Silk Route

The collective name for several overland and ocean routes for silk trade between China and the Roman world, and later Byzantium, from the 1st-8th centuries AD. From Chang'an, capital of the Han Dynasty, the main route went west through the Gansu corridor into the Tarim basin at Dunhuang. There it branched into two main routes across the Central Asian deserts. After crossing the Pamirs, the two routes rejoined finally at Merv and continued via Ecbatana and Ctesiphon to Palmyra and the Mediterranean. The institutionalized traffic in silk began in the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD). The cities along the Silk Route flourished despite political changes. From the 9th century onwards, trade came increasingly to depend on sea routes and the main Chinese export was not silk but porcelain. Overland commerce revived only briefly during the continent-wide peace that ensued after the Mongol conquests of the 13th century, when Marco Polo followed the Silk Route to the court of the Yuan emperor Kublai Khan.

The overland route followed by trade between China and the Mediterranean world from the 2nd century bc onwards. The Silk Route began at Chang an and passed up the Gansu corridor through Wuwei to Dunhuang, where it branched into two main routes across the Central Asian deserts. After crossing the Pamirs the two routes rejoined finally at Merv and continued via Ecbatana and Ctesiphon to Palmyra and the Mediterranean. (West of the Pamirs India was accessible through Bactria.) For centuries the main Chinese export was silk, a commodity that apparently supplied the Roman name for China, Sérica. The institutionalized traffic in silk began in the Han dynasty (206 bc-ad 220), when Chinese power secured the route through Central Asia, but irregular trade must have followed the same path some centuries earlier, bringing jade from Khotan to China and Chinese goods to the kurgans at Pazyryk. From the time of Augustus, the Romans spent ruinous sums on silk in a trade in which the Parthian empire of Iran prospered as middleman. The contact with Western Asia is clearly reflected in Chinese art, where foreign motifs like the Parthian shot (a mounted archer turning in the saddle and shooting to the rear) are prominent in the decoration of Han bronzes and lacquers. Central Asia fell under the control of a powerful Turkish confederacy after the collapse of the Han dynasty and returned to Chinese rule only with the rise of the Tang dynasty (AD 618-907). The cities along the Silk Route and the trade that passed through them continued to flourish despite political changes, however, as Sassanian and Byzantine coins found in China testify; in the 5th-8th centuries Classical and Iranian motifs were major themes in Chinese decoration (silks, pottery, metalwork) and in Buddhist cave paintings like those at Dunhuang (see also Turfan, Loulan). Nevertheless the trade in silk itself began to decline in the 6th century, when according to Procopius (500-565) the technique of raising silkworms was brought to Byzantium. Moreover towards the end of the Tang dynasty the rise of Islamic states in Central Asia put an end to Buddhist civiliza tion there and raised barriers hostile to trade between Europe and the Far East. From the 9th century onwards trade came increasingly to depend on sea routes and the main Chinese export was not silk but porcelain (see ceramics, China). Overland commerce revived only briefly during the continent-wide peace that ensued on the Mongol conquests of the 13th century, when Marco Polo followed the Silk Route to the court of the Yuan emperor Kublai Khan.