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At the start of this period, the Indian Ocean was the center of world trade. The world’s largest empires traded in this diverse network of merchants from all over Afro-Eurasia.

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The camel caravans which crossed the great dunes of the Sahara desert began in antiquity but reached their golden period from the 9th century CE onwards. In their heyday caravans consisted of thousands of camels travelling from North Africa, across the desert to the savannah region in the south and back again, in a hazardous journey that could take several months. Stopping along the way at vital oases, the caravans were largely controlled by the Berbers who acted as middlemen in the exchange of such desired commodities as salt, gold, copper, hides, horses, slaves, and luxury goods. The trans-Saharan trade brought with it ideas in art, architecture, and religion, transforming many aspects of daily life in the towns and cities of a hitherto isolated part of Africa.

The Camel

Although North Africa had once possessed a camelid animal, the Camelus thomazi, this had become extinct during the Stone Age. The dromedary camel ( Camelus dromedarius), the one with a single hump, was perhaps introduced from Arabia into Egypt in the 9th century BCE and in the rest of North Africa not before the 5th century BCE (although the precise dates are disputed amongst historians). Camels still did not become common, though, until the 4th century CE. Caravans of horses and donkeys had crossed parts of the Sahara in antiquity but it was the hardy camel which allowed ancient peoples to carry more goods across the inhospitable Sahara and do it faster, reducing both costs and risks. The Encyclopedia of Ancient History has the following summary regarding the advantages of camels as transport:

The value of the camel is not only confined to its high adaptation to severe desert conditions and its regulation of heat and water via its sweat glands: its ability for long-distance travel of about 48 km per day and its high carrying capacity (240 kg) make it a "ship of the desert," in comparison with the load capacity of horses, donkeys, and mules at roughly 60 kg. Indeed, the camel's life span of 50 years surpasses that of the donkey (30-40 years) and the horse (25-30 years). (1281)

From the 8th century CE, the Moroccans were successfully breeding camels on a huge scale and they even created a cross-breed between the dromedary camel and the two-humped Bactrian camel of Asia ( Camelus bactrianus). The result of these experiments produced two variants of dromedaries: a sleek, fast-running camel useful for messenger services and a heavier, slower camel that could carry more weight than the pure dromedary.

The Caravans in Antiquity

Long before the great trans-Saharan caravans of the medieval period, there was a more localised trade between nomadic desert peoples and the tribes of the savannah region south of the Sahara, often called the Sudan region. Rock salt from the Sahara itself, which was badly needed in the salt-impoverished savannah, was exchanged for cereals (e.g. rice, sorghum, and millet), which could not be grown in the desert.

Routes would shift over the centuries like the sand dunes of the desert as empires rose & fell.

The Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BCE ( Histories, Bk 4. 181-5), noted a camel caravan route which went from Thebes in Egypt to Niger (although Memphis is more likely to have been the starting point). The Roman writer Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE) noted in his Natural History (5.35-8) that the caravans were managed by the Garamantes, probably ancient Berbers, who lived south of Libya. The Garamantes, in control of the date-palmed oases at Fezzan, acted as middlemen between the peoples of North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. This arrangement would continue throughout the history of trans-Saharan commerce because those who controlled the desert, who knew the secrets of meeting its formidable challenges, also controlled the trade.

Roman Tripolitania (modern Libya) was supplied with gold, ivory, ebony, cedarwood, and exotic beasts destined for the circuses, while olive oil and luxury goods like fine ceramics, glassware, and cloth were sent south in the exchange. Further east, there were also camel caravans linking Darfur in northwest Sudan to Assiut on the Nile at least from the 1st century CE. Known as the Darb al-Arbein ('Road of 40 Days') it brought ivory and elephants from Africa's interior and thrived into Late Antiquity.

Trans-Saharan Trade Routes

The really large camel caravans that travelled the minimum 1000 kilometres (620 miles) to cross the entire Sahara desert really took off from the 8th century CE with the rise of Islamic North African states and such empires as the Ghana Empire of the Sudan region (6th-13th century CE). Routes would shift over the centuries like the sand dunes of the desert as empires rose and fell either side of the Sahara and as new resources were discovered that could be exploited in the trade that never ceased.

The first route seems to have been between Wadi Draa (southern Morocco) and the Ghana Empire (southern Mali) in the mid-8th century CE and passed through an area of the Sahara controlled by the Sanhaja Berbers. Within 50 years two more major routes had been established which passed through Saharan territory controlled by the Tuareg, an offshoot of the Sanhaja. These were from western Algeria to the Songhai kingdom on the bend of the Niger River and from Libya to Lake Chad (a route blessed by many small oases and a very large one, Kawar). In the mid-11th century CE, a major route went between the Almoravid towns of Sijilmasa north of the Sahara and Awdaghost in the south. In the next century, with the rise of the Almohads in North Africa, Walata would replace Awdaghost at the southern end of the route. Walata was further to the east and so in a better position to act as a collecting point following the discovery of new gold fields. Gao and Timbuktu on the Niger River were also now attracting enough trade to be an end destination for caravans setting off from what is today Tunisia and southern Algeria. The great North African cities of Marrakesh, Fez, Tunis, and Cairo were all important starting or destination points for the trans-Saharan caravans.

A typical caravan could have 500 camels but some of the annual ones had up to 12,000 camels.

From around 1450 CE Portuguese ships were sailing down the Atlantic coast of Africa and offering an alternative to the trans-Saharan caravan routes. From 1471 CE, these ships were accessing the aptly-named Gold Coast in the south of West Africa. However, the rise of the Songhai Empire (1460 - c. 1591 CE) ensured that there was still a huge market and supply of goods for Saharan traders to exploit in the savannah region.

Navigating the Sahara

A typical caravan could have 500 camels but some of the annual ones had up to 12,000 camels in them. These great caravans usually travelled in the best season for travel, winter. To avoid the heat of the midday sun, caravans typically set off at dawn to the call of horns and kettledrums, then rested in the shade of tents during the middle of the day, and moved on again in the late afternoon, continuing until well after dark.

The journey across the Sahara could take at least from 40 to 60 days, and it was only made possible by stopping at oases along the way, but even with these water stops, the journey was brutal and hazardous. That there were established routes, and that Arab medieval writers were so particular in mapping them, is strong evidence that any improvised deviation, the taking of shortcuts or the missing of the next oases through poor navigation or a sandstorm, was very likely to bring disaster. Other dangers included bandits, venomous snakes, scorpions, and the supernatural demons desert people often believed haunted certain parts of the Sahara.

The biggest problem, of course, was water. A person needs a minimum of one litre of water a day in the desert under optimum conditions but this would barely achieve survival. The typical consumption is 4.5 litres a day. Fortunately, camels need not drink anything at all for several days, although when they do reach a water source they drink prodigiously. The chief limit on a caravan, then, was how much water it could carry and how quickly it could get to the next water source along the route.

As well as camel drivers and slaves to do the basic menial tasks, the caravan might have certain officials such as a scribe to record transactions, specialist guides for particular areas of the route, messengers, and an imam to lead daily prayers. Most important of all was the caravan leader, called the khabir, who exercised total authority en route. As with most positions of power, so too came grave responsibilities, and the khabirwas liable for any losses and accidents (unless he could demonstrate he was not to blame for them). The historian H. J. Fisher describes the many qualities a good khabir needed:

He knew the desert routes and watering places, and he was able to find his way by the stars at night, or if need be by the scent and touch of the sand and vegetation. He had to understand the proper rules of desert hygiene, remedies against scorpions and snakes, how to heal sickness and mend fractures. He had to know the various chiefs of towns and tribes with which the caravan had to deal along the way, and in this respect a responsible khabir might consolidate his position by strategic marriages in several localities, or into several tribes.

(quoted in Fage, 267)

Besides the stars and the smell of the sand and vegetation, a desert Berber, as today, used many other indicators of direction such as the height of the sun and moon, the lay of the land, mountains on the horizon, the shadows of the dunes, wind direction, the spray of sand blown from the peaks of dunes, ancient eroded gullies, the distribution of rocks and pebbles, the presence of mirages, and the position of camel dung, which is pointed in shape with the point always in the direction of the next water source.

Carrying oneself across the desert, then, was certainly a challenge, guiding camels loaded down with slabs of rock salt was difficult enough, too, but if slaves were being transported, it became a voyage of attrition for everyone, as one 11th-century CE writer noted in his description of the problems of a caravan leader mid-journey:

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He was exhausted with his slave men and women. This woman had grown thin, this one was hungry, this one was sick, this one had run away, this one was afflicted by the guinea worm. When they encamped they had much to occupy him.

(quoted in Fage, 639)

Herodotus described caravans stopping every 10 days at a known oasis, the lifelines of the desert. Some of these oases could be mere wells and a few houses but others, like Awdila, the Fezzan group, and the Kufra group (all in Libya), were great spreads of luxuriant greenery, a sight indeed for sore desert traveller's eyes. Here there were date palms, lemon trees, and fig trees, as well as wheat and vines cultivated using irrigation canals. On the other hand, many oases over time simply disappeared under the shifting sands or their waters dried up and they were abandoned to the next sandstorm. Stopping for resupply at an oasis did not come for free either as the tribes that controlled them exacted a tax on the passage of goods through their territory. In order to ensure no outsiders muscled in on the lucrative management of the caravans, Saharan peoples would often cover the smaller desert wells with sand to hide them.

There were attempts to make the journey less inhospitable by increasing nature's meagre offerings along the way. Abd al-Rahman, the governor of Maghrib (r. 747-755 CE), ordered a series of wells to be dug on a route from southern Morocco to the Sudan region. Water was drawn up from such wells using camel-haired ropes and leather buckets, pulled by a camel walking away from the well in a straight line.

Traded Goods

What exactly was worth all the bother of transporting over large distances very much depended on the particular rich elites in the north and south of the desert, something which changed not only because of tastes and fashion but also the rise and fall of states and their access to goods which could be exchanged.

Salt was the major commodity going south which was exchanged for gold, ivory, hides, and slaves (acquired from African tribes conquered by the sub-Saharan empires). Goods were gathered up from across the entire West African region and channelled along the Niger and Senegal Rivers to trading 'ports' like Timbuktu. As the Sudan region saw new and richer empires rise like the Mali Empire (1240-1645 CE) and Songhai Empire, so a wealthy elite sought evermore exotic and expensive goods from North Africa and the wider Mediterranean.

Besides salt, the caravans transported southwards glazed pottery (luxury vases, cups, oil lamps, and incense burners), precious and semi-precious stones (especially garnet and amazonite), cowrie shells and copper wire to be used as currencies, copper ingots, horses, manufactured goods, fine cloth, beads, coral, dates, raisins, and glassware (cups, goblets, and perfume bottles). As the Sudan empires spread their influence and new powers rose such as Hausaland, so this brought in new goods to the trans-Saharan trade like kola nuts (a mild stimulant), ostrich feathers, perfumes, and tobacco.

Legacy

The major and most immediate consequence of the trans-Saharan trade was that it gave states tremendous power in their respective regions as they came to possess goods which were highly valued by their own populations and those of competitor states. These goods could be consumed to enhance the prestige of the ruling class or traded on or taxed which made ruling elites even richer than before and, through the payment of armies, left them in an even more dominant position over subjugated tribes and smaller states. More subtly, there was another kind of baggage besides the trade goods which came with the merchants who crisscrossed the Sahara. Ideas, technology, and religion all spread, too.

Although the extent of either direction's cultural influence is difficult to gauge precisely, we do know that Islam was introduced into the Sudan region via northern traders from the 9th century CE. Mosques and Islamic town planning began to be seen in Sudan towns. The adoption of precise scales using accurate glass weights was adopted in some Sudan cultures, almost certainly in response to the need to accurately measure gold dust. However, some things did not seem to catch on. For example, the import of Mediterranean pottery had little effect on the production of traditional Sudan pottery shapes and designs. So, too, better kilns capable of higher firing temperatures have been revealed by archaeology in the north but were not adopted in the Sudan. In the other direction, the technique of mud-rubble to fill wall cavities may have been adopted in the north from Sudan practices.

The caravans, albeit on a much smaller scale than in their heyday, are still going today. Saharan salt from Taoudenni is still transported by Tuareg camel caravans, the 90-kilo slabs now ultimately destined for the refineries of Bamako in Mali. Four-wheel drive vehicles and satellite phones may be of enormous value to modern desert travellers but the camel still remains one of the most dependable ways to reach and transport goods in the remoter parts of the Sahara.

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The Camel Caravans of the Ancient Sahara

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The camel caravans which crossed the great dunes of the Sahara desert began in antiquity but reached their golden period from the 9th century CE onwards. In their heyday caravans consisted of thousands...

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Look at "Afro Eurasian Trade Circles" map and *click* each circle for more info 

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Look at "Afro Eurasian Trade Circles" map and *click* each circle for more info 

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Sites of Encounter in the Medieval World

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Overview of the Mongolian Empire (past assignment)

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Overview of the Mongolian Empire (past assignment)

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Salt from the Sahara desert was one of the major trade goods of ancient West Africa where very little naturally occurring deposits of the mineral could be found. Transported via camel caravans and by…

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The Swahili Coast-a narrow strip of land that stretches along the eastern edge of Africa from Somalia in the north to Mozambique in the south-is an area with a long and unique cultural history.

Subjects

Geography, Human Geography, Social Studies, Ancient Civilizations, World History

Image

Traditional Sailing in Kilwa

City-states along the east African coast have a longstanding tradition of trade and mingling between various peoples. Many of these former city-states still exist in modern nations.

Photograph by John Kanyingi

What Is the Swahili Coast?

On the east coast of Africa-at the western edge of the Indian Ocean-lies a narrow strip of land that has hosted travelers for thousands of years. When ships were powered by sails, the seasonally alternating Indian Ocean monsoon winds allowed for efficient sea voyages up and down the coast.

One of the first written records of the area's significance, a Greek merchant's guide from the first century C.E., describes sailing voyages on the Red Sea and the coast of East Africa. This work, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, describes the wealth of ivory, rhino horn, tortoise shell, and palm oil available for trade in each of these east African city-states.

This coastal region, which today stretches along the eastern edge of Africa from Somalia in the north to Mozambique in the south, is known as the Swahili Coast and is home to a unique culture and language-a multicultural polyglot of African, Arab, and Indian Ocean peoples.

The original inhabitants of the Swahili Coast were Bantu-speaking Africans, who had migrated east from the continent's interior. They eventually spread up and down the coast, trading with each other, with the people of the interior, and eventually people from other continents.

Not much is known about the history of the Swahili Coast in the immediate centuries after the Periplus, although archaeologists have found hints of connections between this region and the Roman and Byzantine empires.

Starting with the eighth century C.E.-when Muslim traders, mostly Arabs, came to settle permanently in the region-historical records became more detailed. Later, in the 12th century, Persian settlers-known as the Shirazi-arrived. Today, the vast majority of Swahili people are Sunni Muslims.

The Medieval Heyday

The Swahili Coast appears to have reached its zenith during the Medieval Period, from around the 11th to 15th centuries. During that time, the Swahili Coast comprised numerous city-states that traded across the Indian Ocean. The city-states were independent sultanates, although they shared a common language (Swahili) and religion (Islam). They traded across the Indian Ocean for items, such as pottery, silks, and glassware.

