The world is changing around us. As we move into an era where the political, military and economic dominance of the west is coming under pressure, the sense of uncertainty is unsettling. While we ponder where the next threat might come from, how best to deal with religious extremism or how to negotiate with states who seem willing to disregard international law, networks and connections are quietly being knitted together across the spine of Asia; or rather, they are being restored. The Silk Roads are rising again.
Notes
Preface
1E. Wolf, Europe and the People without History (Berkeley, 1982), p. 5.
2A. Herrman, ‘Die älteste türkische Weltkarte (1076 n. Chr)’, Imago Mundi 1.1 (1935), 21–8, and also Mamud al-Kashghari, Dīwān lughāt al-turk: Compendium of the Turkic Dialects, ed. and tr. R. Dankhoff and J. Kelly, 3 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1982–5), 1, pp. 82–3. For the city’s location, V. Goryacheva, Srednevekoviye gorodskie tsentry i arkhitekturnye ansambli Kirgizii (Frunze, 1983), esp. pp. 54–61.
3For rising Chinese demand for luxury goods, see for example, Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia, Dipped in Gold: Luxury Lifestyles in China (2011); for India, see Ministry of Home Affairs, Houselisting and Housing Census Data (New Delhi, 2012).
4See for example, Transparency International, Corruption Perception Index 2013 (www.transparency.org); Reporters without Borders, World Press Freedom Index 2013–2014 (www.rsf.org); Human Rights Watch, World Report 2014 (www.hrw.org).
5Genesis 2:8–9. For perceptions on the location of the Garden of Eden, J. Dulumeau, History of Paradise: The Garden of Eden in Myth and Tradition (New York, 1995).
6For Mohenjo-daro and others, see J. Kenoyer, Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley (Oxford, 1998).
7Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian, Han Dynasty, tr. B. Watson, 2 vols (rev. edn, New York, 1971), 123, 2, pp. 234–5.
8F. von Richthofen, ‘Über die zentralasiatischen Seidenstrassen bis zum 2. Jahrhundert. n. Chr.’, Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin 4 (1877), 96–122.
9E. Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978). Also note the overwhelmingly positive and highly romanticised reaction of French thinkers like Foucault, Sartre and Godard to the east and to China in particular, R. Wolin, French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution and the Legacy of the 1960s: The Wind from the East (Princeton, 2010).
10Bābur-Nāma, tr. W. Thackston, Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor (London, 2006), pp. 173–4.
11W. Thackston, ‘Treatise on Calligraphic Arts: A Disquisition on Paper, Colors, Inks and Pens by Simi of Nishapur’, in M. Mazzaoui and V. Moreen (eds), Intellectual Studies on Islam: Essays Written in Honor of Martin B. Dickinson (Salt Lake City, 1990), p. 219.
12Al-Muqaddasī, Asanu-t-taqāsīm fī marifati-l-aqālīm, tr. B. Collins, Best Division of Knowledge (Reading, 2001), p. 252; Ibn al-Faqīh, Kitāb al-buldān, tr. P. Lunde and C. Stone, ‘Book of Countries’, in Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North (London, 2011), p. 113.
13Cited by N. di Cosmo, Ancient China and its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History (Cambridge, 2002), p. 137.
14For example, S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, ed. J. Strachey (New York, 1965), p. 564; J. Derrida, Résistances de la psychanalyse (Paris, 1996), pp. 8–14.
Chapter 1 – The Creation of the Silk Road
1C. Renfrew, ‘Inception of Agriculture and Rearing in the Middle East’, C.R. Palevol 5 (2006), 395–404; G. Algaze, Ancient Mesopotamia at the Dawn of Civilization: The Evolution of an Urban Landscape (Chicago, 2008).
2Herodotus, Historiai, 1.135, in Herodotus: The Histories, ed. and tr. A. Godley, 4 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1982), 1, pp. 174–6.
3See in general J. Curtis and St J. Simpson (eds), The World of Achaemenid Persia: History, Art and Society in Iran and the Ancient Near East (London, 2010).
