Civilizations of the Silk Road [1 ed.] 9781032439990, 9781032440057, 9781003369899, 1032439998

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CIVILIZATIONS OF THE SILK ROAD

This book describes the interactions between various civilizations and societies along the Silk Road between 500 BCE and 1500 CE, the period from the first encounters of ancient Greek and Persian civilizations to the time when maritime exchanges between Europe and Asia exceeded those on land. Starting with the genesis and features of different civilizations, the book focuses on the history and exchange of different cultures along the Silk Road: Zhang Qian’s successful pioneering feats which inaugurated the opening stretch of the Silk Road; the origins and dissemination of Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Christianity, Manichaeism, Nestorian-Christianity, and Islam; the westward spread of papermaking and printing; and long-distance exchanges of scripts and spoken language, music, architecture, painting, and sculpture. It also outlines the historically significant migrations of various peoples from east to west, such as the Xiongnu, Yuezhi, Han, Qiang, Hephthalites, Turkic groups, Uyghurs, Mongols, and Xibe. The author has interwoven facts, anecdotes, and his own experiences of study throughout the book, making it a fascinating history reader and cultural primer. This book thus will be an essential read for students and scholars of Eurasian Studies and Chinese History and those who are interested in the history of the Silk Road in general. Professor H. K. Chang, well known as a biomedical engineering expert, is a Foreign Member of the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK) and a Chevalier of France’s L’Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur. He is one of those rare personalities who first excelled in the hard sciences but went on to devote himself as an educator and to the humanities. He was dean of engineering at the University of Pittsburgh and served City University of Hong Kong as president 1996–2007. In recent years, Professor Chang has lectured or taught general education courses at University of Paris, Cairo University, Bosphorus University (Istanbul), Bilkent University (Ankara), University of Delhi, Peking University, Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, China Europe International Business School, and Shandong University. His academic interests now focus on cultural exchanges across the Eurasian landmass, particularly along the Silk Road. Author of a dozen books on civilizations and education, he has interwoven his 40 years of travel experiences along the Silk Road—from China’s northwest to India, Central and West Asia, Caucasus, Asia Minor, and the Mediterranean—into this tome.

Civilizations of the Silk Road H. K. Chang

Sponsored by Chinese Fund for the Humanities and Social Sciences. First published in English 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 H. K. Chang Translated by Bruce Humes in collaboration with the author The right of H. K. Chang to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. English Version by permission of Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Chang, H. K., 1940– author. Title: Civilizations of the Silk Road / H.K. Chang ; [translated by Bruce Humes in collaboration with the author]. Description: New York : Routledge, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022057739 (print) | LCCN 2022057740 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032439990 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032440057 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003369899 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Silk Road—Civilization. | Eurasia—Civilization. | China—Civilization. | Asia, Central—Civilization. Classification: LCC DS328.2 .C474 2023 (print) | LCC DS328.2 (ebook) | DDC 950—dc23/eng/20221220 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022057739 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022057740 ISBN: 978-1-032-43999-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-44005-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-36989-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003369899 Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Preface   1 “Civilization”: Origins, Diversity, and Continuity

vii 1

  2 Alexander’s Eastern Campaigns, Hellenism, and Gandharan Art

25

  3 Mysteries of the Western Regions: Pioneering Zhang Qian and Han Dynasty Explorers

45

  4 Buddhism’s Genesis: To the West Is a Deity, Buddha Is His Name 64   5 Buddhism’s Spread in China: Contemporaries Kumarajiva and Faxian—The Encounter That Didn’t Happen

78

  6 Sogdians Along the Silk Road

94

  7 Golden Peaches of Samarkand

116

  8 Silk and Paper

131

  9 Printing Migrates West, Alphabets Migrate East

147

10 Origins and Spread of Islamic Civilization

161

11 Islam in China

177

12 Rise of the Turkic-Speaking Peoples and Their Westward Migration

191

vi  Contents

13 Westward Migration of the Turkic Peoples: From the Syr Darya to the Danube

204

14 Eurasia Under Mongol Rule

223

15 The Timurid Empire and the Ming Treasure Voyages

235

Bibliography250 Index253

Preface

“The Silk Road” is now virtually a household word. Thousands of people all over the world wish to view and personally experience it. In fact, it was only in 1877 that the German scholar and explorer Ferdinand von Richthofen coined the term “Seidenstrasse” (Silk Road) to designate this venerable network of ancient commercial passages from East to West Asia. In my fourth-grade textbook, there was a story about the court scribe Ban Chao who set aside his writing brush to enlist in the army during the Eastern Han (25–220 CE). While in middle school I happened to learn that my maternal aunt was born in Xinjiang, and only returned to Kunming, her family’s hometown, when she was 12. My father also told me then that Europeans and Japanese were keenly intrigued by China’s Xinjiang region, and many a scholar had gone there to research the Silk Road pioneered by Zhang Qian, the Western Han Dynasty (206 BCE–25 CE) imperial envoy and explorer. That was the first time I heard the term “Silk Road”; henceforth I yearned to “do” the Silk Road someday. In 1987, I finally had the opportunity to travel from Lanzhou to Urumqi and Kashgar via Gansu’s Jiayu Pass and Dunhuang, home to the Mogao Caves. It was a rare opportunity at the time. It became my hobby to learn about the Silk Road, and over the years I bought many tomes and airline tickets to realize my dream. After retirement in Hong Kong in early summer 2007, I decided to make civilizations along the Silk Road—or cultural exchange across the Eurasian continent, if you like—my “new specialization.” In autumn of the same year, I was designated Weilun Professor at Tsinghua University, and for one semester I taught a self-designed general education course, Roaming Amongst Civilizations (Youzouyu wenming zhi jian), to two hundred undergraduates; in 2008, I devoted a full academic year at Peking University, including giving a course titled “Civilization Exchanges Between the East and the West” (Dongxi wenming jiaoliu) to a class of M.A. students at the School of Journalism and Communication; and in spring 2009, I gave a series of “Lectures on Cultural Exchange” at Shandong University and, in autumn 2009, I accepted an invitation from Istanbul’s Bosphorus University to serve as a visiting professor for half a year, and I lectured on the “History of the Silk Road”, an elective for third-year students earning their B.A. in history. After several years accumulating experience teaching my specialty, in autumn 2012 I delivered a month-long series of lectures to one hundred undergraduates at

viii  Preface Shanghai Jiao Tong University, entitled “Interaction Between Civilizations” (Wenming jiaowang jiangzuo). At the time I was Yeh-Lu Xun Chair Professor at Peking University, and as per an agreement between Peking University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Peking University Press compiled and published my speeches. Afterwards, the same press included my Jiao Tong lectures in its “Famous Generalist Lecture Series” (Mingjia tongshi jiangzuo shu xi), and in keeping with its renowned format, dubbed the book Fifteen Lectures on Silk Road Civilizations (Si lu wenming shiwu jiang). This volume principally describes the exchanges between various civilizations and societies along the length of the Silk Road. While including commerce of a host of goods such as large mammals, crops, medicines, utensils, textiles, musical instruments, jewelry, minerals, and gunpowder, it nonetheless focuses on the exchange of less tangible culture. The origins and dissemination of Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Christianity, Manichaeism, Nestorian-Christianity, and Islam are portrayed, as well as the long-distance exchanges of scripts and spoken language, music, architecture, painting, and sculpture via the Silk Road. It outlines the historically significant migrations of various peoples from east to west, such as the Xiongnu, Yuezhi (i.e., Yue-chi), Han, Qiang, Hephthalites, Turkic groups, Uyghurs, Mongols, and Xibe. Although the content appears very broad, the time period covered in this volume is set between 500 BCE and 1500 CE, i.e., the period between the first encounters of the ancient Greek and Persian civilizations, to the time when maritime interactions between Europe and Asia exceeded those on land. To make for a smoother read, for the most part I have altered the language employed when lecturing to a more standard written form, but readers will also find impromptu remarks from the classroom scattered throughout. This is not only consistent with the less formal “talk” in the Chinese book title of 15 Talks, but it also highlights my personal views on certain issues. If I were to sum up in one sentence the historical significance of 2,000 years of cultural commingling along the Silk Road and throughout Eurasia, without hesitation I would say: A society evolves and thrives when it is open and inclusive, willing and accustomed to interacting with and learning from different peoples. I am deeply grateful to my late parents for their inspiration—and admonishments— during my childhood. I would like to dedicate this volume to their souls in heaven. Hong Kong, May 2021

1 “Civilization” Origins, Diversity, and Continuity

The exit of modern Homo sapiens from Africa about 100,000 years ago and the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago represent the origins of human civilization. Eight regions of the world that independently developed agriculture and four ancient Eurasian-based societies transported humanity into the “civilized” era. Civilization can be perceived as a function comprising key variables such as space, time, state of being, and peoples. It is interactive, continuous, and diverse.

Genesis of Civilization Civilization is a human-made product, of course. But how did humankind come to inhabit the globe? Most archaeologists agree that we emerged from East Africa. After the Great Rift Valley was formed, the climate altered and apes were forced to abandon their trees to forage for food in the savannah. About 7.5 million years ago, hominids underwent differentiation from apes and, after a long evolutionary process, began to walk erect on their hind limbs. With their upper limbs no longer tied to the ground, their hands were available to do many things, and their necks and spines could bear greater weight. The hominid’s brain capacity then grew in tandem, and its skull became heavier. Figure 1.1 is a picture I took at the Ethiopian National Museum. In 1974, a skeleton was unearthed in northern Ethiopia’s Afar region. Scholars judged it to be that of a 3.2-million-year-old female and dubbed her “Lucy.” She is classified as Australopithecus afarensis, Latin for “southern ape from Afar.” In 1994, a 4.4-million-year-old female hominid, nicknamed Ardi, was also discovered in the same area in Ethiopia. She too could walk upright, but her skull capacity was smaller than Lucy’s. This shows that humans evolved first to walk upright, and only then did bigger brains develop. The forelimbs of apes are relatively long, and their balance is poor when walking just on their hind limbs. They need to touch the ground with their forelimbs every two or three steps, a demeanor known as “knuckle walking.” Lucy’s upper limbs were significantly shorter than her lower ones, and it was already inconvenient to use her knuckles to help walk. When modern Homo sapiens departed from Africa about 100,000 years ago, they trekked first to West Asia, and then scattered throughout Eurasia. These DOI: 10.4324/9781003369899-1

2  “Civilization”

Figure 1.1  “Lucy”: Upright in the Ethiopian National Museum

“Civilization” 3 modern humans gathered in small groups, roamed widely, and subsisted by capturing prey and gathering fruits. Scholars refer to them as “modern” because they were no longer anatomically distinct from us, and their well-developed vocal cords could generate many different sounds, building blocks for primitive language. What do we mean by “civilization”? At its most basic, civilization is a way of life. It is worth noting that, as a Chinese term, 文明 (wenming) has been employed only over the last century, and its definition is still in flux. In fact, it is the Chinese counterpart of the word “civilization” in English and many European languages and refers to urban life. While “culture” and “civilization” are not synonymous in the West, one can often be substituted for the other in Chinese. Equally, the Chinese term for culture—文化 (wenhua)—is only 100 or so years old. Of course, 文 and 化 do have clear meanings in ancient Chinese: 文 refers to 纹, a homophone for the decorative patterns on pottery, and 化 signifies change. The ancient Chinese phrase “以文化人” (yi wen hua ren) refers to the usage of art and literature to “mold” the human character, and this is the origin of today’s term, wenhua. In turn, wenhua is the Chinese counterpart of the ancient Latin cultura, meaning tilling or cultivation of land. Farming and urban life both originated in the “agricultural revolution” discussed later, so there is no strict distinction between the two. About 10,000 years ago, some people in West Asia switched from hunting, fishing, and gathering fruits and cereals to purposefully planting grains and raising animals. This was the earliest “agricultural revolution.” Later, in certain climate-friendly and water-rich areas, harvests became relatively abundant, and foodstuffs sufficed to support a larger population. People began to gather in settlements, and towns and cities were established where a portion of residents could engage in nonagricultural pursuits, such as handicrafts, religious rites, and warfare. Most historians consider this the starting point of civilization. Predictably, urban-centric dwellers perceived themselves as “civilized” and other lifestyles as “barbaric.” The emergence of written texts, laws, and religion—and clerics who managed religious sites—formed the early infrastructure of a civilized society. According to French historian Fernand Braudel, civilization generally refers to a long-lasting, continuous lifestyle covering a large area, the principal elements of which are material, political, and spiritual. By contrast, culture encompasses a smaller scope and a shorter timeframe and tends to be more abstract, emphasizing consciousness and a certain zeitgeist. For example, the 5,000-year zhonghua civilization—a popular term among experts for China’s accumulated multiethnic traditions—qualifies as a civilization, while the society that flourished in the middle and lower Yellow River Valley during 3000–1900 BCE is generally known as Black Pottery Culture (aka Longshan Culture). A more modern and specific example would be Microsoft, which possesses a much-vaunted corporate culture; no one would refer to “Microsoft civilization”!

4  “Civilization” To summarize: When people talk about interaction between civilizations, they are referring to large-scale, long-term contact between two or more distinct civilizations, including collisions and fusion. As for cultural exchange, members of different cultures can share their arts and traditions. Civilization is inseparable from the exploitation of plants and animals. When the ancients collected fruits and cereals and observed that certain ones could germinate, then they actively planted and cultivated them and farming was born; at its core, agriculture is a way of life that utilizes plants to ameliorate human life. In addition to hunting and fishing, humans could raise certain animals and even domesticate them, i.e., engage in animal husbandry. With experience, they realized that herds of cattle, sheep, and horses benefitted from periodic migration, and the nomadic lifestyle eventually engendered nomadic civilization. A farming lifestyle required fixed settlement, at least until planted crops could be harvested. The relationship between nomadic and sedentary farming civilizations has been a recurring theme in the history of Eurasia, generating intense conflict as well as mutual learning and intermingling. Most of the early civilizations originated in Eurasia. But why? For one thing, from East Africa to the northern portion of the Arabian Peninsula, to the Tigris and Euphrates Basins, and even further eastward to the Iranian Plateau, the latitudes are relatively similar. Comparatively speaking, temperatures, flora, and fauna were probably also similar, which was conducive to the survival of pioneering migrants. By contrast, the trek from Africa’s northeast to its southwest was more arduous and longer, variations in temperature were greater, and customary fruits and prey were possibly unavailable. Significantly, cattle, sheep, horses, donkeys, camels, and other large animals suitable for domestication abound in Eurasia. South America and its alpacas excepted, other regions of the world lack such a vital resource. Sub-Saharan Africa hosts many large mammals—the lion, tiger, leopard, rhino, zebra, giraffe, and so forth—but they cannot be domesticated. We can say that civilization is also inseparable from the animal kingdom; humans have successfully altered the natural evolution of certain ones, without which “civilization” as we know it might not have come to be. The main means of transport for ancient nomads was the horse. Domesticated around six thousand years ago on the Pontic-Caspian Steppe or the southern Russian Steppe, horses were originally treated as a source of meat. But later, it was recognized that the horse possessed many capabilities, and it came to be utilized in other ways. Its ears are quite long and flexible enough to pivot in different directions, so it has sharp hearing; its eyes are located far apart on either side of its head, so they offer a panoramic view, endowing it with superior vision compared to that of a human, whose closely set eyes mainly look forward. Horses also possess a good memory, hence the Chinese adage that “an old horse knows its way.” Soon after the horse’s domestication, the wheel was invented, and the horsedrawn carriage made its debut. Later, the war chariot depended upon horsepower to do battle, all of which highlights the importance of horses to humankind. The invention of the stirrup also facilitated mounting and riding a horse. His feet in

“Civilization” 5 Table 1.1  Timeline of Livestock Domestication Animal

Years ago

Site

Dogs Sheep Goats Pigs Dairy cows Horses Donkeys Water buffalo Bactrian camel Dromedary camel

12,000 10,000 10,000 10,000 8,000 6,000 6,000 6,000 4,500 4,500

Southwest Asia, China Southwest Asia Southwest Asia China, Southwest Asia Southwest Asia, India Ukraine Egypt China Central Asia Arabian Peninsula

stirrups, reins in hand, and thus firmly astride, a mounted warrior could charge the enemy and penetrate its ranks. Afterwards, his steed could be depended upon to guide the battle-weary horseman back to camp. Table 1.1 lists the time and region where a particular animal was domesticated. Dogs were the first, and archeological finds suggest that they were tamed for companionship, not to be eaten. Then came sheep, and water buffalo, horses, and donkeys, with the mule—the offspring of the latter two—appearing somewhat later. The dromedary is Arabian in origin and features a single hump, while the twohumped Bactrian camel inhabits mainly Central Asia (and as far east as China’s Xinjiang, Gansu, and Inner Mongolia), and the two cannot interbreed. Agriculture emerged independently in eight regions worldwide: Two in South America, the Andes and Amazon; one in Central America; two in Africa, Sudan and West Africa; and three in Asia, in the southwest, southeast, and east. In terms of the spread of agricultural practice, North and South America have always been linked and occurred independently of Eurasia. By contrast, agriculture in Africa emerged on its own and spread throughout the continent, but it did subsequently interact with Eurasia, and the various regions of Asia noted earlier all learned from one another, so their “agricultural civilization” progressed at a faster clip. Quartet of Earliest Civilizations Next, I briefly introduce what are widely recognized as the four great ancient civilizations: Mesopotamia and the basins of the Nile, Indus, and Yellow Rivers. They were all created by farming societies. Those located in Eurasia had typically developed a system for writing, nurtured flourishing handicraft and commercial sectors, and formed towns and cities with major sites for worship. By contrast, early nomadic societies generally lacked towns and scripts, but they invented many tools that profoundly impacted civilization, such as ironware, which first appeared in Egypt or West Asia; the Hittites employed iron weapons as early as 11th century BCE. Thanks to nomads, ironware later made its appearance in South and East Asia.

6  “Civilization” To the early Eurasians—be they Chinese or Greco-Roman societies—the nomads to their north were uncivilized peoples, and thus “barbarian.” This term’s etymology lay in the Greek perception that the speech of these tribes was gibberish, and their pejorative onomatopoeia for it—bar-bar—eventually worked its way into many European languages. Mesopotamian Civilization The earliest civilization originated in Mesopotamia some 6,000 years ago, in what we know today as Iraq and Syria. Mesopotamia is a Greek word signifying “[land] between rivers,” and similarly, the Chinese term is “liang he liuyu,” or “two river basins,” a reference to the Tigris and Euphrates. The earliest system of writing was a cuneiform script invented by the Sumerians about 5,500 years ago (Figure 1.2), which debuted in Mesopotamia. Cuneiform symbols comprised “wedge-shaped” strokes impressed on a clay tablet using a stylus (a blunt reed). Many texts featuring cuneiform symbols have been discovered over the last century and can be found in museum collections in Europe, North America, and Iraq’s Baghdad. There are numerous types of cuneiform, and scholars have decrypted several that were used during various time periods by peoples who spoke different languages.

Figure 1.2  Cuneiform-inscribed tablet

“Civilization” 7

Figure 1.3  Sargon the Great, first ruler of the Akkadian Empire (bronze)

The Sumerians and somewhat later the Akkadians and Amorites (founders of ancient Babylon) who ruled Mesopotamia were keen observers of celestial phenomena and pioneered the calendar. They divided the day into two 12-hour parts, and the hour into 60 minutes. The concept of the “12 houses of the zodiac” also originated in Mesopotamia. Figure 1.3 is a bust of Sargon the Great (aka Sargon of Akkad), first king of Akkadia. It is thought to be the world’s earliest bronze of a human head, dating back to 28th century BCE. Situated in southern Mesopotamia, not far from modern Baghdad, was an early Sumerian state of Ur. The most famous person from Ur was Abraham, who spoke a Semitic tongue and led his nomadic people from Ur to Palestine today. According to the Tanakh or the Hebrew Bible and Islam’s Qur’an, he was the forefather of both Jews and Arabs.

