homework help

THE SILK ROADS IN HISTORY BY DANIEL C. WAUGH

T HERE IS AN ENDLESS popular fascination with the "Silk Roads," the historic routes of eco- nomic and cultural exchange across Eurasia. 'I'he phrase in our own time has been used as a metaphor for Central Asian oil pipelines, and

it is common advertising copy for the romantic exoticism of expensive adventure travel. One would think that, in the cen- tury and a third since the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen coined the term to describe what for him was a quite specific route of east-west trade some 2,000 years ago, there might be some consensus as to what and when the Silk Roads were. Yet, as the Penn Museum exhibition of Silk Road •lrtifacts demonstrates, we are still learning about that history, .Hid many aspects of it are subject to vigorous scholarly debate.

Most today would agree that Richthofen's original concept was too limited in that he was concerned first of all about the movement of silk overland from east to west between the "great civilizations" of Han China and Rome. Should we extend his concept to encompass striking evidence from the Eurasian Bronze and Early Iron Ages, and trace it beyond the European Age of Discover)' (15th to 17th centuries) to the eve of the modern world? Is there in fact a definable starting point or conclu- sion? And can we confine our examination to exchange across Eurasia along a few land routes, given their interconnection with maritime trade? I ndeed, the routes of exchange and products were many, and the mix changed substantially over time. The history ofthe Silk Roads is a narrative about movement, resettlement, and interactions across ill-defined borders but not necessarily over long distances. It is also the story of artistic exchange and the spread and mixing of religions, all set against the background ofthe rise and fall of polities which encompassed a wide range of

cultures and peoples, about whose identities we still know too little. Many of the exchanges documented by archaeological research were surely the result of contact between various ethnic or linguistic groups over time. The reader should keep these qualifications in mind in reviewing the highlights from the history which follows.

THE BEGINNINGS

Among the most exciting archaeological discoveries of the 20th century were the frozen tombs of the nomadic pastoral- ists who occupied the Altai mountain region around Pazyryk in southern Siberia in the middle ofthe 1st tnillenniuni BCE. These horsemen have been identified with the Sc"ythians who dominated the steppes from Eastern Europe to Mongolia. The

recovered from Pazyryk Barrow 5 and dated 252-238 BCE, depicts an Achaemenid-style horseman

www.PENN.MUSEUM/EXPEDITION 9

Pazyryk tombs clearly document connections with China: the deceased were buried with Chinese silk and bronze mirrors. The graves contain felts and woven wool textiles, but curi- ously little evidence that would point to local textile produc- tion. 1 he earliest known pile carpet, found in a Pazyryk tomb, has Achaemenid (ancient Persian) motifs; the dyes and tech- nology of dyeing wool fabrics seem to be of Middle Eastern origin. Other aspects of the burial goods suggest a connection with a yet somewhat vague northeast Asian cultural complex, extending along the forest-steppe boundaries all the way to Manchuria and north Korea. Discoveries from 1st millennium BCE sites in Xinjiang reinforce the evidence about active long- distance contacts well before Chinese political power extended that far west.

While it is difficult to locate the Pazyryk pastoralists within any larger polity that might have controlled the center of Eurasia, the Xiongnu—the Huns—who emerged around the beginning of the 2nd century BCE, established what most con- sider to be the first of the great Inner Asian empires and in the process stimulated what, in the conventional telling, was the beginnings of the Silk Roads. Evidence about the Xiongnu supports a growing consensus that Inner Asian peoples for- merly thought of as purely nomadic in fact were mixed soci-

eties, incorporating sedentary elements such as permancni settlement sites and agriculture into their way of life. Related to this fact was a substantial and regular interaction along the permeable boundaries between the northern steppe world and agricultural China. Substantial quantities of Clhine.se goods now made their way into Inner Asia and beyond to the Mediterranean world. This flow of goods included tribute the Han Dynasty paid to the nomad rulers, and trade, in return for which the Chinese received horses and camels. (Chinese missions to the "Western Regions" also resulted in tlie open- ing of direct trade with Central Asia and parts of the Middle East, although we have no evidence that Han merchants ever reached the Mediterranean or that Roman mercliants reached China. The cities of the Parthian Empire, which controlled routes leading to the Mediterranean, and the emergence of prosperous caravan emporia such as Palmyra in the eastern Syrian desert attest to tlie importance of interconnected over- land and maritime trade, whose products included not only silk but also spices, iron, olive oil, and much more.

