Black Gold. Texas Tea. The most valuable commodity in recent years has that nickname, and if you watched a certain TV show from the 1960s, you remember the words. But “black gold” before 1800 meant something else, something also very valuable. Futurists picked up on it, too.
The spice must flow.
Black Gold
Even today, pepper is the most traded spice in the world. It originated out of India, on the Malabar coast, although more than a third of it today comes from Vietnam. In the Silk Road days, it was so valuable that it was demanded by the Huns when they took Rome; they asked for 3000 pounds of pepper in addition to precious metals and furs. Rome lived on cinnamon and pepper, so it knew the value, too.
Accountant Luca Pacioli in his double-entry bookkeeping text explained to merchants how to list their inventory: gold coin in ducats, jewels, unpolished pointed diamonds, silverware, feather beds, and …
… cases of ginger bellidi … sacks of pepper, long pepper or round pepper … so many packages of cinnamon.
The Land of the ‘Stans. Everybody wanted it after the Kushans left (see letter K). It was a highly desirable place, so people diverted the waters, and environmental devastation ensued and still goes on. The waters flow.
The delta of the Oxus, wikipedia.
The Names of the Waters
Alexander called the river the Oxus. Not very imaginative, since he probably just saw cattle at the river. For most of its recent history–that of the last thousand years–the river has been called Amu Darya. That means “river near Amul,” which is also a city that has been renamed and renamed.
Transoxiana, the land beyond the Oxus, refers to the fertile plain between the Oxus (well! duh!) and the other river, which was named the Jaxartes. That meant something like “Pearl Waters” in ancient Persian, though now it’s called Syr Darya, the river near the Aral Sea. Because it flows into the Aral Sea. I liked that pearl image better.
This place has seen an ebb and flow of waters, of people, of names, and of historical events. Whenever you wander through the rivulets of Asia in the Middle Ages, if you come across something like:
Baruq set a trap for the invader Kaidu’s troops on the bank of the Jaxartes, and defeated his forces. In the next battle, however, Kaidu defeated Baraq with the assistance of Mengu-Timur, the Khan of the Golden Horde who sent 3 tumens … Transoxiana was then ravaged by Kaidu…
Wikipedia story of the Battle of the Jaxartes @1268. Notice that there was still plundering going on!
Close-up on the Oxus, wikipedia.
Where Is that Again?
The Oxus rises in the Pamil mountains, just south of the Tien Shan and north of the Hindu Kush. It flows northwest down to the Aral Sea. You read that correct. On the maps customary to an American, it flows up to the left. But this is central, central, CENTRAL Asia, and everything will flow down out of the mountains. The plain between the two rivers is a mix of foothills and blissfully fertile land for either pasture or farming.
Alexander got this far, taken it from the Sogdians. (I’m tempted to say the soggy Sogdians, but I won’t. Doh! I just did.) Alexander had this area, then the Kushans took, the Arabs, the Mongols. It’s all right there, right? After that, Babur descended from the Mongols and founded the Mughal Dynasty. It’s all right there. The confluence of the ‘stans.
Babur, Temur descendant crowned by Mughals, near Oxus. Wikipedia.
Dams Usually Are Not the Solution
The tributaries flowing out of the Pamil glaciers carried enough water to split into two rivers and to fill the fourth largest lake in the world, the Aral Sea. There was also some water left over to flow into the Caspian.
Where the Daryas flow, wikipedia.
The Kushan-Sogdian-Arab Khwarizm populations gradually built up over the centuries, and they pulled off a lot of the water supply. The Muslims built a dam in the little town Gurganj in 985 CE put at the forks, starting to pull all the water to the Aral Sea. We haven’t had giant dams for centuries, but we already know how dams reform the watersheds. And over time, as populations dip their straw into dams and begin to suck them dry, then the dam turns out to be a bad idea.
Soviet diversion dries up the lake, 1989 v. 2003, NASA. gov.
It didn’t matter so much in the Middle Ages, but the Soviets diverting so much water in the middle of the twentieth century, that the Aral Sea had become highly salinized (super salty) by the millennium. Since then, there have been reversals of irrigation rules, and the lake is starting to come back.
The Mongols had a more extreme solution in the 1200s. After getting into a spat with the sultan of Khwarizm, who killed the Mongol envoys, they put the entire basin under siege. This involved wiping out the populations of several ancient cities and destroying the hue Ganjul dam. The Mongols went big. The grasslands recovered for a while before the straw sipping started again.
Today Transoxiana is in the middle. It’s in the middle of Turkemnistan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistans. They weren’t always nomads. Some of the waves of people came across the grasslands to where the water made waves, too, and they came from everywhere to everywhere. The Chinese knew them because they fashion little bobblehead figurines called “foreigner” in the shape of Sogdians.
Sogidan “foreigner” Tang dynasty @600, wikipedia.
The Middle Men who brought their oxen to the river.
Why did the Nomad cross the road? It’s what he lives for…
Roads are created by people who walk them–a lot. The Silk Road was named for what was sent on it, but it was carried by those who traveled, not those who sent. All well and good to be the silk weaver or the wealthy owner of all the looms, but who did the actual taking? “Merchants.” Many of those merchants were also nomads or were at least escorted by the nomads.
Not to mention that standard notion of the “Barbarian of the Steppes.” I may have mentioned the 36-episode Great Course by Kenneth Harl that covers that topic in detail. The title is what Prof. Ken Harl chose, and yet what becomes eminently clear is that barbarians is what everybody else called them to make them seem primitive and less dominating.
In fact, there were dozens of tribes who ruled the steppes, many of whom migrated from the harsh, impregnable deserts and fickle grasslands to the lusher lands in the fertile basin. Thus, they came sweeping down off the steppes repeatedly, always somehow surprising though the Xiong Nu, Hittites, Pecheneges, Scythians, Parthians, Huns, Bactrians, Gok Turks, Seljuk Turks, and Mongols did this for nearly two thousand years.