4Herodotus, Historiai, 8.98, 4, p. 96; D. Graf, ‘The Persian Royal Road System’, in H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg, A. Kuhrt and M. Root (eds), Continuity and Change (Leiden, 1994), pp. 167–89.
5H. Rawlinson, ‘The Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun, Decyphered and Translated’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 11 (1849), 1–192.
6Ezra, 1:2. Also see Isaiah, 44:24, 45:3.
7R. Kent, Old Persian Grammar, Texts, Lexicon (New Haven, 1953), pp. 142–4.
8Herodotus, Historiai, 1.135, 1, pp. 174–6.
9Ibid., 1.214, 1, p. 268.
10Aeschylus, The Persians. Also note more ambivalent attitudes, P. Briant, ‘History and Ideology: The Greeks and “Persian Decadence”’, in T. Harrison (ed.), Greeks and Barbarians (New York, 2002), pp. 193–210.
11Euripides, Bakhai, in Euripides: Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulis, Rhesus, ed. and trans. D. Kovacs (Cambridge, MA, 2003), p. 13.
12Plutarch, Bioi Paralleloi: Alexandros, 32–3, in Plutarch’s Lives, ed. and tr. B. Perrin, 11 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1914–26), 7, pp. 318–26. He was wearing a lucky outfit to judge from a famous mosaic that adorned the grandest house in Pompeii, A. Cohen, Alexander Mosaic: Stories of Victory and Defeat (Cambridge, 1996).
13Quintus Curtius Rufus, Historiae Alexandri Magni Macedonis, 5.1, in Quintus Curtius Rufus: History of Alexander, ed. and tr. J. Rolfe, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1946), 1, pp. 332–4.
14M. Beard, ‘Was Alexander the Great a Slav?’, Times Literary Supplement, 3 July 2009.
15Arrian, Anabasis, 6.29, in Arrian: History of Alexander and Indica, ed. and tr. P. Brunt, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1976–83), 2, pp. 192–4; Plutarch also talks of the importance of Alexander’s pacific and generous approach, Alexandros, 59, 1, p. 392.
16Arrian, Anabasis, 3.22, 1, p. 300.
17Quintus Curtius Rufus, Historiae, 8.8, 2, p. 298.
18A. Shahbazi, ‘Iranians and Alexander’, American Journal of Ancient History 2.1 (2003), 5–38. Also see here M. Olbryct, Aleksander Wielki i swiat iranski (Gdansk, 2004); M. Brosius, ‘Alexander and the Persians’, in J. Roitman (ed.), Alexander the Great (Leiden, 2003), pp. 169–93.
19See above all P. Briant, Darius dans l’ombre d’Alexandre (Paris, 2003).
20For Huaxia, see C. Holcombe, A History of East Asia: From the Origins of Civilization to the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, 2010); for the wall, A. Waldron, ‘The Problem of the Great Wall of China’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 43.2 (1983), 643–63, and above all di Cosmo, Ancient China and its Enemies.
21See most recently J. Romm, Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the War for Crown and Empire (New York, 2011). It has been variously argued that Alexander died from typhoid, malaria, leukaemia, alcohol poisoning (or related illness) or infection from a wound; some contend that he was murdered, A. Bosworth, ‘Alexander’s Death: The Poisoning Rumors’, in J. Romm (ed.), The Landmark Arrian: The Campaigns of Alexander (New York, 2010), pp. 407–11.
22See R. Waterfield, Dividing the Spoils: The War for Alexander the Great’s Empire (Oxford, 2011).
23K. Sheedy, ‘Magically Back to Life: Some Thoughts on Ancient Coins and the Study of Hellenistic Royal Portraits’, in K. Sheedy (ed.), Alexander and the Hellenistic Kingdoms: Coins, Image and the Creation of Identity (Sydney, 2007), pp. 11–16; K. Erickson and N. Wright, ‘The “Royal Archer” and Apollo in the East: Greco-Persian Iconography in the Seleukid Empire’, in N. Holmes (ed.), Proceedings of the XIVth International Numismatic Congress (Glasgow, 2011), pp. 163–8.