8  “Civilization”

Figure 1.4  Relief on the stele of the Code of Hammurabi

Figure 1.4 is a relief at the top of a stone stele engraved with the text of the Code of Hammurabi, the first-ever set of written laws known to humankind, as promulgated by Babylon’s King Hammurabi some 3,800 years ago. It clearly stipulated the punishment for a given misdeed and called for the implementation of concepts such as “Let the buyer beware” and “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Even the legal canon of the Roman Empire was impacted by this iconic code. Nile Valley Civilization The second oldest civilization emerged in the Nile Valley. Ancient Egyptian culture was inseparable from the Nile (famously flowing from south to north), and the known history of Egypt generally begins with the political unification of the

“Civilization” 9 territories surrounding the upper (south) and lower (north) Nile, i.e., Upper and Lower Egypt, in 3150 BCE. Hieroglyphics also came into use about this time. In the following two millennia, the Egyptians created a glorious civilization. Extant ruins include pyramids constructed in different eras and relics such as finely decorated mummies, exquisite and vivid statues, and delicate and aesthetically pleasing tableaux, as well as hieroglyphics, an example of which serves as background for the illustration in Figure 1.5. In general, Egypt’s ancient civilization was tranquil and untroubled by military conflict. Religion was its dominant element, influencing daily life as well as politics, architecture, literature, and the fine arts. While Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations originated within a few hundred years of one another and have much in common, there were nonetheless significant differences. These can be explained by their physical environments. Mesopotamia’s climate was inhospitable, and the two rivers flooded from time to time, making inhabitants feel as if nature worked against them. Located on plains susceptible to invasion, dwellers had to be constantly prepared to defend themselves. By contrast, the Nile’s behavior was more predictable and thus more favorable to human life and methods of production. The soil on both sides of the river was very fertile, and flooding each summer not only receded in time to allow farmers to work their fields, but the water deposited nutrient-rich silt, rendering the soil remarkably fecund. In addition, the Nile Valley is surrounded by desert, so there was little threat from external enemies. No wonder the Egyptian deities were often portrayed smiling benevolently.

Figure 1.5  Woman and man harvesting grain

10  “Civilization”

Figure 1.6  Rosetta stone: Close-up of hieroglyphics at very top, followed by Demotic script in the middle with Ancient Greek on the lower part

The ancient Egyptian script was not decoded until the 19th century. Prior to Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, due to Islamization and Arabization and the gradual disuse of hieroglyphics beginning in the 7th century CE, it had been almost a full millennium since Egyptians were knowledgeable about them. Following the invasion, a French soldier discovered a stone slab in a Nile Delta village. Scholars later dubbed it the “Rosetta stone,” after the name of the village (Figure 1.6). The stele was inscribed with three different scripts: The upper portion consisted of hieroglyphics; the middle was a Demotic (“vulgar”) script, a widely used set of symbols before the 4th century BCE arrival of Alexander’s troops; and on the lower part, ancient Greek utilized during the reign of the Ptolemaic Dynasty (305–30 BCE) founded by Ptolemy, a high-ranking officer who served Alexander the Great. Since many 19th-century European scholars were familiar with ancient Greek, this provided clues to them for cracking the mystery of the other two scripts. A French officer and a British scholar first decoded the hieroglyphics, after which many Europeans continued to decipher ancient hieroglyphic text scattered throughout Egypt, thereby founding a new field of study—Egyptology—that has served to illuminate much of what we now know about ancient Egyptian civilization. Indus Valley Civilization The third oldest civilization emerged in the Indus Valley, located mainly in today’s Pakistan. The valley’s ancient civilization was earlier than those of the Brahmans or Hindus with which we are familiar. The starting point of the latter should be about 3,200–3,500 years ago. Waves of pale-skinned, high-nosed, deep-eyed Aryans drove their ox carts from today’s Afghanistan and forded the Indus and Ganges rivers, gradually occupying the subcontinent and subduing the inhabitants, the Dravidians. The Aryans established and promoted their religion, social system, and script in northern India and eventually extended their control to the south. But as early as 7,000–8,000 years ago, agriculture in the Indus Basin was already fairly developed. In the early 20th century, archaeologists excavated a

“Civilization” 11

Figure 1.7  Waterfowl-decorated ceramic dish unearthed in the Indus Basin

4,500-year-old city there, equipped with sewers and public baths, and both flat, square seals and cylinder (rolling) seals. The timing of the latter was more or less concurrent with their use in Mesopotamia. Also unearthed was an earthenware dish, estimated to be 5,000 years old, decorated with a waterfowl (Figure 1.7). This sophisticated civilization had been in place at least one thousand years before the arrival of the Aryans, yet scholars are still in the dark about its origins, why it disappeared so abruptly, and whether the Aryans encountered resistance to the way of life they imposed. But there is widespread agreement among scholars that this primordial Indus civilization made one major contribution to the world at large: The cultivation and usage of cotton. Because the facts remain unclear, there are two layers of meaning when we qualify India as an “ancient civilization”: Hinduism, a collective term for the fusion of Brahmanism based on the Vedas (Vedic hymns and texts) introduced by the Aryans when they arrived 3,500 years ago, as well as Jainism, Buddhism, and numerous other faiths and rituals derived from them; and a second meaning, which refers to the even more ancient civilization that mysteriously disappeared in the wake of the Aryan invasion. Yellow River Valley Civilization The Yellow River Valley, the fourth cradle of ancient civilization, was situated on the North China Plain and loess-covered hilly areas along the river’s middle and lower reaches. Human population concentrated in an urban area, i.e., towns and cities, had appeared within the valley some 3,500–4,000 years ago, as evidenced

12  “Civilization”

Figure 1.8  Oracle bone for divination

by an oracle bone (Figure 1.8) unearthed at the Yin Ruins (near today’s Anyang, Henan), once the site of Shang’s capital city. Unlike the three previous civilizations noted, the earliest cereal grain here was not wheat but millet. Because the Yellow River Valley hosted the latest of the four ancient Eurasian civilizations, shortly after its emergence wheat, horses, bronzes, chariots, and calendars reached the basin. While it is highly unlikely, the inhabitants of the valley may have invented the calendar and bronzes without reference to existing versions in West Asia, but it is virtually impossible that they would have begun cultivating wheat, domesticated the horse, or invented the horse-drawn war chariot on their own. The Yellow River Basin, featuring millet as its main crop, and the Yangtze River Basin, dominated by rice cultivation, extended from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to the Pacific Ocean, and the two rivers flowed near one another in parallel. As early as 3,000 years ago the two regions were in frequent contact and constituted a single massive agricultural economy, and thus a “semi-unified” country also emerged. What Chinese generally refer to as “the time-hallowed zhonghua civilization” is a reference to the economic and cultural systems already formed more than three millennia ago and that have continued up to the present day. While centered upon the Yellow River and Yangtze Basins, it also extended to the basins of the Pearl, Huai, and southeastern coastal rivers, as well as the river valleys and plains of Shandong, Hebei, and Liaoning provinces. Therefore, when researching civilization history in the global context, discussing the civilization of the Yellow River Valley in isolation may highlight certain aspects while neglecting the fuller picture. As far as Chinese history is concerned, emphasizing the role of the Yellow River Valley ignores the basic fact that early on Chinese civilization shifted from pluralism toward integration. That said, in certain ways the Yellow River Valley does stand apart from those just cited. Geographically speaking, the upper reaches of the Yellow River and Hetao region are close to the Mongolian Plateau and Hexi Corridor, which happen to be hubs that link China’s Central Plains with West Asia. The early nomadic Tocharians (Yuezhi tribes) and later the Scythians also crossed the Altai Mountains

“Civilization” 13 from the North Asian grasslands and entered northern Xinjiang of China and the western part of the Mongolian Plateau. It is quite likely that the Huaxia people—a confederation of tribes in the Yellow River Basin believed to be the ancestors of the Han Chinese today—interacted with these nomads. Alternatively, the Huaxia may also have had contact with these nomads through other tribal groups such as the Di, Rong, and Qiang, thereby obtaining wheat, horses, bronzes, and war chariots from West Asia. In summary, these contacts enabled the Yellow River Basin to acquire advanced agricultural, animal husbandry, and metallurgical technologies from West Asia earlier than the inhabitants of the Yangtze River and Pearl River Basins, and thus they possessed the means to integrate vast swathes of territory beyond the Yellow River Basin. The issue of the birthplace of sericulture also deserves a mention here. Items made of silk fabric dating back 5,000 years have been unearthed in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River where Liangzhu culture once thrived (today’s Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces), but inhabitants of the Yellow River Basin must also have been able to produce silk at a very early stage. Due to the early economic and cultural integration of the Yellow and Yangtze River Basins, however, at present it is difficult to identify precisely where insect cocoons were first systematically cultivated to produce silk. There is considerable evidence that silk was present in the Yellow River Basin quite early. For one, numerous ancient Chinese characters contained the silk radical (糹), indicating that silk was widely traded there long ago. For another, a verse in the Book of Songs (Airs of the State of Wei) opens with the line: A peddler of earnest mien to my home did come to barter cloth for silk he was keen. and mulberry leaves and mulberries appear as metaphors at several points in the poem. The state of Wei was situated in the eastern part of the Yellow River Plain where Hebei and Henan provinces now meet. From this imaginary scene some 2,700 or 2,800 years ago, in which a woman’s eager suitor calls upon the family of his intended bride, a bolt of cloth in hand—under the pretense of trading it for silk—we can see that planting mulberry trees and fabricating silk were already common activities in Wei. As is evident from the four prior examples, all early civilizations rose along the banks of great rivers. The peoples of Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley interacted frequently, and we can assume that those of the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia also had direct contact. Due to distance and the barriers of mountains and deserts, the Yellow River Valley and the other three civilizations lacked direct contact in their early stages, but via the migrations of nomadic steppe populations, indirect interaction between ancient civilizations of East and West Asia was quite likely.

14  “Civilization” Features of Civilization Diversity

The aforementioned historian Braudel was a leading figure in France’s 20thcentury “Annales” school. Its methodology has had a great impact on how historians view European history. Proponents believe that the primordial influence of geography on history is undeniable, and detailed study of politics and military affairs alone cannot give us a true understanding of human history. Braudel collected a large amount of historical data, and over five years of imprisonment in a German prisoner-of-war camp during WWII he penned his The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, expounding that Europe’s economic development, society, and culture are inseparable from its geographical environment. I personally concur with this viewpoint. In his later years, he wrote History of Civilizations, noting the distinctions between “civilization” and “culture” that I discussed earlier. Civilization is a manifestation of a large-scale, long-term mode of existence. Another French scholar, Claude Levi-Strauss, taught and did field work on ethnography in Brazil for five years before World War II. He later authored his renowned Tristes Tropiques. Inside the Amazon jungle, he uncovered the existence of several tribes. He found that their members possessed superior intelligence and scientific knowledge, but due to environmental constraints, they could not abandon their jungle habitat. They identified more than two hundred kinds of grass growing nearby, and most tribespeople could name them individually. In fact, these grasses were not essential to their lifestyle; he maintained it was curiosity and a thirst for knowledge that drove them to classify those grasses. Levi-Strauss’ research illustrates that although these “barbarians” in the Amazonian Basin went about semi-naked and had only blowgun darts for weapons, in terms of raw intelligence they were not notably different from a scholar at La Sorbonne; the only difference lay in their schooling. He himself had been traditionally educated in France, so he was the product of such book learning. These jungle-dwellers did not discover a means to escape from Amazonia, and their environment narrowly limited their lifestyle choices. This is what the title Tristes Tropiques—tropical melancholy, if you like—refers to, and it is an iconic manifestation of civilizational diversity. Figure 1.9 is a photo I took at Cambodia’s Angkor Wat (“City of Temples” in Khmer). Perhaps due to malaria or climate change, this magnificent Hindu (later converted to Buddhist) complex was concealed by jungle growth for centuries until its “rediscovery”—in European eyes, at least—thanks to Henri Mouhot, a French naturalist and explorer, who happened upon Angkor Wat in 1860. Some of the figures on the mural sport hair-buns and weapons typical of China’s Southern Song (1127–1279), evidence that the dynasty’s soldiers had been there. Figure 1.10 is a plaque posted at the Syriac Catholic Church’s cathedral in Paris, which I happened to notice on a Sunday in 2006. Modern-day Syria is not just home to Muslims; over the centuries the region has also hosted the Syriac Catholic Church and bodies such as the Syrian Orthodox Church and the Eastern Christian

“Civilization” 15

Figure 1.9  Angkor Wat relief in Cambodia

Figure 1.10  Plaque adorning Syriac Catholic Church’s cathedral in Paris

Church (often referred to as Nestorian Christian Church), which predates the Roman Catholic Church and employs ancient Syriac as its liturgical language. The Syriac cathedral in Paris, the relief illustrating the Southern Song soldiers at Angkor Wat, and the Amazon jungle tribes’ knowledge of plant life all clearly reflect the diversity of civilizations.

16  “Civilization” The Eastern Orthodox Church places great emphasis on ritual, and devotees chant prayers before richly decorated, brightly colored idols, often touching the icons (e.g., Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus). Intermittently, there was also expressions of iconoclasm (lit. image breaking) that opposed religious icons; they often went so far as to destroy images or monuments in churches. In the 9th century, such destructive urges were possibly influenced by the thendominant Islam that forbids all forms of idol worship, hence a movement arose within the Eastern Orthodox civilization to destroy idols. The theoretical basis for this movement was essentially similar to that of Judaism and Islam, which proposes that God is incorporeal and must not be represented in an anthropomorphic form for the purpose of idolatry. So, these idol destroyers often employed a cross and geometric figures to conceal icons, even altering the original interior decoration of many churches. Any given civilization is innately diverse. Even within the same “system” of civilization, different viewpoints and behaviors may emerge depending upon the era. Interaction

In 14th century BCE, six kingdoms speaking different tongues occupied the Fertile Crescent and surrounding areas of the Middle East. In what is today’s western Iran, the Kingdom of Elam was founded by a tribe speaking an Iranian language of the Indo-European language family. The power of ancient Babylonia, located in between the Tigris and Euphrates Basins, had already waned, and this territory was ruled by the last of the Semitic-speaking Amorites, although Akkadian, another Semitic language, was the lingua franca. To the north of Babylon was an emerging power, the Assyrians, who spoke yet a different form of Semitic language, Aramaic. North of Assyria was the Mitanni Kingdom, whose ruling class came from the northern shore of the Black Sea and spoke an Indo-European language. But most of the king’s subjects spoke Hurrian, which is neither Indo-European nor Semitic. To the west of Mittani was the once mighty Hittite Kingdom. Hittite classifies as an Indo-European language. Southwest of the Hittites was Egypt’s “New Kingdom,” in which ancient Egyptian—an Afroasiatic tongue—was spoken. In 1380 BCE, the Hittite and the Mittani Kingdoms signed an agreement that is considered one of the world’s earliest international treaties. The neighboring countries originally had territorial disputes, but in order to focus on the Egyptians to their southwest, the Hittites were unwilling to concurrently clash with the Mittanis to their east; similarly, in order to deal with Assyrian pressure, the Mittanis decided to end conflict with the Hittites. The two countries signed a peace treaty drawn up in cuneiform text, in which they promised to abide by its stipulations and vowed to accept punishment by their gods if they violated them. Based upon the deities by which they swore, it is evident that the ruling elite of both parties were influenced by earlier Indo-European heritages, as their respective deities had similar names and were depicted with wings. Egypt’s New Kingdom (16th–11th century BCE), a Nile River civilization, had a long history of interacting with the late period of the Hittite Kingdom some 3,300 years ago. The two were continuously at war for nearly a century and had

“Civilization” 17 just clashed in a furious battle in Kadesh, now located in Syria. Reconciliation followed, and they signed a peace treaty around 1300 BCE. One was drafted in Akkadian cuneiform and carved on clay tablets, while the other was engraved in hieroglyphics upon a wall in the Egyptian capital’s Luxor Palace. The parties guaranteed a permanent peace that future generations must not violate. They promised to undertake an exchange of refugees and prisoners and were mutually obligated to help pacify popular rebellions. When the pact was concluded, it was formally announced to 1,000 male and female deities, and the parties swore to uphold it before the gods of Heaven, Earth, Sea, and Wind. Later, when a Hittite princess married the king of Egypt, the new Egyptian queen wrote to the Hittite queen using cuneiform script. The royal correspondence was created by pressing a blunt stylus onto a clay tablet, and to ensure its content remained unseen while en route, the tablet was enclosed in a layer of clay, upon which was engraved the name of the recipient. Upon receipt, the “envelope” was opened with the blows of a mallet, after which the epistle was carefully perused. The relief in Figure 1.11 was unearthed from the ruins of Persepolis (“city of the Persians”), located in southwestern Iran. More than 300 years before Emperor Qin Shi Huang unified China, Cyrus the Great of Persia took control of Media and established the First Persian Empire (550–330 BCE). His heir Darius built the large-scale Persepolis as a venue for royal celebrations. The empire consisted of 20 regions, each governed by a satrap (viceroy), covering an area that was not smaller than that ruled by Qin Shi Huang. At the time, many different peoples and states dispatched delegations to Persepolis to pay tribute to the Persian monarch, and this small-scale relief portrays a group of bearded men leading two-humped camels bearing gifts.

Figure 1.11  Relief in the ruins of Persepolis

18  “Civilization” When discussing humankind’s great civilizations, we Chinese should not always emphasize that ours qualifies as the most ancient. Ours is indeed the one with the longest uninterrupted history and currently the most populous, but it is not necessarily the oldest. Encouraged by Pope Urban II, Catholics of Western Europe launched seven Crusades into what they regarded as their Holy Land. This showed a different kind of interaction between civilizations, namely, protracted warfare based on religious hostilities. An unusual episode in this conflict is worth telling. In medieval Europe, “jousting” was a sport for two armored men on horseback. In a tournament, the goal was to use a lance with blunted tip to knock one’s foe off his mount; on the battlefield, the lance was not blunted and the consequences likely more deadly. Sometime after the Crusaders were forced to withdraw from Jerusalem in the late 12th century, a painting appeared in Europe. It depicted England’s King Richard the Lionheart having pierced the armor of his foe and the latter was about to fall from his horse. In this tableau, King Richard’s foe was supposed to be Saladin, Ayyubid Sultan, ruler of Egypt and Syria, whose forces had defeated the Crusaders and occupied the Holy Land. The historical reality is that Richard did not joust with Saladin, much less defeat him—the pair negotiated in writing but never met. Realizing Jerusalem could not be taken by the Crusaders, the English king withdrew his troops to Europe in 1192, while Saladin died of illness in Syria in 1193. This painting suggests that when civilizations clash, prejudice, misunderstanding, and malicious propaganda surface. Less than a century after Saladin’s demise, the Mongols governed Persia. The Mongol Khan who ruled the Central Plains of China gifted the Il-khan—also a Mongol, but a “junior” khan—with books from China, in the hope that it would enlighten him regarding ancient history. By the end of the 13th century, the Mongols had conquered both China and Persia, and the khans of these two ancient countries were both descendants of Tolui, fourth son of Genghis Khan. Thus, the special political connections resulted in more frequent interactions between these two great ancient civilizations. Figure 1.12 is a letter in Mongolian derived from a script pioneered by the Huihu (a Turkic-speaking people who later mixed with Mongols and other groups in today’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to become Uyghurs). After the Muslims reoccupied Jerusalem and most of the “Levant” (Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia, comprising today’s Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine), almost all of the Crusaders retreated to Europe in the 13th century.

