#SilkRoad Archives – Page 7 of 9

April 9, 2023April 10, 2023

H is for Heavenly Horses (hànxuèmǎ)

Ferghana horse, photo by Olga I., posted at Culture Trip.

They have a lot of names. Heavenly horses. Ferghana horses. The horses of Tianma, the Argamaks.

The vegetarian dragons (my favorite!) The horses that sweat blood.

Ferghana horses in Bactria, photo from Emory U.

They came from the Asian steppes; Ferghana is in Uzbekhistan. From Iran and Turkey, where they might be called Nisean. Of course they did, since equus originated on the plains of Asia. As you may know, those teeny weeny North American horse ancestors died out, and all horses in this hemisphere were originally imported. The wheel, after all, was invented in Mesopotamia and perfected by Asian steppe people like the Hittites who created chariots. Asia covers a lot of territory. Camels are good for plodding through sand, but horses are good for crossing a lot of hard, grassy ground, and Asia had plenty of that.

April 9, 2023April 9, 2023

G is for Giovanni da Pian del Carpine

Giovanni & Franciscan friends meet the Khan. Courtesy of Medieval magazine.com.

It’s 5343 miles from Lyons, France to Karakorum in Mongolia. That’s how far Giovanni da Pian del Carpine (aka John di Plano Carpini) was sent in 1245, along the Silk Road. Pope Innocent IV had noticed that the Mongols had destroyed Russia and Budapest, and had parked near Vienna. Western Europe was getting nervous, for good reason. Innocent sent Giovanni out to tell the Mongols to stop attacking, submit to the Pope, and join them in their campaign against the Muslims.

Guyuk Khan, grandson and one of Genghis’s successor,* declined. (One suspects the translator may have softened the language in the pope’s letter.) The Khan offered a counterproposal, something like “there’s only one god, Tenggeri the sky god, and only one master on earth–me! So I recommend everyone in Europe should submit to the Mongols instead, otherwise chaos will ensue…”

By sending Giovanni out across Asia, the Catholic Church was also chasing down a rumor. They thought there might be a Christian king, maybe another descendant of David, out in the East. His name was supposed to be Prester John.

April 8, 2023April 9, 2023

F is for Frankincense

Medieval portrait of the magi, from the Orthodox Life blog site.

We Three Kings of Orient Are
Tried to Smoke a Great, Big Cigar…
A 8-year-old’s parody of a famous Christmas carol…

What, you are dismayed? You don’t remember that one? Did you remember the one about Chinese and Egyptian astrologers taking African bark scrapings into the alleyway behind the Marriott, where the illegal aliens, who were on their way to the tax collectors, stopped to have a baby? Also known as “Adoration of the Magi.”

Let’s try to un-knot the facts here, which isn’t easy because everybody was fighting over the same territory, back in Year Zero of the Common Era (not AD anymore, in case you missed that memo). What is frankincense and where was it from? Who were the magi and where was this East that they were from? (I said it in yesterday’s post, east is a matter of perspective, depending on not just where the baby was born but who was writing about it and when.)

Frankincense sap collection process found on Youtube.

When Resins Ruled the World

First of all, frankincense is a perfume and an incense. It’s a scent, highly prized across the ages both because it was hard to get and because people didn’t bathe until just about a century ago, so anything that masked odor was prized.