24L. Robert, ‘De Delphes à l’Oxus: inscriptions grecques nouvelles de la Bactriane’, Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions (1968), 416–57. Translation here is by F. Holt, Thundering Zeus: The Making of Hellenistic Bactria (London, 1999), p. 175.
25J. Jakobsson, ‘Who Founded the Indo-Greek Era of 186/5 bce?’, Classical Quarterly 59.2 (2009), 505–10.
26D. Sick, ‘When Socrates Met the Buddha: Greek and Indian Dialectic in Hellenistic Bactria and India’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 17.3 (2007), 253–4.
27J. Derrett, ‘Early Buddhist Use of Two Western Themes’, Journal of
the Royal Asiatic Society 12.3 (2002), 343–55.
28B. Litvinsky, ‘Ancient Tajikistan: Studies in History, Archaeology and Culture (1980–1991)’, Ancient Civilisations 1.3 (1994), 295.
29S. Nath Sen, Ancient Indian History and Civilisation (Delhi, 1988), p. 184. Also see R. Jairazbhoy, Foreign Influence in Ancient India (New York, 1963), pp. 48–109.
30Plutarch, Peri tes Alexandrou tukhes he arête, 5.4 in Plutarch: Moralia, ed. and tr. F. Babitt et al., 15 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1927–76), 4, pp. 392–6; J. Derrett, ‘Homer in India: The Birth of the Buddha’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 2.1 (1992), 47–57.
31J. Frazer, The Fasti of Ovid (London, 1929); J. Lallemant, ‘Une Source de l’Enéide: le Mahabharata’, Latomus 18 (1959), 262–87; Jairazbhoy, Foreign Influence, p. 99.
32C. Baumer, The History of Central Asia: The Age of the Steppe Warriors (London, 2012), pp. 290–5.
33V. Hansen, The Silk Road (Oxford, 2012), pp. 9–10.
34Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian of China, 123, 2, p. 238.
35Ibid., 129, 2, p. 440.
36H. Creel, ‘The Role of the Horse in Chinese History’, American Historical Review 70 (1965), 647–72. The Dunhuang caves have many celestial horses painted on their walls, T. Chang, Dunhuang Art through the Eyes of Duan Wenjie (New Delhi, 1994), pp. 27–8.
37Recent excavations of the Emperor Wu’s mausoleum in Xi’an in 2011, Xinhua, 21 February 2011.
38Huan Kuan, Yan Tie Lun, cited by Y. Yu, Trade and Expansion in Han China: A Study in the Structure of Sino-Barbarian Economic Relations (Berkeley, 1967), p. 40.
39For example, Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian of China, 110, 2, pp. 145–6. For some comments on Xiongnu education, customs and fashions, pp. 129–30.
40See Yu, Trade and Expansion in Han China, pp. 48–54.
41Ibid., p. 47, n. 33; also here see R. McLaughlin, Rome and the Distant East: Trade Routes to the Ancient Lands of Arabia, India and China (London, 2010), pp. 83–5.
42Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian of China, 110, 2, p. 143.
43S. Durrant, The Cloudy Mirror: Tension and Conflict in the Writings of Sima Qian (Albany, NY, 1995), pp. 8–10.
44Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian of China, 123, 2, p. 235.
45E. Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of Tang Exotics (Berkeley, 1963), pp. 13–14.
46Hansen, Silk Road, p. 14.
47T. Burrow, A Translation of Kharoshthi Documents from Chinese Turkestan (London, 1940), p. 95.
48Hansen, Silk Road, p. 17.
49R. de Crespigny, Biographical Dictionary of Later Han to the Three Kingdoms (23–220 AD) (Leiden, 2007).
50M. R. Shayegan, Arsacids and Sasanians: Political Ideology in Post-Hellenistic and Late Antique Persia (Cambridge, 2011).
51N. Rosenstein, Imperatores victi: Military Defeat and Aristocratic Competition in the Middle and Late Republic (Berkeley, 1990); also S. Phang, Roman Military Service: Ideologies of Discipline in the Late Republic and Early Principate (Cambridge, 2008).