Figure 1.12  Mongolian letter written with Huihu-inspired script

“Civilization” 19 In the middle of the 13th century, under the command of Kublai Khan’s younger brother Hulagu, the Mongols undertook a westbound campaign bound for Iraq and Syria and conquered territory comprising virtually the heart of the Islamic world. But once he arrived in Northern Syria, Hulagu reversed direction and rushed back eastward with most of his troops to take part in a crucial Kurultai (a meeting of influential Mongol political and military personalities), convened to select a new “Great Khan” in the wake of the demise of the Great Khan Möngke. The small number of troops he left behind was insufficient to continue southward to Jerusalem, and they were defeated by the Mamluks, who had replaced Saladin as rulers of Egypt and Syria. Arghun, the fourth Il-khan, learned that a group of French Crusaders known as the French Templars had once occupied Jerusalem, and that France’s Saint Louis (Louis IX, 1214–1270) had suggested an alliance with the Mongols to dislodge them. The Crusaders were eventually defeated by the Mamluk forces, however, so Arghun penned an appeal to the king of France, Philip le Bel, in 1289. He proposed that their respective troops group at Damascus, jointly lay siege to Jerusalem, and if successful, split the spoils equally. The occupation of Jerusalem would be left to the Christians. The delivery of this letter to Paris was entrusted to a Genoese merchant residing in Persia, but the French king did not respond positively. By the time this intermediary returned to Persia, having failed to get to England to seek an alliance there as planned, Arghun had passed away. In 1304, Arghun’s son Oljeitu also drafted a letter to Philippe le Bel, which he passed to the merchant and instructed him to take to Paris, but now the French were even less inclined to undertake such a risky adventure in the Levant. Both letters are now in the French National Library. What makes the letter in Mongolian special? In three places, it is stamped with the Great Khan’s seal, which is engraved with six Chinese characters, “fuguo anmin zhi bao” (“Treasure for Assisting the Empire in Pacifying Its Subjects”). This jade seal was especially gifted by Kublai Khan to the Il-Khan of Persia, who was personally enfeoffed by the former. Evidently, even when corresponding with the king of France, two successive Il-Khan did not neglect to impress their royal epistles with a seal engraved with Chinese characters—a revealing detail in the annals of cultural interaction. Continuity

In 2006, I was invited to the annual meeting of the French Academy of Sciences. At the entrance of the Academy, I encountered the Guards of Honor accoutered in military uniform, complete with saber. This garb dates from the Napoleonic era when the institution was established and confirms the continuity of civilizations. While France is a country with state-of-the-art culture and sciences, its modernity has not caused it to sever links with its past. Figure 1.13 is an Iranian Zurkhaneh. People come to lift weights, practice gymnastics, and jog to the sounds of drums beating and chanted verses of the Qur’an. Its nature and function are similar to those of a Chinese martial arts hall, and it

20  “Civilization” is said to be a venue for folk activities that first appeared in 11th-century Persia. Today, it serves to nurture collective fitness, religious enthusiasm, and patriotic sentiment. Although Persian dynasties rose and fell and society evolved for a millennium, and the ancestors of today’s Iran experienced rule by the Seljuk Turks and Mongols and occupation under the Timurids and Turkmens, the Zurkhaneh has been a constant. Civilizations are typified by their continuity. Figure 1.14 (left) portrays Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman sultan who ruled during the first half of the 16th century. Figure 1.14 (middle) features the reform-minded Selim III (reigned

Figure 1.13  Zurkaneh: A martial arts hall, Iranian-style

Figure 1.14 Portraits of three Ottoman sultans: Suleiman the Magnificent (left), Selim III (middle), Abdul Hamid II (right)

“Civilization” 21 1789–1807). Their dress differed but both wore elaborate headdress and a loosefitting robe. Figure 1.14 (right) is Abdul Hamid II (reigned 1876–1909), the greatgrandson of Selim III who was still on the Ottoman throne as the fractured Ottoman Empire entered the 20th century. He is depicted in modern garb—a European-style military uniform—while sporting a special Ottoman red fez in place of the elaborate headdress of his ancestors. Thus, the dress of these three sultans spanning the mid-16th to early 20th centuries evolved but maintained a recognizable continuity. Figure 1.15 features Atatürk (“Father of Turkey”), born Ali Rıza oğlu Mustafa, the first president of the Republic of Turkey (founded in 1923). In a symbolic break

Figure 1.15  Atatürk: “Father of Turkey” in Western formal wear

22  “Civilization” with the Ottoman past, he is seen handsomely accoutered in formal Western dress, a tuxedo. Although huge political and social change took place during the transition from empire to republic, and Atatürk himself was very pro-Western, the basic composition of Turkish society and its religious practices did not undergo earthshattering change, so a sense of continuity was maintained. Throughout Turkey today, pious Muslims still account for a large percentage of the population; in most cities one can dine on Ottoman-era dishes and buy traditional porcelain and miniature paintings. Mosques dot the Turkish landscape, and many are leftovers of the Ottoman Empire, though many have been erected within the latest one hundred years too. Their interior decoration and the artful calligraphy based on excerpts from the Qur’an adorn the walls as in the past, and the muezzin’s call to prayer that rings out five times daily from minarets across the nation, as well as the religious rites conducted and prayers recited inside, all remain essentially unchanged. Figure 1.16 highlights the Sema, a religious ceremony unique to the Mevlevi Order (a Sufi sect), conducted by devotees popularly known as “Whirling Dervishes.” Created by the 13th-century poet Rumi, the dance is a form of prayer designed to transport the dancer into total unity with God, and it is still practiced today in Turkey, mainly in Istanbul and Konya (Rumi’s residence). China also hosts its own Sufi groups, but instead of dance, they aim to achieve oneness with Allah by repeatedly chanting select verses from the Qur’an. Many contemporary Turks still respect the various Sufi sects, a tolerance that is indicative of Islamic civilization’s unity and diversity and its overall continuity.

Figure 1.16  A controversial Sufi tradition: Whirling Dervishes

“Civilization” 23 “Fluid Dynamics”: A Unique Approach to Measuring Civilization’s Evolution Next, I’d like to talk a bit about my old profession—fluid dynamics—to make some observations about how a civilization evolves. Let’s first consider civilization as a multivariate function, with “C” standing for “Civilization”: C = f (s, t, p, q); C = Civilization, s = Space, t = Time, p = person/people, q = state/situation The formula expresses that the function of civilization (C) varies depending upon four variables: space (s), time (t), person/crowd (p), a state/situation (q). According to the method used in the study of fluid dynamics, we can obtain the variation of civilization (C) with respect to the four variables s, t, p, q by performing a total differentiation of civilization (C), that is, first fixing the value for space (s), while permitting changes among t, p, q and observing how C varies. We then do the same with time (t) fixed, while allowing s, p, q to change and then observing how C alters, etc. To simplify, if we assume that p and q are approximately constant, then the earlier two differentiating steps can be expressed mathematically as: Dc ∂c ∂c = +V Dt ∂t ∂s But how can we apply this mathematical methodology to the analysis of history? First, you can fix your attention on an area and observe the different state of a given area at a given time. Then you can record your observations of different places in your role as a mobile observer, but your speed and orientation must be accurately measured. For example, let’s say that I wish to study changes in temperature (W) within a lecture hall, depending upon location, e.g., closer to the ceiling or floor, at the left or right of the hall, nearer to the window or the podium, at a location where the audience is concentrated or a location where there is no audience. Furthermore, I want to know how temperature (W) varies over time. I can employ a mathematical concept to define a temperature function, W = W (s, t, p, q), as I did earlier for the civilization function, that is, C = C (s, t, p, q). If I place a thermometer on the podium and record the temperature for two consecutive hours, I will obtain data for temperature changes occurring near the podium. If I place another 10 thermometers at various places within the hall, and record the temperature for two hours, then I will learn how the temperature changed at 11 fixed points over a period of two hours. That is, by fixing s first, then we can observe how W varies due to t. Alternatively, I could employ a free-flying drone with a thermometer on it. At various times, this drone could fly higher or lower, and nearer the window or the

24  “Civilization” podium. Its flight trajectory determines the velocity and direction of V located before the rightmost term of the partial differential equation I cited earlier. The thermometer on the drone records the temperature at all times, so after two hours, the thermometer would provide a rather detailed record that requires explanation. This record is not a temperature record at fixed points in the hall; it is the temperature of all places the drone visited at different times, i.e., the temperature record of the “observer”—in this case, the thermometer—as determined by the drone’s trajectory. If you process the two records mathematically according to the equation cited just above, you can get an understanding of the temperature changes within the entire hall, in other words, a comprehensive and rational understanding of temperature change anywhere in the hall. China, and numerous other societies—providing they possessed a script—have their own sources for recorded history (e.g., China’s classic Twenty-Four Histories) and other written records such as local chronicles and those kept by institutions such as courts, temples/churches, schools, customs offices, and even clans or enterprises. These are all legitimate sources for researching history. Such information belongs to the first term on the right side of the equal sign of the partial differential equation cited earlier. In the 14th century—a bit later than Marco Polo’s time—lived a Moroccan explorer named Ibn Battuta who traveled solo throughout North and East Africa and West, Central, South, Southeast, and East Asia for some 27 years, including India (8 years) and China (over 6 months). Once back in Morocco, he published his insights in Arabic, now best known as The Travels (full title, literally rendered: A Masterpiece to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling). Ibn Battuta visited many places, and his observations are a good source of data for research. We can fix the time period under study at 1325–1354 CE, and if we follow his route and note what he witnessed, then the changes in civilization he observed during those 27 years are equivalent to the data recorded by the thermometer on the drone in the lecture hall over a set period of time. Indeed, a systematic treatment of Ibn Battuta’s observations would be useful for getting a better grasp of the “history of civilization in flux.” Ibn Battuta aside, beginning way back in BCE times, Chinese envoys to the “Western Regions” (Central Asia) such as Zhang Qian, and later itinerant monks (Fa Xian, Xuan Zang) and maritime explorers (Zheng He), recorded their journeys. Their eyewitness records represent invaluable and highly useful materials for studying history. This category of data belongs to the second term on the right side of the differential equation cited earlier. If there were enough solid data based on local chronicles, and travelogues such as those (supposedly) dictated by explorers Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta after their globetrotting, then we could obtain—in theory, at any rate—the full differential to the left of the equal mark (=) in the fluid-dynamics inspired formula I cited at the beginning of this section, i.e., a complete picture of the interaction between multiple civilizations within the Eurasian context.

2

Alexander’s Eastern Campaigns, Hellenism, and Gandharan Art

In terms of language and ethnicity, the Greeks and Persians both have their origins in Indo-European tribes of the northern Black Sea region. After he vanquished the Persian world, Alexander the Great realized that these two civilizations could indeed commingle. His successful long-distance eastward military campaigns transported a large part of Eurasia into what historians label the “Hellenistic period” (323–31 BCE). In Central Asia, this period witnessed the fusion of Indian Buddhism and Greek art, which gave birth to Gandharan art, a school that exercised great influence on Buddhism in China, South Korea, and Japan.

Civilization’s “Family Tree” The starting point of this chapter is the genealogy of civilization illustrated in Chart 2.1. Second from top left is the Mesopotamian civilization, also known as the Sumerian Civilization, because the early inhabitants of Mesopotamia (“[land] between rivers”) were Sumerians. They invented the cuneiform script and constructed the Great Ziggurat of Ur, a rectangular, stepped tower still standing near Baghdad. Abraham, ancestral patriarch of the Hebrews, led his people from the plains of Mesopotamia to Palestine and created the Jewish world. In Latin, the word for China is Sinae, and Sinic refers to its ancient, multiethnic civilization, or Zhonghua. “Chinese” is generally used to describe modern China. Sinic and “Chinese” are essentially one and the same; they can be traced back to the same primeval origins. When Zhang Qian, the Han Dynasty diplomat and explorer, is mentioned, the relevance rests in Chinese civilization; when the subject is Alexander the Great, then it relates to Mediterranean civilization. Because the overarching theme of this book is the meeting and intermingling of civilizations, I have selected several eras in which to focus on themes that emerge when the pair—civilizations of the East and West—overlap in the same space and time. The plains of Egypt and Mesopotamia are not utterly separate. They are linked to each other via the Sinai Peninsula, forming a shape that resembles a new moon, and since its soil is moist and fertile, it has been dubbed the “Fertile Crescent.” Comprising the crescent are Iraq (ancient Mesopotamia), modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and of course, the river valleys of the Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates. DOI: 10.4324/9781003369899-2

26  Alexander’s Eastern Campaigns, Hellenism, and Gandharan Art Neolithic culture (Xin Shiqi Shidai Wenhua)

Mesopotamia

Egyptian

Indic civilization

civilization

Cretan/Minoan

Hittite

Canaanite

civilization

civilization

civilization

Sinic civilization

Hindu civilization

Chinese

Japanese

civilization

civilization

Classical Mediterranean civilization

Modern Chinese civilization Western civilization

Islamic civilization

Eastern Orthodox/

Modern Japanese civilization

Indian civilization

Russian civilization

Chart 2.1  Genealogy of civilization

Influenced by the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations, peoples in the surrounding areas also created their own. Colored clay pots from 15th century BCE have been discovered in Crete, in the southern Aegean Sea. Knossos on Crete’s northern coast was the capital of the island during the reign of King Minos, and this civilization was dubbed “Minoan” by European scholars. Egyptian civilization was concentrated in the lower reaches of the Nile, facing the Mediterranean Sea, while the southern coast of Crete is not far north of the Nile estuary. Follow Mesopotamia to the area occupied by today’s Lebanon and Syria and you have the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Navigate further to the west and you will arrive at the island of Crete. Thus, Minoan civilization was impacted by both Egypt and Mesopotamia. To the north of Crete are the Aegean Islands and the Mycenae region of southern Greece, an area of early Greek (Mycenaean) civilization. In terms of topography, Greece consists of crisscrossing mountains and islands—“no flat ground extends more than three li,” as the Chinese saying goes—so an agricultural-based state was never truly feasible. The land on the two banks of a large river is typically flat, facilitating the development of agriculture that can construct a civilization with a large population, and one which can sustain a unified government that can tax all its territory. This feature is found in Mesopotamia (Tigris and Euphrates River valleys) as well as the basins of the Nile, Indus, Ganges, Yellow, Yangtze, and Pearl Rivers. Greek civilization, on the other hand, is a civilization nurtured by the Mediterranean Sea, and it eventually went beyond the Mediterranean region.

Alexander’s Eastern Campaigns, Hellenism, and Gandharan Art 27 As we proceed northwest of Mesopotamia, we find the remains of the Hittite Empire. In what is modern-day central and eastern Turkey, some 4,000 years ago cuneiform (“wedge-shaped”) script was already in use here and techniques for bronze fabrication mastered; it is even said that the Hittites invented ironware. Not far from the Hittite Empire was the land of the Phoenicians, who excelled at maritime trade, a region also known as “Canaan” (now Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan). The Judeo-Christian canons, the Old Testament and New Testament, respectively, record that after Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, God promised to gift Canaan to them. According to archaeological finds, about 3,250 years ago the Israelites defeated the Phoenicians and entered the land of Canaan and thereupon absorbed the Canaanite civilization as well as developed its civilization. The Minoan and Canaanite civilizations jointly influenced Mediterranean civilization, evolving into the Classical Greek civilization later incarnated by Alexander the Great. It gradually spread westward to what is now Italy, and from Italy westward to France, Britain, and other parts of Europe. Such are the origins and dissemination of what is now referred to as “Western Civilization” that figures at the bottom left of Chart 2.1. Slavic civilization (principally Russian), typified by its iconic Eastern Orthodox faith, was another branch of ancient Greek civilization whose genesis lies in the Mediterranean. At the end of 9th century CE, two Greek missionaries used Greek capital letters to create an alphabet adapted to Slavic tongues. The Bible was henceforth available in this new Cyrillic script, which helped convert Slavs to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Thus the roots of Russia’s Orthodox faith, and that of other Slavic peoples, are to be found in the Greek Orthodox Church. Western Europe’s Catholics used Latin for the Bible and religious rites, so it is sometimes referred to as the “Latin Church.” Latin was long the liturgical language of the Roman Catholic Church; it was not until 1962 that mass was held in local languages, and today only in the Vatican and the mainland of China are religious ceremonies delivered in Latin. As will be detailed later, Mediterranean and Canaanite civilizations not only directly impacted the Greek and Russian civilizations with their iconic Eastern Orthodox faith; the former two also influenced the civilizations represented by Christianity in Western Europe as well as Islam in West Asia. East vs. West: Persia and Greece Face Off The Persians in the East and the Greeks in the West were perpetually in conflict. Perhaps the most renowned of the Greco-Persian Wars (499–449 BCE) was the “Battle of Marathon,” detailed later in this chapter. Although enemies for generations, the Greeks and Persians were closely linked by ethnicity and language, and both were members of the “Caucasian” race who spoke an Indo-European tongue. According to the combined findings in the fields of archaeology, anthropology, and linguistics, scholars generally agree with a linguistic theory that, while perhaps not entirely accurate, does have considerable evidence in its favor. Next I shall introduce the elements of this theory.

28  Alexander’s Eastern Campaigns, Hellenism, and Gandharan Art About 6,000–7,000 years ago, an unidentified group of tribes speaking a “Proto-Indo-European language” inhabited the southern Ural Mountain Range. Located in the northern Caucasus Mountains, north of the Black Sea, the region was covered by a mixture of grassland and forest. During the period from 6200–3000 BCE, three successive massive migratory waves of these tribes—many on foot herding their cattle or in horse-drawn four-wheeled chariots, and soldiers on horseback or in double-seater war chariots—dispersed throughout Eurasia. They either conquered the indigenous inhabitants or first served as soldiers for the locals, and eventually came to rule them. As they migrated and settled, the new arrivals lived among the locals, often marrying their women, unions that resulted in a large number of mixed-race offspring and engendered new tongues. In this lengthy process of migration, conquest, and integration, “Proto-Indo-European” developed into an extended family of languages and dialects, to the point that the speech of some 45 percent of the earth’s population now arguably belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. It is worth mentioning that the first wave of Indo-Europeans left their homeland north of the Black Sea about 6,200–5,000 years ago and migrated quite far, including the Hittites, who settled in Asia Minor, and the Tocharians, who settled in Tarim Basin of China’s Xinjiang. The second wave of Indo-Europeans abandoned their home base about 4,500– 3,700 years ago and gradually settled in many areas throughout Eurasia. Their languages formed various Germanic languages, Armenian, Greek, Italian, and multiple languages spoken in Iran and India. Starting out from different sites than the second wave, the third wave began its migration toward Western Europe, the Baltic Sea, and Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Their languages gradually morphed into today’s Baltic and Slavic languages as well as Albanian. The line of demarcation for the East-West confrontation incarnated by the Greco-Persian Wars was the western edge of Asia Minor; to the West was Greece, to the East was Persia. But if you look closely at the various ethnic groups and languages in Central Eurasia, you will find that the roots of the Persian “East” and Greek “West” are not so dissimilar. Around 500 BC, Persia reached its peak under the rule of Darius the Great, when his Achaemenid Empire possessed a vast territory that included Egypt and implemented a unified system of weights and measures. This was nearly three centuries prior to China’s Qin Dynasty (221 to 206 BCE). The remnants of Persepolis Palace, whose construction began under Darius 2,500 years ago, are still standing on the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf, northeast of Iran’s Shiraz. From the reliefs carved on the fragmentary walls, one can see the tribute-bearers and imagine the glories of empires past. It reminds me of a line of verse penned by the Tang poet, Wang Wei: Envoys of myriad states Bowed to the Emperor’s tasseled crown.

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Figure 2.1  Reliefs at Persepolis

The issue of “strong” vs. “weak” culture often surfaces. Of course, a steady stream of tribute-bearers arriving at one’s court is a manifestation of a strong culture. But within the past 200 years of China’s history, the nation’s Central Plains civilization has been under assault as never before; even the attacks mounted by the Xiongnu, Di, Xianbei, Tujue, Khitan, Jurchens, Mongols, and Manchus were less traumatic. Due to this onslaught, our knowledge structure today is heavily biased in favor of the West. We know a lot about Greece and are well acquainted with the Italian Renaissance, the discovery of maritime routes by the Spanish and Portuguese, French rationalism, and Great Britain’s industrial revolution. Yet the civilization of Persia, which is physically closer to China and with which we had more frequent contact in the past, is much less familiar to us. This illustrates the fact that today’s dominant culture resides in the West, not in the East. Greek Civilization With its mountainous terrain and archipelago (ancient Greek for “Aegean Sea”), Greece is not well suited to intensive agriculture and was sustained mainly by trade. Nomadic peoples relocate in search of pastures and water for their sheep and horses; the Greeks migrated where their trade routes took them. Like the early Phoenicians, if the Greeks often traveled to a particular port, they would establish a settlement there. Hence their customary places of habitation extended far beyond the Greek peninsula and the Aegean. Greeks established several colonies in what are now Italy and southern France, including Marseille. Greek navigators outdid the earlier Phoenicians when they exited the Strait of Gibraltar and then headed north, where they reached the west coast of Scotland in 6th century BCE. Traveling widely in their large oared ships, at times the Greeks drifted into uncharted waters. Myths of their seafaring ways were immortalized by Homer in his 8th-century-BCE epic, the Odyssey.