Collectively, the city-states are often referred to as "stone towns," because many buildings were constructed using stone-coral blocks held together with mortar. One of the larger structures, whose ruins remain today, is a stone mosque in the city of Kilwa.

Kilwa and Songo Mnara

Among the southern-most of the major city-states-and a major archaeological site today-is Kilwa, located on an island off the southern coast of Tanzania. During the medieval period, it maintained an outpost at Sofala for trading with the gold-rich Kingdom of Great Zimbabwe, which was to the south.

In medieval times, Kilwa was one of the most important trading centers on the east African coast. Its ruins today include a large stone mosque and the Great Palace, which was at the time the largest stone building in Africa south of the Sahara Desert. The grounds of the Great Palace (Husuni Kubwa) occupied a large area and included a swimming pool and around a hundred rooms. Today, the ruins of Kilwa include more recent structures, including a Portuguese prison-fort.

On another island just to the south is another site, called Songo Mnara, founded by the sultanate of Kilwa. No one knows why the people of Kilwa built Songo Mnara, but it appears to have been built following an urban plan, with clean lines and ornamentation made from coral stone.

Chinese Contacts

Perhaps one of the most spectacular sights along the Swahili Coast during the Medieval Period would have been the arrival of the ships of Chinese admiral Zheng He. During the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Yongle (reigned circa 1403-1424 C.E.) sent Zheng on seven diplomatic expeditions. The expeditions included great fleets of hundreds of warships and cargo ships for carrying trade and tribute, crewed by thousands of men.

On his later voyages, Zheng He visited the Swahili Coast, stopping at Mombasa and Malindi (both in modern-day Kenya), and Mogadishu (in modern-day Somalia). In response to one of the expeditions, the Sultan of Malindi sent the Chinese emperor a giraffe and other creatures, which the Chinese considered exotic, as gifts.

However, the Chinese did not maintain a permanent presence in East Africa. The voyages of Zheng He ended with his death and the death of the emperor.

Still, archaeological evidence of the Chinese-Swahili connection is being unearthed even today. In 2010, archaeologists from China and Kenya found a Chinese coin in a village not far from the medieval city-state of Malindi; the coin dated to the Ming Dynasty. In 2013, another group of archaeologists found a similar coin on the island of Manda, also in Kenya. According to one Chinese archaeologist, such coins were carried only by envoys of the emperor.

Portuguese

From 1497 to 1498, Portuguese voyager Vasco da Gama led an expedition of four ships and 170 men past the Cape of Good Hope (in modern-day South Africa), up the east coast of Africa, and into the Indian Ocean.

There, the Portuguese brutally attempted to control all trade and commerce in the Indian Ocean. They established bases at several sites along the Swahili Coast, including Sofala and Mozambique Island. They also built Fort Jesus in Mombasa and set up a customs house on Pate Island.

Interactions with the Portuguese and a consequent decrease in trade led to the decline of the Swahili Coast city-states, although some did carry on for another few centuries, some under the rule of the Omani Empire.

Swahili Today

Today, Swahili is the lingua franca of East Africa. The Swahili language is part of the Bantu language family (the group of languages spoken in much of central and southern Africa) but has had considerable Arabic influences. Indeed, the term "Swahili" is derived from Arabic and means "[people] of the coast." The language also contains loaner words from Persian, Portuguese, and German, among other languages. It is estimated to be spoken by more than 100-million people worldwide.

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The Swahili Coast-a narrow strip of land that stretches along the eastern edge of Africa from Somalia in the north to Mozambique in the south-is an area with a long and unique cultural history. Geography, Human Geography, Social Studies, Ancient Civilizations, World History Image Traditional Sailing in Kilwa City-states along the east African coast have a longstanding tradition of trade and mingling between various peoples.

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Sites of Encounter in the Medieval World

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Resources & professional learning for K-12 history-social science

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The Silk Road wasn't a single route, but rather a vibrant trade network that crisscrossed central Eurasia for centuries, bringing far-flung cultures into contact. Traveling by camel and horseback, merchants, nomads, missionaries, warriors and diplomats not only exchanged exotic goods, but transferred knowledge, technology, medicine and religious beliefs that reshaped ancient civilizations.

The term "silk road" was coined in 1877 by Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen, a German geographer, who focused on the flourishing silk trade between the Chinese Han Empire (206 B.C. to 220 A.D.) and Rome. But modern scholars recognize that the Silk Road (or Silk Roads) continued to enable cross-continental trade until large-scale maritime trade replaced overland caravans in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Here are eight of the most important trade goods that fueled centuries of Silk Road cultural exchange:

1. Silk

It's called the Silk Road for a reason. Silk, first produced in China as early as 3,000 B.C., was the ideal overland trade item for merchant and diplomatic caravans that may have traveled thousands of miles to reach their destinations, says Xin Wen, a historian of medieval China and Inner Asia at Princeton University.

"Your carrying capacity was very limited, so you brought whatever was most valuable, but also the lightest," says Wen, whose upcoming book is titled The King's Road: Diplomatic Travelers and the Making of the Silk Road in Eastern Eurasia, 850-1000. "Not only does silk fit these characteristics exactly-high value, low weight-but it's also extremely versatile."

The Roman elite prized Chinese silk as a luxuriously thin textile, and later, when silk-making technology was brought to the Mediterranean, artisans in Damascus created the reversible woven silk textile known as damask.

But silk was more than clothing, says Wen. In Buddhist cultures it was made into ritual banners or used as a canvas for paintings. In the important Silk Road settlement of Turfan in Eastern China, silk was used as currency, writes historian Valerie Hansen, and in the Tang Dynasty (618 to 907 A.C.), silk was collected as a form of tax.

2. Horses

Patrick Aventurier/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images

Horses were first domesticated in the steppes of Central Asia around 3700 B.C. and transported nomadic tribes that hunted and raided across vast territories that bordered China, India, Persia and the Mediterranean. Once the horse was introduced into agrarian societies, it became a sought-after tool for transport, cultivation and cavalry, writes historian James Millward in Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction.

The silk-for-horse trade was one of the most important and long-lasting exchanges on the Silk Road. Chinese merchants and officials traded bolts of silk for well-bred horses from the Mongolian steppes and Tibetan plateau. In turn, nomad elites prized the silk for the status it conferred or the additional goods it could buy.

Wen says that horses, by providing their own transportation, were the ultimate high-value, low-weight commodity on the Silk Road, and were "a very unique luxury item for the elite of the Eurasian world."

It's not surprising that the famous tomb of the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang (259-210 B.C.) not only contains 8,000 terra cotta warriors, but also lifelike statues of 520 chariot horses and 150 cavalry horses.

3. Paper

Paper, invented in China in the second century A.C., first spread throughout Asia with the dissemination of Buddhism. In 751, paper was introduced to the Islamic world when Arab forces clashed with the Tang Dynasty at the Battle of Talas. The Caliph Harun al-Rashid built a paper mill in Baghdad that introduced paper-making to Egypt, North Africa and Spain, where paper finally reached Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries, writes Millward.

On the Silk Road, travelers carried paper documents that served as passports to cross nomadic lands or spend the night at a caravansary, a Silk Road oasis. But the most important function of paper along the Silk Road was that it was bound into texts and books that transmitted entirely new systems of thought, especially religion.

"It's not a coincidence that Buddhism spread to China around the same time that paper became prevalent in the region," says Wen. "Same with Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism. One of the central significances of the Silk Road is that it served as a channel for the spread of different ideas and cultural interactions, and much of that relied on paper."

4. Spices

Leemage/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Spices from East and South Asia, like cinnamon from Sri Lanka and cassia from China, were exotic and coveted trade items, but they didn't typically travel the overland routes of the Silk Road. Instead, spices were mainly transported along an ancient maritime Silk Road that linked port cities from Indonesia westward through India and the Arabian Peninsula.

Across the Silk Road, spices were valued for their use in cooking, but also for religious ceremonies and as medicine. And unlike silk, which could be produced wherever silk worms could be kept alive, many spices were derived from plants that only grew in very specific environments.

"That means there's a clearer origin for spice than for some of the other luxury items, which adds to their value," says Wen.

5. Jade

Millennia before there was such a thing as the Silk Road, China traded with its western neighbors along the so-called Jade Road.

Jade, the crystalline-green gemstone, was central to Chinese ritual culture. When jade supplies ran low in the 5th millennium B.C., it was necessary for China to establish trade relations with western neighbors like the ancient Iranian Kingdom of Khotan, whose rivers were rich with hunks of nephrite jade, the best variety of jade for carving intricate figurines and jewelry. The jade trade to China flourished throughout the Silk Road period, as did trade in other semi-precious gems like pearls.

6. Glassware

Westerners often assume that most Silk Road goods traveled from the exotic Far East westward to the Mediterranean and Europe, but Silk Road trade went in all directions. For example, archeologists excavating burial mounds in China, Korea, Thailand and the Philippines have found Roman glassware among the prized possessions of the Asian elite. The distinct type of soda-lime glass made in Rome and fashioned into vases and goblets would have eagerly been traded for silk, which Romans were obsessed with.

7. Furs

The taiga is the vast stretch of evergreen forest that runs through Siberia in Eurasia and continues into Canada in North America. In the days of the Silk Road, writes Millward, the taiga attracted hardy bands of trappers who harvested fox, sable, mink, beaver and ermine pelts. This northern "fur road" supplied luxurious coats and hats to Chinese dynasties and other Eurasian elites. Millward writes that Genghis Khan cemented one of his earliest political alliances with a gift of a sable coat. By the 17th century, in the waning days of the Silk Road, rulers from the Chinese Qing Dynasty could buy furs from Siberian trappers.

8. Slaves

Enslaved people were a tragically common "trade good" along the Silk Road. Raiding armies would take captives and sell them to private traders who would find buyers in far-flung ports and capitals from Dublin in the West to Shandong in Eastern China, writes Silk Road historian Susan Whitfield. The slaves became servants, entertainers and eunuchs for royal courts.

Wen says that while enslavement was pervasive in premodern Eurasia along the Silk Road, none of these kingdoms or societies could be classified as "slave-based" in the same way that the African slave trade operated in the New World.

"Slaves were more like an ornament of the life of the Silk Road elite," says Wen, "Not a major economic source."

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The Silk Road: 8 Goods Traded Along the Ancient Network

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The Silk Road wasn't a single route, but rather a vibrant trade network that crisscrossed central Eurasia for centuries, bringing far-flung cultures into contact. Traveling by camel and horseback, merchants, nomads, missionaries, warriors and diplomats not only exchanged exotic goods, but transferred knowledge, technology, medicine and religious beliefs that reshaped ancient civilizations.

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Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art

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In 1271, the leader of the Mongol empire, Khan (ca. 1215-ca. 1294), proclaimed the establishment of the and declared himself emperor of China, but it was not until 1279 that his conquest of China was completed and the Southern Song dynasty fell. The Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) was the first foreign-ruled dynasty in Chinese history to commandeer all of China. With no experience in the running of such a large and complex empire, the Mongols gradually adopted many Chinese cultural and bureaucratic models. Growing at court, corruption, and the horrors of natural disasters, however, led relatively shortly to rebellion and, eventually, dynastic collapse.

Despite the short duration of the Yuan dynasty, it was an extremely vital period in the arts. Particularly, changes in the style of Chinese painting during this period and the widespread introduction of blue-and-white decorated , as well as innovations in manufacture, were crucial developments that affected the arts of the subsequent Ming and dynasties. The Yuan dynasty built new and reestablished older trade links with the outside world through overland as well as maritime routes. Foreign goods filled the coastal cities and new ideas and technologies flowed in, resulting in robust creative enterprises. Porcelain ceramics painted with oxide (which turns blue) before being coated with a clear came to be known as blue-and-white porcelain and began to be widely produced in in south China for domestic consumption and for trade, especially to the Near East. The Yuan court established some regulatory control at Jingdezhen, which became the most important center of porcelain manufacture in China.

Chinese , or scholar-officials, the core of the government bureaucracy in the Song dynasty, were largely ignored by the Mongols. They received at best only minor appointments. As a result, many scholars withdrew from public life. Instead, they pursued their own personal and artistic cultivation, often under the auspices of or . They abandoned naturalism in favor of a more abstract style of ink-and-wash painting that celebrated calligraphic brushwork, which utilizes rhythmic brush strokes charged with the movement of ink.

Painting was an important vehicle for self-expression during this period. Landscape painting became unprecedentedly popular among the Yuan scholars. One of the first figures in inspiring stylistic change was Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), one of China's most talented artists. He looked at masters from previous dynasties and reinterpreted their classical styles in his own fashion. In a sense, he was creating historical art. In doing so, he opened the way not only for the next generation of Yuan amateur (or literati) painters-notably the Four Great Masters of the Yuan, which included Huang Gongwang (1269-1354), (1301-1374), Wu Zhen (1280-1354), and Wang Meng (1308-1385)-but also for all subsequent scholar-amateur style landscape painting until today. Another favored painting genre of the Yuan is bamboo painting (For example, see this painting by Ni Zan). To the proud and secluded Yuan scholars, bamboo itself was a of the true gentleman (it bends but does not break in a wind, returning upright), much like the scholar who maintains their no matter how adverse the circumstance is.

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Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) - Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art

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In 1271, the leader of the Mongol empire, Khan (ca. 1215-ca. 1294), proclaimed the establishment of the Yuan dynasty and declared himself emperor of China, but it was not until 1279 that his conquest of China was completed and the Southern Song dynasty fell.

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Freer Gallery of Art & Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

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The Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art, are located on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Committed to preserving, exhibiting, and interpreting exemplary works of art, the museum houses exceptional collections of Asian art, with more than 44,000 objects dating from the Neolithic period to today. Renowned and iconic objects originate from China, Japan, Korea, South and Southeast Asia, the ancient Near East, and the Islamic world. The Freer Gallery of Art also holds a significant group of American works of art largely dating to the late nineteenth century. It boasts the world's largest collection of diverse works by James McNeill Whistler, including the famed Peacock Room. The National Museum of Asian Art is dedicated to increasing understanding of the arts of Asia through a broad portfolio of exhibitions, publications, conservation, research, and education.
The information presented on this website may be revised and updated at any time as ongoing research progresses or as otherwise warranted. Pending any such revisions and updates, information on this site may be incomplete or inaccurate or may contain typographical errors. Neither the Smithsonian nor its regents, officers, employees, or agents make any representations about the accuracy, reliability, completeness, or timeliness of the information on the site. Use this site and the information provided on it subject to your own judgment. The Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery welcome information that would augment or clarify the ownership history of objects in their collections.

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Collections - Freer Gallery of Art & Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

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The Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art, are located on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Committed to preserving, exhibiting, and interpreting exemplary works of art, the museum houses exceptional collections of Asian art, with more than 44,000 objects dating from the Neolithic period to ...

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A number of very important inventions were made in medieval times such as the Spinning Wheel, Stirrups, Astrolabe, Eyeglasses, Compass, Tidal Mills, Gunpowder and Printing Press.

A large number of inventions came to be during the medieval period. Given that the medieval period was marked by perennial warfare throughout the different parts of Europe, most of the significant inventions of the period were directly or indirectly related to warfare.

However, there were other inventions such as the clock, printing press and architectural innovations which played a critical part in shaping medieval Europe. Here are some of the most important of these inventions from the medieval period.