52P. Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians (Oxford, 2006), p. 6. For the prohibition on marriage, see above all S. Phang, Marriage of Roman Soldiers (13 BC–AD 235): Law and Family in the Imperial Army (Leiden, 2001).
53C. Howgego, ‘The Supply and Use of Money in the Roman World 200 b.c. to a.d. 300’, Journal of Roman Studies 82 (1992), 4–5.
54A. Bowman, Life and Letters from the Roman Frontier: Vindolanda and its People (London, 1994).
55Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheke Historike, 17.52, in The Library of History of Diodorus of Sicily, ed. and tr. C. Oldfather, 12 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1933–67), 7, p. 268. Modern scholars estimate Alexandria’s population to have been as high as half a million, for example R. Bagnall and B. Frier, The Demography of Roman Egypt (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 54, 104.
56D. Thompson, ‘Nile Grain Transport under the Ptolemies’, in P. Garnsey, K. Hopkins and C. Whittaker (eds), Trade in the Ancient Economy (Berkeley, 1983), pp. 70–1.
57Strabo, Geographika, 17.1, in The Geography of Strabo, ed. and tr. H. Jones, 8 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1917–32), 8, p. 42.
58Cassius Dio, Historia Romana, 51.21, in Dio’s Roman History, ed. and tr. E. Cary, 9 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1914–27), 6, p. 60; Suetonius, De Vita Cesarum. Divus Augustus, 41, in Suetonius: Lives of the Caesars, ed. and tr. J. Rolfe, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1997–8), 41, 1, p. 212; R. Duncan-Jones, Money and Government in the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 1994), p. 21; M. Fitzpatrick, ‘Provincializing Rome: The Indian Ocean Trade Network and Roman Imperialism’, Journal of World History 22.1 (2011), 34.
59Suetonius, Divus Augustus, 41, 1, pp. 212–14.
60Ibid., 28, 1, p. 192; Augustus’ claim is supported by the archaeological record, P. Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor, 1989).
61For taxes on the caravan routes: J. Thorley, ‘The Development of Trade between the Roman Empire and the East under Augustus’, Greece and Rome 16.2 (1969), 211. Jones, History of Rome, pp. 256–7, 259–60; R. Ritner, ‘Egypt under Roman Rule: The Legacy of Ancient Egypt’, in Cambridge History of Egypt, 1, p. 10; N. Lewis, Life in Egypt under Roman Rule (Oxford, 1983), p. 180.
62See Lewis, Life in Egypt, pp. 33–4; Ritner, ‘Egypt under Roman Rule’, in Cambridge History of Egypt, 1, pp. 7–8; A. Bowman, Egypt after the Pharaohs 332 BC–AD 642: From Alexander to the Arab Conquest (Berkeley, 1986) pp. 92–3.
63For the registration of births and deaths in Roman Egypt, R. Ritner, ‘Poll Tax on the Dead’, Enchoria 15 (1988), 205–7. For the census, including its date, see J. Rist, ‘Luke 2:2: Making Sense of the Date of Jesus’ Birth’, Journal of Theological Studies 56.2 (2005), 489–91.
64Cicero, Pro lege Manilia, 6, in Cicero: The Speeches, ed. and tr. H. Grose Hodge (Cambridge, MA, 1927), p. 26.
65Sallust, Bellum Catilinae, 11.5–6, in Sallust, ed. and tr. J. Rolfe (Cambridge, MA, 1931), p. 20; A. Dalby, Empire of Pleasures: Luxury and Indulgence in the Roman World (London, 2000), p. 162.
66F. Hoffman, M. Minas-Nerpel and S. Pfeiffer, Die dreisprachige Stele des C. Cornelius Gallus. Übersetzung und Kommentar (Berlin, 2009), pp. 5ff. G. Bowersock, ‘A Report on Arabia Provincia’, Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971), 227.
67W. Schoff, Parthian Stations of Isidore of Charax: An Account of the Overland Trade between the Levant and India in the First Century BC (Philadelphia, 1914). The text has often been seen as being concerned with trade routes; Millar shows that this is incorrect, ‘Caravan Cities’, 119ff. For the identification of Alexandropolis, see P. Fraser, Cities of Alexander the Great (Oxford, 1996), pp. 132–40.