30  Alexander’s Eastern Campaigns, Hellenism, and Gandharan Art Motivated by its topography that was ill-suited to intensive agriculture, the ancient Greeks established many independent city-states overseas. They varied in terms of size and mode of administration and were not subordinate to each other because none had sufficient advantages—in terms of location or natural resources—to enforce its rule upon others. Under normal circumstances, any group of Greeks could proceed within this network of city-states and conduct business. They were then free to return home with their profits to engage in money lending, purchase slaves to do their bidding, and so forth. In terms of politics, the most representative city-state was Athens. Major decisions were taken by the nobility, but each citizen—slaves did not qualify—could voice his opinion in public discussion in the demos or district where he resided and could elect a delegate to participate in the Ecclesia or citizens’ assembly. It was the Athenians who invented the word democracy: demos, meaning “district” or “community,” and kratos, “rule.” Athens was renowned for advocating freedom and for the high esteem in which it held both the merchant and the scholar. In order to nurture a martial spirit, Sparta stipulated that children were to be raised in a commune, not by their biological parents. These two distinctly different social cultures led to military conflict. The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) was fought between the Delian League, led by Athens, and the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta. But even if there were mutually hostile military alliances between city-states, there was still a common faith in the Greek pantheon of deities, 12 in all: notably, Zeus, king of the gods; Hera, their queen; Apollo, god of the sun; Athene, goddess of wisdom; Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty; Poseidon, god of the sea; Dionysus, god of wine; and Hermes, god of commerce. All the Greeks believed that these gods resided at the summit of Mount Olympus, so the adjective “Olympic” has come to mean “everyone” or “the public,” hence the modern use of “Olympic Games” to promote the “Olympic Spirit” that once brought the ancient Greek citystates together in friendly competition. The Classical Greek period (5th–4th centuries BCE) saw the emergence of many great thinkers, mainly in Athens, the most renowned being Socrates, Aristotle, and his erstwhile teacher, Plato. There were many scientists among the ancient Greeks who explored the origins of matter both via theory and based upon empirical evidence, while others explored human physiology and pathology. During the Spring and Autumn period (770–476 BCE), China saw the birth of philosophical concepts such as the dualistic Yin and Yang, and the Five Elements (Wuxing), but Greece also had roughly corresponding theories. Figure 2.2 shows a Minoan fresco created more than three millennia ago but still visible in the Palace of Knossos on the island of Crete. Known as the “bull-leaping fresco,” this likely imagined scene features a toreador grasping the horns of a charging bull, one balancing himself above its back, and a third behind the animal. Greek agriculture was not well developed and was confined to growing cash crops such as grape, fig, and olive with very few cereals. For food supply, it depended on the north coast of the Black Sea, which it controlled and regarded as its own grain store; sometimes it also traded with Egypt in order to get the needed

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Figure 2.2  A fresco on Crete Island that is more than 3,000 years old

cereals. Thus, Greek “civilization” was not randomly pieced together; rather, it was a lifestyle developed over several centuries of experience and comprised key elements drawing upon geography, ecology, trade, politics, society, and religion. Only by combining the physical environment of Greece with the lived experience of the ancient Greeks did this system of sustainable civilization take shape. Figure 2.3 shows the tale of the demigod Herakles (Hercules) and the ferocious Erymanthian Boar that King Eurystheus—shown half-hidden in a vase—tasked him to capture as one of his “Twelve Labors.” This item of faience pottery was probably produced more than 2,800 years ago and is now housed in the British Museum in London. Early on, Greek artists showed great sensitivity to the structure, muscles, and bones of the human body, as evidenced in the well-known “Discobolus of Myron” sculpture. No similarly detailed studies of the human body structure have been discovered in Chinese art. Works of this type also declined during Europe’s Middle Ages when Christianity flourished. But during Italy’s Renaissance, artists such as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci once again focused on the role of muscles and bones and began to portray the human body in detail, and this eventually became an iconic feature of Renaissance artwork. By “Renaissance,” I am not referring to emulation of the arts as they were practiced in ancient Greece; I mean the rejuvenation of its civilization in a more holistic sense. There were military confrontations between Greece and Persia that lasted 50 years, known as the Greco-Persian Wars (499–449 BCE). Initially Greece lost

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Figure 2.3  Greek vase illustrating one of Hercules’ “Twelve Labors”

several islands, parts of the Balkans and the West Bank of Asia Minor. However, overall Greece possessed strategic advantages: The Aegean Sea served as a natural barrier; the Greek navy was strong, powerful, and experienced in warfare at sea; and the Persian army was far from its Iranian Plateau, lacked maneuverability, and consisted of multiethnic troops. The Persians had to travel by sea in order to attack the Greek peninsula, and two landings failed due to strong winds. In 490 BCE, they did succeed in setting foot on dry land south of Athens, but due to the topography, their cavalry was unable to

Alexander’s Eastern Campaigns, Hellenism, and Gandharan Art 33 press their advantage. The Athenians dispatched their entire army and engaged in close-quarter combat. Even though Sparta, a fellow Greek city-state, did not send troops in support, the Athenians eventually gained the upper hand. This was the famous “Battle of Marathon.” In order to deliver news of the victory, it is said that an Athenian soldier—the Spartans had ignored an invitation to join in the fight—raced 42.2 kilometers back to Athens, pronounced the words “We won!” and promptly collapsed and expired. This battle greatly increased the confidence of the Greek city-states and represented a turning point in the halfcentury of Greco-Persian conflict. After Greece defeated Persia, the city-states established new colonies and continued to spread civilization in all directions. However, during this period, Athens and Sparta also developed a pair of competing alliances with fellow city-states. In 431 BCE, Sparta invaded Athens, and in turn Athens’ fleet attacked Sparta’s coastline, which set off the aforementioned Peloponnesian War. A deadly plague broke out in Athens soon thereafter, and its population dropped precipitously. The war ended in 404 BCE when Sparta successfully cut off the enemy’s food supply, which brought Athens to its knees. This marked the twilight of the brilliant “Classical Greek” period. In the decades that followed, historically speaking, the most noteworthy development was the emergence of Greece’s northern neighbor, the Kingdom of Macedonia. Macedonia was only “semi-civilized” at the outset of the classical period and had once been occupied by Persia. After the decline of Athens, King Philip ruled Macedonia (359–336 BCE), and being a great fan of Greek culture, he commissioned a Greek scholar to tutor his son, then just eight or nine years old. His instructor was none other than the great master philosopher of the late Classical Greek period, Aristotle, and Philip’s son, the protagonist and hero of this chapter hence forward, was the future Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great’s Eastern Campaigns Figure 2.4 is a master fresco by the famous Renaissance painter Raphael portraying 20 or so ancient Greek philosophers; it is a virtual assemblage of the “Immortals.” Of course, the scene is an imaginary one. Grecian buildings were certainly not designed like this, and these great thinkers did not live concurrently. A youthful Alexander is also said to figure in the tableau. In Preface to a Farewell Feast Atop the Prince Teng Pavilion in Autumn, Tang poet Wang Bo wrote: Young and unschooled How fortunate was I to find myself at this august gathering. It seems unlikely that Alexander ever uttered such a sentiment, perhaps because he was never trained in the Confucianist tradition of modesty. In any case, Alexander did study under Aristotle. Aristotle authored treatises on many philosophical themes, including those entitled Metaphysics, On the Soul, Poetics, Politics, and Rhetoric, and he also speculated on the origins of the universe.

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Figure 2.4 “The School of Athens” (“Scuola di Atene”): A fresco in the Vatican by Italian Renaissance artist Raphael

Alexander did not study military strategy with Aristotle, because his tutor was not knowledgeable in this domain. Just 20 years of age when King Philip died, Alexander succeeded his father to the throne. He took control of the army and developed the formidable “Macedonian phalanx,” a tactical formation consisting of a block of infantry standing shoulder-to-shoulder in file several ranks deep. At 21, he dispatched troops to unify Greece, which was in a state of decline, and thereby accessed an enormous pool of human and material resources. Many people are deeply motivated by instinct, lived experience, or belief in an ideal or a faith. Alexander’s motivation was to vanquish Persia, Greece’s powerful enemy that represented barbarism in his eyes. Figure 2.5 reputedly shows Alexander the Great, sculpted in marble. His hair is wavy with curls, a touch that suggests the influence of the Gandharan school of visual arts founded by the Greeks of Central Asia after his death. Scholars suspect that the statue in Figure 2.6, housed today in an Iranian museum, portrays Alexander the Great on horseback, and Figure 2.5 may be its missing head. But since the two were not discovered at the same site, this cannot be confirmed. Alexander first chose to attack a land that he believed should be under his control as soon as possible, namely Egypt, a prolific source of cereals that was ruled by the Persians. He first proceeded eastward, penetrating deep into Asia Minor, and set out from its Mediterranean coast to capture Egypt. He continued eastward and occupied Ctesiphon, then capital of the Persian Empire. Afterwards, his army fought all the way to the eastern boundary of Persia’s domain, and entered a

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Figure 2.5  Marble sculpture, said to be Alexander the Great

region—modern-day Tajikistan—inhabited by the Sogdians, speakers of an Eastern Iranian tongue. There he took a 16-year-old Sogdian princess, Roxana, as his wife. Alexander led his army from Bactria to the east and then south to India. After crossing the Indus River, however, his troops balked at going any further; after all, they had left their homes a decade ago. Alexander therefore gave the order to halt. All told, during his eastern expedition and the return journey, some 80 cities bearing his name—“Alexandria” or a variation thereof—were established. This emperor with the air of a Greek scholar, personally instructed to perfection by none other than Aristotle, this commander-in-chief who set out full of prejudice and arrogance to vanquish his enemies, not only defeated his neighbors and his enemies, he also conquered the neighboring lands of his enemies’ neighbors. Along

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Figure 2.6  Sculpture of Alexander in Iran

the way back he stationed a portion of his troops at various sites and had but 10,000 when he returned to Persia. At the time, Alexander was just 32 years old. After ten years of fighting peoples in “the East,” he discovered that they were not irrational barbarians; their culture simply differed from his. He realized that his real task was to integrate them into his empire, not to do battle with them. Inspired by this realization, he married another Persian princess and encouraged his subordinates to follow suit. Alexander held a grand feast to celebrate his wedding and invited thousands. His Greek soldiers were to don Persian garb to attend the event. But among his subordinates were those who opposed such “Persianization.” One of his junior generals perceived this as a sort of surrender, one that transformed the dominant culture of the Greeks into a lesser one. The two clashed, and while Alexander the Great killed his opponent, he himself was injured and not long after died in Persia. Alexander began his Eastern Campaigns in 333 BCE, took the daughter of Persia’s King Darius as his second wife in 324, and died in Babylon in 323. With his passing, the history of the east Mediterranean and much of Eurasia entered the Hellenistic period (323–31 BCE). Hellenism in the East Mediterranean and Central Eurasia The Hellenistic period was dominated by the Greeks, and Greek civilization served as the paradigm for social life. Its realm stretched from Egypt to today’s Afghanistan and lasted nearly two centuries until replaced by the Romans. By comparison,

Alexander’s Eastern Campaigns, Hellenism, and Gandharan Art 37 at its height, the Roman Empire only extended eastward to Mesopotamia and the west bank of the Persian Gulf. In English, the country is called “Greece,” while the flowering of Greek culture that occurred between Alexander’s death and the emergence of the Roman Empire is known as the “Hellenistic period.” This is because English speakers derive “Greece” from the Latin Graecia, while the Greeks refer to their country as Hellas and themselves as Héllēnes. After Alexander, broad swathes of his empire were inherited by his subordinates, engendering four Hellenistic kingdoms. The most important at that time was Alexandria in Egypt, followed by Antioch on the east coast of the Mediterranean, Pergamon on the east coast of the Aegean, and lastly, Greece’s Athens. Alexandria and Antioch should be considered the twin “centers” of the Hellenistic period. The former is situated on the southeast coast of the Mediterranean and functioned as a hub of Asian, European, and African trade. Antioch, whose ruins are located in south-central Turkey near the Syrian border, offered access to Persia by crossing the Tigris, and from Persia onward to Central Asia and China; Antioch was the western end of the route that led from all parts of Asia to the Mediterranean. Figure 2.7 shows the ruins of the Pergamon Library (now in western Turkey) during the Hellenistic period, which remained an important public library during the Roman era. Although ancient China also had large collections of books, it never established a large-scale library for scholars. During the Qing Dynasty, thousands of books were consulted and a massive compilation, entitled Siku Quanshu (aka Complete Library of the Four Treasuries), was hand-copied. Seven sets of the

Figure 2.7  Ruins of the Pergamon Library

38  Alexander’s Eastern Campaigns, Hellenism, and Gandharan Art compilation—each totaling more than 36,000 volumes once bound—were sent to seven locations within China, but the idea of a public library did not yet exist within the country. The ancient library in Pergamon, by contrast, was accessible to scholars for research. It was equipped with an underground sewage system and stove-heated marble toilets! Egypt’s Ptolemaic Kingdom was the wealthiest of the four kingdoms during the Hellenistic period and featured the longest reign. Its rulers constructed the ancient world’s most impressive library at Alexandria, but it was eventually destroyed in battle. The Ptolemy were of Macedonian Greek extraction, and their famous monarchs aside, during their rule many great talents emerged: Particularly renowned was Claudius Ptolemaeus (127–145 CE), the 2nd-century Alexandria-based astronomer, geographer, and mathematician whose theory that the earth is the center of the universe dominated astronomical history for some 1,400 years. The Ptolemaic Dynasty ruled Egypt by nurturing the Greek spirit while relying upon Egyptian traditions. Many Egyptian temples standing today were put in place by the court, but many represented new interpretations of existing architectural styles. In the latter period of their rule, the royal family dressed in Egyptian garb but still spoke Greek; only at the end did they acquire Egyptian as well. This illustrates that when civilizations interact, it is not immediately clear which shall be dominant. Does donning another’s clothing indicate “weak” culture? What about adopting others’ festivals? It’s not that simple. Over time, even members of the same family who reside apart may adopt different tongues, forms of dress, and faiths. Legend has it that a reporter once queried Premier Zhou Enlai: “You studied in France. Well then, how do you assess the impact of the French Revolution on our world today?” “The French Revolution is still too recent,” replied Zhou. “I’m afraid I can’t judge its real impact yet.” Although this was doubtless diplomatic rhetoric, it also suggests wisdom of a sort. One needs to observe history with an eye to the long-term view; shortterm behavior and localized situations often make it difficult to identify their significance and potential influence. Engaging in speculation about which trend will dominate, nurturing a resistant mindset to a given culture, unwillingness to wear another people’s clothing or sing its songs—all in order to maintain one’s homegrown traditions—are not necessarily a correct approach. To put it simply, the Ptolemaic Dynasty (305–30 BCE) had the Greeks playing the role of Egyptian deities, because Egyptian pharaohs were both mortal and divine, and relied upon their unquestioned godliness as evidence of their divine right to rule. But when the Greeks first arrived in Egypt, they were clearly human, so how could they claim to rule other humans? Thus, they needed to gradually cloak themselves in an air of divinity. I write “play the role” of a deity, because it was initially a matter of expediency used to grasp the reins of power; over time, however, the Greeks truly absorbed Egyptian culture. The Ptolemaic rulers constructed many temples such as the famous Luxor Temple complex—Luxor was known to the ancient Greeks as “Thebes”—located in the

Alexander’s Eastern Campaigns, Hellenism, and Gandharan Art 39 middle reaches of the Nile River. In fact, many of Egypt’s most impressive temples were built during the Hellenistic period because the Greeks brought their architectural art, including sculptures and colonnades, with them to the banks of the Nile. The idols were Egyptian while the architectural art was Grecian; this represents the fusion of two civilizations. During the more than two-century rule of the Ptolemy, no battles took place between the rulers and the ruled, but their civilizations became inextricably integrated. The dynasty’s greatest contribution to scientific development was the establishment of the world’s largest university, the “Mouseion” or “Musaeum” (Greek, “institution of the Muses”), which included the famous Library of Alexandria. The English word “museum” is derived from this name. The last pharaoh of the Ptolemaic Dynasty also wore Egyptian garb, but she did not do so to purposely disguise herself; by this time, the royals no doubt identified with such dress. This was Cleopatra, a real historical personality perhaps most strongly associated in the West with the 1963 cinematic classic Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor. Cleopatra claimed to be both a human and a god; while her divinity remained unexpressed, the foibles of her human nature were all too evident. She fell in love with two Roman generals, the first being Julius Caesar, by whom she had a son. Later, she was even more devoted to Mark Anthony, who fathered her twins. After Caesar’s assassination, when Mark Anthony and Octavian, Julius Caesar’s great nephew and adopted son, competed to succeed the dead leader, Cleopatra took Mark Anthony’s side. At that time in history, Egypt was already a vassal of Rome. Mark Anthony had been dispatched by Rome to govern Egypt; Cleopatra herself was the Egypt’s Pharaoh. Driven by the twin motors of romantic desire and love of country, she became the lover of two Roman rulers. In the wake of Octavian’s triumph back in Rome, Cleopatra and Mark Anthony committed double suicide in Egypt. One of Cleopatra’s characteristics was her vanity, for she was extremely confident of her figure. Like her Roman aristocratic contemporaries, she judged that the material that best suited her physique was not wool or cotton, but silk. Therefore, they wore silky robes that rippled against their bodies in the breeze, hopefully rendering them more alluring. History tells us that Cleopatra adored things made of silk. In her era, a catty of silk was worth its weight in gold. Sericulturalists in ancient China raised silkworm larvae on mulberry leaves, processed their cocoons, and painstakingly wound the fine silk filaments on a reel to create raw silk. It was then sold to far off Egypt via Sogdian and Persian merchants. The Seleucid Empire inherited much of the territory conquered by Alexander, but it split apart less than a century after his death. One of the resulting states, the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom (modern-day southern Afghanistan), and the Greeks continued to rule there for another 100 years. They maintained and continued spreading Grecian concepts of architecture, sculpture, and philosophy until they were supplanted by Yuezhi from the north.

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Figure 2.8  Likeness of Cleopatra, Egypt’s female pharaoh

Gandharan Art Founded by Chandragupta in 324 BCE, India’s Mauryan Dynasty arose about the time of Alexander the Great’s demise. Ashoka the Great (reigned 268–232 BCE), grandson of the dynasty’s founder, was originally a bloodthirsty tyrant, but after conquering much territory he probably felt great regret for his weighty sins and therefore converted to Buddhism. He established it as the state religion and facilitated its spread within his dominion. The dynasty’s power extended to the southern part of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, so Buddhism also took root there. Later,

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Figure 2.9  Gold coins from the Kushan Empire

42  Alexander’s Eastern Campaigns, Hellenism, and Gandharan Art Buddhists in northwestern India preached this faith to the Greek descendants who ruled Bactria, so they converted as well. While they became followers of Buddhism, they retained Grecian aesthetics and values, and the two forms of cultural expression gradually merged. Previously, Nepal and India simply disseminated the spirit of Buddhism and hand-copied scriptures. During Ashoka’s reign, wherever the local population converted, a “Pillar of the Dharma”—Dhamma thambha—was erected, signaling that the site was now firmly within the Buddhist realm. The Greeks felt that Buddha should be represented in visible form too, so Gandhara (today’s western Pakistan), where Indian and Greek civilization intertwined, became the center for the production of Buddha statues. Known as examples of Gandharan art, these sculptures featured a Grecian style of artistic expression. Later, the Yuezhi were chased out of the Hexi Corridor by the Xiongnu and fled to the western Pamir Mountains. Afterwards, they continued their southward migration, supplanted the Greeks and Scythians of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, and founded the Kushan Kingdom at the modern-day border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. In first century CE, Kushan became one of the world’s four major empires. Its territory included northern India and the Amu Darya basin, and extended eastward to the Pamirs (now eastern Tajikistan). Near Pakistan’s capital Islamabad is a place called Taxila, where archaeologists have discovered the largest number of Gandharan art works. According to historical records, the ancient center of Gandharan art was located in what is now Peshawar. How exactly can we define the term “Gandharan art”? At left in Figure 2.10 is the head of the Greek god Apollo now housed in a museum in Athens. To the right is a Buddha statue in the Gandharan style, preserved in today’s Pakistan. Their looks, especially the curly hair, are very similar, because

Figure 2.10  Apollo (left) and Gandharan-style Buddha statue

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Figure 2.11  Athene (left) and Gandharan-style woman’s statue

Figure 2.12  Busts of Buddha found in Pakistan, Cambodia, and Indonesia

44  Alexander’s Eastern Campaigns, Hellenism, and Gandharan Art in the Gandharan era there were artisans and sculptors, descendants of the Greeks, who were skilled at applying Grecian techniques to images of Buddha. At left in Figure 2.11 is the Greek deity Athene. The image on the right depicts a statue found in Pakistan, and her pleated skirt also resembles Athene’s clothing. Buddhism was founded in 6th century BCE. To date, no sculptures of the Buddha made during the first 400 years thereafter have been discovered, and many scriptures forbade such a representation. However, many Buddha statues have been uncovered among remains in the Gandhara region, so it is certain that Buddhist sculptural art commenced after 200 BCE. Because Gandhara is far from the origins of Buddhism in the middle reaches of the Ganges, and Gandharan culture extended mainly northward away from India, there was not much resistance to representing the Buddha in the form of a statue. During the Wei, Jin, and Southern and Northern Dynasties, the fabrication of Buddha statues flourished in China, and those found in the grottoes of Maijishan (Tianshui, Gansu), Yungang (Datong, Shanxi) and Longmen (Luoyang, Henan) gradually took on the same look. In Figure 2.12, we see three busts that were discovered in Pakistan, Cambodia, and Indonesia. Prior to the arrival of Islam, Indonesians primarily worshipped Buddhism, although Brahmanism (Hinduism’s forerunner) had also been popular on some islands as well. In each society, the features of the Buddha took on the facial characteristics of the inhabitants who worshipped it. That’s why a Chinese Buddha appears “Chinese.” The basic concept behind these sculptures is the same, but its expression is “localized.” Only one element has remained unaltered: The Buddha’s locks are curly, just like the hair of the Greek Olympian god Apollo.

