Silk road introduction Chapter Production of silk fabrics about silk production Dyeing of silk fabrics

4.2 Goods on the Silk Road

One can talk endlessly about the goods that traveled along the Silk Road, and it is perhaps impossible to list them at all. Porcelain, furs, slaves (especially women), metal products, spices, incense, medicines, ivory, thoroughbred horses, and precious stones were traded here. But, of course, the most important commodity is silk.

Due to its lightness, compactness, huge demand and high cost, it was an ideal trade item for transportation over long distances. As evidenced by "Sailing around the Erythrean Sea", silk was transported in threads as raw materials and in finished products.
The population of East Turkestan was familiar with silk as early as the Chhou period, and in the 4th c. BC. silk threads penetrate into India. Written sources report that already in the II century. BC. Chinese silk became widespread in Parthia in the first half of the 1st century BC. BC. battle banners were made from it. In the 1st century BC. silk penetrates to Alexandria, the main trading center of the Eastern Mediterranean, where luxurious robes were sewn from silk for Queen Cleopatra. Silk was brought to Rome in the second half of the 1st century. BC, in the reign of Emperor Augustus, silk is mentioned, found in the poems of Virgil, Propertius , Horace and Ovid. Moreover, if Horace considered silk robes an outward expression of effeminacy and vice, then Ovid admires silk, comparing the flowing hair of his beloved with the multi-colored fabrics of the Serov people . Silk became widespread among the Roman nobility in the first half of the 1st century BC. BC.
Martial, in Rome in the Viscus district Tascus was a special market where silk was traded.
Along the Silk Road, new goods from Central Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean came to China, for example, a variety of woolen products - carpets, curtains, bedspreads, rugs. They made a great impression on the Chinese, who were unfamiliar with the techniques of processing wool, flax, carpet production and carpet weaving. Parthian tapestry fabrics and carpets were highly valued in ancient China. Delight and amazement in the Ancient East were caused by " five-color and nine-color carpets" made in Daqin , mainly in the famous ancient Syrian weaving workshops. Made there "carpets, tapestries, bedspreads, in their brightness and colorfulness, surpassed all the products of countries east of the sea (i.e., the Persian Gulf)."
Finds of woolen fabrics and embroidered bedspreads, tapestry fabrics and rugs in East Turkestan give a fairly complete picture of the diversity and high artistic merit of Central Asian , Middle Eastern and Mediterranean woolen products. Transported along the Silk Road from West to East.
The trade journey was incredibly difficult. The merchant, for the sake of his greed, testifies Kabus-name , goes through the seas and mountains, endangers life and body, and property, is not afraid of robbers, and vagabonds, and predators devouring people, and unsafe paths. When the profit was indisputable, when almost fantastic profits were expected, they traded everything, carried, regardless of thousands of kilometers, everything: they managed to drive herds of thoroughbred horses through the deserts and even deliver safe and sound such a delicate and perishable commodity as fresh fruit (each fruit or a bunch of grapes were wrapped in cotton, melons were sent on ice in lead boxes), dried fruits were a commodity for granted. Foreign fruits delighted. I wanted to have such my own, and not at those insane prices that were appointed by foreign merchants.
Twice in the seventh century outlandish yellow peaches were sent as a gift to the Chinese court by the Samarkand kingdom. They were as big as goose eggs, - says the source, - And because their color was similar to gold, they were called: "golden peaches." A few seedlings of trees bearing this regal fruit were brought by an embassy caravan through the deserts of the Tarim Basin and grown in the palace gardens of Chang'an . This example of international exchange had its own background. The fact is that in fact, many centuries before that, peaches came to Central Asia from China. Their varieties were then quite mediocre. But at the Samarkad gardeners, they underwent an incredibly successful selection and returned to the Celestial Empire in a completely different quality. But in general, if we talk about the timing of China's access to external contacts, it all starts with two other cultures. The first of them is the grass “ mu -su”, i.e. alfalfa. Alfalfa seeds, along with horses, were brought to China from Central Asia. The second agricultural crop is grapes. The ancient world has been cultivating the vine and producing wine since ancient times. For the Chinese, primarily separated from other civilizations, grapes were a novelty. Moreover, the Chinese envoys were extremely surprised that wine could be made not from rice, but from berries so unknown to them.
These are just three examples from the richest history of the spread of agricultural crops in that vast historical and cultural space of international communication, which we can so inaccurately call the Great Silk Road. In addition to vines and alfalfa, China received from other countries beans, walnut, almond and pomegranate trees, onions, coriander, cucumbers, dates, saffron, sesame seeds, carrots and much more. And if you name only 2 agricultural articles that he gave in return to the rest of the world - silkworm and tea, then all the purely trading activities of the Great Silk Road fade with such values. But there were also chrysanthemums, apricots, high-yielding varieties of rice, many other everyday and exquisite ones.
Equally important was the dissemination of medical knowledge, medicines and pharmacological experience along these trade routes. You can partially trace how this was done by taking as a guide the geography of trade demand for 2 types of goods - goods that are completely unexpected for the uninitiated - these are spices and incense of the East.
The birthplace of nutmeg, nutmeg, pepper, cinnamon, cloves is South and Southeast Asia, but mention of them is constantly found in the ancient world, and in Byzantium, and in Medieval Western Europe, and in Rus', and in the Arab East, and in the Central Asian states. Spices and pepper, like silk, invariably appear at the top of any historical account of Asia's foreign trade. The excitement around them was huge. In medieval Europe, for example, they often replaced money and were a means of payment for the purchase of land, they paid trade fees, and paid a dowry. For them, they were ready to give gold, silver, jewelry; in special cases, part with the latter. This is for us, modern people, pepper and spices - just a seasoning for food (in general, a necessary, but not the most important component of culinary art). In ancient and medieval cooking, pepper and spices were used quite widely. Their preservative properties were especially used. Powder from nutmeg, cloves, pepper and other spices well suppressed the action of bacteria, and this made it possible to prepare high-quality and long-term stored meat supplies. Indian medicine is already well aware of the pharmacological properties of spices and incense. Hippocrates in the composition of anti-inflammatory drugs includes cinnamon, pepper, for example, treats tetanus, the medicine for pleurisy contains cardamom.