Astrolabe was an important Medieval invention, They were used by navigators, astronomers who studied the movement of celestial bodies Read more about the Astrolabe >>

Medieval Inventions - It was in medieval Europe that the earliest versions of the modern compass as we know it were invented Read more about the Compass >>

Important Medieval Inventions such as Eyeglasses, were not invented until around the 13th Century, Early Medieval Eyeglasses were fairly basic in their design Read more about the Eyeglasses >>

The invention of Gunpowder had a massive impact on Medieval Warfare, with the invention of Gunpowder came decline of the legendary 'Medieval Knight'. Read more about the Gunpowder >>

The Medieval 'The Mechanical Clock' was an Important Invention in Medieval Times, Christian monks who had extensive knowledge of astronomy invented Mechanic Clocks Read more about the Mechanical Clock >>

The Printing Press was a very important invention in the Medieval history, Invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th Century and creating a 'printing revolution' Read more about the Printing Press >>

Mechanical Clock

Until the High Middle Ages, there was no accurate and accessible way of measuring time. People had to rely on natural phenomenon, such as the movements of the Sun, or on contraptions such as the hour glass or calibrated candles.

It was only in the 14th century that innovations in Church bell-ringing mechanism evolved to give birth to the earliest mechanical clocks. The first of these dates back to 1344 being used in a cathedral in Padua. In subsequent decades and centuries, clocks began to become more accurate, sophisticated and compact. In time, these clocks would give birth to pocket watches and in more recent times, to wrist watches.

Printing Press

The basis for the modern printing press were laid in 15th century when Johannes Guttenberg in Germany invented a unique printing press of his own. By using the prevalent printing mechanism, he used new methods and equipment to speed up and automate the process of printing.

Before his press, books which had to be printed required a lot of labour and took a lot of time to make, essentially limiting the use of books to the rich and wealthy. The Gutenberg press became a precursor to cheaper printing presses which were established all over Europe and became one of the key inventions that made the European Renaissance possible.

Gunpowder

Before the invention of gunpowder, warfare in the medieval period remained more or less the same as the warfare in the antique period. Although armour's evolved significantly and weapons corresponded in this evolution, warfare still required men to ride on horses or close in for on-foot combat, wield different weapons, defend themselves with armour and face an enemy at close quarters.

All of this changed with the invention of the gunpowder. Gunpowder had been invented in China as early as the 9th century but reached widespread use in Europe only by the 13th century, possible due to battlefield interactions with the Mongols. By the 14th century, gunpowder weapons were being used by the European armies and by the 15th century, these weapons had effectively replaced most of the conventional weaponry.

Tidal Mills

Tidal mills were an important medieval invention dating back to the 8th century. They were usually employed near natural water bodies such as rivers and were driven by the high tides of the water body. In the countryside, such mills were frequently used to accomplish different mechanical tasks, the force of the water itself was used to drive the water wheel on its own. Such early use of mechanical energy can be seen as precursors to the use of electricity in modern period.

Compass

Naval warfare remained a part of the military lifestyle of medieval Europe since the beginning of the medieval period. This was evident in the naval battles between Arabs and the Byzantines in the 8th century and the ongoing naval conflict for supremacy in the Mediterranean.

Navigation in the sea was critically important for longer sea voyages and it was only in the 13th century that the invention of a compass made sea navigation easy for sailors. The dry compass was invented in Europe sometime during the 13th century while a compass more aptly suited for naval use was invented by the Arabs in the 14th century.

Eyeglasses

Eyeglasses were one of the most important inventions of the medieval period. The earliest extant historical source mentioning eyeglasses in Europe dates back to the 14th century. This early form of eyeglasses used convex lenses, suitable only for people with farsightedness.

The eyeglasses are a critically important social invention in that before they became available, poor eyesight usually deteriorated over time and there was little the contemporary physicians could do. The earliest evidence for eyeglasses using concave lens and meant to resolve nearsightedness date back to the 16th century.

Astrolabe

Astrolabe is a device which is used to measure the position of the Sun and different stars in the sky accurately. It was invented during the medieval ages with the earliest astrolabes appearing in Moorish Spain during the 12th century. From Spain, the astrolabe reached wider Europe and in time, became one of the preeminent devices used for astronomical purposes. Given the application of astronomy in many related sciences, the astrolabe is considered one of the most important scientific inventions of the medieval period.

Stirrups

Stirrups refer to a sort of frame that can securely hold the feet of a horse rider. The stirrup essentially allows a rider to keep both his feet securely in the flexible frame, thereby allowing him to wield a weapon or otherwise ride effectively when on the horse.

Stirrups arrived in Eastern Europe around the 7th century and over subsequent centuries, found adoption in the Western Europe. It is argued that stirrups played a critical role in developing the military warfare of the medieval period.

They probably made cavalry the supreme unit of an average medieval army, undermining or reducing the significance of infantry units . It was largely thanks to the stirrups that cavalry riders could wield weapons, fight on the go and even shoot arrows while riding their horse with minimal risk of falling off.

Spinning Wheel

The spinning wheel was originally invented before the medieval period but in Europe, it came to be widely used only in the medieval era. In contrast to the earlier spinning methods used in Europe, the spinning wheel was far more efficient and allowed a spinner to spin greater amounts of thread in less time. This finally made it possible for well-spun clothes to be worn by an increasingly greater section of population in medieval Europe.

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Medieval Inventions List | Medieval Chronicles

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A number of very important inventions were made in medieval times such as the Spinning Wheel, Stirrups, Astrolabe, Eyeglasses, Compass, Tidal Mills, Gunpowder and Printing Press. A large number of inventions came to be during the medieval period.

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Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art

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Sacred Sites in Southeast Asia - Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art

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Welcome to the National Museum of Asian Art. Stay updated on the latest visitor information.

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Silk is a fabric first produced in Neolithic China from the filaments of the cocoon of the silk worm. It became a staple source of income for small farmers and, as weaving techniques improved, the reputation of Chinese silk spread so that it became highly desired across the empires of the ancient world. As China's most important export for much of its history, the material gave its name to the great trading network the Silk Road, which connected East Asia to Europe, India, and Africa. Not only used to make fine clothes, silk was used for fans, wall hangings, banners, and as a popular alternative to paper for writers and artists.

Origins & Cultivation

Silk is produced by silk worms ( Bombyx mori) to form the cocoon within which the larvae develop. A single specimen is capable of producing a 0.025 mm thick thread over 900 metres (3,000 ft) long. Several such filaments are then twisted together to make a thread thick enough to be used to weave material. Fabrics were created using looms, and treadle-operated versions appear in, for example, the murals in tombs of the Han dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE). The silk could be dyed and painted using such minerals and natural materials as cinnabar, red ochre, powdered silver, powdered clam shells, and indigo and other inks extracted from vegetable matter.

The earliest known examples of woven silk date to c. 2700 BCE & come from the site of Qianshanyang in China.

Sericulture - that is the cultivation of mulberry leaves, the tending of silkworms, the gathering of threads from their cocoons and the weaving of silk - first appears in the archaeological record of ancient China c. 3600 BCE. Excavations at Hemudu in Zhejiang province have revealed Neolithic tools for weaving and silk gauze. The earliest known examples of woven silk date to c. 2700 BCE and come from the site of Qianshanyang, also in Zhejiang. Recent archaeological evidence suggests that the Indus Valley civilization in the north of the Indian subcontinent was also making silk contemporary with the Neolithic Chinese. They used the Antheraea moth to produce silk threads for weaving.

However, silk production on a large scale and involving more sophisticated weaving techniques would only appear from the Chinese Shang and Zhou dynasties in the 2nd millennium BCE. Silk then became one of the most important manufactured and traded goods in ancient China, and finds of Shang dynasty (c. 1600 - 1046 BCE) silk in an Egyptian tomb are testimony to its esteemed value and use in early international trade.

Evolution

During the Han dynasty, the quality of silk improved even further, becoming finer, stronger, and often with multicoloured embroidered patterns and designs of human and animal figures. Chinese characters are also woven into the fabric of many surviving examples. The weave of some Han period pieces, with 220 warp threads per centimetre, is extremely fine. The cultivation of the silk worms themselves also became more sophisticated from the 1st century CE with techniques used to speed up or slow their growth by adjusting the temperature of their environment. Different breeds were used, and these were crossed to create silk worms capable of producing threads with different qualities useful to the weavers.

Weavers were usually women, and it was also their responsibility to make sure the silk worms were well fed on their favourite diet of chopped mulberry leaves and that they were sufficiently warm enough to spin thread for their cocoons. The industry became such a vital source of income for families that land dedicated to the cultivation of mulberry bushes was even made exempt from reforms which otherwise took away agricultural land from peasant ownership and mulberry plots became the only land that it was possible for farmers to claim hereditary ownership of. Mencius, the Confucian philosopher, advocated the smallest of land holdings always set aside a plot to plant mulberry. As demand grew, then the state and those with enough capital to do so set up large workshops where both men and women worked. Great aristocratic houses had their own private silk production team with several hundred workers employed in producing silk for the estate's needs and for resale. Silk production even became the subject of poems and songs such as this example from the Master Xun philosophical text of the Warring States period:

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How naked its external form,

Yet it continually transforms like a spirit.

Its achievement covers the world,

For it has created ornament for a myriad generations.

Ritual ceremonies and musical performances are completed through it;

Noble and humble are distinguished with it;

Young and old rely on it;

For with it alone can one survive.

(in Lewis, 114-115)

Eventually, the Chinese could no longer keep the lucrative secret of silk production to themselves and it began to be manufactured in Korea and Japan where it would become a state-controlled industry. Other states and cultures then acquired the skills of sericulture such as India around 300 CE, and from there it spread to Byzantium, Arabia, the Levant, and Italy.

Trade: the Silk Road

The fame of Chinese manufactured silk spread across the famous trade route which took its name - the Silk Road - such was the commodity's importance to the Chinese economy. The Silk Road or Sichou Zhi Lu was actually an entire network of overland camel caravan routes connecting China to the Middle East and hence is now often referred to as the Silk Routes by historians. Silk - in the form of the thread, woven cloth, and finished products - was thus exported via middlemen (no single trader ever travelled the length of the routes) not only to neighbouring states such as the Korean kingdoms and Japan but also to the great empires of India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. In the case of the latter, it is said that the eventual financial collapse of the state was in part due to the constant drain of silver to the east where it went to purchase the silk that the Romans could not live without. The Romans even called the Chinese Seres, after the word for silk in that language.

In addition to land routes and passage across the Inland Sea to Japan, from the 11th century CE Chinese junks sailed and traded across the Indian Ocean and silk thus remained the number one export product of China for centuries; it would only be rivalled by porcelain and tea from the 15th century CE. By the 20th century CE, it would be Japan that would replace China as the world's largest silk producer.

Uses

In China, and later elsewhere, silk was used to make clothing (especially long robes, gowns, and jackets), hand fans, furnishings, wall hangings, screens, decorative scenes for and from famous books and poems, military banners, funeral banners, Buddhist mandalas, and for the purposes of writing instead of bamboo or paper. Brightly coloured and exquisitely embroidered silk robes became a status symbol and helped distinguish officials and courtiers from the cotton- or plain-silk-wearing lower classes. In other cultures, such as Korea, there were even laws forbidding the wearing of silk by persons below a certain social rank. Embroidered silk became so varied and refined that a whole connoisseurship developed around the material, similar to that surrounding the fine porcelain of Chinese potters. Taoist priests were another group who were distinguished by their silk robes, often embroidered with ceremonial scenes.

As a valuable commodity bolts of silk were often used as a form of currency, especially in the payment of tribute such as by the Northern Song (960-1127 CE) and the Southern Song (1127-1276 CE) to the Liao and the Jin emperors, respectively. Silk was also an esteemed gift. Given to tributary states in appreciation of their loyalty, it was an impressive symbol of the Chinese emperor's great wealth and largesse. For example, in 25 BCE alone, the Han gave as gifts an incredible 20,000 rolls of silk cloth. Traders used it is a payment, people paid their tax with it, and even armies were sometimes paid in silk.

In art, silk became a popular surface on which to paint landscape scenes and portraits. Tang dynasty (618-907 CE) artists were particularly famed for their skills in dyeing, printing and painting on silk, with many examples of their work surviving in Japan where they were sent as gifts. Silk books were made which had copies of famous paintings and so became reference albums for art connoisseurs.

Cultural Repercussions

The trade of silk and other commodities along the Silk Road also brought with it ideas and cultural practices in both directions; language and writing were especially important elements transmitted along the routes by traders, diplomats, monks, and travellers. Buddhism came to China from India and was then passed on to Korea and Japan. Explorers such as Marco Polo used the route, as did Christian missionaries from the west to enter China for the first time. New foodstuffs were introduced into China and then cultivated there such as walnuts, pomegranates, sesame, and coriander. Silk, symbol of China for so long, had opened the doors to new lands and new ideas, and finally connected the great empires of the ancient world.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Silk is a fabric first produced in Neolithic China from the filaments of the cocoon of the silk worm. It became a staple source of income for small farmers and, as weaving techniques improved, the reputation of Chinese silk spread so that it became highly desired across the empires of the ancient world.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Silk is a fabric first produced in Neolithic China from the filaments of the cocoon of the silk worm. It became a staple source of income for small farmers and, as weaving techniques improved, the reputation of Chinese silk spread so that it became highly desired across the empires of the ancient world. As China's most important export for much of its history, the material gave its name to the great trading network the Silk Road, which connected East Asia to Europe, India, and Africa. Not only used to make fine clothes, silk was used for fans, wall hangings, banners, and as a popular alternative to paper for writers and artists.

Origins & Cultivation

Silk is produced by silk worms ( Bombyx mori) to form the cocoon within which the larvae develop. A single specimen is capable of producing a 0.025 mm thick thread over 900 metres (3,000 ft) long. Several such filaments are then twisted together to make a thread thick enough to be used to weave material. Fabrics were created using looms, and treadle-operated versions appear in, for example, the murals in tombs of the Han dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE). The silk could be dyed and painted using such minerals and natural materials as cinnabar, red ochre, powdered silver, powdered clam shells, and indigo and other inks extracted from vegetable matter.

The earliest known examples of woven silk date to c. 2700 BCE & come from the site of Qianshanyang in China.

Sericulture - that is the cultivation of mulberry leaves, the tending of silkworms, the gathering of threads from their cocoons and the weaving of silk - first appears in the archaeological record of ancient China c. 3600 BCE. Excavations at Hemudu in Zhejiang province have revealed Neolithic tools for weaving and silk gauze. The earliest known examples of woven silk date to c. 2700 BCE and come from the site of Qianshanyang, also in Zhejiang. Recent archaeological evidence suggests that the Indus Valley civilization in the north of the Indian subcontinent was also making silk contemporary with the Neolithic Chinese. They used the Antheraea moth to produce silk threads for weaving.

However, silk production on a large scale and involving more sophisticated weaving techniques would only appear from the Chinese Shang and Zhou dynasties in the 2nd millennium BCE. Silk then became one of the most important manufactured and traded goods in ancient China, and finds of Shang dynasty (c. 1600 - 1046 BCE) silk in an Egyptian tomb are testimony to its esteemed value and use in early international trade.

Evolution

During the Han dynasty, the quality of silk improved even further, becoming finer, stronger, and often with multicoloured embroidered patterns and designs of human and animal figures. Chinese characters are also woven into the fabric of many surviving examples. The weave of some Han period pieces, with 220 warp threads per centimetre, is extremely fine. The cultivation of the silk worms themselves also became more sophisticated from the 1st century CE with techniques used to speed up or slow their growth by adjusting the temperature of their environment. Different breeds were used, and these were crossed to create silk worms capable of producing threads with different qualities useful to the weavers.