The Han Dynasty expanded ("hine.se dominion for the first time well into Central Asia, in the process extending the Great Wall and establishing the garrisons to man it. While one result of this was a shift in the balance of power between the Xiongnu

'iongnu tombs contained various types of grave goods. Objects in this late 1st century BCE to middle 1st century CE burial from Mongolia included a bronze cauldron containing the remains of a ritual meal, pottery, and a Han Dynasty lacquer bowl with metal rim.

The Qizilqagha beacon tower, northwest of Kucha, Xinjiang, dates from the Han Dynasty. It is located near an Important Buddhist cave temple complex and stands approximately 15 m tall.

and the Chinese in favor ofthe latter, Xiongnu tombs ofthe late 1st century BCE through the 1st century CE in north-central Mongolia contain abundant Chinese lacquerware, lacquered Chinese chariots, high-quality bronze mirrors, and stunning silk brocades.There is good reason to assume that much ofthe silk passing through Xiongnu hands was traded farther to the west. Although Richthofen felt that the Silk Road trade ceased to be important with the decline ofthe Han Dynasty in the 2nd century CE, there is ample evidence of very important interac- tions across Eurasia in the subsequent period when—both in China and the West—the great sedentary empires fragmented.

THE SILK ROADS AND RELIGION

During the 2nd century CE, Buddhism began to spread vigor- ously into Central Asia and China with the active support of local rulers. The earliest clearly documented Chinese transla-

Right, the 19 m high Tang period statue of Maitreya. the Buddha of the Future, is located at Xumishan Grottoes, Ningxia Hui Antonomous Region, China. The cave temples here were first carved in the Northern Wei peri- od. Below, this map charts major routes and sites of the Silk Road.

12 VOLUME 52, NUMBER 3 EXPEDITION

tions of Buddhist scriptures date from this period, although the proce.ss of expanding the Buddhist canon in China and adapting it to (Chinese religious traditions extended over sub- sequent centuries. Understandably, many ofthe key figures in the transmission ofthe faith were those from Central Asia who commanded a range of linguistic skills acquired in the multi- ethnic oasis towns such as Kucha. Buddhism also made its way east via the coastal routes. By the time of the Northern Wei Dynasty in the 5th and early 6th centuries, there were major Buddhist cave temple sites in the Chinese north and extending across to the fringes ofthe CxMitral Asian deserts. Perhaps the best known and best preserved of these is the Mogao Caves at the commercial and garrison town of Dunhuang, where there is a continuous record of Buddhist art from the early

5th century down to the time ofthe Mongol Yuan Dynasty in the 14th century. One ofthe most famous travelers on the Silk Roads was the ('hiñese monk Xuanzang, whose rotite to the sources of Buddhist wisdom in India took him aUiiig the northern fringes ofthe Tarim Basin, through the mountains, and then south through today's Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. When he returned to China after some 15 years, stopping at Dunhuang along the way, he brought back a trove of scrip- tures and important images.

Many of the sites that we connect with this spread of Buddhism are also those where there is evidence of the Sogdians: Iranian speakers who were the first great merchant diaspora ofthe Silk Roads. From their homeland in Samarkand and the Zerafshan River Valley (todavs Uzbekistan and

