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.
Yuan dynasty artist Zhao Mengfu, Autumn Colors on the Que and Hua Mountains, 1295, National Museum of Taipei
Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet…
Rudyard Kipling
East is a matter of perspective. East is a direction on a two-dimensional map, assuming north is up. To San Francisco, China is to the west and New York is to the east. For New Yorkers, San Francisco is west and China is east. But directions are also concepts, so San Francisco is the Wild West and China is the Far East. China is never the Far West, even though its longitude is exactly opposite that of New York.
Merchants on the Silk Road, from the Mediterranean to the Pacific, met their trading partners among dozens of rendezvous cities along the route. At any point, east and west perspectives might have shifted. Constantinople was to the west of India and China. The Yangtze delta, home of the silkworm industry, was east of Xi’an, capital city of the Tang dynasty during the Early Middle Ages, a heyday for the travelers.
But the “East” is itself an idea to European (and American) scholars that has become linked with views about parts of Asia. It can be hard to separate the simple idea of a compass direction across that vast continent from ideas attached to the cultures on the continent. There have been assumptions made and conclusions drawn that reflect biases we might not even notice unless we think about it.
This is the 4th postin my April A to Z Challenge topic on the Silk Road.
Roads all start out with dirt, and though many dispute that the Silk Road was even a road–some saying it was more of a “Silk Route” than an actual road–still, the route was across land and land means dirt.
So what kind of land are we talking about?
There were two routes going from either direction. Although one of the main thrusts originally was to move goods from China westward, there were also goods moving across from Greece and the Levant to Arabia in the ancient Persian and Mesopotamian days. Since there were camels (letter “C”), there were several deserts and as the maps remind us, there were plenty of mountains too.
