The Silk Road refers to all the overland routes connecting the major oasis kingdoms of Central Asia including Dunhuang, Turfan, Khotan, and Samarkand to their neighbors: the Chinese landmass, the Mongolian grasslands, the Iranian plateau, and the Indian subcontinent. The best-known routes ran east-west, but the north-south routes to the nomadic states of the Asian grasslands were also important.
In the popular view of the Silk Road, extensive camel caravans carried goods over long distances, but this was rarely the case. Usually peddlers carried mostly local goods short distances. Government shipments to provision armies profoundly affected the region’s economy, because they involved much larger quantities than in the peddler trade.
Rulers regularly exchanged envoys who carried gifts, exchanges that continued even when private trade fell off. Whatever the reason for an individual’s trip, almost everyone—whether envoy, missionary, artist, craftsman, or refugee—bought and sold goods to pay for travel along the Silk Road.
Silk was not the primary commodity traded on these routes. Goods traveling east included ammonium chloride, paper, silver, gold, glassware, and aromatics such as spices, incense, and fragrant woods. Goods traveling west out of China included bronze mirrors, other metal goods, and paper, in addition to silk. Between 300 and 1000 ce, the most important function of silk was as a currency, not as a trade good, although it remained an important export throughout the period.
A vibrant series of cultural exchanges occurred alongside these commercial exchanges. Technologies, medicine, plants, music, and fashion all moved in both directions across Central Asia. Multiple religions also entered China during this time.
The term Silk Road may not be the most accurate term for these commercial and cultural exchanges, but, despite its flaws, the term has secured a firm place in both scholarly works and the popular mind.
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John L. Brooke and Henry Misa
The histories of humanity and nature are deeply entangled across Inner Eurasia. Great expanses of steppe and mountain connected peoples at the far ends of the landmass and sustained unique civilizational zones of nomadic and settled societies. These are regions profoundly shaped by some of the most complex climatic regimes and by one of the most devastating disease vectors in the world. Viewed in the longue durée of the Holocene, the premodern prehistory and history of Inner Eurasia takes on new dimensions when reviewed in the context of the latest work being done in environmental, climate, and genetic science.
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Daniel Beben
The Ismailis are one of the largest Muslim minority populations of Central Asia, and they make up the second largest Shiʿi Muslim community globally. First emerging in the second half of the 8th century, the Ismaili missionary movement spread into many areas of the Islamic world in the 10th century, under the leadership of the Ismaili Fatimids caliphs in Egypt. The movement achieved astounding success in Central Asia in the 10th century, when many of the political and cultural elites of the region were converted. However, a series of repressions over the following century led to its almost complete disappearance from the metropolitan centers of Central Asia. The movement later re-emerged in the mountainous Badakhshan region of Central Asia (which encompasses the territories of present-day eastern Tajikistan and northeastern Afghanistan), where it was introduced by the renowned 11th-century Persian poet, philosopher, and Ismaili missionary Nasir-i Khusraw. Over the following centuries the Ismaili movement expanded among the populations of Badakhshan, reaching a population of over 200,000 in the 21st century. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Ismailis suffered a series of severe repressions, first under local Sunni Muslim rulers and later under the antireligious policies of the Soviet Union. However, in the decades since the end of the Soviet period, the Ismailis of the region have become increasingly connected with the global Ismaili community and its leadership. While many aspects of the history of Ismailism in the Badakhshan region remain obscure and unexplored, the discoveries of significant corpuses of manuscripts in private collections since the 1990s in the Badakhshan region have opened up wide possibilities for future research.
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The Ismailis are a minority community of Shiʿi Muslims that first emerged in the 8th century. Iran has hosted one of the largest Ismaili communities since the earliest years of the movement and from 1095 to 1841 it served as the home of the Nizārī Ismaili imams. In 1256 the Ismaili headquarters at the fortress of Alamūt in northern Iran was captured by the Mongols and the Imam Rukn al-Dīn Khūrshāh was arrested and executed, opening a perilous new chapter in the history of the Ismailis in Iran. Generations of observers believed that the Ismailis had perished entirely in the course of the Mongol conquests. Beginning in the 19th century, research on the Ismailis began to slowly reveal the myriad ways in which they survived and even flourished in Iran and elsewhere into the post-Mongol era. However, scholarship on the Iranian Ismailis down to the early 20th century remained almost entirely dependent on non-Ismaili sources that were generally quite hostile toward their subject. The discovery of many previously unknown Ismaili texts beginning in the early 20th century offered prospects for a richer and more complete understanding of the tradition’s historical development. Yet despite this, the Ismaili tradition in the post-Mongol era continues to receive only a fraction of the scholarly attention given to earlier periods, and a number of sources produced by Ismaili communities in this period remain unexplored, offering valuable opportunities for future research.
