religion. Different missionaries "carried" their faith to foreign lands. Buddhism came from India via Central Asia, Christianity and later Islam transmitted from Syria, Iran and Arabia.

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Tavishi: Source E: “Silk Road: Connecting People and Cultures"

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Tavishi: Source E: “Silk Road: Connecting People and Cultures"

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Why Silk was important:
- Cool in summer, warm in winter
- Uses colour dye more effectively than cotton
- Strong enough to be used for surgical sutures
- Fire and rot resistant

Early Chinese History
- Silk was used to only clothe the emperor but soon everyone used it
- Silk was good for fishing lines, making paper, musical instrument strings
- Silk was used like money or gold. e.g. farmers payed their taxes in gold and civil servants received their salary in silk

Religion:
- Buddhism carried along the roads from India through Central Asia to Tibet, China, and Japan.
- Islam carried by Sufi teachers and armies.

Silk Isn't The Main Commodity
- Silk Road exchanges diminished in the late Middle Ages.
- Because of silk, countries interacted more and continued influencing each other.
- During "3rd" Silk Road, silk was still a highly valued Chinese export but wasn't the main commodity.
- Europeans wanted pearls, gems, spices, etc.
- All kingdoms needed weapons, horses, etc.
- Arabs learnt how to produce silk which spread to Europe

What Silk Represented
- religious ritual, kingship, artistic production, commercial activity
- valuable, traded commodity, historical medium of exchange
- played major role in early development of global economic and cultural systems

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Claire: Source B - American Museum of Natural History, exhibition description, “Traveling the Silk Road” (excerpts), 2009

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Claire: Source B - American Museum of Natural History, exhibition description, “Traveling the Silk Road” (excerpts), 2009

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Xi'an
Silk Road begins in the Xi'an.
- secret of silk brought wealth and prestige to Chinese empires
- bring communities together through festivals and celebration with telling stories and rituals

Turfan
- lush oasis refuge from the Taklimakan Desert of Central Asia
- irrigation system
- luxury goods were widely traded across Asia along the Silk Road / brought in skin, feather and gems
- introduced their own ingredients and receipts to foreign lands

Samarkand
- built up a fortune buying and selling in distant countries / extends to India, China and Persia
- famous for its fine paper that was made from plant material that is mashed up to a pulp and then formed into a paper.

Baghdad
- House of Wisdom --> has the great minds from many lands
- brilliant scholars --> studied geography, astronomy and mathematics
- astrolabe - guide to the sky --> time of the day and night / sunrise sunset
-  mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi - wrote a book on how to do math in Indian system --> translated into Latin --> people all over Europe use this and switched into Arabic numerals
- medicine -  Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi - wrote approx 200 books - from a pamphlet on toothaches to a medical handbook
- glass traveled towards China where it was treated as the rarest of jewels
- traveled in ships to reach China - approx 6 months

- In 851, an Arab traveler --> sea voyage from the Persian Gulf to Guangzhou, the Chinese port formerly known as Canton.
- glass (islamic merchants), clay pots (Arab and Persian), porcelains (China)

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- The Silk Road was significant for spreading ideas, beliefs, inventions, goods and people.
- The devices and techniques spread rapidly and far across the world through the Silk Road.
- It enriched both of the merchants who carried and exchanged goods, and the people of countries and cultures all across the Eurasia.

Paper
Paper, invented in Han dynasty, had a great impact to transform the world and soon became the writing material of choice for China and East Asia. In 13th and 14th centuries, a group of Chinese workmen began a paper-making establishment under the Mongols; their products were traded and paper soon became the writing material in the Western Eurasia.

Irrigation waterwheel
The irrigation waterwheel, the device  to provide water, was invented in Roman Syria and rapidly spread along the Silk Road.

Food sources
- Apples spread via the steppe belt, in both direction from the modern-day Kazakhstan.
- Oranges went from China to the Mediterranean world.
- Grapes went from the western reaches of Silk Road to China.

