Silk Roads is the accompanying publication to the current exhibition on display at the British Museum in London. Written by the Curators of the Silk Roads exhibition, Sue Brunning, Luk Yu-Ping and Elisabeth R O’Connell, this beautifully illustrated publication examines cross-cultural exchanges that occurred across Asia, Africa and Europe during 500 and 1000 CE.
Both the book and exhibition aim to reimagine the Silk Roads as a web of interlocking networks, linking Asia, Africa and Europe, Japan to Ireland and from the Arctic to Madagascar; the catalogue features high-quality images of exhibits from the British Museum, UK and international collections. The project is therefore an ambitious attempt to cover a vast region, incorporating a range of ethnicities, languages and belief systems.
Limiting the date range to 500–1000 CE, sensibly narrows the scope of this vast subject matter. This date range coincides with the fall of the Sassanian empire, a resurgent Byzantine empire under Emperor Justinian, the rise of Islam and China’s Tang dynasty. The Crusades, the Mongol conquests and Marco Polo’s travels—which are very much in the popular imagination of the “Silk Roads”—came about much later and are not featured here.

Composed of six chapters, the book is structured as a journey that begins in East Asia, through Central Asia and Arabia finally to Europe where surprising discoveries evidence trade and links to the Eastern extremities. Each of these chapters focuses on a particular geographic zone and are connected by shorter case studies that either introduce groups of people who traveled widely or significant sites notable for their syncretic contexts.
Starting in East Asia, the first chapter looks at the three capital cities: Nara in Japan, Gyeongju in Silla Korea and Chang’an (Xi’an) in Tang China and examines the impact of cross-cultural exchanges between Japan and the continent mainly through the spread of Buddhism. In the chapter “Three Capitals in East Asia”, Luk-Yu-Ping writes:
Archaeological findings from the three capitals of Nara, Geumseong and Chang’an, as well as from further afield, reveal a wide range of social, political and religious changes over the period 500 to 1000 from trends in fashion and eating habits, to popular entertainment, to burial customs and the growth and spread of religions. This evidence of exchange and mutual inspiration, as well as regional and longer-distance connections, demonstrates that Nara Japan, silla Korea and Tang China were embedded in Silk Road networks, which led to significant societal changes with a lasting impact.
From the 4th to 14th century, Dunhuang, China was the site of intense religious, commercial and cultural exchange. Around 25 km southeast are the Mogao Caves, a large Buddhist cave-temple complex. In 1900, the Daoist monk, Wang Yuanlu discovered the “Library Cave” or “Cave 17” that contained some 70,000 manuscripts, paintings, textiles and other artifacts which have transformed our understanding of the history and culture of this region.
During an expedition to Dunhuang in 1907, British-Hungarian archaeologist Marc Aurel Stein purchased manuscripts as well as other items from Cave 17 from the monk who had earlier discovered the site. A significant portion of the paintings, prints, textiles and two small wooden figures from this expedition are now part of the British Museum collection and some are featured in the publication.
The chapters on Arabia look at the rise of the Arab Caliphates in the midst of the decline of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires. In “Central Asia to Arabia”, Tim Williams and Luk Yu-ping write:
By the 630s, protracted warfare had exhausted both the Sasanian and the Byzantine empires. The Sasanians had depleted their treasury, leading to punitive taxation and turmoil. Arab forces took advantage of their weakness. Under the command of Caliph Khalid al-Walid, they first occupied Byzantium’s eastern provinces, before pushing into Sasanian heartlands. They captured Ctesiphon in 637, and in 642, under Caliph Umar, they crushed the Sasanian army of King Yazdegerd.
Over time, the material and visual culture of this region, from tiny coins to palaces and large-scale cities, offer further glimpses into the transition from the Sasanian and Byzantine empires to the establishment of the early Islamic caliphates. Coinage is the most obvious visual record of this transition as early Caliphs experimented with their visual identity by borrowing from past already long-established traditions. Newly-minted coins imitated and adapted those of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, indicating continuity in administrative and economic life.
One of the early case studies in the book, explores the remarkable Belitung shipwreck salvaged off the coast of an island of Indonesia. Discovered in 1998, the shipwreck was carrying some 60,000 pieces of Tang Chinese ceramics and other objects. The vessel was most likely on a return journey to Arabia or the Persian Gulf when it sank in the 800s. Its discovery revealed the extent of maritime trade between Tang China and the Abbasid Caliphate. The return cargo included early examples of Chinese blue-and-white wares and were based most likely on imported Arab prototypes. The shipment is testimony to the high demand for sophisticated Chinese Tang ceramics, especially considering ceramic technology was a nascent industry in 9th-century Iraq.
The last two chapters examine how Silk Road connections reached Europe. In 909, the Fatimid dynasty was established, and in 969 conquered Egypt where they established their capital in Cairo. For the first time in a millennium, Egypt’s wealth was no longer exported to capitals abroad such as Rome, Constantinople and Baghdad, and went on to form the basis of an extraordinarily wealthy empire attracting artisans, scholars and tradespeople from neighboring empires.
Rock crystal, sourced in Madagascar, was carved by skilled artisans who reached impressive levels of craftsmanship on thin-walled vessels and other objects. Ceramic craftmanship also reached new heights as potters migrated to the cosmopolitan Fatimid Egypt from the Abbasid empire that was experiencing economic decline.
The discovery of a significant trove of some 400,000 documents that were deposited by the local Jewish community in a geniza (storeroom) of a synagogue, known as the ”Cairo Geniza” reveal the records of a thriving Jewish community that had international social and economic links from al-Andalus to India and even to Southeast Asia. This significant corpus of documents forms an informative case study in the publication. In “Mediterranean Connections”, Elisabeth RO Connell writes:
There are, for example, extracts from the Qur’an written in Hebrew script. Distant textual traditions are represented by multiple manuscripts, such as Indian animal fables retold in Arabic. Kalila wa Dimna is the Arabic title for animal fables originating in Sanskrit around 300 BCE, passing through Middle Persian (Pahlavi) around 550, then Syriac by the end of the sixth century, and later translated into Arabic around 750. From the Arabic version, the fables were translated into Greek, Latin and Hebrew and back into Modern Persian. An entertaining work transmitting ethics and practical philosophy, Kalila wa Dimna was read in royal courts and showrooms, and the survival of multiple copies in the Cairo geniza shows that it was also appreciated by the Jewish community there.
From the caves of Dunhang, to the multicultural and cosmopolitan capitals of Fatimid Egypt and Cordoba, and into Europe, Silk Roads highlights important phases in human history where political stability enabled cosmopolitan societies to flourish. The resulting interconnectedness led to innovations as well as increased scholarship through transmission of ideas.
Distilling the “Silk Roads” into a 300-page museum catalogue is no easy task, yet Silk Roads manages to go into fair detail and breadth, introducing the reader to important developments in human history. The book features a bibliography that will interest academics as well as readers with general interest.
The publication is an important book in terms of updated research and offers new perspectives on how globally connected the world was a millennium ago.
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