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Joo-Yup Lee
The Kazakh Khanate was a Chinggisid nomadic state that ruled the eastern Qipchaq Steppe (Dasht-i Qipchāq), a steppe zone that roughly corresponds to modern-day Kazakhstan, during the post-Mongol period as one of the most important successor states of the Mongol Empire and the last reigning dynasty of the Chinggisids. The Kazakh Khanate branched off from the Ulus of Jochi, whose people (ulus) were called Uzbeks in 15th-century Central Asia. The Kazakh Khanate was founded by the Uzbeks led by Jānībeg Khan and Girāy Khan, two Jochid princes who sometime in the 1450s had broken away from Abū al-Khair Khan, the Jochid ruler of the eastern Qipchaq Steppe. In the 16th century, like other Chinggisid states such as the Crimean Khanate, the Northern Yuan, and the Shibanid Uzbek Khanate that emerged as regional empires in the territories of the former Mongol Empire, the Kazakh Khanate was transformed into a nomadic empire. During the reigns of Qāsim Khan (r. c. 1512–1521) and his successors Ḥaqq Naẓar Khan (r. c. 1538–1581) and Tawakkul Khan (r. c. 1582–1598), the Kazakh Khanate expanded westward to reach the Yayïq (Ural) River and eastward the Tienshan Mountains. The Kazakh Khanate entered a period of sharp decline at the turn of the 18th century due to the Zunghar Oirat onslaught. As a result, the Kazakh khans and sultans became nominal vassals of the Russian Empire and the Manchu Qing Dynasty. The Kazakh Khanate was annexed by the Russian Empire in the early 19th century, which brought to an end the six-centuries-long reign of the Chinggisids.
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Jin Noda
The Kazakh khans considered themselves the descendants of Juchi, the son of Chinggis Khan. Leading a group of Turkic Muslim nomads, they established their own authority on the Kazakh steppe (previously called the Qipchaq steppe) by the end of the 15th century. During the 16th century, the Kazakhs further expanded their territory, by fighting with the Shibanid Uzbek dynasty, the Noghays, and the Moghuls. However, the 17th century found the Kazakhs in turn being pressured from without by the Junghars, a group of Mongolian nomads. While it was through this struggle with the Junghars that the Kazakhs gradually attained a unique identity, this identity came at the price of a loss of unity between the three clan confederations (known as Zhuz).
After the fall of the Junghars during the mid-18th century, the Kazakhs began conducting a policy of “bilateral diplomacy” with the Russian Empire and Qing China. Simply put, the Kazakh khans sent envoys to both Russia and the Qing court. The relations between the Kazakhs and the Qing are worthy of particular attention as several members of the Kazakh dynasty were even bestowed official titles by the Qing emperor. This bestowal guaranteed the right to trade in Xinjiang and further strengthened Kazakh authority throughout the steppe as well.
During the 19th century, the territory of the Kazakh nomads was split up by the Russian and Qing empires. This fracturing was mainly caused by Russia’s expansion into Central Asia. From this time, great political changes began occurring on the Kazakh steppe, leading to mass rebellions and other social unrest. During this tumultuous period under Russian influence, however, Kazakh society also produced many intellectuals, further strengthening their national identity.
Significant changes in Kazakh historiography after the onset of the Soviet era are characterized by a focus on two elements: namely, the close relationship between the Kazakhs and the Qing Empire, and the impact of Islam on Kazakh society. Historical research on these topics has been influenced by newly available archival sources in both Russia and China.