68Strabo, Geographica, 2.5, 1, p. 454; Parker, ‘Ex Oriente’, pp. 64–6; Fitzpatrick, ‘Provincializing Rome’, 49–50.
69Parker, ‘Ex Oriente’, 64–6; M. Vickers, ‘Nabataea, India, Gaul, and Carthage: Reflections on Hellenistic and Roman Gold Vessels and Red-Gloss Pottery’, American Journal of Archaeology 98 (1994), 242; E. Lo Cascio, ‘State and Coinage in the Late Republic and Early Empire’, Journal of Roman Studies 81 (1981), 82.
70Cited by G. Parker, The Making of Roman India (Cambridge, 2008), p. 173.
71In H. Kulke and D. Rothermund, A History of India (London, 2004), 107–8.
72L. Casson (ed.), The Periplus Maris Erythraei: Text with Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Princeton, 1989), 48–9, p. 80; 56, p. 84.
73W. Wendrich, R. Tomber, S. Sidebotham, J. Harrell, R. Cappers and R. Bagnall, ‘Berenike Crossroads: The Integration of Information’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 46.1 (2003), 59–62.
74V. Begley, ‘Arikamedu Reconsidered’, American Journal of Archaeology 87.4 (1983), 461–81; Parker, ‘Ex Oriente’, 47–8.
75See T. Power, The Red Sea from Byzantium to the Caliphate, AD 500–1000 (Cairo, 2012).
76Tacitus, Annales, ed. H. Heubner (Stuttgart, 1983), 2.33, p. 63.
77Petronius, Satyricon, ed. K. Müller (Munich, 2003), 30–8, pp.
23–31; 55, p. 49.
78Martial, Epigrams, 5.37, in Martial: Epigrams, ed. and tr. D. Shackleton Bailey, 3 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1993), 1, p. 388.
79Talmud Bavli, cited by Dalby, Empire of Pleasures, p. 266.
80Juvenal, Satire 3, in Juvenal and Persius, ed. and tr. S. Braund (Cambridge, MA, 2004), pp. 172–4.
81Casson, Periplus Maris Erythraei, 49, p. 80; 56, p. 84; 64, p. 90.
82Seneca, De Beneficiis, 7.9, in Seneca: Moral Essays, ed. and tr. J. Basore, 3 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1928–35), 3, p. 478.
83Tacitus, Annales, 2.33, p. 63.
84Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, 6.20, in Pliny: The Natural History, ed. and tr. H. Rackham, 10 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1947–52), 2, p. 378.
85Ibid., 6.26, p. 414.
86Ibid., 12.49, p. 62.
87H. Harrauer and P. Sijpesteijn, ‘Ein neues Dokument zu Roms Indienhandel, P. Vindob. G40822’, Anzeiger der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist.Kl.122 (1985), 124–55; also see L. Casson, ‘New Light on Maritime Loans: P. Vindob. G 40822’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 84 (1990), 195–206, and F. Millar, ‘Looking East from the Classical World’, International History Review 20.3 (1998), 507–31.
88Casson, Periplus Maris Erythraei, 39, p. 74.
89J. Teixidor, Un Port roman du désert: Palmyre et son commerce d’Auguste à Caracalla (Paris, 1984); E. Will, Les Palmyréniens, la Venise des sables (Ier siècle avant–IIIème siècle après J.-C.) (Paris, 1992).
90Ammianus Marcellinus, Rerum Gestarum Libri Qui Supersunt, 14.3, in Ammianus Marcellinus, ed. and tr. J. Rolfe, 3 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1935–40), 1, p. 24.
91J. Cribb, ‘The Heraus Coins: Their Attribution to the Kushan King Kujula Kadphises, c. AD 30–80’, in M. Price, A. Burnett and R. Bland (eds), Essays in Honour of Robert Carson and Kenneth Jenkins (London, 1993), pp. 107–34.
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