3

Mysteries of the Western Regions Pioneering Zhang Qian and Han Dynasty Explorers

Interactions between farming peoples in the temperate zone and northern nomads represent the dominant motif of Eurasian history. The Western Han Dynasty (206 BCE–25 CE) had been threatened by the Xiongnu even since its establishment, so in the late 2nd century BCE Emperor Wu of Han dispatched his imperial envoy Zhang Qian to the remote “Western Regions”—the Chinese term for then-uncharted Central Asia—in the hopes of outflanking the Xiongnu and getting his hands on the treasured horses of this territory. Zhang Qian’s successful pioneering feat officially opened the way for orderly exchange of indigenous goods and cultures between China’s Central Plains and Central Asia and effectively inaugurated the opening stretch of the Silk Road. During the Eastern Han (25–220 CE), the famous general, explorer, and diplomat Ban Chao succeeded in pacifying the territory. He and his son were subsequently garrisoned in the Western Regions. As Protector General of the territory, Ban Chao once even attempted to make contact with the Roman Empire. Many archaeological discoveries in modern times have proven that the Silk Road paved the way for regular contact between the Han and the Persians and also indirectly facilitated the exchange of goods between China and the Roman Empire.

Xiongnu Empire in the Northern Grasslands The Xiongnu were a tribal confederation based in the eastern portion of the Eurasian Steppes, and theirs was the first empire established by a Chinese steppe people in those climes. What does the concept of “steppe people” signify? In terms of production methods, their hallmark is the large herds of livestock they raise, and the more heads they own, the greater their wealth and the more influence they wield. Once their herds have consumed most of the grass in the surrounding habitat, they must relocate for better grazing, and thus they set up camp in different locales during the summer versus the winter. Since steppe inhabitants must constantly migrate while seeking fresh grass and nearby water for their animals, their form of lodging must be “portable.” The Chinese character for a room “室” is topped by the radical for a roof “宀,” but prairie dwellers can’t relate to such a concept; they are accustomed to a tentlike structure known as a yurt to Turkic peoples or the Mongolian ger. The earliest DOI: 10.4324/9781003369899-3

46  Mysteries of the Western Regions nomadic people may have been tribal groups that roamed the steppes of southern Europe and spoke an Indo-European tongue. Some nomads living in the steppes of southern Russia and modern Kazakhstan, and the Altai mountains, were known as Scythians or Saka. Residents of the Kangju, Shule, and Khotan Kingdoms cited in ancient Chinese chronicles may all have been descendants of Scythians, and the Loulan may also have had blood ties with them. The Indo-European Scythians established a vast steppe empire that dominated during the 9th–6th centuries BCE. Within East Asia, the Xiongnu and Xianbei—both considered Mongolic groups—were historically the steppe peoples who interacted most with the Central Plains, the cradle of Chinese civilization, and exercised the most influence over it. Some scholars categorize their languages as members of the Mongolian branch of the Altaic family of languages, though this language family is disputed by some. The Xiongnu and Xianbei, and later the Mongols, belonged to essentially the same cultural system, which was characterized by groups of herders migrating intermittently among the grasslands with their livestock. When two tribes encountered one another, they negotiated or fought until a winner emerged, whereupon everyone coalesced around the victors, and the smaller tribes were integrated into the confederation, though each tribe retained its own leader. Having joined forces, they were more powerful, and when they met with danger, they could offer a helping hand to one another. Alliances were impermanent, and it was not only those tribes that shared the same language or ancestry who came together. Therefore, their material culture, bloodlines, languages, and religious beliefs frequently intermingled. The sole constant characteristic was their pastoral nomadic lifestyle, the heart of the steppe people’s existence. For various reasons, some powerful confederations gradually emerged among the Xiongnu. They controlled a large number of resources and could dominate nearby tribes speaking similar languages to the Xiongnu, so they were able to establish an empire. King Wuling of Zhao and Hu-Style Leggings During China’s Spring and Autumn period (770–476 BCE), Central Plains rulers were aware of the existence of states in the grasslands to the north, but they did not necessarily refer to their nomadic leaders as “Xiongnu.” This term did not appear until the Warring States period (475–221 BCE). For example, Confucius praised Guan Zhong, the reform-minded chancellor of the State of Qi: “Were it not for Guan Zhong, my hair would dangle, and my right lapel would cover the left!” By which he meant, “If it weren’t for Guan Zhong, we would all be letting our hair hang free and folding the right lapel over the left, like a nomad on the steppes.” During that era, inhabitants of the vast prairies, like the Xianbei and Turkic peoples who came after them, let their hair hang down unattended instead of fashioning it into a tight bun atop the head, as was the custom in the Central Plains. When arranging the lapel of his jacket or robe on his chest, the Central Plains inhabitant took care to fold the left over the right and then tie it in place, the opposite of his counterpart in the grasslands.

Mysteries of the Western Regions 47 Another characteristic of the steppe peoples is that they domesticated and raised large numbers of horses earlier in history. Prior to the advent of the motorized vehicle in the late 19th century, riding a horse was the most rapid mode of transport. Similarly, before the invention of weapons using gunpowder, the most effective means of combat was the mounted soldier. Thus, the steppe people possessed an inherent advantage in military affairs: They were accustomed to roaming and could relocate quickly, and almost every man was a potential soldier because virtually all were skilled at using a bow and arrow while astride a horse. When it came to war, this meant mobile nomads were naturally superior to sedentary agriculturalists. From the larger Eurasian perspective, be it the Latin peoples of Europe, the Persians, or the Han Chinese, right from the start they were all at a disadvantage when faced with a military offensive undertaken by grassland peoples. At its height, the Xiongnu Empire occupied a large swathe of land beyond their original home of the Mongolian Plateau. Its forces had penetrated the Yinshan Mountains, which extended over 1,500 kilometers across what are now Inner Mongolia, Hebei Province, and Hetao, the region situated north of the Great Wall of China that consists of plains and plateaus along the northern stretch of the Yellow River. In 5th century BCE, the State of Jin broke apart into three smaller ones, Han, Wei, and Zhao. This meant that the latter, located to the north, was the first Central Plains state to have frequent contact—and conflicts—with the Xiongnu. To deal with this threat, King Wuling of Zhao (reigned 340–295 BCE) eventually instituted a series of bold military reforms that involved learning from his adversaries, the Hu, a general term connoting non-Han, nomadic peoples originating in the north during that time. Intriguingly entitled “Hu Attire, Horseback Archery,” the reforms created a cavalry division, required troops to don Hu-style pants in place of their courtly robes, and trained bowmen to shoot while mounted. One thing worth emphasizing in this anecdote: The relative strengths and weakness of a civilization should not be judged by the prosperity or decline of a given society in a particular era and place. At the time, the Xiongnu were indeed superior warriors compared to their counterparts in the State of Zhao, who represented the Central Plains civilization. Recognizing that the traditional courtly robe was far less suited to riding a horse than Hu-style leggings, the king himself took the lead in wearing them. From this story, we can clearly see evidence of how the Central Plains inhabitants learned from the steppe people. Clothing aside, they also adopted the latter’s custom of seating oneself on flat platforms. King Wuling was convinced that in terms of his people’s survival and prosperity, they needed to adopt the advantageous practices of the Hu, i.e., their clothing and their formidable archery skills when mounted. But cultural conservatives countered, isn’t that equivalent to forgetting our ancestors? How can we remain ignorant of our canons and forsake our forebears? And so, there was heated debate in the court about whether to undertake reform. The reformers represented by King Wuling believed that only via reform could they compete with the Xiongnu; inaction meant passively awaiting one’s demise.

48  Mysteries of the Western Regions But most people were blind to this, and only one of the king’s uncles and a senior minister were clear-eyed about it. So, one day when civil and military officials were convened, the king’s uncle showed up in Hu-style pants. Many of those attending were aghast, but given that he was the king’s close relative, the opposition didn’t dare openly criticize him. This incident marked the dawn of the reforms—King Wuling subsequently purchased many horses, and his soldiers were trained in the military art of mounted archery. Sima Qian’s Historical Records recounts that the king uttered these words: “Those known for their discerning vision must abandon traditional customs leading to disaster. I wish to adopt the dress of the Hu.” “It is not for me to be wary of Hu garb,” he also stated. “It is the people’s mockery that I fear,” in other words, dressing like a “barbarian” was a trivial matter, but if his people were wiped out by the Hu, he would be the eternal butt of jokes. The State of Zhao was situated in today’s provinces of Hebei and northern Shanxi, while Yan existed where the northern parts of Hebei near Beijing. After the Warring States period, they became a northern territory within a unified China ruled by the Qin Dynasty. Meanwhile, the Xiongnu had already entered the Hetao region. Qin royalty, themselves natives of Shaanxi in the northwest, were far-sighted and recognized that, having annexed six states to the east, if they were to consolidate their realm, they must also contend with the Xiongnu. Trade is a means employed in times of peace, but what if the Xiongnu were to launch an attack? Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s ultimate solution was to build the Great Wall to serve as a barrier to the Xiongnu’s intrusions. Regarding this period, although they do not constitute formal history, there are moving legends, such as Lady Meng Jiang’s Tears Bring Down the Great Wall. Legend has it that her husband was sent as a corvée laborer to build the wall, so she set out to bring him winter clothes, but by the time she arrived, he had already died. She wept so bitterly that a part of the Great Wall collapsed, revealing his bones! This may merely have been a richly embellished folk tale, but it is uncontested fact that Qin Shi Huang ordered the repair, connection, and lengthening of existing walls to form the Great Wall and the training of a large number of cavalry. The Xiongnu and the Han Join Forces After the Qin Dynasty came the Han (206 BCE–220 CE), founded by Liu Bang (Emperor Gaozu), a man of great talent and bold vision. A native of Jiangsu, he penned a famous poem: Ode to the Grand Wind

A grand wind began to blow, the clouds rose on high. All within the seas acknowledge my rule, and I have returned to the village of my birth. To guard the four corners of my empire, where shall I find courageous warriors?

Mysteries of the Western Regions 49 How did he define the “four corners” of his land? East of the Han was the ocean, there were numerous mountain ranges to the west, and in the south, the Qin had dispatched the Nanyue King Zhao Tuo to Guangzhou to quell end-of-dynasty unrest. Emperor Gaozu’s anxieties about his “four corners” were based upon his own experience. After he had defeated his archrival Xiang Yu and established the Han, he immediately proceeded to the north where the Xiongnu, taking advantage of the chaos on the Central Plains, had breached the Great Wall and moved troops southward. But during the battle it emerged that his camp was unwisely located. He and his warriors were surrounded by the Xiongnu on a mountain for seven days and seven nights, and there was no escape. This is the famous “Siege of Baideng.” Just when the emperor was trapped and threatened with virtual starvation, senior imperial advisor Chen Ping proposed a scheme: Exploit a woman’s jealousy to make the Xiongnu retreat. From their camp they could observe the Xiongnu leader Modu Chanyu and his Yanzhi (empress) on a morning promenade. Chen Ping dispatched a messenger to secretly visit the empress. “This is a gift for Your Highness,” whispered the envoy, as he presented her with jewelry on behalf of the Han emperor. “We hope that you will persuade the Chanyu to withdraw his troops. If not, we shall gift him several Han beauties whom we shall insist he accept in exchange for a peace settlement.” That very night the empress put her considerable skills of persuasion to work, and the following morning the Xiongnu troops pulled out as desired, thus sparing Emperor Gaozu’s life. Succeeding generations of Han monarchs recognized that they should not attack the northern “barbarians” in haste, but should first undertake adequate preparations. A 70-year-long period of peace dubbed the “Reign of Emperors Wen and Jing” followed, when the population recuperated from the chaotic transition between the Qin and Han Dynasties, and agriculture—including various methods of promoting farming and silk production—was actively fostered. Thanks to Emperors Wen and Jing who preceded him, Emperor Wu of Han (reigned 141–87 BCE) now had enough power to avenge prior humiliations and expand the empire’s territory. I should explain here that relations between the Xiongnu and the Han were always subtle. The latter often gifted a princess in marriage to the former as a means of tightening the bonds between the two peoples, but the balance of power for each such exchange differed, so the nature and content of the exchange varied. Occasionally, a “princess”—in fact, an exceptionally beautiful palace attendant not of royal blood—was dispatched to the Xiongnu court. One such commoner, a virtual household name among today’s Chinese, was Wang Zhaojun, who lived during the reign of Emperor Yuan of Han (48–33 BCE). She refused to bribe the court painter, and so he intentionally portrayed her as so unattractive that the emperor did not deign to lavish his attentions upon her. Someone suggested the emperor send this lady-in-waiting to the Xiongnu, and he naturally consented. Shortly before her departure, he summoned her for an audience, and when he discovered her elegance and beauty, he felt deep regret.

50  Mysteries of the Western Regions But there was little to be done, for the emperor had already given his word to the Xiongnu envoy, and so—in 33 BCE, just three years before Egypt’s Cleopatra suicided for love and country—she was married off to Chanyu Huhanye, the Xiongnu emperor who resided north of the Great Wall. In all, she served as empress to three Chanyu and was immortalized by Tang poet Du Fu: Once she departed the imperial purple terrace, The desert stretched to the north. A green grave against the yellow dusk All that remains of her now. Lady Zhaojun’s contribution to long-term peace between the Han and Xiongnu, as well as her role in bridging agricultural and nomadic civilizations, has passed down through the ages. According to Emperor Wu who took power in the mid-2nd century BCE, the “kinship” strategy was not a long-term solution. A more fundamental solution involved seeking allies from the Western Regions to “break the Xiongnu’s right arm,” a reference to the western domain of their nomadic empire, i.e., when the Xiongnu were pictured facing southward toward the Han, the west was naturally to the “right” of the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu Empire was vast and difficult to rule, so its governance was split between a Chanyu in the east and another in the west, often brothers or an uncle and a nephew. Therefore, the Xiongnu could threaten and outflank the Han Dynasty from Korea and the Liaodong Peninsula in the East, and Central Asia to the west. Emperor Wu learned that soon after Modu Chanyu took power, the Xiongnu sent troops south into the Hexi Corridor, where they massacred the Yuezhi, and celebrated by serving liquor in the skull of the dead Yuezhi chief! The majority of the remnants of the Yuezhi (known as the “Greater Yuezhi” in Chinese annals) fled to the region northwest of the Ili River in China’s Xinjiang, i.e., near Issyk Kul in modern-day Kyrgyzstan. Emperor Wu’s plan was to liaise with the Greater Yuezhi and agree with them to execute a pincer movement against the Xiongnu, so he needed to send an envoy to Central Asia and persuade them to participate. Although the Han Dynasty was unquestionably very powerful, the dozen or so states in the Western Regions took their cue from the Xiongnu; either their leaders had married a Xiongnu princess or their own sons were sent to the Xiongnu as hostages. Moreover, the Xiongnu cavalry could mass at their borders as needed, so this had a considerable deterrent effect. Such were the political realities of the era. Zhang Qian Explores the Western Region Zhang Qian was born in today’s Hanzhong region of Shaanxi Province. He was just a humble palace attendant when he was selected by Emperor Wu of Han to head a diplomatic mission to the Western Regions, then uncharted territory, where his brief was to liaise with the Greater Yuezhi. In 139 BCE, he set out accompanied by an entourage of more than 100 officers and troops, with a former Xiongnu soldier serving as interpreter and guide. In the course of his pioneering mission, he was

Mysteries of the Western Regions 51 detained and held under “house arrest” by the Xiongnu and married a local woman. Eventually he took advantage of internal strife among his hosts, whose watch over him had relaxed, to escape. Instead of taking his wife, children, and loyal Xiongnu assistant back into Han territory, however, he continued westward. He crossed the Pamir Plateau and continued on to places such as Dayuan (Ferghana Valley) and Kangju Kingdom in Transoxiana, until he reached modern-day Almaty in Kazakhstan—a daunting trek that bears witness to his loyalty for the emperor as well as his own tenaciousness. When he arrived at the place where the Yuezhi people had lived, he discovered that to flee from oppression by the Wusun, an Indo-European semi-nomadic steppe people, the Yuezhi had migrated to the south of Amu Darya (modern-day northern Afghanistan). Zhang Qian then pushed on to cross Amu Darya (Amu River) in the hopes of achieving his original imperial mission, i.e., to persuade the Yuezhi to join forces and crush the Xiongnu. There, he noted the presence of a special type of cloth as well as distinctive bamboo poles from Sichuan. He learned that these items had arrived via “Shendu” (China’s name for India, first mentioned in the Historical Records by Sima Qian, Zhang Qian’s contemporary). This caused him to speculate that there might be a route in Southwest China that led to the country known as Shendu, which was connected to Afghanistan. On the diplomatic front, Zhang Qian was unsuccessful. Since the Yuezhi had put down roots in their new surroundings and were no longer willing to fight the Xiongnu, in 128 BCE he set out to return to Han territory. Along the way he was once again detained by the Xiongnu, but eventually in 126 BCE he made it back to Chang’an (modern Xi’an in Shaanxi). He formally reported to the emperor his experiences and insights into the Western Regions, acquired during more than a decade on the road, thus enriching the court’s knowledge of both the Xiongnu and the remote world of Central Asia. Emperor Wu’s troops engaged the Xiongnu in battle several times between 121 and 118 BCE, expelling them from the Hexi Corridor, and four prefectures were immediately established: Wuwei, Zhangye, Jiuquan, and Dunhuang. Connecting the Gobi Desert to their north, the Yellow River plains in their east, the QinghaiTibet plateau to their south, and the oasis towns in their west, these four prefectures became important commercial towns and military garrisons on the Silk Road in the ensuing centuries. Some 100 kilometers to the west of Dunhuang was Yumen Pass (“Jade Gate Pass”), then the westernmost part of the Great Wall. It was considered the furthermost town of the Han Chinese population and culture. Two lines of verse by Tang poet Wang Zhihuan evoke the remote and desolate landscape of the Western Regions: Why perform the forlorn Willow Ballad on a Qiang flute? The Spring Breeze ne’er gusts beyond Jade Gate Pass. Yet in his poem “The Moon over a Mountain Pass,” Li Bai (Li Bo) wrote: The wind blows for ten thousand li Beyond the Jade Gate.

52  Mysteries of the Western Regions This may be because he was born in Suyab, an ancient Silk Road city now located on the Chu River in Kyrgyzstan, far west of Yumen Pass, so he perceived the pass from the viewpoint of a soldier stationed in the western portion of the Tianshan Mountains (“Sky” or “Heavenly Mountains”). The first two lines of the poem confirm this, as it situates the poet west of the Tianshan: The bright moon rises above the Heavenly Mountain, Shimmering amidst an infinite sea of clouds. In short, having established prefectures in the Hexi Corridor, the Han Dynasty’s influence grew markedly and soon expanded to Shaju (Yarkand), Shule (Kashgar) in the Taklamakan Desert, and all the way west to the Pamirs. In 119 BCE, Zhang Qian was entrusted with a second mission to the Western Regions, mainly to the Kingdom of Wusun in the Ili River Basin. For this journey, he led an entourage of hundreds and employed 500 oxen to transport various goods, especially those made of silk. This represents the first time silk had been seen west of the Pamir Plateau. Silk eventually continued its travels all the way to Rome, where it became a fashionable material for togas. This route later became one of a network of trade passageways often cited today as the “Silk Road.” After Zhang Qian returned from Wusun, Wusun modified its former proXiongnu stance. Because the Han Dynasty offered opportunities for commercial profit, Wusun adopted an “equidistant diplomacy” that was amical to both Han and Xiongnu. Soon the king of Wusun requested the hand of a Han princess in marriage. This is the tragic tale of hardships faced by Princess Xijun (Liu Xijun), a story well known in China over the centuries. Liu Xijun was the first Han Dynasty princess to be married off to remote Wusun. Unlike court attendant Wang Zhaojun (who wedded a Xiongnu Chanyu), Princess Xijun was of royal blood. She was the daughter of Emperor Wu’s nephew, Liu Jian, king of Jiangdu. Since her parents had been executed for their role in the failed “Rebellion of the Seven Princes,” she had been raised at the court to expiate their guilt; it was natural that she be given priority over other princesses for such a “diplomatic marriage.” Thus, at the age of just over 20, Princess Xijun was given in marriage to the septuagenarian Wusun monarch. Predictably, his Xiongnu queen energetically did her best to undermine the newcomer, and the king—who had requested the marriage—did not find her particularly to his liking either. He summoned her only a few times each year, and for her part, the princess refused to humble herself in his presence, although she often gave his attendants gifts from the Central Plains. But just two years after their wedding, the king passed away. According to the nomadic people’s custom, the widow should marry the deceased’s brother or son (assuming he is not her own offspring), or in the event there is none, she should marry his next kin. The latter was the case for Princess Xijun, whose new spouse was her deceased husband’s grandson and successor to the Wusun throne, King Cunzhou.

