K is for Kushan

Vima Kadphises and Shiva, photo from columbia. edu.

You want to study the Romans?
You ought to study the Kushans.

Prof. Craig Benjamin, “Foundations of Eastern Civilization”

The Kushan dynasty may be the greatest empire that you’ve never heard of. 

The Kushans practically invented the Silk Road. At least the middle part of the road, since I noted previously that the Han dynasty forged paths across the mountains to create the road from the east and Darius’ Achmaenid dynasty had a “Royal Road” that crossed from Greece through Persia from the west. Craig Benjamin, who taught a crackerjack 45-lecture Great Course on Eastern Civilizations (yes that’s where I got some of this from), started out an ancient Rome scholar. But he ended up writing his dissertation on the Kushans, that dynasty that spread from Persia across northern Afghanistan and India, a terrain that is mountainous but traversable. 

Today, it’s known as the Hindu Kush.

The Hindu Kush is a place but also a people who spread far across the territory. Wikipedia.
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J is for Jade Gate

The Remains of the Jade Gate, photo from Silk Road Tours.

Border control. That’s what we would call the Jade Gate today, a series of fortress and structures that guarded the pass from northern China to the entire west. The Silk Road in the northeastern part of Asia slid between the stark Taklamakan Desert , one of the harshest in the world, and the ridge of Tien Shan mountains. As the road skirted this harsh climate for 600 miles, it dropped down through a “bottleneck” into a beautiful and fertile countryside. Xi’an, the end or beginning of the road depending your point of view, was right on the other side.

Yumenguang, Jade Gate, the bottleneck of the Silk Road. Map courtesy of Aurel Stein.

Yumen Pass

It was called jade because jade, the product, passed through going to and from China. The royals wore jade in their tombs. Today, a lot of the jade comes out of Myanmar and the mines in the south traversing north; in 150 BCE, there were a lot of options to push it through circulation, but the northern Chinese emperors surely wanted it.

Yet there were raiders to prey on the caravans, though they also would have had to hide in the desert or the mountains. And if they wanted to pour into China, they had to pass through this relatively small place, big enough for large raiding parties perhaps, but not a massive army.

The Han dynasty emperors built some barricades and placed guards along the barricades, as well as compelling the travelers to pass through the gate.

Yumen guan 玉門關 are derived from: yu 玉 = ‘jade’ + men 門 = ‘gate’, ‘door’;  guan 關 = ‘frontier-passes’.

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I is for Ibn Battutah

If you thought Giovanni da Pian’s 5000 miles across Asia was long, how about 73,000 miles?

Muslim scholar Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Battutah — in Arabic بُو عَبْد الله مُحَمَّد اِبْن عَبْد الله اللَّوَاتِيّ الطَّنْجِيّ اِبْن بَطُّوطَة — traveled all across the deserts of Asia Minor AND across northern Africa, southern Europe, eastern Europe, India, the southern oceans, and parts of China. It was enough to circumnavigate the globe three times. Battuta went so far, that there are multiple views of his trip, all of which could fit under the heading of “map porn,” a few of which I will include because I do just love me some maps.

Ibn Battuta traversed pieces of the Silk Route, including sea routes. Wikipedia.
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