The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

by Peter Frankopan

By the time I was a teenager, I had become uneasy about the relentlessly narrow geographic focus of my classes at school, which concentrated solely on western Europe and the United States and left most of the rest of the world untouched.

When I read about Arab geographers whose works were accompanied by charts that seemed upside down and put the Caspian Sea at the centre of the world, I was transfixed—as

This region is where the world’s great religions burst into life, where Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism jostled with each other. It is the cauldron where language groups competed, where Indo-European, Semitic and Sino-Tibetan tongues wagged alongside those speaking Altaic, Turkic and Caucasian.

where discoveries in the Americas altered the prices of goods in China and led to a surge in demand in the horse markets of northern India.

In the late nineteenth century, this sprawling web of connections was given a name by an eminent German geologist, Ferdinand von Richthofen (uncle of the First World War flying ace the “Red Baron”) that has stuck ever since: “Seidenstraßen”—the Silk Roads.

Today, Jalalabad and Herat in Afghanistan, Fallujah and Mosul in Iraq or Homs and Aleppo in Syria seem synonymous with religious fundamentalism and sectarian violence. The present has washed away the past: gone are the days when the name of Kabul conjured up images of the gardens planted and tended by the great Bābur, founder of the Mughal Empire in India.

The mantle of progress shifted, however, in the early modern period as a result of two great maritime expeditions that took place at the end of the fifteenth century. In the course of six years in the 1490s, the foundations were laid for a major disruption to the rhythm of long-established systems of exchange.

The discoveries changed patterns of interaction and trade, and effected a remarkable change in the world’s political and economic centre of gravity. Suddenly, western Europe was transformed from its position as a regional backwater into the fulcrum of a sprawling communication, transportation and trading system: at a stroke, it became the new mid-point between east and west.

“The Persians are greatly inclined to adopt foreign customs,” he wrote: the Persians were prepared to abandon their own style of dress when they concluded that the fashions of a defeated foe were superior, leading them to borrow styles from the Medes as well as from the Egyptians.

The willingness to adopt new ideas and practices was an important factor in enabling the Persians to build an administrative system that allowed the smooth running of an empire which incorporated many different peoples.

As a child, be well-behaved. As a youth, be self-controlled. As an adult, be just. As an elder, be wise. As one dying, be without pain.

Indeed, there is a correlation not only in the date of the earliest statues of the Buddha, but also in their appearance and design: it seems that it was Apollo that provided the template, such was the impact of Greek influences. Hitherto, Buddhists had actively refrained from visual representations; competition now forced them to react, to borrow and to innovate.

This may be why it is possible that borrowings can be detected across great works of literature. It has been suggested, for instance, that the Rāmāyaṇa, the great early Sanskrit epic, owes a debt to the Iliad and to the Odyssey, with the theme of the abduction of Lady Sita by Rāvaṇa a direct echo of the elopement of Helen with Paris of Troy.

Influences and inspiration flowed in the other direction too, with some scholars arguing that the Aeneid was in turn influenced by Indian texts such as the Mahābhārata.

For Constantine—and the Roman Empire—had found God; and the new faith was from the east too. Surprisingly, it came not from Persia or from India, but from an unpromising province where three centuries earlier Pontius Pilate had found infamy as governor. Christianity was about to fan out in all directions.

The equation was as simple as it was powerful: a society protected and favoured by the right god, or gods, thrived; those promising false idols and empty promises suffered.

But in fact every aspect of early Christianity was Asian. Its geographic focal point, of course, was Jerusalem, together with the other sites related to Jesus’ birth, life and crucifixion; its original language was Aramaic, a member of the Semitic group of tongues native to the Near East; its theological backdrop and spiritual canvas was Judaism,

Zoroastrianism became synonymous with Persia. It did not take much for this religion to be seen as a tool of occupation rather than a form of spiritual liberation. It was no coincidence, then, that some began to look to Christianity precisely as an antidote to the heavy-handed promotion of beliefs from the Persian centre.