Mysteries of the Western Regions 53 Nomadic regimes that originated in the steppe, including the imperial family of the later Ottoman Empire, maintained a unique inheritance system until the 19th century. Most Central Plains’ dynasties practiced primogeniture, in which the eldest son inherited the throne, although a younger one was sometimes named heir apparent. The same was true in medieval Europe, with the eldest son the sole beneficiary of all noble titles, land, and property; his siblings had to look after themselves. Therefore, the second and third sons of the feudal aristocracy in Western Europe often became soldiers, priests, merchants, or scholars. This inheritance system featured a degree of transparency and predictability and helped avoid open conflict within the court. Nomadic peoples in the Eurasian interior, however, did not practice primogeniture. They determined the right to inheritance in the form of a large-scale assembly of extended family members, convoked by the most powerful clan, e.g., the Mongolian kuraltai. The steppe people’s election of a new leader, from 3rd century BCE through the 19th of the Common Era—a tradition of more than 2,200 years— was determined by such patriarchal councils. This was largely due to their frequent war footing, where the new headman was determined based on his physique, personality, and leadership skills; dependence on the eldest son of the former leader was simply not feasible. A hierarchical concept of seniority, “Three Fundamental Bonds and Five Constant Virtues,” was detailed in the deeply revered Confucian classics. Therefore, peoples of the Central Plains emphasized generational seniority, while nomadic peoples did not have such a concept, only the concept of age. Put another way, if we think in the historical and geographical context of the time, we will find ourselves wondering: Given the roaming lifestyle of the grassland peoples, what would become of a widow whom no one subsequently married or looked after? Who would help her during migrations and provide for her sustenance once a seasonal camp had been set up? So, the marriage of a younger brother with the widow of his dead older brother was not simply a “custom,” it was a necessity. Therefore, Princess Xijun, widowed in Wusun, was required by custom to marry the grandson of her deceased husband. The princess had been schooled in the Confucian canons from an early age. Originally hardly keen to wed the king of Wusun who was already in his seventies, she was even less willing to be married off to his newly enthroned grandson, so she fought to return to the Central Plains. But Emperor Wu considered suppressing the Xiongnu a priority, and thus ordered her to “comply with the customs of Wusun” and enter into another diplomatic marriage regardless of her personal wishes. Tradition has it that the princess composed this poem to capture her melancholy, far from her homeland: My hand in marriage did my family give To the other side of heaven. To King of Wusun, far away in an alien land. A domed chamber is my room, of felt are its walls. Flesh for food, mare’s milk for drink.

54  Mysteries of the Western Regions Yearning for my native land, my heart is rent How I wish the fabled Huang Hu would fly me home. The final two lines doubtless channel her true sentiments. She may well have been China’s first Han verse-maker of the Western Regions. Renowned “frontier” poets Wang Changling and Wang Zhihuan—both men who lived during the Tang—made their debut centuries later. It is widely assumed that Zhang Qian’s exploration of the Western Regions and his pioneering of the “Silk Road” are inseparable. The term itself did not appear in China after his era; in fact, it wasn’t even coined there. It was Ferdinand von Richthofen, a German geographer and explorer, who first cited it in a book published in 1877 in which he signaled its significance. The German government had sent him to China to map the best potential railway routes from Germany to China. After onsite investigation and analysis of a large amount of data, he concluded that one of the principal axes of the history of civilization was the ancient East-West route that traversed Eurasia—Seidenstraße, Silk Road in German—and so he recommended that the railway be constructed along this route. The main function of this route, which comprised several sections, was the transport of valuable, lightweight, and nonperishable goods from East Asia to Europe. Richthofen dated the Silk Road’s genesis at 115 BCE, apparently because this was the year that Zhang Qian returned to Han territory after his second mission to the Western Regions. Richthofen defined the Silk Road as “the Western Regions transportation route that connected China with the region between the Amu and Syr Rivers, and China with India, silk trade being the main medium.” At the turn of the 20th century, some scholars opined that the concept of the Silk Road should extend westward to Syria. In short, the Silk Road was not a single road but a network of passageways. The overland route that goes through central Eurasia can be roughly divided into three sections: The eastern section from Luoyang or Chang’an to Dunhuang (Gansu Province); the middle section from Dunhuang to Samarkand (Uzbekistan); and the western section from Samarkand to the Mediterranean, ending in Byzantium (renamed Constantinople by the Romans and Istanbul now), Antioch on the west coast of today’s Syria, or Alexandria in Egypt. With the opening of the Silk Road, trade was unobstructed and two-way travel continuous. China-made silk products and other products were transported in bulk as far west as Europe. Many types of produce entered the Central Plains via Central Asia, including fruits and vegetables such as grapes, walnuts, onions, and garlic, as well as music, dance, and musical instruments of Central Asia and the arts of Greece, Persia, and Rome. In addition to silk, tea, and ceramics, China also introduced technologies to Central Asia, such as foundry iron and well-drilling techniques. Ban Chao Lays Foundation for Chinese Rule There is another person in the history of the Silk Road who especially deserves to be remembered, namely Ban Chao (32–102 CE), the Eastern Han general,

Mysteries of the Western Regions 55 explorer, and diplomat who long administered the Western Regions. His older brother, historian Ban Gu, compiled the Book of Former Han chronicling the Western Han (206 BCE to 25 CE), and he also had a famous talented younger sister, Ban Zhao. During Ban Chao’s era, the Eastern Han Dynasty became powerful enough to contend with Xiongnu while expanding its influence to the Western Regions. His mission was to impress, cajole, or awe various small states in the region into acknowledging Han’s sovereignty. Originally just a court scribe, he believed that a man should travel afar and leave his mark where he went, so he set aside his writing brush to enlist in the army. He commanded a 36-strong “special operations force” that roamed the Western Regions. It is said that there were 36 countries scattered around the Tarim Basin at the time, all of which he reportedly visited, and with good results. Ban Chao repeatedly showed his diplomatic acumen as well as boldness and decisiveness. Once when he was visiting Shanshan (aka Loulan), a state in the northeast of the Tarim Basin, he detected a change in attitude in his hosts. He suspected a Xiongnu delegation must have just arrived. Upon skillful inquiry, he confirmed the suspicion and learned where the Xiongnu group camped. That evening, he gathered his men, gave them a moving speech, and asked everyone to drink wine with him. Around midnight, Ban Chao and his retinue carried out a surprise raid on the Xiongnu camp. Ban Chao personally killed three Xiongnu soldiers; more than 100 of the Xiongnu delegation, including its head, lost their lives. Soon after this incident, the king of Shanshan agreed to be a vassal of Han. For his exploits and successes, the emperor ordered Ban Chao to stay in the Tarim Basin for three decades. “A fallen leaf returns to its roots,” goes the Chinese saying. In his later years, Ban Chao once petitioned the emperor to return to the Central Plains, but the sovereign did not respond for three years, effectively denying his request to leave his post. Eventually his sister Ban Zhao found the opportunity to make his case to the emperor. Her elder brother had been garrisoned in the remote Western Regions for three decades where, despite years of hardship, he had served long and achieved much on behalf of his country. With this in mind, could not His Majesty graciously permit her brother to return to his hometown in his twilight years? The emperor finally acceded to the request, but appointed Ban Yong, Ban Chao’s son who was born and raised in the Western Regions, to succeed his father. Ban Chao was aware of the existence of “Da Qin,” an ancient Chinese name for the Roman Empire, and in 97 CE he dispatched his deputy Gan Ying to seek contact with the Romans. According to historical annals, China’s Gan Ying holds the record for the furthest westward exploration among East Asians during the 1st century CE. He arrived on the eastern coast of the Persian Gulf, but unable to commission a ship that would take him and his retinue further west, he turned back. Nonetheless, this illustrates that the Chinese of that time had a fairly broad worldview. Zhang Qian’s pioneering exploration of the Western Regions expanded the popular horizons of his era and stimulated the desire of later generations to continue westward. But this was also due to the huge pressure exerted by the Xiongnu, without which the Han emperors might not have adopted measures to expand their

56  Mysteries of the Western Regions influence westward. The Han emperor dispatched Ban Chao to the region to pacify the states there, and then stationed him there for three decades despite his petition to return to the Central Plains, precisely because he proved to be a very effective administrator who established a solid foundation there for the Han Dynasty. During Ban Chao’s time, Luoyang was capital of the Eastern Han. If you went directly west from Luoyang, you reached Dunhuang. Proceeding further west along the margins of the Tarim Basin, the kingdoms of Shanshan (near the salt lake Lop Nur), Khotan, and Shule were accessible; and if you followed the northern edge of the basin and turned back toward the east, you could pass through places such as Kucha (aka Kuche, Qiuci) and Yiwu (Hami). Next, I will briefly detail some Han-era relics uncovered in archaeological digs undertaken in China’s northwest once known as the “Western Regions”: Let’s begin with an item from Loulan, an ancient city located on the northeastern edge of the Lop Desert (Figure 3.1). This coffin may well be 2,000 years old, but thanks to the arid climate it has been well preserved. The painted bird is similar to a divine bird described in Persian mythology. This bears witness to interaction between civilizations; Persia’s empire never extended to Loulan, and there are no tales of a Persian princess having made her way to the region, yet here is this Persian-style decoration, which illustrates the penetration power of folk culture. Another site of digs where important discoveries have been made is Khotan, modern-day Hetian or Hotan, located on the southern edge of the Tarim Basin and north of Kunlun Mountains. Hotan has traditionally—for some four millennia— enjoyed a reputation as a leading source of premium-quality jade. Locals are mainly descendants of Scythians, and they also share lineage with the Qiang people. Khotan and the Han Dynasty had a very close relationship, and this region was also an important intermediary for Buddhism’s eastward spread. Many documents written in Chinese or Kharosthi (northwest Indian) script were found there.

Figure 3.1  Iranian-style coffin unearthed at Loulan (Xinjiang)

Mysteries of the Western Regions 57

Figure 3.2  Hanzi brocade: “Five stars rise in the East”

And then there are the ruins at Niya, located in the desert north of 21st-century Hotan. There were detailed accounts of it in ancient Chinese chronicles, but traces of it were lost for centuries until Aurel Stein, the British archaeologist, discovered this ancient city and conducted preliminary on-site studies of it. But it was not until 1995 that a Sino-Japanese team undertook a thorough, large-scale excavation. The team found a man and woman buried next to one another. Their bodies were wrapped in Han Dynasty brocades. Under the elbow of the male corpse was a rectangular brocade with a plain, monochromatic border. Upon the brocade were stitched two identical phrases in hanzi: “五星出東方利中國” (wuxing chu dongfang li zhongguo), and a design featuring a Persian-style beast (Figure 3.2). According to scholars, this phrase is a term that appears in the art of divination and signifies that when the Five Elements (stars)—metal, wood, water, fire, and soil—appeared simultaneously to the east, the following day’s battle would favor the Chinese. The two country’s archaeologists also found many wooden slips. Most of them were in the Gandhari language and employed scripts (such as Kharosthi) popular in northern India; other slips featured Chinese characters. In fact, Kharosthi was decoded by Sanskrit experts back in the 19th century, so the phrases were quickly deciphered. They were about topics such as trade, the sale and purchase of slaves, and loans. Some seals of the Han Dynasty were also unearthed at the Niya ruins, such as seals of Han Dynasty stationed in the Western Regions. Figure 3.3 consists of four hanzi, 司禾府印 (si he fu yin) called “Sihefu Seal,” which would have been the official seal of the erstwhile Agricultural Bureau.

58  Mysteries of the Western Regions

Figure 3.3  Han Dynasty Agricultural Bureau seal unearthed at Niya

Mysteries of the Western Regions 59

Figure 3.4  Wooden slips with Chinese hanzi unearthed at Niya

Figure 3.4 is a Chinese text. All of the previous show that during the Eastern Han, Niya nobility inhabited an environment in which two cultures coexisted. This was not simply due to proximity of residence; it was also due to intermingling on a daily basis and reflected in all aspects of life. This provides important clues for the study of cultural evolution. The use of Chinese astrological terms and the presence of the Gandhari language on embroidered tapestry can help explain the various elements of Eastern and Western cultures during the Han and the degree of integration between them. There is no doubt that Zhang Qian and Ban Chao broadcast the power of the Han Dynasty throughout the Western Regions. All the kingdoms in the region dispatched diplomatic envoys to the Han and often sent their princes to study in the capital, to solidify fealty of their states to the Chinese court. For example, the rulers of Khotan Kingdom were originally Scythian. The princes they sent often settled in the Central Plains and took Han surnames. One early Tang general was named Yuchi Gong (Jingde), and Yuchi is the Han surname of the Khotan royal family. Some branches of the family resided in Chang’an and gradually integrated into Han society. Interaction Between the Han and Roman Empires More than 2,000 years ago, mountains, rivers, and poor transport infrastructure stymied the flow of information between the Han and the Romans, who thus inhabited parallel universes. This was the case for the man-in-the-street. A Han subject

60  Mysteries of the Western Regions naturally did not pay much heed to who ruled in Rome or who had constructed the latest library. Unlike the earlier Chinese dynasties and the European ones later, Roman emperors were selected from military professionals by senior officers and members of the upper crust of Roman society. During Rome’s heyday before the 4th-century invasion by northern “barbarians,” the empire bordered on Persia, then known as the Parthian Empire. To the east lay the Kushan Empire founded by the Yuezhi, and further east was, of course, the Han Empire. Via the northern steppe and a network of oasis cities along the Silk Road—as well as maritime routes—wares were exchanged and ideas shared. From the Greater Khingan Mountains and the region north of the Amur River (Heilongjiang, China’s “Black Dragon River”) to the Eastern European Plain to the east of Ukraine lay swaths of temperate grasslands that were hundreds of kilometers wide from north to south. The nomadic steppe peoples occupied this territory early on. Chinese chronicles state that Han Dynasty general Dou Xian pursued the Xiongnu some 5,000 li during his “Northern Expedition.” But that doesn’t signify they fled straight northward like an arrow shaft; at a certain point in the grasslands, they definitely turned left, i.e., westward. The question is, whereto then?

Map 3.1  East-West maritime and land-based trade routes during the Eastern Han

Mysteries of the Western Regions 61 Europeans have long opined—despite the lack of reliable historical evidence— that the much-feared “Attila the Hun,” whose attacks on Rome eventually resulted in the empire’s fall, was actually a descendent of the Xiongnu. This is primarily because the first syllable of the ancient Chinese appellation for the Xiongnu, “匈奴,” is pronounced similarly to the word “Hun.” It is true that, timewise, this theory lies within the realm of possibility. Around 100 CE, the “pacified” southern Xiongnu joined forces with Dou Xian’s troops to do battle with their northern cousins. Dou Xian entered the area north of the Gobi in pursuit. An inscription commemorating his decisive victory there over the northern Xiongnu in 89 CE was carved on a cliff in the Yanran Mountains (modern Delgerkhangai Mountains). The Han army later occupied the Balikun grasslands of China’s Xinjiang, and the Xiongnu fled westward. A portion of the Xiongnu remained in Central Asia and became known as the Hephthalites; some of them later proceeded south and conquered northwest India; another portion of the fleeing Xiongnu may have migrated to the Volga region. Did they intermarry with the locals and eventually continue westward to besiege Rome around 400 CE? It isn’t impossible, but there is no consensus on this question. At this point, let’s review some basic facts about geography and its impact on lifestyles: The easternmost Eurasian Steppe begins around Lake Baikal and to its north, and then extends westward to Romania and other areas in Eastern Europe. Nomads were constrained from abandoning their grasslands, since they were hemmed in by birch tree forests to the north where they couldn’t graze their herds or roam on their horses. Unlike steppe nomads, forest dwellers subsisted by hunting prey. Once the Han Dynasty controlled the region south of Hetao and the oasis cities in the Taklamakan, the nomads could not make further inroads to the south, so they turned north where clashes occurred with forest dwellers. This foretold the conflicts that would later arise between the Slavic and Turkic peoples. Generally speaking, Slavs inhabit forests, nomads live on the grasslands, and farming peoples reside mainly in river basins. In addition to the Eurasian Steppe and the Silk Road with its oases, ancient civilizations also had a third way to communicate, the “Maritime Silk Road.” This network of sea routes passed via the Straits of Malacca, the Gulf of Siam (now the Bay of Bengal), to the southern Arabian Peninsula, and then by sea and land (the latter being more essential) to what is now Petra in Jordan. At the height of the Roman Empire, it flourished as a transshipment hub. Is there archaeological evidence to support the idea that these sea routes actually constituted a maritime version of the land-based Silk Road? Until fairly recently as scattered finds have emerged, there were only legends. A typical example is when, as chairman of Hong Kong’s Cultural and Heritage Commission during 2000– 2003, I chanced to tour Guangzhou’s Museum of the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King. The site was discovered when the Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture was preparing to erect an office building there in 2000, and today it has become a fine themed museum.

62  Mysteries of the Western Regions The Nanyue King was first enfeoffed during the Qin, and his kingdom was granted similar status under the Han. A delicate silver container with a West Asian design (Figure 3.5) was discovered in the mausoleum. It dates back to about 122 BCE, just when Zhang Qian was exploring the Western Realm. The container is made with a silver-copper alloy and shaped exactly like Persian items of that era. Since it was excavated on the banks of the Pearl River in Guangzhou, it most likely arrived by boat and not by land. East-West land-based contacts across Eurasia were frequent. For example, along the Silk Road, especially near Guyuan (aka Xihaigu) in Ningxia, many batches of Persian coinage have recently been unearthed, including copper and silver coins. Guyuan is situated 700–800 kilometers south of Yinchuan, part of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, and thus well within the eastern portion of the ancient Silk Road. I personally know a Hong Kong collector who possesses more than 100 pieces of Greek coins unearthed in the middle portion of the Silk Road. This shows that after Alexander the Great conquered Bactria, some of the Greeks who remained there continued minting coins in the traditional method, i.e., featuring a bust. Figure 3.6 shows Roman-era coins.

Figure 3.5  Persian-style silver container unearthed at tomb of Nanyue King (Pearl River delta)

Mysteries of the Western Regions 63

Figure 3.6  Roman-era coins found in Central Asia

Since no Roman currency has been found in the “interior” of the mainland of China, i.e., east of Gansu’s Dunhuang, and there is no historical evidence of a Han Dynasty personage ever setting foot in the Roman Empire proper (Gan Ying did not go beyond the Persian Gulf), we can conclude that contacts between the Han and Roman Empires took place indirectly via Central and West Asia.

4

Buddhism’s Genesis To the West Is a Deity, Buddha Is His Name

This chapter explores conditions that facilitated Buddhism’s introduction into China. Firstly, I will describe the geography, culture, and inhabitants of the Hexi Corridor and Tarim Basin during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE to 220 CE), because these were the places Buddhism had to pass through in order to access the heart of the Chinese empire. Secondly, I will review China’s early indigenous religious and philosophical thought to better grasp how this Indian faith took root in China. I will conclude with a brief overview of the subcontinent’s early religions, including Brahmanism, Jainism, and Buddhism.