Weavers were usually women, and it was also their responsibility to make sure the silk worms were well fed on their favourite diet of chopped mulberry leaves and that they were sufficiently warm enough to spin thread for their cocoons. The industry became such a vital source of income for families that land dedicated to the cultivation of mulberry bushes was even made exempt from reforms which otherwise took away agricultural land from peasant ownership and mulberry plots became the only land that it was possible for farmers to claim hereditary ownership of. Mencius, the Confucian philosopher, advocated the smallest of land holdings always set aside a plot to plant mulberry. As demand grew, then the state and those with enough capital to do so set up large workshops where both men and women worked. Great aristocratic houses had their own private silk production team with several hundred workers employed in producing silk for the estate's needs and for resale. Silk production even became the subject of poems and songs such as this example from the Master Xun philosophical text of the Warring States period:

Sign up for our free weekly email newsletter!

How naked its external form,

Yet it continually transforms like a spirit.

Its achievement covers the world,

For it has created ornament for a myriad generations.

Ritual ceremonies and musical performances are completed through it;

Noble and humble are distinguished with it;

Young and old rely on it;

For with it alone can one survive.

(in Lewis, 114-115)

Eventually, the Chinese could no longer keep the lucrative secret of silk production to themselves and it began to be manufactured in Korea and Japan where it would become a state-controlled industry. Other states and cultures then acquired the skills of sericulture such as India around 300 CE, and from there it spread to Byzantium, Arabia, the Levant, and Italy.

Trade: the Silk Road

The fame of Chinese manufactured silk spread across the famous trade route which took its name - the Silk Road - such was the commodity's importance to the Chinese economy. The Silk Road or Sichou Zhi Lu was actually an entire network of overland camel caravan routes connecting China to the Middle East and hence is now often referred to as the Silk Routes by historians. Silk - in the form of the thread, woven cloth, and finished products - was thus exported via middlemen (no single trader ever travelled the length of the routes) not only to neighbouring states such as the Korean kingdoms and Japan but also to the great empires of India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. In the case of the latter, it is said that the eventual financial collapse of the state was in part due to the constant drain of silver to the east where it went to purchase the silk that the Romans could not live without. The Romans even called the Chinese Seres, after the word for silk in that language.

In addition to land routes and passage across the Inland Sea to Japan, from the 11th century CE Chinese junks sailed and traded across the Indian Ocean and silk thus remained the number one export product of China for centuries; it would only be rivalled by porcelain and tea from the 15th century CE. By the 20th century CE, it would be Japan that would replace China as the world's largest silk producer.

Uses

In China, and later elsewhere, silk was used to make clothing (especially long robes, gowns, and jackets), hand fans, furnishings, wall hangings, screens, decorative scenes for and from famous books and poems, military banners, funeral banners, Buddhist mandalas, and for the purposes of writing instead of bamboo or paper. Brightly coloured and exquisitely embroidered silk robes became a status symbol and helped distinguish officials and courtiers from the cotton- or plain-silk-wearing lower classes. In other cultures, such as Korea, there were even laws forbidding the wearing of silk by persons below a certain social rank. Embroidered silk became so varied and refined that a whole connoisseurship developed around the material, similar to that surrounding the fine porcelain of Chinese potters. Taoist priests were another group who were distinguished by their silk robes, often embroidered with ceremonial scenes.

As a valuable commodity bolts of silk were often used as a form of currency, especially in the payment of tribute such as by the Northern Song (960-1127 CE) and the Southern Song (1127-1276 CE) to the Liao and the Jin emperors, respectively. Silk was also an esteemed gift. Given to tributary states in appreciation of their loyalty, it was an impressive symbol of the Chinese emperor's great wealth and largesse. For example, in 25 BCE alone, the Han gave as gifts an incredible 20,000 rolls of silk cloth. Traders used it is a payment, people paid their tax with it, and even armies were sometimes paid in silk.

In art, silk became a popular surface on which to paint landscape scenes and portraits. Tang dynasty (618-907 CE) artists were particularly famed for their skills in dyeing, printing and painting on silk, with many examples of their work surviving in Japan where they were sent as gifts. Silk books were made which had copies of famous paintings and so became reference albums for art connoisseurs.

Cultural Repercussions

The trade of silk and other commodities along the Silk Road also brought with it ideas and cultural practices in both directions; language and writing were especially important elements transmitted along the routes by traders, diplomats, monks, and travellers. Buddhism came to China from India and was then passed on to Korea and Japan. Explorers such as Marco Polo used the route, as did Christian missionaries from the west to enter China for the first time. New foodstuffs were introduced into China and then cultivated there such as walnuts, pomegranates, sesame, and coriander. Silk, symbol of China for so long, had opened the doors to new lands and new ideas, and finally connected the great empires of the ancient world.

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Silk is a fabric first produced in Neolithic China from the filaments of the cocoon of the silk worm. It became a staple source of income for small farmers and, as weaving techniques improved, the reputation of Chinese silk spread so that it became highly desired across the empires of the ancient world.

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Driving Desires: Gold and Salt
________________________________________

The [inhabitants of the Western Sudan] use salt for currency as gold and silver are used. They cut it into pieces and use it for their transactions.

-Ibn Battuta, 1355 C.E.

Mediterranean and Sahara-Seas of Gold Salt and gold were at the heart of a global medieval economy that bound Africa with the Mediterranean world. Artists from Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Morocco, and Italy-to peripheries as exotic and far-flung as England-shared in a visual culture of gold.

For merchants traveling southward across the Sahara, the main attraction was West African gold, which was widely admired for its purity. In addition to its associations with material wealth, gold held powerful symbolic value. The special qualities of gold-its rarity, its sparkle and reflectiveness, its malleability, and its resistance to tarnish, as well as the difficulty of extracting it from the earth-all contributed to its value. Empires across North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe minted gold into coins and used it to make and to embellish luxury objects.

West African gold provided rulers and merchants in Saharan centers with the means to acquire goods from afar. Rock salt, mined in the heart of the Sahara, was among the most important of these. Salt, which is scarce in West Africa, is essential to human life.

Investigator Interview: The Salt Trade

Interview between Addi Ouadderrou and salt merchant Lahbib Rahmiwi.

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Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Driving Desires: Gold and Salt

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Driving Desires: Gold and Salt ________________________________________ The [inhabitants of the Western Sudan] use salt for currency as gold and silver are used. They cut it into pieces and use it for their transactions. -Ibn Battuta, 1355 C.E. Mediterranean and Sahara-Seas of Gold Salt and gold were at the heart of a global medieval economy that bound Africa with the Mediterranean world.

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The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

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Authors: Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas

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The Trans-Saharan Gold Trade (7th-14th Century) | Essay | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

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Gold, sought from the western and central Sudan, was the main commodity of the trans-Saharan trade. The traffic in gold was spurred by the demand for and supply of coinage.

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The Silk Road is neither an actual road nor a single route. The term instead refers to a network of routes used by traders for more than 1,500 years, from when the Han dynasty of China opened trade in 130 B.C.E. until 1453 C.E., when the Ottoman Empire closed off trade with the West. German geographer and traveler Ferdinand von Richthofen first used the term "silk road" in 1877 C.E. to describe the well-traveled pathway of goods between Europe and East Asia. The term also serves as a metaphor for the exchange of goods and ideas between diverse cultures. Although the trade network is commonly referred to as the Silk Road, some historians favor the term Silk Routes because it better reflects the many paths taken by traders.

The Silk Road extended approximately 6,437 kilometers (4,000 miles) across some of the world's most formidable landscapes, including the Gobi Desert and the Pamir Mountains. With no one government to provide upkeep, the roads were typically in poor condition. Robbers were common. To protect themselves, traders joined together in caravans with camels or other pack animals. Over time, large inns called caravanseraiscropped up to house travelling merchants. Few people traveled the entire route, giving rise to a host of middlemen and trading posts along the way.

An abundance of goods traveled along the Silk Road. Merchants carried silk from China to Europe, where it dressed royalty and wealthy patrons. Other favorite commodities from Asia included jade and other precious stones, porcelain, tea, and spices. In exchange, horses, glassware, textiles, and manufactured goods traveled eastward.

One of the most famous travelers of the Silk Road was Marco Polo (1254 C.E. -1324 C.E.). Born into a family of wealthy merchants in Venice, Italy, Marco traveled with his father to China (then Cathay) when he was just 17 years of age. They traveled for over three years before arriving at Kublai Khan's palace at Xanadu in 1275 C.E. Marco stayed on at Khan's court and was sent on missions to parts of Asia never before visited by Europeans. Upon his return, Marco Polo wrote about his adventures, making him-and the routes he traveled-famous.

It is hard to overstate the importance of the Silk Road on history. Religion and ideas spread along the Silk Road just as fluidly as goods. Towns along the route grew into multicultural cities. The exchange of information gave rise to new technologies and innovations that would change the world. The horses introduced to China contributed to the might of the Mongol Empire, while gunpowder from China changed the very nature of war in Europe and beyond. Diseases also traveled along the Silk Road. Some research suggests that the Black Death, which devastated Europe in the late 1340s C.E., likely spread from Asia along the Silk Road. The Age of Exploration gave rise to faster routes between the East and West, but parts of the Silk Road continued to be critical pathways among varied cultures. Today, parts of the Silk Road are listed on UNESCO's World Heritage List.

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The Silk Road | National Geographic Society

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The Silk Road is neither an actual road nor a single route. The term instead refers to a network of routes used by traders for more than 1,500 years, from when the Han dynasty of China opened trade in 130 B.C.E. until 1453 C.E., when the Ottoman Empire closed off trade with the West.

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Sundiata Keita was the first ruler of the Mali Empire from 1235 C.E. to 1255 C.E. Sundiata Keita, whose name means Lion Prince, was born early in the 13th century to a noble family within the Malinke people. The Malinke kingdom, Kangaba, was part of the Ghana empire of West Africa. Oral stories about Keita say that he was a sickly child or suffered from some sort of physical impairment. This explains why, when his brothers were killed by the rulers of Ghana, he was spared. Eventually, he became a local leader of the kingdom of Kangaba.

When the Ghana Empire tried to impose trade restrictions on the Malinke, Keita began a revolt. He managed to unite several peoples of West Africa to fight against Ghana's king, Sumanguru; he defeated Sumanguru at the battle of Kirina in 1235 C.E. After that, Keita's generals began to conquer other territories in West Africa. He called his new kingdom the Mali Empire, which would become one of the richest empires in the world.

Keita's victory over Sumanguru marked the beginning of the Mali Empire. Keita decided to rebuild the then-destroyed city of Niani near the Sankarini River as his new capital. This area soon became a hub for African and Arab traders. The Mali Empire grew wealthy due to its control of trade routes as well as its significant gold and copper resources.

The Mali Empire, under Sundiata Keita, created one of the very first charters of human rights, the Manden Charter, also known as the Kouroukan Fouga. This is an oral, rather than written, charter, which has been passed down by generations of Malinke. The Manden Charter speaks about peace within a diverse nation, the abolition of slavery, education, and food security, among other things.

Besides the Manden Charter, there is a large body of oral stories and legends passed down about Sundiata Keita, which occasionally contradict written sources. Whether Keita converted to Islam is a matter of debate among documentary scholars and those who've passed down oral legends. Some believe that Arab traders in the area converted Keita to Islam. Certainly, his descendants were Muslim, and many went on pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj), and Keita's most famous descendent, Mansa Musa, dazzled Egypt and the Islamic world on his lavish pilgrimage east. However, the legendary oral tradition that surrounds Keita suggests that he never turned away from his native religion. These oral stories portray Sundiata Keita as a magician and believer in traditional Malinke religion. Some sources suggest that he was both: Muslim to work with the Muslim merchant class, and a practitioner of traditional Malinke religion to work with the rest of his people. Whatever the case, be it devout Malinke observer, a Muslim convert, or a mixture of both to the most effective administrator he could be, Keita's personal religious convictions remain a mystery.

Keita died in 1255 from an unclear cause, though some believe he was killed in an accident. As founder of the Mali Empire, he is the subject of a large oral storytelling tradition that describes him as a near-legendary figure. The empire he founded became one of the richest in the world, and his descendants included one of the richest individuals to ever live, Mansa Musa. His administration and military work allowed the empire to survive through the 16th century, solidifying him, his empire, and his family into the imaginations of storytellers around the world.

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Sundiata Keita | National Geographic Society

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Sundiata Keita was the first ruler of the Mali Empire from 1235 C.E. to 1255 C.E. Sundiata Keita, whose name means Lion Prince, was born early in the 13th century to a noble family within the Malinke people. The Malinke kingdom, Kangaba, was part of the Ghana empire of West Africa.

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From the mythic origins of the Chinese dynasties to the eventual fall of the last imperial house, Chinese emperors have long fought to maintain control over one of the most enduring empires on Earth. The rise and fall of various imperial families oversaw waves of innovation and cultural advancement.

Subjects

Anthropology, Social Studies, Ancient Civilizations, World History

Image

Terracotta Warriors

Qin Shin Huang unified China, becoming the nation's first emperor. He was buried with almost 8,000 life-size statues known of as the terracotta warrior army.

Photograph by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images

Myth or reality?

Chinese archaeologists recently unearthed what may be evidence supporting the existence of one of the Chinese empire's 4,000-year-old creation myths. The Xia dynasty was the first of many ancient Chinese ruling houses, thought to exist from around 2070 B.C.E. until 1600 B.C.E. Yet the actual existence of this dynasty and culture has been debated. Many researchers have seen the Xia dynasty as a semi-mythical period of rule, invented by the later Zhou dynasty to justify their overthrow of the Shang dynasty, who allegedly overthrew the Xia dynasty. The first Xia king, Yu, is said to have repaired the damage caused by a major flood, and this is how he achieved the Mandate of Heaven (divine right to rule). While this was commonly dismissed as a creation myth, excavations by University of Peking archaeologists have found evidence of large-scale floods from around the Xia time period, thus possibly confirming part of the Xia dynastic story. The Xia dynasty brought about what would become the foundation of Chinese rule, namely that of familial succession, with sons following fathers to the throne.

The Xia dynasty was overthrown in 1600 B.C.E. by the first Shang leader. Given that the existence of the Xia dynasty is debated, the Shang dynasty is sometimes seen as the first of the China's dynasties. The Shang rulers maintained control for around 600 years, and during this period of cultural and economic stability, Chinese culture and innovations flourished. This period saw the invention of writing, and many later historians viewed it as a "Golden Age." In 1046 B.C.E., the Shang king was overthrown by the Zhou king, ending the Shang dynasty.

The longest of the ancient China's dynasties was the Zhou dynasty, which ruled from 1046 B.C.E. to 256 B.C.E. The Zhou period is divided into two eras: Western Zhou (1046-771 B.C.E.), with the capital at Haojing, and Eastern Zhou (770-256 B.C.E.), where the capital was moved to Luoyang due to conflict. The Zhou dynasty saw a flourishing of some of ancient China's most influential writers and philosophers, such as Mozi, Confucius, and the first writings about Taoism. However, this stability would not last, and the period from 476 to 221 B.C.E. was known as the "Warring States Period" where the seven regions controlled by the Shang began serious infighting. Ultimately, the Qin armies would emerge victorious in 256 B.C.E., overthrowing the Shang leaders.