It is ironic, therefore, that while Constantine is famous for being the Emperor who laid the basis for the Christianisation of Europe, it is never noted that there was a price to pay for his embrace of a new faith: it spectacularly compromised Christianity’s future in the east.

Although it is tempting to dismiss such comments as signs of bigotry, examinations of skeletal remains show that the Huns practised artificial cranial deformation on their young, bandaging the skull to flatten the frontal and occipital bones by applying pressure to them. This caused the head to grow in a distinctly pointed manner.

Literacy levels plummeted; building in stone all but disappeared, a clear sign of collapse of wealth and ambition; long-distance trade that once took pottery from factories in Tunisia as far as Iona in Scotland collapsed, replaced by local markets dealing only with exchange of petty goods; and as measured from pollution in polar ice-caps in Greenland there was a major contraction in smelting work, with levels falling back to those of prehistoric times.

Indeed, even in the Middle Ages, there were many more Christians in Asia than there were in Europe.50 After all, Baghdad is closer to Jerusalem than to Athens, while Teheran is nearer the Holy Land than Rome, and Samarkand is closer to it than Paris and London. Christianity’s success in the east has long been forgotten.

As religions came into contact with each other, they inevitably borrowed from each other. Although it is difficult to trace this accurately, it is striking that the halo became a common visual symbol across Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian and Christian art, as a link between the earthly and the divine, and as a marker of radiance and illumination that was important in all these faiths.

This was not far enough for some. John Chrysostom, archbishop of Constantinople at the turn of the fourth century, urged that the liturgy should be more exciting, complaining that it was difficult for Christians to compete with the theatricality of the synagogue where drums, lyres, harps and other musical instruments made for entertainment during worship—as did actors and dancers brought in to enliven proceedings.

There was a theological logic to this dualistic approach, usually called Gnosticism, which argued that preaching in terms that had understandable cultural reference points and used accessible language was an obvious way to spread the message.

In fact, there was considerable interest and exchange passing in the other direction, as an admiring seventh-century Chinese text makes plain. Syria, the author wrote, was a place that “produces fire-proof cloth, life-restoring incense, bright moon-pearls, and night-lustre gems. Brigands and robbers are unknown, but the people enjoy happiness and peace. None but illustrious laws prevail; none but the virtuous are raised to sovereign power. The land is broad and ample, and its literary productions are perspicuous and clear.”

God sends apostles, Muḥammad was told by the angel Jibrīl (or Gabriel), to deliver good news or to give warnings.44 Muḥammad had been chosen as a messenger by the Almighty. There was much darkness in the world, he was told, many things to fear,

To the modern eye, Christianity and Islam seem to be diametrically opposed, but in the early years of their coexistence relations were not so much pacific as warmly encouraging. And if anything, the relationship between Islam and Judaism was even more striking for its mutual compatibility.

It provided the basis for leaps and bounds in algebra, applied mathematics, trigonometry and astronomy—the latter, in part, driven by the practical need to know in which direction Mecca lay so that prayers could be offered correctly.

While the Muslim world took delight in innovation, progress and new ideas, much of Christian Europe withered in the gloom, crippled by a lack of resources and a dearth of curiosity.

Augustine had been positively hostile to the concept of investigation and research. “Men want to know for the sake of knowing,” he wrote scornfully, “though the knowledge is of no value to them.” Curiosity, in his words, was nothing more than a disease.

despite the apparent unity conferred by the cloak of religion, there was still bitter division within the Islamic world. Three major political centres had evolved by the start of the 900s: one was centred on Córdoba and Spain; one on Egypt and the Upper Nile; and the third on Mesopotamia and (most of) the Arabian peninsula, and they fought with each other over matters of theology as well as for influence and authority.

These quickly solidified into two competing arguments, championed by Sunnī and Shīʿa interpretations, with the latter arguing passionately that only the descendant of Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, should rule as caliph, and the former arguing for a broader understanding.

One of the most famous correspondents was Ibn Faḍlān, who was sent into the steppes in the early tenth century in response to a request by the leader of the Volga Bulghārs for learned scholars to come and explain the teachings of Islam.

