I was going to write about the Upanishads because I haven’t focused much on Indian culture, and they had a huge influence on Silk Road trading, goods, art, and ideas. But when I looked up Upanishads, I read that they were an ontological….and Schopenhauer Vedic brahman interconnected universe … and my eyes rolled back in my head.
So in lieu of discussing very important but abstract Indian spiritual philosophical concepts, let’s talk about pirates instead.
Technically, Ulbricht is Silk-Road-related. Not that 12th century Silk Road, though. This is the dark web Silk Road.
The oud, the chant, the guzheng, and the morin khuur. There aren’t many stories of medieval bards out on the Silk Road, but there must have been. Even the conquerors appreciated art and music. The cities of Baghdad, Samarkand, Constantinople, and Hangzhou were considered the happening places to be back in the day. Marco Polo weaves music in and out of his stories of Cathay and of Alaoudin.
When any one of them opened his eyes, saw this delightful spot, and heard the delicious music and songs, he really believed himself in the state of blessedness.
Marco Polo, “On the Old Man of the Mountain”
Wikipedia shows range of medieval lute players.
Here’s a quick spin through some medieval instruments, with their links (sorry in advance if you run into a Youtube ad, but wait for the music!)
The Oud
The lute came out of Persia, an instrument with a neck, strings, and a rounded bowl for good sound. The Arabs called their version the oud. Apparently, it belongs to a class of instruments called chordophones, whose sound comes from vibrating strings. The singer Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965–1040) was known for his expertise.
No one still lives in Babylon. Luxor is an open-air museum, ancient ruins for tourists. Alexandria was burned down, Tenochtitlan is underground, and Çatalhöyük can hardly be spelled, let alone found.
Registan square in Samarkand, built @800 BCE. Wikipedia photo.
It’s not the oldest continuously inhabited city, yet 2800 years seems a pretty good pedigree. And if you’re going to write about the center of the Silk Road, only ONE city in the center, Samarkand would be it.
Samarkand survives.
“Samarkand” painted by Zommer, late 19th c. Wikimedia.
Oasis in the Desert
Remember the Oxus, remember the Hindu Kush and the Kushans a few alphabetic posts back? The Kush is a mountain range in northern India, and the Kushans and Sogdians spread across the land to its northwest. The Oxus, today the Amu Darya, flows from the those mountains to the northwest, to the Caspian and the once Aral Sea.
Above the Oxus, nestled in a long and unusual stripe of green across those mix of foothills, dirt, desert, and mountains, is the ancient city of Samarkand, the second-largest city in Uzbekistan. If you were to take a map of Asia and North Africa, squint and put your finger on the middle, you might exactly touch Samarkand.