Disadvantages
Long-distance trade can have an unexpected disadvantages as the Black Death plague which is believed to have come via the Silk Road from Central Asia, devastated Europe in 14th century.

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Tavishi: The Products of the "Silk Road"

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Tavishi: The Products of the "Silk Road"

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Science and Technology:
Chinese technologies impacted many civilizations. For example, the compass helped with ocean navigation, paper-making and printing spread knowledge and culture quicker, those in Central Asia learnt to drill wells and develop irrigation systems which boosted the economy of desert region states, dynamite was constantly used in Europe in wars which resulted in a revolution of weapons, etc.

The Chinese also learnt new technologies from the rest of the world. They imported cannons from the Portuguese and tried to replicate them, Jesuit missionaries helped introduce Western knowledge to them, astronomical instruments were invented under the rule of Western leaders, etc.

Handicraft:
Major exports from China were silk, porcelain, lacquer ware, iron ware, gold and silver ware, etc. Silk was considered fashionable Europe and important in The Koran. Chinese paintings were also valuable.

From the rest of the world, China got instruments, changed their ways of sitting (sat on stools and chairs instead of kneeling), furs, pearls, Western clocks, etc.

Food, Spice, and Drug:
China got new vegetables to use in their cuisine. Walnuts, cucumbers, peppers, etc may of been imported. Tomato, spinach, grape, fig, potato, papaya, etc. were definitely imported.

China's biggest import in the food category was tea. Spice was also imported and used in cosmetics, medicine, etc. Chinese didn't habitually burn incenses until spice was available. Over 100 medicines were imported to China.

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Phoebe: The Spread of Religion & Philosophy along the“Silk Road”

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Phoebe: The Spread of Religion & Philosophy along the“Silk Road”

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- Buddhist traders were major competitors of Muslim traders on the Silk Road.
- Muslim Rulers gave protection and favouritism towards their merchants which helped spread Islam. There were also missionary activity from Sufi preachers. Arab muslims traveled to China by the Silk Road or the sea route to spread Islam
- Westerners influenced China. Non-Chinese traditions (Buddhism and Islam) were altered and reshaped to the Chinese culture. Buddhism spread in China. Missionaries from Central Asia translated sacred texts into Chinese
- Iranian New Year festival at the spring equinox in Central Asia is considered to be an "Islamic" festival.
- Christianity was transformed and rapidly expanded through the efforts of the major Christian apostles.

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Aarushi: The Geographic Setting of the "Silk Road"

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Aarushi: The Geographic Setting of the "Silk Road"

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Nature of the Path
The Silk Road extended across Central Asia  from Nortwestern-China, to the Caspian and Black Seas, and and on to the Middle East.
Because of high, dry terrain, infrequent and irregular water supplies, absent or scarce forage for caravan animals, this zone was only passable to skilled Silk Road caravaners.
What made the the journey possible at all besides the expertise of the caravaners was the substantial oases across Central Asia. They were islands of greenery, watered by rivers and springs.
Regions on the Road
China: China could be divided easily into North China and South China. The North is characterised by a dry climate where crops like wheat and millet, grow in fertile soil of broad plains and terraced valleys. Strong geographical and agricultural differences between the North and South led to fracture into different political identities.
The Mediterranean:
The Mediterranean was and still is the western convergence point of the maritime trans-Eurasian trade routes. It channeled widespread distribution of Silk Road goods onward to Korea and Japan.
The Middle East:
The Middle East is generally taken to include all of the territory between the eastern Mediterranean and the western reaches of Persia. While generally considered  the end-point for the Silk Road, it was also a trans-shipment zone.
South Asia:
India's route was through the Indus Valley of the northwest, then over the Khyber Pass or other passes into what is now Afghanistan. Spices, pearls, gemstones cotton cloth, other goods were added to the traffic of the Silk Road, and Chinese, Persian and other goods flowed back to India.