When the walls of the city were finally breached after a six-week siege, the attackers were primed to shed blood. As one who witnessed the carnage that followed put it, Jerusalem was soon filled with dead bodies, corpses piled up “on mounds as big as houses outside the city gates. No one has ever heard of such a slaughter.”

Saladin sought out Reynald of Châtillon personally, and beheaded him.

He urged that kings, princes, barons and cities that were arguing with each other should set aside their differences and respond to what had happened. This was a frank admission that, for all the rhetoric about the knighthood being motivated by faith and piety, the reality was that self-interest, local rivalries and squabbling were the order of the day. Jerusalem had fallen,

Constantinople’s physical riches were spirited away to churches, cathedrals, monasteries and private collections all over western Europe. Sculptures of horses that had stood proudly at the Hippodrome were loaded on to ships and transported to Venice where they were mounted above the entrance to St. Mark’s Cathedral; innumerable relics and precious objects were likewise transported to the city, where they remain today, admired by tourists as examples of fine Christian craftsmanship rather than war booty.

This now became the Mongol capital, designed to crown the achievements of taking control of the entire region between the Pacific and the Mediterranean. The new metropolis has retained its importance ever since: Beijing.

Rather than forming a grand alliance with the Mongols against Muslim Egypt, the English king was forced to head to Scotland to put down the rebellion of William Wallace. With other European monarchs similarly preoccupied, the Christian presence in the Holy Land finally came to an end: two centuries after the knights of the First Crusade had captured Jerusalem, the last footholds gave way.

One important reason for the boom in Venice and Genoa was the skill and foresight they showed in feeding their customers’ desires—and those of the traders who came from other cities in Europe to buy the goods that had been brought there.

5 As any trader knows, margins count for everything. There was a strong incentive, therefore, to ship through the Black Sea—which only served to make this an even more important route to the east.

In fact, the Mongols’ success lay not in indiscriminate brutality but in their willingness to compromise and co-operate, thanks to the relentless effort to sustain a system that renewed central control.

Influences from the east even lay behind the hennin, the most distinctive fashion accessory of the Renaissance across Europe. The conical headgear favoured by ladies and so visible in the portraiture of the fourteenth century onwards appears to have been directly inspired by the distinctive hats worn at the Mongol court in this period.

But, like many travellers’ accounts of this period, it is riddled with inaccuracies and semi-mystical beliefs. Mecca, for example, was not home to the house of the Buddha, nor a location where Buddhists came once a year on pilgrimage; there was no land where women reproduced by “exposing themselves naked to the full force of the south wind.” Melons in Spain did not measure six foot in diameter, and could not feed more than twenty men; nor did sheep in Europe grow to the height of a full-grown man, to be cut open each spring in order to allow a dozen pounds of fat to be taken out before being stitched up again with no after-effects.

Europe lost at least one-third of its population to the plague, and perhaps much more, with conservative estimates of the number of dead placed somewhere around the 25 million mark in an assumed total population of 75 million.

finally began to peter out in the early 1350s that one source noted a “shortage of servants, craftsmen, and workmen, and agricultural workers and labourers.” This gave considerable negotiating powers to those who had previously been at the lower end of the social and economic spectrum. Some simply “turned their noses up at employment, and could scarcely be persuaded to serve the eminent unless for triple wages.”66 This was hardly an exaggeration: empirical data shows that urban wages rose dramatically in the decades after the Black Death.

The empowerment of the peasantry, of labourers and of women was matched by a weakening of the propertied classes, as landlords were forced into accepting lower rents for their holdings—deciding

Finally, in 1453, the imperial capital fell, the capture of one of the greatest cities of Christendom a triumph for Islam, which was once again in the ascendant. In Rome, there were accounts of men crying and beating their chests when news came through that Constantinople had fallen, and of prayers being offered by the Pope for those trapped in the city.

Based on the Byzantine calendar that was used in Russia, the timing seemed to be crystal clear. Using the date of the Creation as 5,508 years before Christ, the world was going to end on 1 September 1492.