www.PENN.MUSEUM/EXPEDITION 13

Tajikistan), the Sogdians extended their reach west to the Black Sea, south through the mountains of Kashmir, and to the ports of southeast Asia. Early 4th century Sogdian letters, found just west of Dunhuang, document a Sogdian network extending from Samarkand through Dunhuang, and along the Gansu Corridor into central China. Sogdians entered Chinese service and adopted some aspects of Chinese culture while retaining, it seems, their indigenous religious traditions (a form of Zoroastrianism). Their importance went well beyond commerce, as they served not only the Chinese but also some of the newly emerging regimes from the northern steppes, the Turks and the Uyghurs. The Turks for a time extended their control across much of Inner Asia and were influential in promoting trade into Eastern Europe and the Byzantine Empire. The Uyghurs received huge quantities of Chinese silk in exchange for horses. Sogdians played a role in the transmis- sion of Manichaeism—another of the major Middle Eastern religions—to the Uyghurs in the 8th century, by which time both Islam and Eastern Christianity had also made their way to China. With the final conquest of the Sogdian homeland by Arab armies in the early 8th century, Sogdian influence declined. Muslim merchants of various ethnicities would replace the Sogdians in key roles controlling Silk Road trade.

Tombs ofthe 5th to 8th century, along the northern routes connecting China and Central Asia, contain abundant evi- dence of east-west interaction. There are numerous coins from Sasanian Iran, examples of Middle Eastern and Central Asian metalwork, glass from the eastern Mediterranean, and much more. By the time of the Tang Dynasty (618-906), which managed once again to extend Chinese control into Central Asia, foreign culture was all the rage among the Chinese elite: everything from makeup and hair styles to dance and music. Even women played polo, a game imported from Persia.

THE IMPACT OF THE ARABS AND THE MONGOLS

By the second half of the 8th century—with the consolida- tion of Arab control in Central Asia and the establisbment of the Abbassid Caliphate, with its capital at Baghdad—western Asia entered a new period of prosperity. Many threads made up the complex fabric of what we tend to designate simply as "Islamic civilization." Earlier Persian traditions continued, and the expertise of Eastern Christians contributed to the

14 VOLUME 52, NUMBER 3 EXPEDITION

CHRONOLOGY OF SELECTED TRAVELERS

136-125,119-115 BCE. Zhang Qian, emissary sent by Han Dynasty Emperor Wu Di to the "Western Regions," who sup-

plied important commercial and political intelligence.

629-643 CE. Xuanzang (Hsuan-tsang), Chinese Buddhist monk who traveled through Inner Asia to India, studied there,

and once back in the Chinese capital Chang'an (Xian) was an

important translator of Buddhist texts.

821. Tamim ibn Bahr, Arab emissary, who visited the impres- sive capital city of the Uyghurs in the Orkhon River valley in

Mongolia.

1253-1255. William of Rubruck (Ruysbroeck), Franciscan missionary who traveled all the way to the Mongol Empire

capital of Karakorum and wrote a remarkably detailed account

about what he saw.

1271-1295. Marco Polo, Venetian who accompanied his father and uncle back to China and the court of Yuan Emperor Kublai Khan. Marco entered his service; after returning to Europe dictated a romanticized version of his travels while in a Genoese prison. Despite its many inaccuracies, his account

is the best known and arguably most influential of the early

European narratives about Asia.

1325-1354. Abu Abd Allah Muhammad Ibn Battuta, Moroccan whose travels even eclipsed Marco Polo's in their

extent, as he roamed far and wide between West Africa and

China, and once home dictated an often remarkably detailed

description of what he saw.

1403-1406. Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo, Spanish ambassador to Timur (Tamerlane), who carefully described his route through

northern Iran and the flourishing capital city of Samarkand.

14131415, 1421-1422, 1431-1433. Ma Huan, Muslim interpreter who accompanied the famous Ming admiral Zheng

He (Cheng Ho) on his fourth, sixth, and seventh expeditions

to the Indian Ocean and described the geography and com-

mercial emporia along the way.

1664-1667, 1671-1677. John Chardin, a Erench Hugenot jeweler who spent significant time in the Caucasus, Persia,

and India and wrote one of the major European accounts of

Safavid Persia.

