The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

The Vincent Astor Foundation Gift © Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fabrics of the Silk Roads were highly desirable, and were sometimes even used as currency. This textile from the eighth or ninth century shows the famous horses of central Asia.

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The Silk Roads present many challenges, obstacles and natural barriers. These include the Pamir mountains, where passes were heavily protected, such as at Tashkurgan’s Stone Fort (above), near Kashgar, and the treacherous Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang, western China (next page).

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Women preparing newly woven silk. This image was made by the Chinese Emperor Huizong of the Song dynasty, early twelfth century.

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Ceramic sculpture of a Sogdian trader, mounted on a Bactrian camel, dating to the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD).

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Lavish decorations from Sogdian palaces in Panji-kent attest to the rewards of trade across Asia.

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Inscription at Naksh-i Rustām of the chief priest, Kirdīr, trumpeting the triumph of Zoroastrianism.

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The Buddhas of Bamiyan, symbols of the advance of Buddhism into Central Asia. They were blown up by the Taliban in 2001.

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A Sogdian translation of a Christian psalter, using Syriac script. Disseminating faith in local languages was an important factor in how they spread.

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The Crucifixion, from the Rabbula Gospels, a Syriac illuminated manuscript from the sixth century.

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The “Standing Caliph” coin, perhaps depicting the Prophet Mu-h.ammad himself.

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A folio of an indigo-dyed copy of the Qur’ān, North Africa, ninth or tenth century.

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The new Muslim empire brought wealth flooding back to the centre. Here the Sultan is shown surrounded by his courtiers, from a manuscript of the Persian epic poem the Shāhnāma by Firdawsī.

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Muslim rulers were great patrons of the arts and of scholarship. Scholars in discussion at an ‘Abbāsid library, image from the Maqāmāt of al-H.arīrī.

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The map of Mah.mūd al-Kāshgharī, showing Balāsāghūn as the centre of the world.

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Illustration of al-Bīrūnī’s explanation of the phases of the moon.

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War and trade went hand in hand. The forbidding defensive walls of Bukhara.

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The Vikings were heavily involved in human trafficking. Their reputation for violence played an important part in their success.

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Detail from a rune-stone from Tilinge, Sweden, commemorating the death of a Scandinavian adventurer in “Serkland”—the land of the Saracens, or Arabs.

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The Mongols swept across Asia with astonishing speed. Here, Genghis Khan pursues an enemy, supported by his men.

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It was not just trade and conquest that flowed along the Silk Roads; so did disease. The most devastating was the Black Death, which ravaged Asia and Europe in the fourteenth century. Victims depicted in the Toggenburg Bible have the distinctive swellings that Boccaccio said could be the size of apples.

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The gold of West Africa was famous across the Mediterranean. The great Malian king, Mansa Musa, “the richest and most noble” of rulers, holds a large golden nugget in this detail from the Catalan Atlas, 1375.

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China became increasingly interested in the world beyond the Pacific in the fifteenth century. The Chinese admiral Zheng He explored the Indian Ocean and the coast of East Africa. This wall painting from the Chinese temple shrine, Penang, Malaysia, shows one of his ships.

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Map of the Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf and Bay of Bengal by Jan Huyghen van Linschoten—the doyen of European mapmakers.

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Cortés and Xicoténcatl, whose alliance brought about the demise of the Aztecs. Cortés claimed to suffer from an illness that could only be cured by gold.

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The bustling port of Calicut in south-western India, a century after Vasco da Gama’s expedition. European traders who flocked to Asia could make huge profits from selling goods to the new rich back home.

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The stunning mausoleum of Gūr-i Mīr in Samarkand, resting place of Timur and his heirs.

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The Taj Mahal, a symbol of love—and of the sharp surge in wealth in India in the seventeenth century.

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The Dutch delegation being received in Udaipur by the Maharana Sangram Singh in 1711 (detail). Negotiating (and reconfirming) trade privileges was vital to defend European commercial interests.

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The Dutch Golden Age: Vermeer’s Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window—with a bowl in the foreground in the distinctive blue and white colours of Asian ceramics.

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The East India Company made fortunes for many of its officers. Its spectacular failure led to a government bail-out that antagonised many in Britain’s colonies. In 1773, men dressed as “Indians” tipped tea into the harbour in Boston in protest. The Boston Tea Party was a milestone on the route to the American Declaration of Independence.

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The assassination of Alexander Burnes in Kabul on 2 November 1841. Burnes had been a popular commentator on Central Asian affairs before his death.

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Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary at the start of the First World War. Grey believed good relations with Russia were vital to Britain’s interests in India and the Perisan Gulf.

Manoutchehr Eskandari-Qajar / Qajar (Kadjar) Dynasty Pages

Shah Moz˙affar od-Dīn, whose requests for loans created problems—and opportunities—for London and St. Petersburg.

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Herbert Backe, architect of the plan to divide the Soviet Union into “surplus” and “deficit” zones. It was envisaged that millions would starve to death as a result.

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Hitler’s mountain home, “the ultimate source of decorating inspiration,” according to Homes &Gardens. Hitler drew inspiration for German expansion east from British India—and from European settlers in America. The Volga, he said, was to be Germany’s Mississippi, with the indigenous population expelled beyond this frontier.

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William Knox D’Arcy, a “capitalist of the highest order,” who won an exclusive concession to “probe, pierce and drill at will the depths of Persian soil” for sixty years.

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Mohammed Mossadegh, Prime Minister of Iran who was deposed by a CIA-led plot in 1953. He was said to diffuse “a slight reek of opium.”

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The Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, and his wife. “My visions were miracles that saved the country,” he told one interviewer.

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The return of Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran in 1979 was greeted with wild celebrations in Teheran. The BBC estimated that 5 million people took to the streets.

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Saddam Hussein, wearing his favoured military fatigues. He was identified by the British in the 1960s as someone with whom “it would be possible to do business.”

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Osama bin Laden. U.S. intelligence reports before 9/11 noted that there was considerable sympathy for his message in the Arabic-speaking world—though few endorsed his terrorist methods.

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The Khan Shatyr Entertainment Centre in Astana, Kazakhstan. The futuristic transparent tent houses a shopping centre, sports facilities, cinemas—and an indoor beach resort.

Kerem Sanliman

Heydar Aliyev International Airport in Baku, Azerbaijan. One of the state-of-the-art transport hubs being built along the New Silk Road.