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William Wood
The Khanate of Khiva, one of the Uzbek khanates of Central Asia, refers to a political entity in the region of Khorezm from the early 16th century until 1920. The term itself, which was not used by locals who instead used the name vilayet Khwārazm (“country of Khwārazm”), dates from 18th-century Russian usage. Khorezm is an ancient center of sedentary civilization with a distinct culture and history that came under Uzbek rule as the latter migrated southward from their pasturelands on the steppe beginning in the early 16th century. In contrast to the related dynasties in Transoxiana, the Khanate of Khiva retained a greater degree of pastoralism, though the state was still fundamentally built on sedentary agriculture. Though no doubt affected by historical variations in the volume and routes of the overland caravan trade, Khiva remained a key center for transregional trade throughout its history, especially with the growing Russia Empire to the north. Political structures in Khiva remained weak and decentralized until the 19th century, when the Qongrat dynasty succeeded in transforming the khanate into the most centralized state in the region. Among the legacies of the khanate is its promotion of a distinctive Turkic literary culture, which interacted fruitfully with the dominant Persian culture of neighboring regions. As with other states in Central Asia, by the second half of the 19th century Khiva became a target of the expanding Russian Empire, which conquered Khorezm in 1873. While the tsarist state initially preserved a portion of the khanate under Qongrat rule as a protectorate, after the Bolshevik Revolution this state was soon dissolved and absorbed into the Soviet Union.
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Alexander V. Maiorov
The task of the tümens of Jebe and Sübedei’s raid to Europe (1221–1223) was not limited to reconnaissance only. This raid was part of Chinggis Khan’s general expansion strategy involving establishing total control over the Kipchaks and conquering their steppe territories both in Asia and Europe. This strategic ambition had to be implemented by Prince Jochi, the ruler of the Western ulus of the Mongol Empire. Jochi was to bring his major forces to Europe and join the Jebe and Sübedei vanguard corps for the final defeat of the Kipchaks. Being allies and kin of the Kipchak rulers, the prince of Kiev and other southern Rus’ princes provided military assistance to them. Thus, the counter-attack of the Mongols targeted Rus’. After the defeat of the Rus’–Kipchak coalition forces in the Battle of the Kalka River, the Mongols were able to cross the Dnieper and approach Kiev. However, Jochi’s refusal to bring his major forces to support the Mongol vanguard brought to naught all the victories and achievements of generals Jebe and Sübedei. The initial goals of the Great Western Campaign of the Mongols (late 1236–1242) consisted in conquering Volga Bulgaria, the Kipchak/Polovets steppes, and the Hungarian kingdom. To a large extent, the defeat and destruction of Vladimir-Suzdal Principality occurred as part of the aftermath of the battle of Kolomna, where Kölgän, the youngest son of Chinggis Khan and one of the most honorable Mongol lords, was killed. The Mongol invasion was preceded by peace negotiations with the Mongols conducted by the most powerful Rus’ princes, specifically Yury Vsevolodovich of Vladimir-Suzdal and Daniel Romanovich of Galicia-Volhynia. Following these negotiations, the princes did everything they could to avoid personal involvement in military action against the Mongols. The Mongols’ stone artillery and wide use of flame liquids were critical weapons in the siege and assault of Rus’ cities and towns. The defendants had no effective countermeasures against these dangerous weapons. A comparative analysis of various reports in Rus’ chronicles about the date of the capture of Kiev by the Mongols with information from Hungarian sources shows that the most likely date is December 6, 1240. The proper names Uladmur and Uchogul Uladmur, given by the medieval Persian historian Rashīd al-Dīn in his account of the conquest of south Rus’ by the Mongols, cannot be related to the historical toponyms of Galician-Volhynian Rus’. The Mongol name Uladmur was connected with the name of Prince Vladimir Riurikovich, who had occupied the Kievan throne not long before the attack of the Mongols against south Rus’ and held peaceful negotiations with Prince Möngke. In Volhynia and Galicia the Mongols used a method that they had often used before. They forced the residents of the conquered cities to go outside the city walls and massacred them. They spared only the young men suitable for military service and took them into auxiliary troops (khashar), so that they should fight in the most dangerous areas of the battle.