SILK ROAD TIMELINE

Mediterranean

Northen India Pakistan Afghanistan j

Central Asia

East Asia

www.PENN.MUSEUM/EXPEDITION I5

emergence of Baghdad as a major intellectual center. Even though Chinese silk continued to be imported, centers of silk production were established in Central Asia and north- ern Iran. Considerable evidence has been found regarding importation of Chinese ceramics into the Persian Gulf in the 8th through the 10th century. The importance of maritime trade for the transmission of Chinese goods would continue to grow as Muslim merchants established themselves in the ports of southeast China. The Chinese connection had a

substantial impact on artistic production in the Middle Fast, where ceramicists devised new techniques in order to imitate Chinese wares. Conversely, the transmission of blue-and- white pottery decoration moved from the Middle East to China. The apogee ofthese developments came substantially later in the period ofthe Mongol Empire, when in the 13th and 14th centuries much of Eurasia came under the control ofthe most successful of all the Inner Asian dynasties whose homeland was in the steppes of Mongolia.

i 6 VOLUME 52, NUMBER 3 EXPEDITION

Under the Mongols, we can document for the first time the travel of Europeans all the way across Asia, the most famous examples being the Franciscan monks lohn of Plano CÀupini and William of Rubruck in the first half ofthe 13th century, and Marco Polo a few decades later. ( ienoese merchant families took up residence in Chinese port cities, and for a good many decades there was an active Roman Catholic missionary'church in China. The reign of Kublai Khan in China and the establishment of the Mongol Ilkhanid regime in Iran in the second half of the 13th century was a period of particularly extensive exchange of artisans (granted, most of them probably conscripted) and various kinds of technical specialists. \\ hile tlieir long-term impact may have been limited, the exchanges included the transmission of medical and astronomical knowledge. There is much here to temper the view that the impact of the Mongol conquests was primarily a destructive one.

1 )espite the rapid collapse of the Mongol Empire in the 14th century, under their Ming Dynasty successors in (>hina and the limurids in the Middle East, active commercial and artistic exchange between East and

The Mongol Ilkhanid palace at Takht-i Suleyman in northwestern Iran (1270-1275) was probably the source of this lusterware tile with a Chinese dragon motif. From the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (no. C.1970-1910).

This modern sculpture, shown with the Registan monuments, Samarkand, in the background, is evocative of the Silk Road. The buildings are the 15th century medrese (religious school) of Ulugh Beg and the 17th century Shir Dor medrese.

West continued into the 16th century. Timurid Samarkand and Herat were centers of craft production and the caravan trade. The early Ming sponsored the sending of huge fleets through the Indian Ocean, which must have flooded the mar- kets in the West with Chinese goods, among them tbe increas- ingly popular celadon (pale green) and blue-and-white porce- lain. The centers of Chinese ceramic production clearly began to adapt to the tastes of foreign markets, whether in Southeast Asia or the Middle East. The legacy of this can be seen in the ceramics produced in northern Iran, which decorated palaces and shrines, and in the later collections of imported porcelain assembled by the Ottoman and Safavid rulers in the 16th and 17th centuries. Persian painting, which reached its apogee in the 15th and 16th centuries, was substantially influenced by C^hinese models.

Conventional histories of the Silk Roads stop with the European Age of Discovery and the opening of maritime routes to the East in the late 15th century. Of course, there had already long been extensive maritime trade between the Middle East, South Asia, Southwest Asia, and East Asia. Undoubtedly the

relative value of overland and sea trade now changed, as did the identity of those who controlled commerce. Yet, despite growing political disorders disrupting the overlatid routes, many of them continued to flourish down through the 17th century. New trading diasporas emerged, with Indian and Armenian merchants now playing important roles. Trade in traditional products such as horses and spices continued, as did the transmission of substantial amounts of silver to pay for the Eastern goods. Among the Chinese goods now much in demand was tea, whose export to the Inner Asian pastoral- ists had grown substantially during the period ofthe Yuan and early Ming dynasties. Trade along the Silk Roads continued, even if transformed in importance, into the 20th century.