"China" and the Terracotta Warriors

The Qin dynasty (221-206 B.C.E.) and the first Qin leader, Qin Shin Huang, mark the first use of the term "emperor" regarding the dynastic leader. While this imperial reign lasted for only two emperors and 15 years, it began some of the most influential programs across the ancient world. The Qin empire marked a period of Chinese unification, where surrounding territories were brought under the rule of the emperor. Qin Shin Huang embarked on an authoritarian government augmented with significant infrastructural development, and began work on what would become the Great Wall of China. Qin Shin Huang died in 210 B.C.E. and was buried in a mausoleum with a massive terracotta warrior army consisting of almost 8,000 statues to serve the emperor in death. The Qin dynasty is also thought to be the origin of the European name for China. Qin Shin Huang was succeeded by his son, Qin Er Shi, whose reign lasted for only three years before he was unseated in 206 B.C.E. due to his unpopularity. The leader of the rebels, Liu Bang, became the first emperor of the Han dynasty.

The Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.-220 C.E.) marked another Golden Age of China. During this time, the Silk Road (a trade route from Asia to the Mediterranean and East Africa) became established by Han emperors and trade flourished. The historian Sima Qian wrote extensively during this period, and Confucianism became the official state religion. In 220 C.E., the last Han emperor was deposed, which ushered in a period known as the Three Kingdoms.

The next 300 years between 220-589 C.E. saw no major dynastic houses establish themselves over China. The Three Kingdoms was a period between 220-280 C.E. where the region was divided between the rulers of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Dong Wu. The region further fractured into the Northern and Southern territories between 386 and 581 C.E.

In 581 C.E., the short-lived Sui dynasty emerged to unify the Northern and Southern territories before being overthrown by the Tang dynasty in 618 C.E. The Tang dynasty enjoyed significant stability and is often described as the greatest of the dynasties. Beginning in 690 C.E., China's only empress regnant, Wu Zetian, reigned for 15 years, instituting many reforms before being forced to abdicate in 705 C.E.

Mongol Takeover

A period of warring followed the Tang dynasty, and in 960 C.E., the Song dynasty came to power. During the Song dynasty, the first paper money in the world was issued. The Song dynasty lasted until 1279 C.E. when it was defeated by the Mongols under the leadership of Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan. The conquest of China by the Mongols marked the greatest reach of the Mongol Horde, who then ruled China as the Yuan dynasty from 1279 C.E. until 1368 C.E. During the Mongol rule of China, Marco Polo, the Venetian merchant, visited and wrote extensively about his travels along the Silk Road.

The Yuan dynasty was deposed in 1368 C.E. by the Ming Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, who set up a stable, yet autocratic, state. The Ming emperors oversaw extensive building and repair along the Great Wall of China in an effort to preserve their crumbling borders. The invading forces of the Manchu people from the northern border eventually ended the Ming dynasty in 1644 C.E. and ushered in the Qing dynasty.

The Last Emperors

The Qing dynasty marks the last of the Chinese emperors, ruling from 1644 C.E. to 1911/12 C.E. The Qing were Manchu people rather than Han Chinese. The Manchu are a nomadic ethnic minority with their own language and customs coming from what is now northeastern China. During the Qing period, Chinese territory reached its greatest extent. While the Qing empire was relatively stable, the 19th and 20th centuries brought China into increasing conflict with Western powers, and in 1911 C.E., the last of the Chinese emperors, Puyi, abdicated in favor of a republican government.

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January 19, 2023

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From the mythic origins of the Chinese dynasties to the eventual fall of the last imperial house, Chinese emperors have long fought to maintain control over one of the most enduring empires on Earth. The rise and fall of various imperial families oversaw waves of innovation and cultural advancement.

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Mansa Musa (Musa I of Mali) was the ruler of the kingdom of Mali from 1312 C.E. to 1337 C.E. During his reign, Mali was one of the richest kingdoms of Africa, and Mansa Musa was among the richest individuals in the world. The ancient kingdom of Mali spread across parts of modern-day Mali, Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Mauritania, and Burkina Faso. Mansa Musa developed cities like Timbuktu and Gao into important cultural centers. He also brought architects from the Middle East and across Africa to design new buildings for his cities. Mansa Musa turned the kingdom of Mali into a sophisticated center of learning in the Islamic world.

Mansa Musa came to power in 1312 C.E., after the previous king, Abu Bakr II, disappeared at sea. Mansa Abu Bakr II had departed on a large fleet of ships to explore the Atlantic Ocean, and never returned. Mansa Musa inherited a kingdom that was already wealthy, but his work in expanding trade made Mali the wealthiest kingdom in Africa. His riches came from mining significant salt and gold deposits in the Mali kingdom. Elephant ivory was another major source of wealth.

When Mansa Musa went on a pilgrimage ( hajj) to Mecca in 1324 C.E., his journey through Egypt caused quite a stir. The kingdom of Mali was relatively unknown outside of West Africa until this event. Arab writers from the time said that he travelled with an entourage of tens of thousands of people and dozens of camels, each carrying 136 kilograms (300 pounds) of gold. While in Cairo, Mansa Musa met with the Sultan of Egypt, and his caravan spent and gave away so much gold that the overall value of gold decreased in Egypt for the next 12 years. Stories of his fabulous wealth even reached Europe. The Catalan Atlas, created in 1375 C.E. by Spanish cartographers, shows West Africa dominated by a depiction of Mansa Musa sitting on a throne, holding a nugget of gold in one hand and a golden staff in the other. After the publication of this atlas, Mansa Musa became cemented in the global imagination as a figure of stupendous wealth.

After his return from Mecca, Mansa Musa began to revitalize cities in his kingdom. He built mosques and large public buildings in cities like Gao and, most famously, Timbuktu. Timbuktu became a major Islamic university center during the 14th century due to Mansa Musa's developments. Mansa Musa brought architects and scholars from across the Islamic world into his kingdom, and the reputation of the Mali kingdom grew. The kingdom of Mali reached its greatest extent around the same time, a bustling, wealthy kingdom thanks to Mansa Musa's expansion and administration.

Mansa Musa died in 1337 and was succeeded by his sons. His skillful administration left his empire well-off at the time of his death, but eventually, the empire fell apart. Well after his death, Mansa Musa remained engrained in the imagination of the world as a symbol of fabulous wealth. However, his riches are only one part of his legacy, and he is also remembered for his Islamic faith, promotion of scholarship, and patronage of culture in Mali.

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Mansa Musa (Musa I of Mali) | National Geographic Society

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Mansa Musa (Musa I of Mali) was the ruler of the kingdom of Mali from 1312 C.E. to 1337 C.E. During his reign, Mali was one of the richest kingdoms of Africa, and Mansa Musa was among the richest individuals in the world.

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From the 13th to 17th century, West Africa was home to the great Mali Empire. Established by King Sundiata Keita, the kingdom united several smaller, Malinké Kingdoms near the Upper Niger River. Protected by a well-trained, imperial army and benefiting from being in the middle of trade routes, Mali expanded its territory, influence, and culture over the course of four centuries. An abundance of gold dust and salt deposits helped to expand the empire's commercial assets. Mali included the city of Timbuktu, which became known as an important center of knowledge. Mali also developed into a hub for the Islamic faith before poor leadership led to the empire's ultimate decline in power and influence.

The rise of the Mali Empire can be traced back to Sundiata, or the "Lion King," as some called him. After seizing the former capital of the Ghana Empire in 1240, Sundiata and his men consolidated control while continuing to expand the Mali Empire. Often times, the officers of his court wielded great power, which was crucial to keeping the empire strong during periods of poor leadership.

Mali had kings, called Mansa. The Mali Empire would reach a height of strength during the reign of Mansa Musa I. Territorial expansion coincided with cultural advancements, particularly in architecture, and the empire flourished. Using his large army, Musa doubled the empire's territory. This allowed the kingdom to enjoy the benefits of being at the center of trade in Africa. In 1324, Musa undertook a pilgrimage to Mecca during which he spent and gave away all of his gold. As a result, stories of the wealth of the Mali king spread far and wide.

Spanish cartographer Abraham Cresques even featured Musa in the Catalan Atlas, a popular resource for European explorers. Cresques included an image of Musa wearing a gold crown, holding more gold in his hand. This image would be the catalyst for explorers to search for the city of Timbuktu in hopes of finding Musa's riches. Today, some believe he could have been the richest man in history. Islamic learning centers, schools, and universities, and the grandest library in all of Africa were a direct result of Mansa Musa's rule and made Mali into a multilingual and multiethnic kingdom.

Following Mansa Musa's death around 1337, the empire fell victim to declining influence around Africa. Other trade centers developed, hurting the commercial wealth that had once so freely surrounded Mali. Poor leadership set the kingdom on a path of civil wars. The surrounding Songhay Empire would conquer most of the Mali kingdom by the late 15th century, leaving little remaining of the once proud Mali Empire. By the 17th century, the Moroccan Empire occupied the area.

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The Mali Empire | National Geographic Society

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From the 13th to 17th century, West Africa was home to the great Mali Empire. Established by King Sundiata Keita, the kingdom united several smaller, Malinké Kingdoms near the Upper Niger River. Protected by a well-trained, imperial army and benefiting from being in the middle of trade routes, Mali expanded its territory, influence, and culture over the course of four centuries.

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Ocean water is constantly moving, and not only in the form of waves and tides. Ocean currents flow like vast rivers, sweeping along predictable paths. Some ocean currents flow at the surface; others flow deep within water. Some currents flow for short distances; others cross entire ocean basins and even circle the globe.

By moving heat from the equator toward the poles, ocean currents play an important role in controlling the climate. Ocean currents are also critically important to sea life. They carry nutrients and food to organisms that live permanently attached in one place, and carry reproductive cells and ocean life to new places.

Rivers flow because of gravity. What makes ocean currents flow?

Tides contribute to coastal currents that travel short distances. Major surface ocean currents in the open ocean, however, are set in motion by the wind, which drags on the surface of the water as it blows. The water starts flowing in the same direction as the wind.

But currents do not simply track the wind. Other things, including the shape of the coastline and the seafloor, and most importantly the rotation of the Earth, influence the path of surface currents.

In the Northern Hemisphere, for example, predictable winds called trade winds blow from east to west just above the equator. The winds pull surface water with them, creating currents. As these currents flow westward, the Coriolis effect-a force that results from the rotation of the Earth-deflects them. The currents then bend to the right, heading north. At about 30 degrees north latitude, a different set of winds, the westerlies, push the currents back to the east, producing a closed clockwise loop.

The same thing happens below the equator, in the Southern Hemisphere, except that here the Coriolis effect bends surface currents to the left, producing a counter-clockwise loop.

Large rotating currents that start near the equator are called subtropical gyres. There are five main gyres: the North and South Pacific Subtropical Gyres, the North and South Atlantic Subtropical Gyres, and the Indian Ocean Subtropical Gyre.

These surface currents play an important role in moderating climate by transferring heat from the equator towards the poles. Subtropical gyres are also responsible for concentrating plastic trash in certain areas of the ocean.

In contrast to wind-driven surface currents, deep-ocean currents are caused by differences in water density. The process that creates deep currents is called thermohaline circulation-"thermo" referring to temperature and "haline" to saltiness.

It all starts with surface currents carrying warm water north from the equator. The water cools as it moves into higher northern latitudes, and the more it cools, the denser it becomes.

In the North Atlantic Ocean, near Iceland, the water becomes so cold that sea ice starts to form. The salt naturally present in seawater does not become part of the ice, however. It is left behind in the ocean water that lies just under the ice, making that water extra salty and dense. The denser water sinks, and as it does, more ocean water moves in to fill the space it once occupied. This water also cools and sinks, keeping a deep current in motion.

This is the start of what scientists call the "global conveyor belt," a system of connected deep and surface currents that moves water around the globe. These currents circulate around the globe in a thousand-year cycle.

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Ocean Currents | National Geographic Society

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Ocean water is constantly moving, and not only in the form of waves and tides. Ocean currents flow like vast rivers, sweeping along predictable paths. Some ocean currents flow at the surface; others flow deep within water. Some currents flow for short distances; others cross entire ocean basins and even circle the globe.

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Resource

ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

A royal advisor sent on a mission to create a world map, al-Idrisi created one of the most studied works of mapmaking and geography.

Subjects

Geography, Social Studies, World History

Image

Al-Idrisi Mediterranean Map

Arab geographer al-Idrisi oversaw the creation of more than 70 maps. This al-Idrisi map contains the Mediterranean Sea, northern Africa, Europe, and parts of Asia. It is oriented with the south toward the top.

Photograph by Buyenlarge/Getty Images

Centuries before digital navigation apps put global maps at our fingertips, people relied on the work and research of scholars and cartographers (mapmakers) to illustrate the world. One of the most famous cartographers to publish early maps of the world was Arab Muslim geographer, traveler, and scholar Abū Abdallāh Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Abdallāh ibn Idrīs al-sharif al-Idrīsī, or simply al-Idrisi. Al-Idrisi's book, The Excursion of One Who is Eager to Traverse the Regions of the World, is known as one of the great works of medieval geography and cartography.

Little is known about al-Idrisi's life. It is likely he was born in Sabtah, Morocco (now known as Ceuta), around 1100 C.E. Al-Idrisi is believed to be a descendant of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. He attended the university in Cordoba, Spain, and traveled throughout North Africa, Europe's Mediterranean region, and Spain.

In 1145 C.E., al-Idrisi became an advisor to King Roger II of Sicily. Roger II hired al-Idrisi to create an updated world map. Al-Idrisi sent travelers and geographers around the world to gather knowledge for this updated map and others.

The fruit of these efforts, The Excursion of One Who is Eager to Traverse the Regions of the World, was completed in 1154 C.E., shortly before the king's death. The finished product included a text illustrating the geographic findings and a collection of 70 maps that included the world north of the equator. Al-Idrisi's work was translated into Latin and studied globally.

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ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY A royal advisor sent on a mission to create a world map, al-Idrisi created one of the most studied works of mapmaking and geography. Geography, Social Studies, World History Image Al-Idrisi Mediterranean Map Arab geographer al-Idrisi oversaw the creation of more than 70 maps.

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Photograph by Strelyuk/Shutterstock

For more than 100 years, a single family controlled a territorial empire stretching as far as 23 million square kilometers (nine million square miles), from East Asia to Europe. That family was descended from the great warrior Genghis (also spelled Chinggis) Khan, and its reign is known as the Chinggisid (or Genghisid) Dynasty. The following are profiles of some of the empire's principal leaders.

Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan (1162-1227 C.E.), the founder of the Mongol Empire, is widely regarded as one of the most successful military commanders in world history. In the year 1206 C.E., Genghis-originally known as Temujin-was in his forties, with his greatest military exploits still ahead of him. By that summer, he had conquered his domestic enemies. He summoned a kuriltai (a meeting of the Mongolian tribal chiefs) at which the nomadic tribes of the Mongolian steppe agreed to unite as a new nation under his leadership, confirming his title as Genghis Khan (universal ruler). With ruthless cunning, he overtook his rivals and rose to become the first Great Khan of the Mongols.