The Hexi Corridor and Tarim Basin During the Han When discussing the spread of Buddhism within China, we cannot ignore the Tarim Basin. Situated south of the Tianshan and north of the Kunlun mountain ranges, the basin hosts the Taklamakan, the world’s second largest desert. On its eastern edge is Lop Nur, a small, now-desiccated salt lake, and along its northern former shoreline are the remains of Loulan Kingdom. In fact, many historically significant cities once lay along the basin’s rim. Historically speaking, the ancient, romanticized Chinese term “xiyu” or “Western Regions” was a vast area that referred to remote territory—now largely within China’s Xinjiang—to the west of the famed Yumen Pass (“Jade Gate”) and parts of today’s Central Asia. Core geographical units included the Junggar, Tarim, and Ferghana Basins; mountain ranges such as the Altai, Tianshan, Kunlun, and Pamir; rivers such as the Tarim, Ili, Chu, Irtysh, Amu, and Syr; and two big lakes, the Balkhash and Issyk-Kul. The terrain of Xinjiang (“New Dominion”) is often described as “three mountains with two basins.” Running north to south, the “mountain trio” are the Altai, Tianshan, and Kunlun ranges. Junggar Basin is sandwiched between the Altai and Tianshan, while Tarim Basin is situated between the Tianshan and Kunluns. Desert dominates Tarim Basin, but Junggar Basin comprises both grasslands and some desert. The Tarim Basin generates a small volume of river water that often penetrates to underground rivers, so the flow occasionally disappears from sight. The best-known waterways are the Hotan, Aksu, and Yarkand Rivers, which form the Tarim River. Hotan River is renowned for Hotan jade—especially its creamy white, “mutton-fat” DOI: 10.4324/9781003369899-4

Buddhism’s Genesis 65 or suet jade—which has been deposited by its waters for millennia. Until recently, prospectors (and lucky visitors) could still happen upon raw jade in its dry riverbeds. Another important river is the Ili River, which originates in the Tianshan Mountains and flows through Ili and eventually into Kazakhstan’s Lake Balkhash. Ferghana Basin is not far west of Xinjiang’s Kashgar. Known to the Chinese as “Dayuan” during the Han, the much-prized “blood-sweating” horses of Zhang Qian’s era were bred in Ferghana Valley. The basin is now shared by modern Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Known to the ancient Chinese as “Onion Peaks,” the Pamir Plateau in western Xinjiang of China is a mountain range that also extends to Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Afghanistan. It was an important junction point on the Silk Road. This anecdote has reportedly come down from 13th-century explorer Marco Polo: When he arrived at the Pamirs, the locals were very hospitable, and his host provided not only food and accommodation, but also bid his own wife to share Marco Polo’s bed for the night. This may sound outrageous, but some scholars point out that because the local residents were virtually isolated from the outside, there was a danger of inbreeding, which is not conducive to the continuation of future generations. Since the only people with whom they had contact were traveling merchants, some families essentially “borrowed” the travelers’ genes for the greater good of the community. The Pamirs in the northwest and the Himalayas in the southwest hampered China’s access to western Eurasia, so many potential exchanges of culture and know-how— phonetic scripts, papermaking, and so forth—took many centuries to occur. Many systems and customs in China differ significantly from those in the West because of the lack of contact and communication with the outside world for a long time. The earliest inhabitants of the Tarim Basin were probably speakers of IndoEuropean languages. They crossed the Altai Mountains some 4,000 years ago and arrived north of Tianshan Mountains. A portion continued on to Tarim Basin, the earliest people to inhabit Taklamakan Desert. As mentioned previously, their ancestors, Hittites and Celts, all left their respective Indo-European homelands at about the same time (perhaps 4,500 years ago). While Celts went west, Hittites went south, and the ancestors of early inhabitants of the Tarim Basin headed east to Central Asia. Many European scholars refer to them as “Tocharians.” For this reason, the Indo-European language spoken by the Tocharians is similar to Latin and even Irish Celtic. By comparison, the Indo-European languages spoken by Iranians and Indians are less closely related to the latter two languages. I do not know what motivated the Tocharians to migrate east and then south after they crossed the Altai to eventually settle in the Tarim Basin. But it is clear that the Yuezhi in Hexi Corridor and the Loulan and Niya peoples in the basin—all considered Tocharians by Western scholars—spoke Indo-European tongues. According to archaeologists, wheat was brought to East Asia by Indo-European peoples. This contrasts the history of rice, another important food crop, which emerged in East Asia some 8,000 years ago. Grains of 7,000-year-old rice have been found in the Hemudu culture ruins at Yuyao, Zhejiang. Rice was also grown

66  Buddhism’s Genesis in the Mekong River region 7,000 years ago. Whether the two places began cultivating rice concurrently, or one learned from the other, has not been ascertained. It is natural for humans to grow rice by sowing wild rice seeds, because after threshing, raw rice can immediately be cooked and eaten. It is thus not unthinkable that rice was initially cultivated independently in more than one place. Wheat kernels, however, cannot be eaten directly; before consumption, they must be ground into flour, kneaded with water to form dough, heated, and cooked. In addition, the dough is more easily digested after fermentation. It is therefore unlikely that wheat was grown independently in different places. At present, the consensus is that wheat originated in either the Iranian Plateau or Mesopotamia and then gradually spread throughout Eurasia. The contribution of the aforementioned Tocharians in the dissemination of wheat throughout East Asia (China, South Korea, Japan) appears undeniable. The wheel may also have a similar history of transmission. The Mesopotamians of 6,000 years ago were already making use of it, a reminder of the wise adage, “One need not reinvent the wheel.” It may even have been the Tocharians who brought this revolutionary transport tool to East Asia, but there is no indisputable evidence of this inference. But when the Aryans, speakers of an Indian-European language, invaded India 3,500 years ago, they arrived in carriages drawn by oxen. This suggests that China did not invent the ox cart, or at least that horses and horsedrawn, two-wheeled war chariots were passed to China from the West. As mentioned earlier, there is a lengthy belt of east-west grasslands traversing Eurasia, sandwiched between the forest to the north and a desert route to the south that is dotted with oasis towns. It constituted the most convenient route for twoway nomadic movement between east and west. Due to the cold climes, population density in ancient times was relatively low, but many peoples still lived there. One of them, a branch of Iranians called the Scythians, originated in the steppe northeast of the Caspian Sea, then moved to the north of the Black Sea. They are mentioned in Greek and Persian history books as Scythians and Saka respectively, while Chinese chronicles labelled them “Sai” people, apparently derived from Saka. Unlike the Tocharians, the Scythians spoke a language belonging to the IndoIranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Some Scythians also migrated eastward to the north of the Altai Mountains and gradually descended to modern-day Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region where they established the Kingdoms of Shule (now Kashgar) and Khotan (now Hetian), so they were already known to the Chinese during the Han Dynasty. Khotan was not far from the Kunluns. The residents were mainly descendants of the Scythians, but at times Tibetans and Qiang crossed the mountains, entered Xinjiang, and controlled portions of southern Xinjiang. It is precisely because of the continuous integration of various peoples that the southern and northern populations in Xinjiang emerged. Relations between the Khotan rulers and the Han were traditionally very close, and the region was an important intermediary for the introduction of Buddhism. Many bilingual and Chinese-language documents have been unearthed here, once again demonstrating the role of the Western Regions as a hub for multicultural interaction. There was also Shule, situated on the western rim of Tarim Basin, and its location was very strategic. The Han once stationed troops in Shule to ensure loyalty.

Buddhism’s Genesis 67 It was sometimes threatened by the Xiongnu, but never occupied. Generally speaking, in the post-Han era Shule was influenced by a trio of civilizations—Persian, Indian, and Chinese. After the Han Empire established its rule in the Western Regions from Loulan to the east and Ferghana Basin in the west, it demanded that these kingdoms send male youths of royal blood to the capital where they were schooled. Once the Xiongnu forces were basically expelled from the Western Regions, the Han and these states maintained stable political (suzerain-vassal) and trade relations for long periods. Although the latter rebelled occasionally, especially when the Central Plains were in turmoil, most oasis states remained under Han rule. Previously, I detailed the long period during which Ban Chao (“Protector General of the Western Regions”) and then his son Ban Yong administered the area. There is only one thing to add here: It was during the Ban Chao era (mid-1st century CE) that Buddhism was introduced into the Central Plains via the Tarim Basin. Regarding the Western Regions, it is important to introduce one more state as well as two foreign personages, a historically significant trio. The place I’d like to highlight is Loulan. The easternmost of a string of small states on the edge of the Tarim Basin, it served as a “must” rest stop for Central Plains travelers prior to continuing westward. Thanks to its strategic location, it became a thriving commercial center and a hub for multicultural exchange. Due to climate change, the rivers near Loulan gradually dried up. After 500 CE, residents left the area, and the ancient cities of Loulan and Niya to the west were submerged beneath layers of sand. But the image of Loulan—Krorän in Turkic tongues—has retained a romantic ring in Chinese poetry. Regarding the “discovery” of ancient Loulan and Niya, two Europeans should be introduced. Sven Hedin, a Swede who risked his life to locate the source of the Hotan River, was also the first European to happen upon and excavate the ruins of Loulan; at almost the same time, a Hungarian Jew originally at the service of the British in India, Aurel Stein, made even greater discoveries elsewhere in China’s Xinjiang. Stein hired a local Uyghur as a guide who led him to a cache of wooden slips engraved in the Kharosthi script, an ancient Indian script used to write Gandhari Prakrit and Sanskrit. He subsequently found many documents in Niya (see Chapter 3) and sent them back to the United Kingdom, and these documents became an extremely valuable collection in the British Museum. But Stein’s explorations didn’t stop there. He later journeyed to Gansu’s Dunhuang where he encountered a Daoist priest, Wang Yuanlu, who had accidentally discovered a huge hidden cache of scrolls inside one of the Mogao Caves. As he required cash to maintain the sacred grottoes, he revealed the whereabouts of the cache, enabling the explorer to depart with a haul of thousands of invaluable documents, religious and secular, bound for Britain. This was his second major “collection” that ended up in museums in the United Kingdom. In all, Stein led four major expeditions to Central Asia between 1900 and 1930. If it were only for his possibly serendipitous discoveries in Niya and Dunhuang, we can’t say Stein’s luck was overwhelmingly good. He later visited a portion of the Great Wall situated not far from Jiayu Pass, because he had heard tell of a beacon tower there. Others had preceded him but did not report any finds. Stein

68  Buddhism’s Genesis discovered eight ancient missives, however, and although they were in very poor condition, he numbered them and sent them back to Britain. What were those letters? Since the Han, China had a postal system whose infrastructure consisted of a series of inns where “postmen” transporting official correspondence to and from the capital could rest, eat, spend the night, and lodge their mounts. In 312 CE, for some reason a messenger left his pouch there, and the letters remained inside it until Stein discovered them in 1907. Most significantly, the letters were written in Sogdian, and thanks to efforts by scholars of several nationalities, their contents were deciphered, revealing much about how the Sogdians engaged in trade on the ancient Silk Road. Originally a medical doctor, his three major discoveries on the Silk Road helped establish his reputation as one of the most formidable archaeologists of the 20th century. Religion and Philosophy in Early China—Confucianism and Daoism Earlier, I focused on the geography and governance of the Western Regions under the Han. In the following section, I briefly discuss the state of religion and philosophy in China prior to Buddhism’s arrival. It was during the Spring and Autumn (770–476 BCE) and Warring States (475–221 BCE) periods that Chinese civilization began to mature. Its political and economic systems aside, the ancient Huaxia—China’s name for the confederation of Yellow River tribes who later became the Han ethnicity—also gradually evolved their unique view of the universe, the meaning of human life, and social order. Over those six centuries, there were many competing schools of thought, but we will confine this introduction to the two most influential, Confucianism and Daoism (Taoism). Confucius was the founder of Confucianism, and a record of his discourse, especially the Analects of Confucius—whose exact compilation date is unknown—is assumed to express his views on personal cultivation and social relations. Prevailing Chinese views on the nature of the universe, the meaning of human life and social order mentioned earlier, and even the views of his era on education and aesthetics are also contained within the Analects. The philosopher Mencius, who lived two centuries after Confucius, was a great synthesizer of Confucian thought. Xunzi, who lived a bit later, was also a renowned Confucianist who held somewhat different views about man’s innate character. The main theme of Confucianism is to guide a person to believe in and act in accordance with his social obligations. Mencius tended to emphasize man’s nature for being just and benevolent, while Xunzi saw man’s propensity for evil if not educated properly. But their shared belief in educating the common folk weighed more heavily than their differences. One shared trait among Confucianists was a disinclination to explore questions such as the origins of human life or how the universe came into existence. After all, it is written in the Analects: How to fathom death Before grasping the purpose of life?

Buddhism’s Genesis 69 And he also reportedly uttered these words: I do not hold forth upon that which is Uncanny, violent or demonic. Which is to say that Confucius classified religious ritual as something “uncanny, violent or demonic.” The Shang Dynasty (1600–1046 BCE) emphasized ghosts and spirits, and often used “oracle bones” for divination, so there is no denying that the Chinese previously worshipped both deities and one’s ancestors. During his era this was the case as well, and Confucius did participate in sacrifices to the gods. But in doing so, he was participating in a social activity, effectively recognizing certain social mores, but he was not expressing belief in or exploring the questions of eternal life or supernatural forces. During the same timeframe, the Greeks were worshipping the gods on Mount Olympus who were flesh-and-blood deities busy falling in love, cheating on their partners, suffering from jealousy, and birthing new generations. Confucianism basically revolved around social ethics and order; a certain amount of energy went into exploring questions such as whether humankind is innately kind or evil. The emphasis was on the here and now, not life in the past or the future. This deeply impacted the character of the Han, the main ethnic group that constitutes the modern Chinese nation; they were pragmatic and did not pay much heed to things that are unknown or cloaked in mystery. This tendency was the case for the philosophies of Confucius, Mengzi, and Xunzi. Daoism is an entirely different matter. “Lao-Zhuang” philosophy—a reference to Laozi and Zhuangzi, Daoism’s two best-known ancient thinkers—cherished all that was natural and were unwilling to be shackled by society’s expectations. Thus, the Daoist-flavored query: Imperial domains— What has it to do with me? This suggests the Daoist yearning to distance oneself from the pressures of politics and materialistic urban society, in favor of living as one pleases. But if you look carefully, in terms of their viewpoints on life, death, and the universe, how do Confucianism and Daoism differ? They diverge in the way they viewed society; like Confucianists, Daoists also did not explore the heavy questions of how the universe or humankind came to be. The difference lies in Daoism’s dialectic thought: As summer passes winter arrives, Extreme joy turns to sorrow, Where bitterness ends, sweetness begins. Such is Daoist thinking. It assumes the existence of some sort of objective order, but has no compulsion to express it in words.

70  Buddhism’s Genesis Confucianism and Daoism were both products of agricultural society. Their differences lie in the distinctly different status of their respective proponents. Confucianists represented the ruling elite’s views about society. Confucius and Mencius both stood on the side of the ruler, and contemplated the dao—lit., the path—to achieve social tranquility and good governance. The Daoists tended to see things from the perspective of the ruled. Unwilling to be restrained by the emperor’s power, they preferred to enjoy the “cool breeze and luminous moon.” Prior to the introduction of Buddhism, the Chinese intellectual community’s state of mind was more or less as just stated. As for the Logicians and Yin-Yang schools, they were just variants on Confucianism and Daoism, or slightly different; none surpassed these two. Among the “Hundred Schools of Thought” that contended at the time, none explored the origins of humankind or the universe like the Greeks, who analyzed matter, hypothesized the existence of the atom, and formulated a systematic concept of the universe. Although their contemplations were profound and intricate, the direction of their efforts was different. Had they been obsessed with questions such as the origins of the universe, it is difficult to say if Buddhism could have been so easily accepted by the Chinese. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty accepted Dong Zhongshu’s advice and discarded the Hundred Schools and promoted Confucianism only, thereby establishing an enduring context for mainstream Chinese thought from the Han onwards. Although Dong Zhongshu himself was an admirer of schools of thought such as the Logicians, Yin-Yang, and the Five Elements, he was keener to utilize social mores to govern and restrict the way of life and thinking of the common folk. Amidst the chaos that presaged the end of the Eastern Han, there arose a slogan: “The Azure Sky is already dead; the Yellow Sky shall soon rise!” Yellow referred to the colored turbans of the peasant rebels who aimed to overthrow the dynasty. The slogan exploited the hazy concept of “Tian”—traditionally associated with the Heavens and the almighty godhead(s) residing there—to channel the people’s resistance against the regime. Since ancient times, the ruling class including Confucius participated in rites to express reverence for the Heavens (Tian). That is to say, they did not believe that humankind was the end all, be all of existence; but nor did they further explore questions such as the nature of the Heavens, how they came to be, who or what created them, and whether they hosted one or multiple deities. Buddhism flourished during the Southern Song (1127–1279). As a school of thought, Buddhism permeated all thinking and culture and penetrated the very spinal cord of the Chinese. Perhaps unwittingly, during this era Confucian philosophy began to be in concert with that of Buddhism; at any rate, this was the beginning of what would become Song- and Ming-style Confucianism. Once Buddhism was firmly entrenched in Chinese culture, a group of scholars such as Cheng Yi (1033–1107) and Zhu Xi (1130–1200) purposely worked to integrate the Indian philosophy with indigenous Confucianism and then used Buddhism to reinterpret the latter. Wang Shouren (aka Wang Yangming, 1472–1529) incarnated this fusion during the Ming, and we will discuss his role later.

Buddhism’s Genesis 71 Early Indian Religions—Brahmanism, Jainism, and Buddhism What were the early religions of India? Before I answer that question, it is necessary to explain that India took shape firstly after the British had gradually transformed kingdoms on the Indian subcontinent, each with its own sovereignty and traditions, into British colonies. And then, it was not until formal independence in 1947 that the Republic of India—that by then included an additional 500-plus tiny principalities that theoretically had not been British territory—was born. Therefore, during previous millennia there had never been a unified nation on the subcontinent as we now find in the 21st century. What I have to say here pertains to the religions of the early people of the Indian subcontinent. As was mentioned in Chapter 1, a dark-skinned, flat-nosed people, the Dravidians, were its original inhabitants. Around 1500 BC, a group of paleskinned, high-nosed Aryans crossed the mountainous passes of the Hindu Kush from Afghanistan and entered the northwestern portion of the subcontinent. After gaining a foothold there, they spread throughout northern India. Several centuries hence, they proceeded southward and became the founders of the Hindu civilization throughout the Indian subcontinent, including the island of Sri Lanka to its southeast. According to primordial beliefs and their new understanding of nature and society acquired during the conquest of India, the Aryans textualized the Vedas, comprising mainly hymns previously in oral form. There are four major mantras or collections: Rig-Veda, Sama-Veda, Yajur-Veda, and Atharva-Veda. Based on these religious texts, the Indians gradually formed the Brahman faith. Brahmanism posits that the universe is presided over by three deities, namely Brahma, the god of creation; Vishnu, the god of preservation; and Shiva, the god of destruction. All three have magical powers of regeneration, so Hinduism possesses myriad deities numbering at least in the tens of thousands. The alternation of this triumvirate drives a universal cycle enveloping all things, animate and inanimate, nature and humanity, that are inexorably involved. Under Brahmanism, society comprised four social classes (castes) plus “untouchables,” all determined by descent. Topping this hierarchy was the Brahmin caste, whose members were priests (including scribes and priests’ aides) who conducted religious ceremonies, created from the mouth of Brahma. Next came the Kshatriya, nobles and warriors who held political power and were created from Brahma’s arm(s). Responsible for production and commerce, the Vaishya were created from Brahma’s leg(s). The fourth caste was the Shudra, laborers and farmers, created from Brahma’s feet. Excluded from the formal caste system but unquestionably at the bottom of the social hierarchy were the Dalit (formerly Chandala), “untouchables” who performed dirty work such as slaughtering, tanning, garbage collection, and toilet cleaning. The origin of the caste system was the result of the Aryans’ forced separation of the conquered population based on descent and the institutionalization of religious tenants in a fixed form. As division of labor under the Aryans grew more complex,

72  Buddhism’s Genesis society was divided into the aforementioned broad categories of religious and economic activity, and then specific industries were incorporated into the framework of the caste system. This eventually became so detailed that subclassifications in today’s India can reach 3,000. Contemporary Indian society discourages intermarriage, and at times people of different castes are not permitted to dine at the same table. This is in spite of the official abolition of the caste system upon the republic’s founding in 1947 and the imposition of quotas guaranteeing access to education and employment for historically disadvantaged castes. For decades, those persons who strictly abide by caste segregation have gradually decreased, but Indian society still generally accepts the predominance of Hindu culture (see Chapter 1) that originated from the Aryans’ Brahmanism. At present, contemporary Indian social life and religious culture are virtually inseparable. The religions and deities mentioned earlier feature in ancient India’s two great Sanskrit narrative epics, the Mahabharata (“great story”) and Ramayana (“journey of Rāma”), compiled between the 2nd century BCE and the 4th century CE. The Mahabharata is composed of 600,000 śloka or couplets, first passed down orally for generations and later compiled into text. In the Ramayana, Rama is the eighth reincarnation of Vishnu. One of his major generals is named Hanuman, a quick-witted, awesome Monkey King who almost always accedes to peoples’ pleas. Since the Vishnu sect of Hinduism had reached China’s Quanzhou by the 13th century and a large temple complete with a carvedrock statue of Hanuman still stands, I suspect that Wu Cheng’en, author of the 16th-century classic novel Journey to the West—the fictionalized tale of Xuanzang’s quest (629–645) to fetch the Buddhist canon from India—may have been aware of this Indian god, so he created the much-beloved character Sun Wukong, known as the “Handsome Monkey King” (see Figure 4.1). There are many intriguing and fantastic tales about the deities who populate the Hindu pantheon. Ganesha, who has been loved and revered by believers since the 5th century, sports the head of an elephant (Figure 4.2). There are many renditions of this, one of which is similar to Chinese folk stories about Xue Rengui, a Tang-era general, and his wife Liu Yinhuan and son Xue Dingshan, another Tang-era general. Ganesha was the son of Shiva and his wife Parvati. Once Shiva left home for many years, and upon his return found a pair of men’s shoes at the door. Furious, he beheads the man who is inside his house. Realizing he had slaughtered his son by mistake, he runs out the door determined to make amends. Suddenly encountering an elephant, he cuts off its head and attaches it to his son’s neck. The origin and content of the earliest religions in India were as described earlier. Around 500 BCE, sages emerged in the European, East, and South Asian parts of Eurasia. In China it was Confucius, in Greece Socrates, and of course in India Shakyamuni. Shakyamuni (born Siddhartha Gautama, ca. 563–483 BCE) was the Kshatriya prince of a small state near today’s Nepal. Sensing that his life was empty and yearning for greater meaning elsewhere, he ran away from home. Eventually, he seated himself under a bodhi tree (or a sacred fig tree), meditated for 49 days, and

Buddhism’s Genesis 73

Figure 4.1  Ramayana’s “Monkey King”

attained enlightenment. This was the origin of Buddhism, and as such, one cannot really say that it was initially a god-based faith. But later acolytes deified Shakyamuni, and inspired by the Brahmin triumvirate, they gradually developed the concept of trailokya, or Three Planes of Existence.