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Prajakti Kalra
Beginning in 1206 large parts of Eurasia came under the sway of the Chinggissid Mongols. In 1260 the united Mongol Empire came to an end and divided into four khanates ruled by the progenies of Chinggis Khan. The four khanates were the Yuan (centered at China), the Ilkhanate (Middle East), the Golden Horde (Russia and the Caucasus), and the Chaghadaids (Central Asia). These political entities remained connected under the broad umbrella of the institutions and worldview that originated in the steppe and one that was informed by Chinggis Khan’s rule. Essentially the periods of the united Mongol Empire (1206–1260) and of the four khanates (1260–1350) can be termed as the period of Mongol rule. The abiding allegiance to the Chinggissid legacy continued to find resonance for the far-flung imperial family well in to the mid-14th century and even later in certain parts of Eurasia. Under this united system of rule, trade came to occupy a special place and led to hitherto unprecedented exchanges and prosperity. Mongol Eurasia was able to transform micro economies into a coherent macro economy that relied on overland and maritime trade. These exchanges in large part were achieved through the building of physical infrastructure connecting China all the way to northwest Europe, and provision of capital. Along with overland trade, the Mongols were able to participate in and spur maritime trade in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean-Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean trade complex, even though they didn’t control all of it. The architecture essential for conquest proved important for trade and exchanges of goods, peoples, and ideas as well. Physical security, storage facilities, monetary policies, and the creation of markets and cities across the expanse of Mongol Eurasia enlivened trade. The historical accounts of this period describe cities overflowing with goods and riches along with transfers of a variety of technologies, providing a vivid picture of exchanges. The Mongols followed in the footsteps of a long line of nomadic empires that had been pivotal in the flow of long-distance trade and expanded it across Eurasia. Not only did they promote trade and patronize traders, they influenced the kinds of goods and technologies that were found on the Silk Road(s) at the time. The presence of a wide array of manufactured goods in large quantities signifies their role in the founding of production centers. While the Mongols were not traders themselves, the Khans were impressive in their understanding of the importance of trading networks and relied heavily on access to the information traders provided. From the very beginning of the empire traders filled the ranks of interlocutors and helped carve a space for bolstering exchanges in policymaking. Traders were close to the Khans and political elites and informed decision-making, often serving as emissaries, ministers, and administrators in the service of the Khans. Not only did traders provide the Khans with commodities, but they also served as money lenders, making them important partners to the Mongol state and the imperial family. The myriad relationships between the Mongol Khans and traders are testament to a deep partnership that brought to bear an exciting moment for Eurasia, making it possible to refer to the Mongol period as the first globalization.
Article
Richard Eaton
The Persian cosmopolis refers to the vast territory between the Balkans and Bengal in which, for 1000 years, an integrated sense of moral, social, political, and aesthetic order was informed by the circulation of normative Persian texts. Several centuries after the Arab conquest of the Iranian plateau, a spoken form of a hybridized Middle Persian and Arabic emerged in written form, using a modified Arabic script. What had begun as a regional vernacular swiftly became a transregional, literary medium as regional courts in Khurasan and Central Asia patronized Persian literature and used that language in their bureaucracies, building on a tradition of professional writers that had served Persian empires for centuries. The technology of paper-making, recently introduced from China, facilitated the rapid movement of Persian texts across space, while Firdausi’s epic poem the Shah-nama (1010) celebrated Iranian mythology and pre-Islamic history in ways that connected widely scattered peoples of different ethnicities. Territorial conquests by Persianized Turks, followed by Mongol invasions that drove peoples of Central Asia and Khurasan into new lands, also served to expand the geographical extent of the Persian cosmopolis.
By the 14th and 15th centuries, the political, aesthetic, and moral order elaborated in a growing Persian canon—for example, the principle of justice—had become associated with a prestigious, cosmopolitan style that was emulated and absorbed by widely scattered peoples of diverse ethnicities and religions. Persianate architecture, attire, urban design, music, cuisine, and numismatic traditions were also assimilated by such peoples. With the translation of a rich store of romance literature into vernacular tongues, the Persian cosmopolis became as much a subjective phenomenon, inhabiting people’s collective imagination, as it was an objective, mappable zone in which popular, discursive, and normative texts circulated along networks that connected royal courts, provincial notables, Sufi lodges, merchant communities, and schools.