He then began a series of campaigns into neighboring lands, taking control of much of northern China, including its capital at what is now Beijing. Turning west, his armies and their legendary cavalry rampaged through Central Asia and captured vast territories as far as the Caspian Sea and into the Middle East. Crossing the Caucasus Mountains, the Mongols overwhelmed a force led by Russian princes in 1223. By the time Genghis Khan returned to Mongolia in 1225, he controlled much of the Silk Road trade network that facilitated commerce between Europe and Asia.

One important diplomatic tactic Genghis Khan used in his rise to power was marriage-a powerful tool in cementing political alliances. Before he had amassed great power, Genghis Khan approached his key ally Toghril, the khan of the Kereit people, and proposed a match between his son and the khan's daughter. Toghril's refusal led to battles between Mongol and Kereit clans. However, Toghril's brother, Jaka Gambu, agreed to a double-marriage pact. One of Jaka Gambu's daughters, Sorqoqtani, married the Mongol leader's son, Tolui, while Genghis Khan himself married another daughter, Ibaqa. However, at the kuriltai of 1206, Genghis Khan publicly divorced Ibaqa after a falling out with her father.

Ogodei Khan

Ogodei Khan (circa 1186-1241) was the third son born to Genghis Khan by his senior wife, Borte. Genghis Khan chose Ogodei as his successor, most likely because he had an even temperament and had often made peace when his two older brothers fought. Ogodei's main task as khan was to preserve and build upon what his father had achieved. Starting in 1229 under Ogodei's rule, the Mongols extended the boundaries of the empire, with successful campaigns in Persia, the Caucasus, and Russia. He personally led one of the three Mongol armies that captured northern China from the Jin Dynasty in 1234. Ogodei also shifted the Mongol Empire's tactics from exploitative military occupation toward government and taxation of conquered areas. He built an imperial capital at Karakorum in Mongolia during the 1230s and constructed a highly effective relay system to transmit messages across the vast distances of Eurasia.

Ogodei was a heavy drinker and his increasingly severe addiction made it necessary for him to lean on trusted advisors, including his wife, in matters of policy and administration. He died after a bout of excessive drinking in December 1241. Mongol armies on the western front, who had reached Hungary, turned back upon receiving news of the khan's death, putting an end to the empire's European conquests.

Mongke Khan

Mongke Khan (circa 1209-1259) assumed the khanate through a contested kuriltai. Sorqoqtani Beki, Mongke's mother, had prepared diligently to give her four sons a chance to become Great Khan. Elite women played important roles in the empire, and after her husband Tolui died, Sorqoqtani rejected a marriage offer from Ogodei and managed to do so politely, realizing she would have more power if she remained independent. She made her move at the 1251 kuriltai, plotting with her nephew Batu to seat her eldest son, Mongke, on the throne over someone from Ogodei's side of the family. The Ogodeids were furious but could not unite behind an alternative candidate. These maneuvers led to violent strife among Genghis Khan's descendants.

Once Mongke came to power, he immediately ordered a purge of his Ogodeid opponents. These included the former regent Oghul Ghaimish, whom Mongke charged with witchcraft and had executed. Once he consolidated his power, Mongke carried out administrative reforms. He undertook a census of the whole empire to serve as a basis of complex tax and tribute policies, and he introduced coins and paper money to assist in tax collection. Mongke also put two of his brothers, Hulegu and Kublai, in charge of major military campaigns. Hulegu conquered Baghdad for the Mongols in 1258, executing the last leader of the Abbasid Caliphate. Kublai was stationed in northern China, fighting against the Song Dynasty in the south alongside Mongke himself, who was killed there in battle in 1259.

Kublai Khan

Kublai Khan (1215-1294) was in China when Mongke died. He and his brother Ariq Boke, who was based in Mongolia, were soon battling for the succession. Ariq Boke had support at home as a more traditional kind of steppe leader, but Kublai was able to leverage enough resources to prevail after four years of civil war between the brothers. Nevertheless, many considered his status as Great Khan of the Mongols to be suspect as he was not formally confirmed in a proper kuriltai. He also had a long-running armed conflict with his cousin Qaidu Khan, who controlled much of the Central Asian steppe.

Kublai faced political difficulties in China as well, ruling at the head of a foreign occupation. Yet he aspired to govern in the manner of a Chinese emperor. He built the city of Dadu (present-day Beijing) and moved the imperial capital there from Mongolia. He named his dynasty the Yuan, honoring the Chinese political tradition. He also restored China's territorial unity when he captured the south from the Song Dynasty in 1279. Despite his efforts to adopt Chinese customs, he made sure to protect the interests of Mongols and keep them a separate, privileged class. Thanks to the famous travelogue written by the Venetian adventurer Marco Polo, the western world came to hear about the mighty Kublai Khan after his death.

National Geographic Society

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Image Photograph by Strelyuk/Shutterstock For more than 100 years, a single family controlled a territorial empire stretching as far as 23 million square kilometers (nine million square miles), from East Asia to Europe. That family was descended from the great warrior Genghis (also spelled Chinggis) Khan, and its reign is known as the Chinggisid (or Genghisid) Dynasty.

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Image

Image by Josse/Lemage

The Pax Mongolica, Latin for "Mongol peace," describes a period of relative stability in Eurasia under the Mongol Empire during the 13th and 14th centuries. The Pax Mongolica brought a period of stability among the people who lived in the conquered territory.

After the death of the first Mongol emperor, Genghis Khan, in 1227, the resulting empire extended from the China's Pacific coast to Eastern Europe. This meant that the Silk Road network, which had been dangerous to travel due to the warring kingdoms along the route, fell completely under Mongol control.

The resulting stability brought by Mongol rule opened these ancient trade routes to a largely undisturbed exchange of goods between peoples from Europe to East Asia. Along the Silk Road, people traded goods such as horses, porcelain, jewels, silk, paper, and gun powder. European travelers, such as the Venetian merchant Marco Polo, were able to go all the way to China and back. Polo went on to describe his experience in distant lands in a chronicle that captivated the European audience.

Aside from facilitating trade, the Mongol influence also improved the communication along the Silk Road by establishing a postal relay system. The Mongols culturally enhanced the Silk Road by allowing people of different religions to coexist. The merging of peoples and cultures from conquered territories brought religious freedom throughout the empire. Across the vast steppes of Asia, a traveler might encounter Muslims and Christians living and working alongside Mongols, who continued to practice their traditional religion.

But some of the things that made the Pax Mongolica so efficient are what caused its decline and fall in the mid-1300s. The efficient trade routes led to the rapid and unchecked spread of the bubonic plague, also known as the Black Death. The plague originated in central Asia, making its way westward to Europe where it spread further. In addition to disease, the fragmented empire endured increasing turmoil from within. This prevented further expansion and hastened its inevitable decline.

National Geographic Society

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Image Image by Josse/Lemage The Pax Mongolica, Latin for "Mongol peace," describes a period of relative stability in Eurasia under the Mongol Empire during the 13th and 14th centuries. The Pax Mongolica brought a period of stability among the people who lived in the conquered territory.

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The Mongol Horde enjoyed a fearsome reputation as an undefeated fighting force. They conquered China, terrorized Eastern Europe, sacked Baghdad, and tried to take on the Mamluks in Egypt.

Subjects

Geography, Human Geography, Social Studies, Ancient Civilizations, World History

Image

Mongol Taking of Baghdad

Among the conquests of the Mongol Horde in the 13th century was the taking of Baghdad. The siege of the city of in 1258 C.E. is shown here.

Photo of the print taken from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Division orientale, Supplément persan 1113, fol. 180v-181.

The Mongol Horde enjoyed a fearsome reputation as a largely undefeated fighting force. They conquered China, terrorized Eastern Europe, sacked Baghdad, and attacked the Mamluks in Egypt. Their military prowess won them the largest contiguous land empire in history.

Mongol Conquest of China

The Great Wall of China was built to keep northern forces from raiding China, but in the 13th century C.E., the wall provided little help against the armies of Mongol invaders. Under the leadership of the infamous Genghis Khan and, later, his grandson, Kublai Khan, Mongol nomads overran the Chinese armies and ushered in the Yuan Dynasty of China. Over the course of its existence, the empire would become the largest contiguous land empire in history.

The Mongol invasion of China started in 1211 when Genghis Khan's forces took on the northern Chinese Jin Empire. Mongols took advantage of the fractured state of China, which was then divided into the Song Empire in the south and the Jin Empire in the north. Genghis Khan allied his forces with defectors from the Jin state in order to overtake their army. The Mongols learned siege warfare techniques from the Chinese, which helped them extend their military outfitting beyond their significant cavalry forces. The Jin state was absorbed into the Mongol Empire under Ogodei Khan in 1234.

After a period of peace between Mongols in the northern region of China and the southern Song Empire, the grandson of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, began a second invasion of the Chinese region. Mongol forces besieged the Song's important fortress city of Xianyang for five years before conquering it and moving on. The last Song emperor was a young boy. He, his mother, and the imperial court fled the Mongol forces. In 1279, with Mongol invaders closing in, a loyal minister carrying the eight-year-old emperor jumped into the ocean, and both drowned. The boy's demise marked the complete takeover of China by Mongol rulers. Kublai Khan went on to become the first emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, which lasted until 1368. Under the rule of Kublai Khan, the Mongol Empire became the largest contiguous empire ever seen.

Mongols Go West

Conquering China was a major victory, but it was just the beginning for the Mongols. In the 1230s, they began to head west, eyeing territory in Eastern Europe. Batu, another grandson of Genghis Khan, expanded Mongol rule to modern-day western Russia, Ukraine, and all the way up to the Carpathian Mountains. In the east, Batu extended Mongol territory to Siberia. The Mongol army burned and sacked the city of Kiev in Ukraine in 1240. Forces marched onward toward Hungary and Poland, defeating the Hungarian and Polish armies and causing the Hungarian king to flee.

However, by 1242, despite weak military resistance from Hungary, the Mongol forces turned back without overtaking Hungary. The reasons for this retreat are largely unknown, but scholars have previously suggested that the death of the Great Khan Ogodei may have compelled the army to return to Mongolia in order to decide who would succeed their ruler. However, some researchers have proposed a new theory based on a study of climate data for that region. While unusual cold and snow may have helped the Mongols cross the frozen Danube River in the winter, the spring weather was not so forgiving. That particular spring brought unusually wet and marshy conditions, which may have wreaked havoc with the horses of the Mongol forces. Wet and muddy conditions would have interfered with the cavalry's mobility, and would have limited where their horses could graze due to flooded pastures. If these researchers are correct, it may have been the wellbeing of Mongols' horses, and not their emperor's death, that compelled them to give up their campaign in Eastern Europe.

This western part of the Mongol Empire established by Batu, was known as the Golden Horde. It is unclear why this part of the empire received this name, but a theory is that it was named after the yellow tents employed by the Mongol army. Batu settled his capital near the Volga River at Sarai Batu. He and his descendants ruled over the Russian and Eastern European territory until eventually succumbing to dynastic squabbles, which left them vulnerable to attacks from other regional powers. The remnants of the Golden Horde in Crimea were defeated by the Ottomans in 1502.

The Sack of Baghdad

Mongol forces sacked Baghdad, the jewel of the Abbasid Caliphate, in 1258. Under the direction of Hulegu Khan, another Genghis Khan's grandsons, the Mongols directed themselves to subduing Muslim forces in modern-day Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Hulegu came to control all of Iran and founded the Il-khan Dynasty. (Il-khan means subordinate khan in Persian.)

The sack of Baghdad began in 1258 when Hulegu sent a letter to the caliph of Baghdad demanding control of the city and threatening to destroy everything should he not receive it. The caliph, Mustasim, did not take Hulegu's threat seriously and did little to properly defend the city. There was also some internal strife between the caliph and his subjects, which prevented any appropriate response to the Mongol threat.

The Mongols pillaged and sacked Baghdad on an disasterous scale. They killed hundreds of thousands of Baghdad's residents and razed art and architecture to the ground. The Mongols threw all the books from the libraries of Baghdad into the Tigris River. Mustasim was wrapped in a rug and trampled to death, marking the end of the Abbasids, one of the greatest Islamic dynasties.

Mongol Defeat at Ain Jalut

The war between the Mongols and the Turkish Mamluks marked a rare moment for the famously unstoppable Mongols. The Mamluks were an enslaved army loyal to the various Islamic state rulers. While they were technically enslaved, Mamluks could hold high status in Islamic society. At some points in history, members of the Mamluks were even installed as sultans over Egypt and Syria. As a fighting force, the Mamluks were well-equipped, elite warriors. Much like the Mongols, the Mamluks were especially skilled horsemen, but rode Arabian horses, which are much larger than the short, sturdy breeds used by the Mongols. Mamluks spent their whole lives in intensive training for all manner of combat: horseback archery as well as close-quarter combat with swords, lances, and clubs.

The Mongols, under Hulegu, marched on Egypt after they conquered Syria in 1260, and, like the sack of Baghdad, Hulegu sent a threatening letter to the Mamluk Sultan Qutuz before sending an army. However, Hulegu's brother, Mongke, who was Great Khan at the time, had died and Hulegu had to return to Mongolia to decide the succession. But he left an army of 20,000 under his general, Ketbuqa.

At Ain Jalut in Gaza, the Mamluks took advantage of Hulegu's absence and marched on this smaller Mongol army. Mamluks employed ambush tactics and made use of hand cannons to frighten the Mongol horses. While the Mongols and the Mamluks both suffered significant losses, the Mamluks managed to slaughter almost the entire Mongol Horde, including General Ketbuqa. This defeat forced the Mongols back to Iran and solidified the western Mongol border. While the Mamluks and Mongols would go on to fight further battles, the battle of Ain Jalut is significant for being the Mongols' first significant defeat.

Media Credits

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other

October 19, 2023

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The Mongol Horde enjoyed a fearsome reputation as an undefeated fighting force. They conquered China, terrorized Eastern Europe, sacked Baghdad, and tried to take on the Mamluks in Egypt.

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Kublai Khan | National Geographic Society

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Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan, completed his grandfather’s conquest of China and founded the Yuan Dynasty.

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Resting on the Silk Road - Caravanaserai 

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Resting on the Silk Road - Caravanaserai 

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Caravanserais were roadside inns located along the Silk Road that provided shelter to travelers and served as a marketplace for trading goods.

Subjects

Anthropology, Archaeology, Geography, Human Geography, Social Studies, Ancient Civilizations, World History

Idea for Use in the Classroom
Begin by prompting students to brainstorm a list of possible needs of merchants as they traveled the Silk Road, taking into account the duration and means of travel. Then introduce the infographic to students. Have students compare the list they developed with the services provided by caravanserai as shown on the infographic.

Next, direct students to the portion of the infographic containing the map of the Silk Road. Students can use the key to distinguish between the red and white line and blue dots. Once familiar with the map, have students propose reasons for the varying density and distribution of caravanserai ruins, especially those far from the Silk Road. Students can also identify the different cultural regions, terrains, and climates through which the Silk Road spanned using outside resources. Considering these different features, have students hypothesize how a caravanserai might change based on its location, including goods and services, architecture, or places of worship. Students can test their predictions by working in small groups to research the characteristics of caravanserais in specific regions. Each group can select a particular geographical area, then compare with groups researching other areas to highlight cultural similarities and differences.

Connect the use of caravanserai to modern travel by challenging students to explain how the caravanserai depicted in the infographic should be modified to fit today's needs. Have students consider these questions as they propose modifications:

What are the necessities of travel in the modern world?