To an even greater extent, Byzantine pharmacology was based on such products. The composition of medicines for those suffering from migraine, asthma, for people with a large spleen, doctors of medieval Byzantium certainly included pepper, aloe, cassia, cinnamon.
At the opposite end of the Trans-Asian roads from the ancient world and Byzantium - in South Asia, the picture of the use of medicinal preparations from spices is even more impressive, especially since most of them grew there. But the highest results of international communication of this kind, perhaps, were embodied in the Arab medieval pharmacology. This is one of the brightest examples in the history of mankind of the enduring value of non-trade exchange - the exchange of knowledge. Only one treatise of the encyclopedia of Abu Rayhan al-Biruni "Pharmacology" (beginning of the 11th century) shows how synthetic the Arabic science of medicines is - it summarizes the experience of various regions of the East. The pinnacle of Muslim medicine in general and pharmacology in particular is the work of Ibn Sina (Avicenna) "The Canon of Medicine", which had not only a huge impact on the entire Eastern world, but also a decisive one - on the medicinal business of Western Europe. All the abundance of recipes of Muslim pharmacology, along with spices and other medicinal plants, migrated to European medicine. That is why the trade boom for these products begins, and therefore such a rush demand for pepper and spices from the European society is understandable. The situation will become even clearer if we remember that the entire history of East and West is also the history of massive, almost continuously recurring epidemic diseases and epidemics.
Now the story of incense, called "blessed". Arabian frankincense and myrrh, ancient fragrant resins, were also widely used in medicine. Frankincense , for example, was considered an excellent hemostatic agent. In general, smoking incense had unique disinfectant properties. With the constant threat of epidemics and unsanitary conditions that existed in past centuries, air disinfection with the help of fragrant substances was an urgent matter. Of course, incense also has the ability to have a very strong effect on the human psyche - some soothe, others tone up.
Now about the transmission along the same road network of the Great Silk Road of the experience opposite to the desire to survive - the experience of mutual physical destruction by many of those generations. We have some incredible confusion about the introduction of firearms in Asia. For some reason, there is a completely absurd opinion that Europe played a decisive role in getting to know the East after the arrival of their ships in the Indian Ocean, i.e. after the Great Geographical Discoveries. In fact:
In 1498, Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and entered the Indian Ocean. In 1511, the Portuguese began to lay siege to Malacca, a major center of inter-Asian maritime trade. Imagine their surprise when Malacca also responded with artillery fire. The Portuguese were at that time the only Europeans in the Indian Ocean. Those two deserters, who a few years earlier made an attempt to establish the production of tools from the ruler of Calicut (India), could not play the main role in the situation in Malacca. After the capture of the city, more than 3 thousand small cannons were found there . They were much worse than those made in Europe, however, be that as it may, they shot and inflicted damage.
Gunpowder was indeed known to the Chinese for a long time - they invented it themselves. During the Sunn dynasty (5th-13th centuries), explosive vessels with gunpowder were launched using catapults. When in the 14th century in Europe, firearms became predominant, the Turkic tribes, who previously lived in Central and Central Asia, had already penetrated the Middle East, Asia Minor and seriously disturbed Europeans. Gunsmiths appeared among the Turks , and some of them very quickly brought the novelty along the Trans-Asian road from the west (through Asia Minor to Iran) to Central Asia. From Central Asia, innovation moved in two directions: to the east - to China, and to the south - to India. In addition to the Turks, the Chinese were also helped in its development by Jesuit monks. Apparently, it quickly reached Southeast Asia (to the same Malacca) from China.
This "Silk Road" could just as well be called "Paper Road", because it was on him that the Chinese handed over to the rest of the world another of their brilliant inventions - paper. Its production outside the Celestial Empire was first established in the 8th century. Chinese artisans in Samarkand. From there, it spread to the west and replaced the former writing material - parchment and papyrus.
“ Inter-Asian international communication along these roads has had a huge impact on architecture and urban planning. One example is enough - Central Asia, the magnificent buildings of Timur in Samarkand, the Ak-Saray palace in Shakhrisyabs , the tomb of the Timurids Gur -i Emir, Khauzha Ahmad Yasawi mosque in the city of Turk . It combines architectural styles, forms, building techniques of many countries. All this was created not only by Central Asian architects, but also by masters from Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Iraq, Syria, Asia Minor, and India.
These roads also carried mercy. At the beginning of our era, Buddhist preachers from India passed through them, in the early Middle Ages - Nestorian Christians, and in the XIII-XIV centuries. - Catholic priests from Europe. The spread of Buddhism throughout the caravan space is splendidly illustrated by the presence there of many other large and small temples (stupas), other monuments and architectural finds. They rose in a wide territorial corridor from Northwest India to the southern part of Central Asia and turned east to the Tarim Basin, which is literally strewn with cultural structures.
The exchange of spiritual values is the highest achievement of the Great Silk Road activity. Buddhism, for example, caused in China the rise and flourishing of philosophical thought, science and literature already at a qualitatively different level than before. Islam, although, unlike Buddhism, initially expanded its influence in a non-peaceful way, it also created its own unique spiritual world, its own unique culture, in the vast expanses of the Great Silk Road, incorporating the achievements of dozens of countries and peoples into it.
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