RE-DISCOVERY OE THE SILK ROADS

An important chapter in the history of the Silk Roads is the story of their re-discovery in modern times. Over the ceiitu-

On the left is a Ming porcelain dish created in the Jingdezhen kilns, dated 1403-1424. It was donated to the shrine of Shaykh Safi al-Din at Ardebil (northwestern Iran) by Safavid Shah Abbas I m 1611. On the right is a blue and white ceramic imitation of Chinese porcelain, probably from Samarkand, dated 1400-1450, which was produced by craftsmen conscripted in 1402 in Damascus. Both dishes from the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (no. 1712-1816; no. C.206-1984).

i 8 VOLUME 5 2 , NUMBER 3 EXPEDITION

MARCO POLO'S TRAVELS: MYTH OR FACT?

N HIS OWN LIFETIME and even today, Marco Polo's account of his travels has

been branded a falsification. A late medieval reader might have asked how it is

.. that there could be such wonders about which we have never heard. Why is it,

the modern critic muses, that Marco so often seems to get the facts wrong or fails to

mention something we think he should have included such as the Great Wall or foot-

binding? Of course in any age, the first descriptions ofthe previously unknown are

likely to engender skepticism. Accuracy in reporting may be conditioned by precon-

ceived notions, the degree to which the traveler actually saw something or perhaps

only heard about it secondhand, and the purpose for which an account was set down. i

Marco had his biases—he was an apologist for Kublai Khan and, it seems, really did I

work for the Mongols. As an official in their administration, he would not necessarily I

have mixed with ordinary Chinese. When he was in China, much ofthe Great Wall

was in ruins and thus might simply not have seemed worthy of comment. Where

he reports on Mongol customs and certain aspects ofthe court, he can be very precise. If his descriptions of cities seem

stereotyped, the reason may have been that they indeed appeared equally large and prosperous when judged by European

standards. In any event, to convey the wonders ofthe Great Khan's dominions required a certain amount of hyperbole.

It seems unlikely that Marco took notes along the way. Mistakes can thus easily be attributed to faulty memory as well as

the circumstances in which a professional weaver of romances, Rusticello of Pisa, recorded and embellished Marco's oral

account while the two were in a Genoese prison. Even if Marco's account still challenges modern scholars, there can be no

question about its impact in helping to transform a previously very limited European knowledge of Asia.

ries, many of the historic cities along the Inner Asian routes declined and disappeared as a result of climate change (where water supplies dried up) or changes in the political map. Only episodically did the ancient sites attract the attention of local rulers; at best, oral tradition presen'ed legends which bore little relationship to the earlier history ofthe ruins. In Europe, it was travel accounts such as that of Marco Polo which helped to alert early explorers of Central Asia to the possibil- it)' of unearthing traces of Silk Road civilizations now buried beneath the desert sands.

The foundation for modern Silk Road studies was laid between the late 1880s and the eve of World War I. Somewhat by accident, the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin di.scovered sev- eral ofthe ruined towns along the southern Silk Road, includ- ing I )andaii L'iliq, north of Khotan, and Loulan, near the dried- up bed of Lake Lop Nur. Inspired by such information and the trickle of antiquities that was now coming out of Central Asia, the 1 lungarian born Aurel Stein, an employee of the

British Indian government, inaugurated serious archaeologi- cal exploration ofthe sites in western China. His most lamous accomplishment was to purchase from the self-appointed keeper ofthe Mogao cave temples near Dunhuang in 1907 a significant part of a treasure trove of manuscripts and paint- ings discovered there only a few years earlier. A year later, the Erench sinologist Paul Pelliot shipped another major portion of this collection back to Europe. In the meantime, pursuing leads suggested by earlier Russian exploration, German expe- ditions had been active along the northern Silk Road. There they removed large chunks of murals from the most impor- tant Buddhist cave temples in the Turfan and Kucha regions and sent them back to Berlin. The Germans also found manu- script fragments and imagery from Christian and Manichaen temples. Such was the quantity and range of the textual and artistic materials obtained by these early expeditions that their analysis is still far from complete, l'art of the challenge was to decipher previously unknown languages and scripts. The