What role does transportation technology play?

What basic human needs does the caravanserai address?

Media Credits

The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited.

Director

Tyson Brown, National Geographic Society

Author

National Geographic Society

Production Managers

Gina Borgia, National Geographic Society

Jeanna Sullivan, National Geographic Society

Program Specialists

Sarah Appleton, National Geographic Society, National Geographic Society

Margot Willis, National Geographic Society

other

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Where Worlds and Ideas Connect: The Caravanserai

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Caravanserais were roadside inns located along the Silk Road that provided shelter to travelers and served as a marketplace for trading goods. Anthropology, Archaeology, Geography, Human Geography, Social Studies, Ancient Civilizations, World History Idea for Use in the Classroom Begin by prompting students to brainstorm a list of possible needs of merchants as they traveled the Silk Road, taking into account the duration and means of travel.

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Confucianism is one of the most influential religious philosophies in the history of China, and it has existed for over 2,500 years. It is concerned with inner virtue, morality, and respect for the community and its values.

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https://weather.com/en-IN/india/science/news/2019-12-16-floods-end-reigns-dynasties-medieval-india-study

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Major flooding and drought events caused by abnormal monsoon patterns may have been responsible for wiping out powerful medieval dynasties across the Indian subcontinent 7 to 8 centuries ago, a new study has found.

Evidence for the same was discovered by a group of geology experts from IIT Kharagpur, who spent years studying oxygen isotopes on the ancient stalagmites located in Meghalaya's Wah Shikar Caves.

These oxygen isotopes, which are essentially traces that are left behind due to rainfall or precipitation, help researchers narrow down the time period during which the rainfall occurred. Therefore, scientists also refer to them as 'time slides'. The trace samples are obtained by drilling into rocks, and are then passed through the process of uranium-thorium time series dating.

While the stalagmites themselves are 1,000 years old, dating of the isotopes revealed evidences of heavy as well as low precipitation from 900 years ago, occurring between 1100 AD and 2012 AD. Through subsequent analysis, abrupt shifts in the Indian summer monsoon (ISM) were identified, and these shifts led to a tremendous impact on the human societies.

The paper says that the monsoon was strong during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (1100AD-1300AD) and the Current Warm Period (1750AD-present), and showed multiple shifts during the Little Ice Age (1300AD-1750AD). "Intervals of prolonged summer monsoon weakening are correlated to the decline of major dynasties in India, possibly due to decrease in agriculture productivity, declining economy and societal crisis," reads the paper.

Sena in Bengal, Solanki in the west, and the dynasties of Paramar, Yadav and Pandyan from the south were among the ones that met their end during these extreme, catastrophic events. The study adds that similar events may also have occurred in China, thereby leading to the downfall of the Ming dynasty.

So far, the existent history has led us to believe that wars were the only major factors to have caused the downfall of great dynasties. But now, this study has offered a new, unique perspective that could provide better values to the existent explanations.

Not only have its findings reported new flooding and drought events that were never recorded in history, but the study also sheds more light on some already-known events related to migration and the beginning- and end-dates of dynasties.

The complete findings of this study have been published in the reputed journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology by Elsevier on December 15.
(This story has been updated with additional information)

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Abnormal Monsoons, Not Wars, Ended Reigns of Multiple Dynasties in Medieval India: Study | The Weather Channel

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Major flooding and drought events caused by abnormal monsoon patterns may have been responsible for wiping out powerful medieval dynasties across the Indian subcontinent 7 to 8 centuries ago, a new study has found. Evidence for the same was discovered by a group of geology experts from IIT Kharagpur, who spent years studying oxygen isotopes on the ancient stalagmites located in Meghalaya's Wah Shikar Caves.

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https://pwias.ubc.ca/ideas/videos/monsoon-islam-trade-and-faith-on-the-medieval-malabar-coast/
(VIDEO)

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Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies

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Monsoon Islam: Trade and faith on the medieval Malabar coast | Videos | Peter Wall Institute

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Videos from the Peter Wall Institute of Advanced Studies, Monsoon Islam: Trade and faith on the medieval Malabar coast | Peter Wall Institute

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John Green: Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today we're going to be discussing trade here, in the Indian Ocean. Oh, my globe had a globe! We're gonna do some new-school history where we talk about a system instead of talking about individuals or some boring boring dynasty - no, Stan, not that kind of Dynasty - yes, that kind of dynasty.

So many world history classes still focus on People Who Wore Funny Hats, and how their antics shaped our lives, right? And while it's interesting and fun to note that, for instance King Charles VI of France believed that he was made out of glass, relentlessly focusing on the actions of the Funny-Hatted-People who ruled us makes us forget that we also make history.

Past John Green:
Mr. Green, Mr. Green! Did Charles VI of France really believe that he was made out of glass?

Present John Green:
Yes, he did, but today we're talking about Indian Ocean trade and it's going to be interesting, I promise. So pay attention. ALSO, NO HATS! This is a classroom, not a Truman Capote beach party!

[intro plays]

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Nerdfighteria Wiki - Int'l Commerce, Snorkeling Camels, and The Indian Ocean Trade: Crash Course World History #18

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John Green: Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today we're going to be discussing trade here, in the Indian Ocean. Oh, my globe had a globe! We're gonna do some new-school history where we talk about a system instead of talking about individuals or some boring boring dynasty - no, Stan, not that kind of Dynasty - yes, that kind of dynasty.

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The free online history encyclopedia with fact-checked articles, images, videos, maps, timelines and more; operated as a non-profit organization.

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The name Timbuktu conjures images of an exotic, far-flung location. This ancient West African city was once a center for scholarship and Islam

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Image

Illustration by Christopher Klein

The journeys of merchants and their caravans along the Silk Road through the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa would have been much more difficult if not for the caravanserais (also spelled caravansary) that dotted those ancient routes. Variously described as "guest houses," "roadside inns," and "hostels," caravanserais were buildings designed to provide overnight housing to travelers. Merchants and their caravans were the most frequent visitors.In furnishing, safe respite for guests from near and far, caravanserais also became centers for the exchange of goods and culture.

As traffic along the Silk Road increased, so did the construction of caravanserais. They were needed as safe havens-not just from extreme climates and weather, but also from bandits who targeted caravans loaded with silks, spices, and other expensive goods. In fact, caravanserais were built at regular intervals so that merchants would not have to spend the night exposed to the dangers of the road. They appeared roughly 32-40 kilometers (20-25 miles) apart-about a day's journey-on the busiest Silk Road routes.

The design of these buildings also reflected their protective purpose. Often built just outside the nearest town or village, they were encircled by immense walls resembling those of a fort. Caravans entered through a high, massive gate that could be secured from within at night with heavy chains. A porter stood guard just past the gate, charged with safeguarding the persons, goods, and animals inside.

The interior of a caravanserai looked more like an inn than a fortress, however. A large ground-floor courtyard ringed with storerooms and stables for camels, donkeys, and horses would often have a corner for cook fires as well. Small, unfurnished rooms for lodgers were found on the second floor. Some larger caravanserais also featured a bathhouse and prayer room.

Most of the old caravanserais still in existence today are crumbling stone ruins, of interest only to historians and tour groups. In contrast, medieval caravanserais were lively seedbeds for globalization, resembling the modern city in the variety of people, languages, goods, and customs found within their walls. Travelers from East and West-speaking many different languages-traded stories, news, merchandise, and ideas while they mingled at these trade hubs. They sampled local cuisine and observed foreign etiquette. They learned more about Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism from missionaries and scholars passing through. When they traveled on, they took much that was new and different along with them. The economic and cultural exchanges caravanserais made possible had far-reaching effects still seen today in the variety of languages, faiths, and cultures co-existing in this region of the world.

National Geographic Society

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Image Illustration by Christopher Klein The journeys of merchants and their caravans along the Silk Road through the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa would have been much more difficult if not for the caravanserais (also spelled caravansary) that dotted those ancient routes.

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Hello my name is Peter Last Name and you better read this or i will find you and I will make my bunny eat your house (not really but still).

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This article explores the spread of plague, known as 'the Black Death', across the Silk Roads of the 14th Century CE. It examines ways in which people responded to the disease and looks at how we can respond to newly arising challenges today, utilizing the Silk Roads as an instructive example of the benefits of an interconnected world built on collaboration and timely and reliable knowledge sharing.

The Silk Roads are an instructive reminder that human beings do not occupy isolated worlds but a shared and interdependent one that flourishes when they interact with one another. Interactions across vast distances, such as those which took place along these historic routes, have made an undeniable contribution to the enrichment of life and culture. Now, as in the past, increasing human interconnectedness and movement presents challenges but also opportunities in numerous fields including science, medicine and epidemiology, and greatly adds to the improvement and richness of our daily lives. The constant movement and mixing of populations along the Silk Roads had a profound impact on the history and civilizations of the peoples of Eurasia and indeed of people worldwide, driving the development of knowledge, ideas, beliefs, culture and identities. Science, arts and literature, as well as knowhow, crafts and technologies were shared and disseminated into societies along the lengths of these routes.

However, wherever people, animals and goods have moved and brought enriching effects, undesirable phenomena such as disease have also been transmitted on a broad scale. Just as global movement and connectedness is not a new phenomenon, neither is the potential for, and the occurrence of, epidemics. Among the different kinds of parasites, bacteria and viruses, and their associated diseases, that were transmitted along the Silk Roads, plague was one of the most notable. Plague is a disease caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, commonly carried by fleas. Three pandemics of plague have occurred in human history: the best-known and perhaps largest was the second outbreak often referred to as the "Black Death", which infected vast numbers of people across Eurasia, and killed somewhere between 75 and 200 million. The outbreak peaked between 1347 and 1351 CE, reaching the trade ports of Europe by 1346. A number of theories exist as to where the 14 th century plague originated and how exactly it spread. One of the most often cited is that it was carried by infected rodents across the Silk Roads, reaching Europe along with infected merchants and travellers.

Societies were very limited in their ability to treat and prevent the spread of plague in the 14 th century as there was no accurate knowledge available about the exact cause of the disease or of effective treatments. Indeed, fleeing remained one of the only effective preventative public health measures available to people at the time. Whilst the attempted cures for plague had very little effect, the Black Death did prompt Europe and other parts of the world to expand and refine public health measures, particularly in the subsequent decades and centuries as the disease continued to periodically return. Furthermore, some methods for preventing the spread of plague, such as making suspected vessels and travellers remain in isolation for 40 days before they were allowed to enter the city of Venice, are still practiced today, and it is from this practice that we derive the term "quarantine".

The transmission of the Black Death, and the damage that it caused to societies in Asia and Europe, are undoubtedly examples of a disastrous catastrophe that trade, and interactions, helped exacerbate. However, an overall assessment of the outcomes of the exchanges along the Silk Roads reveals that despite some negative effects, these interactions have brought vast benefits and enriched human life and culture. In fact, the medical sciences have been one of the direct beneficiaries of these intercultural exchanges. During the medieval or "post-classical era" (500-1450 CE), scholars made large contributions to the fields of medicine, pharmacology and veterinary science thanks to the circulation of knowledge and ideas. The movement of people and knowledge across the Silk Roads facilitated the widespread translation of work from other parts of the world into Arabic, making a broad array of scholarship accessible to polymaths of the day. Their work synthesised and built on existing medical knowledge, such as that developed in Ancient Greece and Rome, and combined this with knowledge from other regions of the world such as China and the Indian subcontinent.

The example of the Black Death would be inspiring for dealing with challenges caused by the outbreak of epidemics in our contemporary world. Unlike in the 14 th century, today we can identify new viruses, sequence their genome, and develop a reliable test for the disease in just a few weeks. It may be tempting in uncertain times, particularly now as the world is witnessing the rapid spread of COVID-19, to conclude that the only way to prevent challenges such as the spread of infectious diseases is to restrict movement and exchange, and somehow roll back globalization and the connectedness of different cultures and peoples. However, the spread of plague in a world without planes, trains and cruise ships, serves as a reminder that diseases can move rapidly even without such technologies.

Although we live in an age of intense globalization that seems unprecedented, human movement, exchange and interconnectedness are not recent phenomena. In fact, people have always moved from place to place and exchanged goods, skills and ideas across vast distances. The outbreak of the Black Death and its spread along the Silk Roads would be a timely reminder that one of the greatest defences against newly emerging challenges is the exchange and collective analysis of reliable knowledge and experience. Despite the tremendous speed of the circulation of people and goods around the world today, humans are well prepared and ready to face the challenges that may result from these interactions, largely thanks to collaborations and collective experiences and these will continue to play an important role in tackling and preventing the spread of diseases.

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The Spread of Disease along the Silk Roads

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This article explores the spread of plague, known as 'the Black Death', across the Silk Roads of the 14th Century CE. It examines ways in which people responded to the disease and looks at how we can respond to newly arising challenges today, utilizing the Silk Roads as an instructive example of the benefits of an interconnected world built on collaboration and timely and reliable knowledge sharing.

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Ancient Origins Reconstructing the story of humanity's past

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The Silk Road is arguably the most famous long-distance trade route in the ancient world. This trade route connected Europe in the West with China in the East, and allowed the exchange of goods, technology, and ideas between the two civilizations. Silk, however, was the most celebrated commodity that was transferred along this route, traveling from China westwards. Although merchants could make huge profits if they succeeded in bring their goods to their destination, it was not without risks, as certain stretches of this route were extremely dangerous.

What is the Silk Road?

In spite of its name, the Silk Road was not one single road, but rather, a network of roads that connected the East and the West. It may be remarked that this name was only given quite recently, as it was coined in 1877 by the German historian and geographer, Ferdinand von Richthofen. 'Officially', the Silk Road was established when the Han Dynasty of China began to trade with the West, commonly said to be in 130 BC. This overland route continued to be used up until AD 1453, when the Ottoman Empire, which had conquered Constantinople in that year, decided to stop trading with the West, and therefore closed the routes.
Extent of Silk Route/Silk Road. Red is land route and the blue is the sea/water route, which also had its dangers. ( Public Domain )
In the East, the Silk Road started in Chang'an (known today as Xi'an), the Han capital until it was moved to Luoyang during the Eastern Han Dynasty. Travelers (merchants, pilgrims, envoys, etc.) starting off their journey from this city could take a northern route that would take them across China's northwestern provinces. After this, they would face the Gobi Desert, arguably the biggest danger of the Silk Road.

Dangers of the Silk Road
Sogdian painting showing Sogdian merchants during the medieval period. ( Public Domain Samarkand, by Richard-Karl Karlovitch Zommer. This was an ancient city on the Silk road positioned between China and the Mediterranean, in modern day Uzbekistan. ( Public Domain ) Top image: A 14 th century depiction of a camel caravan on the Silk Road. Source: Public Domain )
The Gobi Desert is the largest desert in Asia, and stretches across modern day China and Mongolia. Whilst this desert can be divided into several different eco-regions, it may be said to consist, generally speaking, mainly of rocky, compact terrain. It is this feature of the Gobi Desert that made it easier for trade caravans to travel across the desert, as opposed, for example, to the sandy terrain of the neighboring Taklamakan Desert. Like other deserts, the Gobi Desert is arid, and therefore the biggest challenge facing those who choose to traverse it is to obtain enough water for themselves as well as for their camels.