Article
Michal Biran
The Qara Khitai or Western Liao dynasty (1124–1218) ruled in Central Asia in the period that preceded the rise of Chinggis Khan. Founded by Khitan refugees who escaped from north China when the Jurchen Jin dynasty (1115–1234) vanquished their Khitan Liao dynasty (907–1125), they soon carved out for themselves a multicultural empire in Central Asia that combined Chinese, nomadic, and Muslim elements. Vanquishing the Qarakhanids and the Seljuks and making the Khwārazm Shāhs, the Gaochang Uighurs, and various Mongolian tribes their vassals, at its height the Qara Khitai Empire stretched from the Oxus to the Altai Mountains (namely, from Uzbekistan to western Mongolia including most of Xinjiang, China). Their biggest victory in 1141 against the Seljuks even became the basis for the legend of Prester John. Practicing religious tolerance and mostly indirect rule—leaving local rulers largely intact apart from in their capital Balāsāghūn (Burana, Kyrgyzstan)—and, using their Chinese and nomadic cultural capital, the Sinicized Buddhist nomads ruled over their heterogeneous but mostly Muslim sedentary population in rare harmony. The aging dynasty, however, could not survive the repercussions of Chinggis Khan’s rise, which coincided with the bolstering of the Khwārazm Shāh’s power. In the early 13th century, after a Naiman prince who had escaped from Chinggis Khan usurped the Qara Khitai throne, the Mongols vanquished the Qara Khitai, incorporating most of their troops into the Mongol army and channeling their skilled subject population for imperial needs. A scion of the Qara Khitai established the Muslim Qutlughkhanid dynasty of Kirman (south Persia, 1222–1306) that ruled under Mongol and later Ilkhanid aegis.
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Isenbike Togan
Perennial interest of the nomads in exchange and trade is known, but the transition from exchange to trade is not so well known. Exchange is a kind of barter, while trade entails traders and profits. Though both continued in war and peace, records are scarce for peacetime. Wartime activities are well documented and make it clear that once the transition from exchange to trade was accomplished, war and conquest facilitated the expansion of networks. Expansion, opening up new routes, and maintenance of the old were accomplished by conquest along these routes. The roads needed to be connected to provide safety, eliminate anxiety, and establish an environment of trust for commercial transactions. Muslim merchants were the active participants of these new commercial ventures, which had the protection of Chinggis Khan’s army of conquest. However, in building the empire, Chinggis Khan would first resort to a conciliatory attitude before taking any military measures.
Trade and trade routes were the main arteries of the Mongol Empire. These networks were the agreement points among all contenders of power, merchants, warriors, and the commanding members of the ruling dynasty. It was this agreement on the importance of trade that secured the endurance of the empire.
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The Turkic identity that first emerged with the rise of the Türk empire in the mid-6th century did not encompass all Turkic-speaking nomads in the Inner Asian world. The Türks, who founded the first Turkic nomadic empire, reserved the term Türk for themselves. In turn, the Uighurs and the (Yenisei) Qirghiz, who succeeded the Türks in the Mongolian steppes, did not identify themselves as Türk. As a result, after the final collapse of the Türk empire in the mid-8th century, Turkic identity did not survive among non-Türk groups in the Mongolian steppes.
Turk became a much broader identity in the Islamic world. Muslim writers spread the term Turk (plural Atrāk), virtually using it as a synonym for Inner Asian nomads including both Turkic- and non–Turkic-speaking groups. Accordingly, when the Mongols entered the Islamic world, Muslim writers in general identified them as Turks. The Muslim view of the Turks as Inner Asian nomads was adopted by the Mongols of the Ilkhanate and the Mongol successors in Central Asia (Timurids, Moghuls, and Shibanid Uzbeks), who viewed themselves as the most prominent branch of the Turks. (The designation Central Asia is used here for the interior region stretching from the Caspian Sea in the west to Xinjiang, China in the east. Inner Asia denotes the steppe regions.)
Essentially, their Turkic identity was a non-Tajik, Inner Asian nomadic identity, not a non-Mongol, Türk-related identity. Importantly, it encompassed Mongol identity. In the histories and documents produced in the Ilkhanate and the Mongol successor states in Central Asia, Turk in the phrase “Turk and Tajik” and various Chinggisid and Timurid genealogies primarily denoted the Mongols.
However, a Central Asian type of Turkic identity was non-existent in the Qipchaq Steppe during the Mongol and post-Mongol period. Apparently, the term Turk had not been used as a self-appellation among such non-Türk groups of the Qipchaq Steppe as the Qipchaqs. Likewise, the Mongol successors of the Qipchaq Steppe (Uzbeks, Qazaqs, and Tatars) did not self-identify as Turks. However, like their Central Asian counterparts, they identified themselves as Mongol descendants.