WWW.PENN.MUSEUM/EXPKDITION 19

MERCHANT DIASPORAS AND OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SILK ROAD TRADE

UR KNOWLEDGE OF THE mechanisms for commercial

exchange along the Silk Roads is still limited. Most com-

merce was "short-haul" between one oasis or town and

the next, and probably never generated any written records. There

were also long-distance caravans and merchant diasporas often

located far from the "home office." The Sogdians were involved in

long-distance trade, documented first in Sogdian letters written by

members of that diaspora in the early 4th century, and later from

documents unearthed in the Turfan oasis, among them a famous

example of a contract for the purchase of a slave. Religious affilia-

tion may have bound communities of entrepreneurs who were oth-

erwise isolated minorities in larger population groups. Thus Eastern

Christians (Nestorians) played important roles in trade from the

Middle East to India and beyond. With the rise of Islam, it was not

long before Muslim merchants were resident in the ports of south-

east China and in the Chinese capital of Chang'an. A vast repository

of Hebrew documents preserved in Cairo describes the activities of a

far-flung Jewish community all across the Mediterranean world into

Eastern Europe and through the Middle East. Italian merchants were

active all along the Silk Roads, even sending their representatives to

China in the time of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty.

Although Middle Eastern silk production was by now very sub-

stantial, imports of Chinese raw silk were significant in the emergence

of Italy as a major center of silk weaving. One of the most valuable

sources about products and prices is a commercial handbook com-

piled by the Elorentine agent Pegalotti in Constantinople in the 14th

century. In it, he reports that the routes to China are generally safe for

travel. By the late 16th and 17th centuries, Armenian Christians were

placed in charge of the Safavid (Persian) silk trade. One of the most

remarkable documents from this late period in the history of the Silk

Roads is an account book by an Armenian, Hohvannes, who started

at the home office in a suburb of Isfahan, traveled south to Shiraz,

then on to the Indian Ocean coast, where he boarded a ship to India.

Once he arrived in the Mughal Empire, he continued his buying and

selling, aided by a mechanism for cashing in letters of credit and for

shipping goods back home even as he went on, ultimately spending

time in Lhasa before returning to India. Surprisingly, Hohvannes

used double-entry bookkeeping and thus has left us an invaluable,

detailed account of goods and prices.

belated Chinese response to what they came to characterize as a plundering of their antiquities finally put a stop to most foreign exploration by the mid-1930s.

In recent decades, new excavations have added substantially to our knowledge of this part of Asia. One focus of Chinese archaeol- ogy has been on the very early cultures of Inner Asia, which antedate the traditional "begin- ning of the Silk Roads." The ongoing discover- ies from locations such as the Astana cemetery, dating from the lang period, are enabling us to now write a serious social and economic history of some of the flourishing oasis com- munities, in a time when silk was still a major currency that fueled commerce.

Our knowledge of the cultures in the northern steppes commenced with the work ot Russian archaeologists beginning at the end of the 19th century. Russian expeditions organized by the famous Orientalist Wilhelm Radloff documented sites in .southern Siberia and northern Mongolia, providing some of the first evidence about "cities in the steppe" and helping to publicize the earliest texts in a Turkic language. Russian-Mongolian expeditions revealed the richness of Xiongnu elite burials at the site of Noyon uul (Noin Lila) in the moun- tains of north-central Mongolia, and were responsible for the first serious excavation of the 13th century capital of the Mongol Empire, Karakorum. Archaeology at sites throughout the Eurasian steppes has resulted in draiiiatic discoveries, and forced us to question many of our assumptions about when meaningful exchange across all of Eurasia began.