One of the consequences of the need for water in the Gobi Desert is the foundation of rest stops / caravanserais along the route taken by the travelers. These stops allowed travelers to rest, to have food and drink, and to prepare themselves for the next portion of their journey. These places also facilitated the exchange of goods, and even ideas, amongst the travelers who stopped there. Ideally, these caravanserais were placed within a day's journey of each other. In this way, travelers could avoid spending too much time in the desert, which would make them targets for bandits, another danger of the Silk Road.

Once the Gobi Desert is navigated, travelers would continue their journey into Iran, Turkey, and finally Europe. Whilst this part of the journey may be less dangerous than the Gobi Desert, it is not entirely without its perils. The political situation in each of these areas is vital in determining the success of the trade endeavors. As an example, when the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in AD 1453, they decided to stop trading with the West, which resulted in a drastic decline in the use of the Silk Road. Conversely, when the Mongols established their empire, which included China and Central Asia, where the Silk Road passed through, political stability was brought to these regions, which allowed trade along the Silk Road to flourish.

Silk by Sea

Finally, it may be remarked that there was also a maritime Silk Road, which connected China to the West via Southeast Asia, the India, and the Arabian Peninsula. Like the merchants of the overland Silk Road, those who traveled along this route were also at the mercy of the forces of nature, especially storms that were highly unpredictable. Moreover, pirates who plied the oceans were also a threat to travelers, just as the desert bandits were for their overland counterparts.

By Wu Mingren

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Treacherous Trading: Dangers of the Silk Road

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The Silk Road is arguably the most famous long-distance trade route in the ancient world. This trade route connected Europe in the West with China in the East, and allowed the exchange of goods, technology, and ideas between the two civilizations.

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https://www.britannica.com/topic/Silk-Road-trade-route

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Where did the Silk Road start and end?

What major goods traveled along the Silk Road?

What traveled along the Silk Road besides goods?

This article was most recently revised and updated by

Silk Road, ancient trade route, linking China with the West, that carried goods and ideas between the two great civilizations of Rome and China. Silk went westward, and wools, gold, and silver went east. China also received Nestorian Christianity and Buddhism (from India) via the Silk Road.

Originating at Xi'an (Sian), the 4,000-mile (6,400-km) road, actually a caravan tract, followed the Great Wall of China to the northwest, bypassed the Takla Makan Desert, climbed the Pamirs (mountains), crossed Afghanistan, and went on to the Levant; from there the merchandise was shipped across the Mediterranean Sea. Few persons traveled the entire route, and goods were handled in a staggered progression by middlemen.

Know Your Asian Geography Quiz

With the gradual loss of Roman territory in Asia and the rise of Arabian power in the Levant, the Silk Road became increasingly unsafe and untraveled. In the 13th and 14th centuries the route was revived under the Mongols, and at that time the Venetian Marco Polo used it to travel to Cathay (China). It is now widely thought that the route was one of the main ways that plague bacteria responsible for the Black Death pandemic in Europe in the mid-14th century moved westward from Asia.

Part of the Silk Road still exists, in the form of a paved highway connecting Pakistan and the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, China. The old road has been the impetus behind a United Nations plan for a trans-Asian highway, and a railway counterpart of the road has been proposed by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP). The road inspired cellist Yo-Yo Ma to found the Silk Road Project in 1999, which explored cultural traditions along its route and beyond as a means for connecting arts worldwide across cultures.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Amy Tikkanen.

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Silk Road, ancient trade route, linking China with the West, that carried goods and ideas between the two great civilizations of Rome and China. Silk went westward. Wools, gold, and silver went east. China also received Nestorian Christianity and Buddhism (from India) via the route. Read more about the Silk Road here.

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Welcome to Britannica School, a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Elementary, Middle, and High School.

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I have it set to 1453, but you can go earlier!

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Incredible timeline of world empires/kingdoms

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Incredible timeline of world empires/kingdoms

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Check out these formative for even more information (you do not have to answer all the qs again)

Ibn Battuta

Marco Polo

Zheng He

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Ibn Battuta | PBS World Explorers | PBS LearningMedia

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Ibn Battuta is known as the greatest Muslim explorer in history. Over the course of thirty years, Battuta recorded his adventures from Africa to Southeast Asia.

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Marco Polo | PBS World Explorers | PBS LearningMedia

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While still a teenager, Venetian explorer Marco Polo set off to explore parts of Asia no European had ever seen before. Marco Polo followed in the footsteps of his uncle and father, journeying over 6000 miles from Venice while learning many new languages.

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Zheng He | PBS World Explorers | PBS LearningMedia

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Commanding a fleet of over 300 ships, it is surprising how little is known today about Chinese explorer Zheng He. Across seven major voyages Zheng He solidified Chinese dominance in trade and exploration.

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"Voyages of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta" map

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"Voyages of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta" map

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Sites of Encounter in the Medieval World

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Resources & professional learning for K-12 history-social science

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Mansa Musa and his rich legacy have often been written about by chroniclers and travelers. Primary sources are very important tools used to help us learn more about Mansa Musa. Let's explore some writings that give us more insight on the Kingdom of Mali during the 14th century from people who actually lived closer to that time. When reading these sources, please use your imagination to visualize the imagery expressed in the writing, and make inferences about what Mansa Musa was like as a ruler.

In this translated passage from his book "Chronicle of the Seeker" African Muslim scholar Mahmud Kati accounts the events that inspired Mansa Musa to go on his pilgrimage. What were some of those events?

According to author Leo Africanus, Mansa Musa's reign had a lasting impact on Timbuktu. Leo Africanus describes Timbuktu under the reign of successor Mansa Suleyman in pages 824-826 of his book, "The History And Description of Africa And of The Notable Things Therein Contained". You can read the passage from his this ancient text featured on Archive.org. The British Museum also produced beautifully designed "Kingdom Of Mali" follow-up activities for both teachers and students. Visit each of these sites to learn more!

Mali and its king Mansa Musa were elevated to near-legendary status, cemented by their inclusion on the 1375 Catalan Atlas created by cartographer Cresques Abraham. View the Catalan Atlas by visiting The Cresques Project website. Panel III will show a close up image of Mansa Musa on the map and a translation of the description of the image.

Traveler Al-Umari wrote about Mansa Musa's elaborate display of gold during his journey to Cairo on his way to Mecca. View his writings in Boston University's Kingdom of Mali Primary Sources. There are also additional sources about the West African Kingdoms at the BU African Studies Center.

Interested in bringing Mansa Musa's story to life in your classroom? Do that with "Mansa Musa Rules!™" , an arts integration workshop about the great Mansa Musa of the 14th century Mali Empire presented by Teaching Artist Jessica Smith from Culture Kingdom Kids. During this fun and interactive program, students will engage in a hands-on historical reenactment that will dramatize exciting highlights from Mansa Musa's story using creative storytelling, music and movement activities. An action-packed program promises to awaken each participant's creativity. It will also enhance their personal connection to one of Africa's most powerful historical figures. For more information, visit Culture Kingdom Kids.

Mansa Musa was a devout Muslim who provided opportunities for the Islamic culture to enriched the Mali Empire by influencing its architecture, religious traditions, schools and trade routes. Learn more by watching: " Crash Course: Mansa Musa and Islam in Africa"

National Geographic produced a series called " Lord Of The Mines " which explores his impact on the gold industry. Examine and analyze the creative imagery provided by the costuming, set design and actor's characterization of Mansa Musa. Determine what impression this video portrays to viewers about Mansa Musa. Then compare it to the impression that the primary sources provided above convey.

Suggested Reading Materials:
Within the pages of these books, you will learn more about Mansa Musa and Medieval West African kingdoms authored by some of the world's top historians.

Burns, Khephra. Mansa Musa. San Diego: Gullivers Books, 2001. Print

Conrad, David. Empires of Medieval West Africa: Ghana, Mali, and Songhay. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2005. Print

Diouf, Sylviane. Kings and Queens of West Africa. Canada: Grolier Publishing, 2000. Print

Levtzion, Nehemia. Ancient Ghana and Mali. London: Methuen, 1973. Print
Special thanks to Teeshavalone Jenkins, Haile Gerima, Dr. Barbara Brown and David Conrad http://ed.ted.com/lessons/who-is-alexander-von-humboldt-george-mehler - dig

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Mansa Musa, one of the wealthiest people who ever lived - Jessica Smith

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Mansa Musa, the 14th century African king of the Mali Empire, is said to have amassed a fortune that possibly made him one of the wealthiest people who ever lived. Jessica Smith tells the story of how Mansa Musa literally put his empire - and himself - on the map.

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If you could choose between a pile of salt and a pile of gold, you would probably choose the gold. After all, you know that you can always buy a container of salt for about forty-five cents at the local supermarket. But what if you could not easily get salt, and without it you could not survive? In fact, throughout history salt has been very difficult to obtain in many parts of the world, and people feared a lack of salt the way we in the industrialized world fear a shortage of fuel oil.

Once cultures began relying on grain, vegetable, or boiled meat diets instead of mainly hunting and eating roasted meat, adding salt to food became an absolute necessity for maintaining life. Because the Akan lived in the forests of West Africa, they had few natural resources for salt and always needed to trade for it. Gold, however, was much easier to come by. Every Akan knew how to find tiny grains of gold sparkling in the river beds after a rainfall. The people who lived in the desert of North Africa could easily mine salt, but not gold. They craved the precious metal that would add so much to their personal splendor and prestige. These mutual needs led to the establishment of long-distance trade routes that connected very different cultures.

Camel caravans from North Africa carried bars of salt as well as cloth, tobacco, and metal tools across the Sahara to trading centers like Djenne and Timbuktu on the Niger River. Some items for which the salt was traded include gold, ivory, slaves, skins, kola nuts, pepper, and sugar.
continue...

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If you could choose between a pile of salt and a pile of gold, you would probably choose the gold. After all, you know that you can always buy a container of salt for about forty-five cents at the local supermarket. But what if you could not easily get salt, and without it you could not survive?

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Historic Connections Scaffolds for Board Game Project 2024

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How Did the Black Plague Start?

Even before the "death ships" pulled into port at Messina, many Europeans had heard rumors about a "Great Pestilence" that was carving a deadly path across the trade routes of the Near and Far East. Indeed, in the early 1340s, the disease had struck China, India, Persia, Syria and Egypt.

The plague is thought to have originated in Asia over 2,000 years ago and was likely spread by trading ships, though recent research has indicated the pathogen responsible for the Black Death may have existed in Europe as early as 3000 B.C.

Symptoms of the Black Plague

Europeans were scarcely equipped for the horrible reality of the Black Death. "In men and women alike," the Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio wrote, "at the beginning of the malady, certain swellings, either on the groin or under the armpits...waxed to the bigness of a common apple, others to the size of an egg, some more and some less, and these the vulgar named plague-boils."

Blood and pus seeped out of these strange swellings, which were followed by a host of other unpleasant symptoms-fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, terrible aches and pains-and then, in short order, death.

The Bubonic Plague attacks the lymphatic system, causing swelling in the lymph nodes. If untreated, the infection can spread to the blood or lungs.

How Did the Black Death Spread?

The Black Death was terrifyingly, indiscriminately contagious: "the mere touching of the clothes," wrote Boccaccio, "appeared to itself to communicate the malady to the toucher." The disease was also terrifyingly efficient. People who were perfectly healthy when they went to bed at night could be dead by morning.

Did you know? Many scholars think that the nursery rhyme "Ring around the Rosy" was written about the symptoms of the Black Death.

Understanding the Black Death

Today, scientists understand that the Black Death, now known as the plague, is spread by a bacillus called Yersinia pestis. (The French biologist Alexandre Yersin discovered this germ at the end of the 19th century.)

They know that the bacillus travels from person to person through the air, as well as through the bite of infected fleas and rats. Both of these pests could be found almost everywhere in medieval Europe, but they were particularly at home aboard ships of all kinds-which is how the deadly plague made its way through one European port city after another.

Not long after it struck Messina, the Black Death spread to the port of Marseilles in France and the port of Tunis in North Africa. Then it reached Rome and Florence, two cities at the center of an elaborate web of trade routes. By the middle of 1348, the Black Death had struck Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon and London.

Today, this grim sequence of events is terrifying but comprehensible. In the middle of the 14th century, however, there seemed to be no rational explanation for it.

No one knew exactly how the Black Death was transmitted from one patient to another, and no one knew how to prevent or treat it. According to one doctor, for example, "instantaneous death occurs when the aerial spirit escaping from the eyes of the sick man strikes the healthy person standing near and looking at the sick."

How Do You Treat the Black Death?

Physicians relied on crude and unsophisticated techniques such as bloodletting and boil-lancing (practices that were dangerous as well as unsanitary) and superstitious practices such as burning aromatic herbs and bathing in rosewater or vinegar.

Meanwhile, in a panic, healthy people did all they could to avoid the sick. Doctors refused to see patients; priests refused to administer last rites; and shopkeepers closed their stores. Many people fled the cities for the countryside, but even there they could not escape the disease: It affected cows, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens as well as people.

In fact, so many sheep died that one of the consequences of the Black Death was a European wool shortage. And many people, desperate to save themselves, even abandoned their sick and dying loved ones. "Thus doing," Boccaccio wrote, "each thought to secure immunity for himself."

Black Plague: God's Punishment?

Because they did not understand the biology of the disease, many people believed that the Black Death was a kind of divine punishment-retribution for sins against God such as greed, blasphemy, heresy, fornication and worldliness.

By this logic, the only way to overcome the plague was to win God's forgiveness. Some people believed that the way to do this was to purge their communities of heretics and other troublemakers-so, for example, many thousands of Jews were massacred in 1348 and 1349. (Thousands more fled to the sparsely populated regions of Eastern Europe, where they could be relatively safe from the rampaging mobs in the cities.)

Some people coped with the terror and uncertainty of the Black Death epidemic by lashing out at their neighbors; others coped by turning inward and fretting about the condition of their own souls.

Flagellants

Some upper-class men joined processions of flagellants that traveled from town to town and engaged in public displays of penance and punishment: They would beat themselves and one another with heavy leather straps studded with sharp pieces of metal while the townspeople looked on. For 33 1/2 days, the flagellants repeated this ritual three times a day. Then they would move on to the next town and begin the process over again.

Though the flagellant movement did provide some comfort to people who felt powerless in the face of inexplicable tragedy, it soon began to worry the Pope, whose authority the flagellants had begun to usurp. In the face of this papal resistance, the movement disintegrated.

How Did the Black Death End?

The plague never really ended and it returned with a vengeance years later. But officials in the port city of Ragusa were able to slow its spread by keeping arriving sailors in isolation until it was clear they were not carrying the disease-creating social distancing that relied on isolation to slow the spread of the disease.

The sailors were initially held on their ships for 30 days (a trentino), a period that was later increased to 40 days, or a quarantine- the origin of the term "quarantine" and a practice still used today.

Does the Black Plague Still Exist?

The Black Death epidemic had run its course by the early 1350s, but the plague reappeared every few generations for centuries. Modern sanitation and public-health practices have greatly mitigated the impact of the disease but have not eliminated it. While antibiotics are available to treat the Black Death, according to The World Health Organization, there are still 1,000 to 3,000 cases of plague every year.
Gallery: Pandemics That Changed History

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The Black Death was a devastating global epidemic of bubonic plague that struck Europe and Asia in the mid-1300s. Explore the facts of the plague, the symptoms it caused and how millions died from it.

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The easy-to-use getaway to historical maps in libraries around the world.