Yet this is only part of the story, for equally dramatic discoveries have been made in recent years regarding maritime trade. Erom the East China Sea to the Mediterranean, naud- cal archaeology is documenting the cargoes of everything from scrap metal to fine porcelain. Excavations along the Red Sea and the East African coasts have expanded our knowledge

2 0 VOLUME 52, EXPEDITION

of contacts with India and the Far East. Although long known from ("la.ssical texts, the archaeological evidence of Roman trade with India continues to grow. Overall there is now a much greater appreciation ofthe importance of long-distance trade through the Middle East starting in the Bron/e Age and continuing well into the era when first the Portuguese and then the Dutch and Hnglish began to dom- inate the Indian Ocean. Maritime trade throughout history has been an integral part of Eurasian exchange.

So the "Silk Roads" did not begin when I Ian Emperor Wu Di .sent his emissary Zhang Oian t̂ > the West in the 2nd century BCE any more than they ended when Vasco Da (iania pioneered the route to India around the Cape of ( iood 1 lope. Our current "Age of Discovery" concern- ing the histor)' ofthe Silk Roads, employing sophisticated

A mural brought back to Berlin by German archaeologists depicts Uyghur Buddhist devotees. It was found in Bezeklik. Temple 9. in the Turfan region, and dates to the 8th to 9th century CE. From the Collection of the Museum of Asian Art. Berlin (MIK III 6876a).

f

f'lf

A mural of donors (Tocharian princes?) from 8 ("Cave of the Sixteen Swordbearers"). has to 432-538 CE. Note the red hair on the men and the intentional defacement of the mural. From the Collection of the Museum of Asian Art. Berlin (MIK III 8691).

EUM/EXPEDITION 21

analytical tools such as DNA testing and remote sensing from satellites, at the very least should persuade us that the study of this history is still young. Who knows what secrets remain to be uncovered from the desert sands? f^

DANIEL c . WAUGH ÍS Professor Emeritus in History, International Studies, ami Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is the current direc- tor ofthe Silk Road Seattle Project and editor of the journal ofthe Silkroad Eoumiation.

For Further Reading

Baumer, Christoph. Soutiiern Silk Road: In the Footsteps of Sir Aurel

Stein and Sven Hedin. Bangkok: Orchid Press, 2000.

Hulsewé, F. P., and M. A. N. Loewe. China in Central Asia: The Early Stage: 12S B.C.-A.D. 23. An Annotated Translation of Chapters 61 and 96 ofthe History ofthe Former Han Dynasty Leiden: Brill, 1979.

Jackson, Peter, and David Morgan, trans, and eds. The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck: His Journey to the Court of the Great Khan Möngke 1253-1255. London: Hakluyt Society, 1990.

Juliano, Annette L., and Judith A. Lerner. Monks and Merchants: Silk Road Treasures from Northwest China: Gansu and Ningxia, 4th-7th Century. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., with The Asia Society, 2001.

Komaroff, Linda, and Stefano Carboni. The Legacy of Genghis

Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256-1353.

New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale

University Press, 2002.

Qi, Xiaoshan, and Wang Bo. The Ancient Culture in Xinjiang along

the Silk Road. Ürümqi: Xinjiang renmin chubanshe, 2008.

Tucker, Jonathan. The Silk Road: Art and History. London: Art

Media Resources, 2003.

Whitfleld, Roderick, Susan Whitfield, and Neville Agnew. Cave

Temples of Mogao: Art and History on the Siik Road. Los Angeles:

Getty Institute and Museum, 2000.

Whitfleld, Susan. Life along the Silk Road. London: John Murray,

1999.

Whitfield, Susan, and Ursula Sims-Williams. The Silk Road: Trade,

Travel, War and Faith. Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2004.

Websites

Digital Silk Road (http://dsr.nii.ac.jp/).

Silk Road Seattle |http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad).

The International Dunhuang Project (http://idp.bLuk).

The Silkroad Foundation (http://silkroadfoundation.org).

junk near Ca Mau, Vietnam. The t8i and saucers are from the Jingdezh and were made around 1725, apparenti' the year that the ship sank en route froi Guangzhou to Batavia (Jakarta). From the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (nos. FE.49:2 to 179:1, 2-2007).

Copyright of Expedition is the property of University of Pennsylvania and its content may not be copied or

emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission.

However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.