74  Buddhism’s Genesis

Figure 4.2  Elephant-headed Ganesha

Horizontally, there are the Eastern Medicine Buddha, Central Shakyamuni Buddha, and Western Amitabha. Vertically, there are the Buddhas of the Past, Present, and Future. Many Bodhisattvas and Arhats have emerged along the way, typifying the religion as is familiar to many Chinese today. While Buddhism’s founder was a Kshatriya prince who went against the basic tenets of Brahmanism, another Kshatriya prince Mahavira (ca. 540–468 BCE) founded a

Buddhism’s Genesis 75 new religion known as Jainism, also a very different kind of religion from Brahmanism. Jainism teaches that all forms of life are interconnected. Broadly speaking, Jains believe in non-absolutism, non-possessiveness, non-violence, and non-attachment. It never became a major religion in India or elsewhere. But there are still about five million Jains in India today. On the whole, they are strictly vegetarian and exercise sexual continence. Since they loathe killing living beings and even plants, many have become merchants or moneylenders. Today many Jains are influential and wealthy members of the banking and mercantile community in Mumbai and Gujarat. After vigorous promotion by the Maurya Dynasty’s King Ashoka the Great (260–232 BCE), Buddhism gradually replaced Brahmanism. However, during the 6th–7th centuries, Brahmanism evolved into what is widely labelled “Hinduism,” gradually absorbing and replacing Buddhism. Surprisingly to Westerners, many Indians do not recognize the term Hinduism. They do not accept the appellation; they simply believe in certain deities that their communities have always worshipped and observe its traditional religious rituals and customs. In fact, the term “Hinduism” is a European convention. European scholars in the 18th century considered that most Indian beliefs shared a common cultural gene—the cycle of “creation-destruction-re-creation”—and therefore, the religion of most inhabitants of the Indian peninsula should be called “Hinduism.” When Xuanzang arrived in India (ca. 630), the Chola Dynasty with its power base in South India was rising and Hinduism was flourishing. Figure 4.3 shows the

Figure 4.3  A thousand-year-old Hindu temple

76  Buddhism’s Genesis façade of a Hindu temple in South India with myriad idols, sculpted in great detail and richly ornamented. It was built about 1,000 years ago, before Paris’ NotreDame Cathedral and St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. Figure 4.4 features the image of a dancing Shiva. Among the common folk, he is the most popular because he challenged four-headed Brahma, and even beheaded a fifth, created by Brahma with his thumb! Every Hindu god has a wife and his own iconic vahana (Sanskrit for carriage or mount).

Figure 4.4  Nataraja: Shiva, divine dancer

Buddhism’s Genesis 77 Indonesia was long within the Indian cultural sphere of influence, and before Islamization (14th–16th centuries), most of the country’s population practiced Hinduism. Even after the introduction of Islam, the inland and remote islands of the Indonesian archipelago (such as Java) still hosted many Hindu believers and inherited many Indian customs, whence the country’s name “Indonesia,” from the ancient Greek Indos and nesos (islands). Even Indonesia’s national airline is named after Garuda, Vishnu’s legendary bird-like mount. Religion and art have always been inseparable. Religious art in India is lively, and Indian dance is very colorful with complex and varied movements. In fact, it was after the introduction of Buddhism that Chinese court dance gained in complexity as well. Hindu dancers must master the Tribhanga, where the body resembles an “S” shape, i.e., it bends in one direction at the knees, the other direction at the hips and then the other again at the shoulders and neck. Just as essential in classical Indian dance are the complex and ever-changing gestures of the dancer’s hand and fingers. Today, dancers from India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Indonesia’s Bali are heirs of this style. Each of their dances contains religious elements. In fact, all early dances were associated with religious ritual. Buddhism spread as its ardent believer King Asoka expanded his realm to northwestern India, including today’s Afghanistan. It was originally ruled by the Greeks and the Kushan, and they also converted to Buddhism. Buddhism’s role within India later declined, however, and the earliest object of Buddhist veneration, Shakyamuni, was subsumed within the Hindu Vishnu sect, and henceforth regarded as an incarnation of Vishnu. But it needs to be noted again that the ideals advocated by Shakyamuni were actually the inverse of those of Brahmanism; Brahmanism (Hinduism’s predecessor) separated society into distinct castes, a concept not present in Buddhist ideology. In Buddhism, anyone can attain Nirvana through silent contemplation, formal meditation, and good deeds. Nirvana is a state of being, not the “Paradise” where the Creator resides, as in the Abrahamic religions. It should also be noted that Buddhism and Jainism, both of which originated in 6th–5th century BCE, were advocated by the Kshatriya and widely supported by members of both the Kshatriya and the Vaishya castes. But Buddhism was opposed by most Brahmins, for whom it implied political and social revolution. This is why Buddhism replaced Brahmanism for centuries under the impetus of King Ashoka, who was born into the Kshatriya.

5

Buddhism’s Spread in China Contemporaries Kumarajiva and Faxian—The Encounter That Didn’t Happen

Buddhism was born in the middle reaches of India’s Ganges River in a region near today’s Nepal, whence it soon spread throughout Central Asia. In the 1st century CE, Buddhist learning migrated from the Western Regions to Luoyang, and during the 2nd a Persian monk, An Shigao, came to China where he translated Theravada scriptures. Not long after, a monk from the Kushan Empire of Yuezhi origin, Lokaksema, traveled to Han Dynasty China to promote Mahayana Buddhism. The Chinese monk Faxian set out to fetch the Buddhist canon from India in the 5th century, passing through Xinjiang of western China, and upon his return wrote A Record of the Buddhistic Kingdoms. The Central Asian monk Kumarajiva came to Liangzhou (today’s Wuwei in Gansu) via Xinjiang, resided there for over 15 years, relocated to Chang’an for ten-plus years during the Sixteen Kingdom period, and translated a large number of Mahayana and Theravada sutras. The paths of Faxian and Kumarajiva crossed twice, but unfortunately, they did not actually meet. Undeniably a giant in the history of Buddhism in China, Xuan Zang should be credited with establishing the foundation for the religion’s popularization. To close this chapter, we will review the relationship between political power, the masses, and religion in Indian history, and explore the sociality of religion and the search for the individual’s soul down through the ages in Eurasia.

Figure 5.1 in the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang is a large mural consisting of three parts. The upper-right portion depicts a large gold statue of a human figure. Captured from the Xiongnu by the Han army, the statue represented a deity worshipped by this nomadic people. It also shows Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty worshiping this large gold statue. The lower part of the mural illustrates that Emperor Wu of Han, perplexed by the significance of this gold statue, dispatched Zhang Qian to the Western Regions to identify its origin. The upper-left portion shows the Han envoys approaching a city with Buddhist temples and pagodas in it and two monks standing outside the city to welcome the Han envoys. The clear implication of this complex mural is that Zhang Qian arrived in the Western Regions and realized that the “man of gold” was the Buddha. Many scholars now posit that the latter two parts of this mural were an intentional “forgery” of a supposed ancient event, created during the Tang-era dispute between DOI: 10.4324/9781003369899-5

Buddhism’s Spread in China 79

Figure 5.1 Mogao Cave mural: The Han army seizes Xiongnu’s “man of gold” and Zhang Qian’s supposed mission to identify the captured statue

Daoists and Buddhists. In fact, Daoism—indigenous to China—was born during the closing years of the Eastern Han (25–220 CE), most probably at the beginning of the Yellow Scarf Rebellion in 184 CE, while Buddhist scriptures were brought into China from Central Asia first in 68 CE (see later) and then from India in 147 CE. Some later Buddhists were perhaps unaware of these facts and wished to establish “beyond doubt” that Buddhism predated Daoism in China. Hence, they made a rather tenuous proposition that Emperor Wu dispatched Zhang Qian to the Western Regions for the express purpose of ascertaining the identity of the captured gold statue, and this questionable claim of Buddhism’s early introduction to China was commemorated. An Shigao: Buddhist Missionary to China When and how did Buddhism actually make its China debut? Concurrently with the 1st-century rule of Kaniska, king of the Kushan Empire, four empires coexisted on the Eurasian continent: To the west were the Romans, to its east were the Persian

80  Buddhism’s Spread in China (Parthian) Empire and the Kushan Empire (descended from the Yuezhi), and in the easternmost portion of Eurasia was, of course, the Han Empire. Among the Parthians was a crown prince who had yearned to study Buddhism since childhood. He renounced his claim prior to enthronement, yielding instead to his uncle. This “regime change” was actually driven by both international and internal court politics. The Roman Empire, which was influential in Western Asia, was keen for the uncle to take the throne, so it was arranged for the prince to become king of Armenia, a neighboring Persianate country controlled by Rome. For their part, the Armenians did not welcome the Parthian prince as their new sovereign. Not long after his arrival, the prince withdrew entirely from political life and left on a pilgrimage to India to immerse himself in Buddhist study. From the Buddhist perspective, his abdication signified that he—like the Buddha who attained Nirvana after renouncing the throne—had transcended human life. He resided in India for many years, mastering various Buddhist classics. Keen to promote the Dharma (Buddha’s teachings and sermons), he came to China in 147 CE. At the time, the Chinese referred to Parthia (successor state of the Seleucids located in today’s southeastern Iran) as “Anxi,” so the monk-prince Parthamasiris took the Chinese surname “An” and the given name “Shigao.” An Shigao propagated a form of Buddhism that is referred to disparagingly as “Hinayana” (“Lesser Vehicle”) by devotees of Mahayana (“Greater Vehicle”). Followers of the former, however, never use this terminology; in their parlance, they are devotees of Theravada Buddhism. Roughly speaking, Theravada emphasizes attaining self-liberation through one’s own efforts, while in Mahayana the devotees seek enlightenment or Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings, so Mahayanists perceive of their sect as a “vehicle” for the many to attain a state of divine wisdom. It was Theravada Buddhism that first took root in India, Central Asia, and Persia. Around 68 CE, during the Eastern Han, it found its way into China. Legend has it that the premier Buddhist scriptures to enter the empire were transported to Luoyang atop white steeds, so Emperor Ming of Han ordered construction of White Horse Temple—China’s first-ever Buddhist site of worship—to commemorate this momentous event. An Shigao was an erudite monk with a profound grasp of Buddhist doctrine, as well as exceptional language-learning ability. After his arrival, he quickly mastered Chinese and applied himself to the translation of the Theravada canon into Chinese from 148 to 171 CE. At the end of this period, however, the dynasty was in decline and northern China was no longer stable, so he relocated south and eventually died there. Although the volume of An Shigao’s translations was not great, he was the first person to render the Buddhist canon in Chinese and was thus a pioneer in this right. The Theravada school of Buddhism that he championed is still considered the primordial and superior form of the religion in Sri Lanka as well as Southeast Asia’s Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos. Today, believers in China, Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan mainly opt for Mahayana Buddhism, informally known as “northern Buddhism.” Another important monk who came to China to expound the Dharma is known by his name in religion, Lokaksema. Since he is noted in Chinese chronicles as

Buddhism’s Spread in China 81 支婁迦讖 (zhi lou jia chen)—readers fluent in hanzi will note the odd “Zhi” at the beginning of his surname—it is assumed that he was a member of the Yuezhi ethnicity, who often added this prefix to form a family name when residing in China. He lived during the 2nd century, slightly later than An Shigao, and promoted Mahayana; it evolved in India and Central Asia and then entered China. In fact, Central Asians were originally devotees of Zoroastrianism, variously known in China as “Ahura’s Religion” (named after its highest deity, Ahura Mazda) or, more commonly, “fire-worship.” Zoroastrianism predates Buddhism by at least a century, and according to textual research its founder Zarathustra (Zoroaster) was a Persian born in what is now Afghanistan. Since Persia’s Sasanian Empire adopted Zoroastrianism as its national religion, this faith exercised considerable influence within Western and Central Asia. This illustrates the fact that all global religions have prospered when they obtain the support of strong governments. As Dao’an, a Buddhist monk who lived during the Eastern Jin (317–420), put it, “Unless one obeys a country’s sovereign, a religion will struggle to establish itself.” During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Emperor Wu of Liang in the south was a great admirer of Mahayana. On three occasions he cloistered himself in Tongtai Temple (on the site of Nanjing’s Jiming Temple), stating he intended to take up monkhood. Each time a handsome “ransom” was made to coax him to return to the court. In such an environment, the clergy grew wealthy, a plethora of temples sprang up, and Buddhism prospered mightily under the Southern Dynasty. Faxian’s Pilgrimage to the Birthplace of Buddhism Despite Mahayana’s tardy arrival, most Chinese devotees now practice it rather than Theravada. As Buddhism spread initially, thanks to the efforts of certain individuals, a localized form—“Buddhism with Chinese characteristics”—gradually emerged. A key figure in the popularization of Buddhism in China was Faxian (334–420) who lived during the Eastern Jin. Buddhist scriptures circulating in that era could not be easily interpreted and even contained mutually contradictory content, so Faxian—at 62 years of age—made up his mind to travel to India and personally study the faith at its very roots. When he set off, his retinue consisted of a dozen or so souls, but along the way, some wavered in their determination while others withdrew for sundry reasons, leaving him to carry on his historic “Journey to the West” all by himself. Faxian’s path to the cradle of Buddhism was an extremely arduous one. Departing from Chang’an in 399, he passed through Hexi Corridor and oasis outposts along the northern rim of Tarim Basin, crossed the Pamirs and Hindu Kush Mountains, forded the Indus, and finally set foot in northwest India in 405. He spent three years learning the language there, and then studied another three years on the move within the Ganges Basin while collecting many precious classics. In 410, he boarded a commercial ship at the estuary of the Ganges River (near modern Kolkata) bound for “Lion Country” (as Sri Lanka was known in ancient China), which he explored for two years.

82  Buddhism’s Spread in China After that, Faxian decided not to retrace his steps but to go by ship instead. Little did he realize that this would not make his return any easier! In 412, Faxian boarded a large commercial vessel capable of carrying more than 200 passengers. Unfortunately, after it passed through the Straits of Malacca it had an accident at Java. Repairs required a long time. After a wait of five months, he boarded another merchant ship, this time bound for Guangzhou. Buffeted by high winds, it found itself in the Sulu Archipelago, now part of the Philippines. Faxian rested up and then departed again, finally reaching Mt. Lao on the southeastern coastline of the Shandong Peninsula in 413. Faxian’s experience is persuasive evidence that the “Maritime Silk Road” was already an established trading route by the 5th century. As noted in Chapter 3, a delicate, Persian-style silver container dating from Qin Dynasty (221–206 BCE) was unearthed at the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King in Guangzhou (Pearl River Delta), indicating that this route was often sailed by merchants. But the earliest religious figure to take advantage of it may well have been Faxian. By the time his feet once again trod on Chinese territory, he was almost 80 years old. Back in China, Faxian wrote A Record of the Buddhistic Kingdoms (as titled by translator James Legge, the Scottish Sinologist) that recorded his experiences in over a decade of travel. Although Buddhism’s influence in India was waning, it was still popular, and Faxian labelled India the “Buddhist kingdom.” His work describes the geography and scenery, history, and state of Buddhism in India’s myriad statelets, as well as facts about communications infrastructure linking what are now India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and nearby countries. This constitutes the earliest record of China’s maritime traffic, which is both historically significant and important data for assessing the erstwhile state of Buddhism. Faxian set out when he was 62 years old and arrived in India five years later without ever considering turning back. His perseverance, faith, and belief in seeking genuine Buddhism must have been exceptionally strong, and his example illustrates how one’s faith can generate real fortitude. Kumarajiva Presides Over Translation of Buddhist Canon Kumarajiva (344–413) was an extraordinarily gifted and legendary figure. An Indian noble and devotee of Buddhism, his father settled in Qiuci (now Kuche of China’s Xinjiang) in the northern Tarim Basin following an unsuccessful political career. Kumarajiva was the result of the union of his father and the king’s sister, making him the son of Indian nobility and nephew of the king of Qiuci. Kumarajiva manifested his intelligence from an early age. Like his father, his mother was a Buddhist. Anxious that his smarts might lead him in the wrong direction, she placed him in the care of monks at the tender age of seven. In fact, the entire Tarim Basin was Buddhist-dominated by the 5th century, and whenever she went to the temple for prayer, she brought him along. So, Kumarajiva was familiar with Buddhist scriptures early on and proficient in both Mahayana and Theravada scriptures. Since he excelled at Sanskrit, knew Kuchean (a Tocharian dialect written in Brahmi or Kharosthi script), and was of noble lineage, he acquired a reputation as the most learned person among the tiny states of the Western Regions even while young.

Buddhism’s Spread in China 83 Being learned can be a burden of sorts. The most powerful force in northern China at the time was the Former Qin (351–394), ruled by the Di people. Their capital was Chang’an, and they controlled territory from the Korean Peninsula to the Pamirs in the remote west. After defeat at the Battle of Fei River (383), the monarch Fu Jian yearned to establish a Buddhist state. He heard that a revered senior monk named Kumarajiva resided in Qiuci, so he dispatched Lü Guang and his army that ravaged the city, captured Kumarajiva, and took him eastward to northern China. When they arrived at Liangzhou (Wuwei) in the Hexi Corridor, a military-led coup occurred back in Chang’an, Fu Jian was killed, and the Qiang seized the opportunity to establish the Later Qin (384–417), while Lü Guang founded the Later Liang (386–403) in Liangzhou (modern-day Gansu). Thus, Kumarajiva never met Fu Jian but resided in Liangzhou 16 or 17 years, where he mastered Chinese. It was not until Later Liang was annexed by Later Qin in 401 that the monk was actually taken to Chang’an. Kumarajiva and Faxian never discussed Buddhism face-to-face. But they did have two chances to meet: Had Kumarajiva arrived in Chang’an before 399, for instance, they might have encountered one another. Kumarajiva could have given Faxian some advice regarding his itinerary that might have lessened the troubles the latter and his party met with on the road and given Faxian potential contacts among Buddhists in India. The second missed opportunity was when Faxian returned to China in 413 but proceeded to Chang’an rather than Nanjing. Had he gone to Chang’an, they might still have met prior to Kumarajiva’s death that same year, and Faxian could have shared his impressions of contemporary India. So, I’ve subtitled this chapter “Contemporaries Kumarajiva and Faxian—The Encounter That Didn’t Happen.” Yao Xing, second ruler of the Later Qin, held Kumarajiva in high esteem and provided him with many monks and scholars fluent in Chinese to assist in translating the Buddhist scriptures. Granted, his Chinese language skills may not have been as good as those of the locals with whom he collaborated, but he spoke the tongue, had a good grasp of the original Sanskrit, and invented a new methodology for translation that resulted in significant breakthroughs, technique-wise. His renditions were known as “New Translations” and proved very influential for later generations. For example, there are many extant renditions of the Diamond Sutra (Vajra Sutra), but his remains the most oft-recited version. His translated texts were highly refined and featured a unique four-character-per-verse format. Kumarajiva’s method was first to dictate his rough translation that was recorded by an assistant and then alter the draft himself. His predecessors often employed literal translation, which resulted in awkward transliterated terms such as prajñāpāramitā (from the famous Heart Sutra). Without annotation, for the uninitiated its meaning would be difficult to ascertain. Kumarajiva chose free translation, a fluent rendering in Chinese that emphasized rendering a given term’s meaning (e.g., “perfection of wisdom”). By comparison, An Shigao’s grasp of Chinese was less sophisticated, because he had come on his own to China to promote Buddhism and the ruler had not supplied him with assistants. His translations were not easily understood, while Kumarajiva

84  Buddhism’s Spread in China could call on a team of collaborators who possessed excellent written Chinese, so their target texts were more precise and read more smoothly. Over the years, Kumarajiva’s approach to translating the Buddhist classics naturally nurtured many outstanding Buddhist scholars. He was well acquainted with both Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism and completed translation of classics from both schools. A number of anecdotes about Kumarajiva have come down to us. Because he was so talented, he attracted many women, and despite his monk status, he twice violated the religious commandment against marriage. The first time was to wed a Kuchean princess, the second a court attendant in Later Qin. In other words, while his translation and written works constitute a major contribution to Buddhism, he did not strictly follow its precepts. Exactly why we cannot know, but it is said that King Yao Xing considered him a once-in-a-generation genius, and he was keen for Kumarajiva to pass on his genes. The Heart Sutra contains a passage that was famously rendered by Kumarajiva as follows: 色即是空 空即是色 Which can be rendered as: Form incarnates emptiness And emptiness form. The Chinese term 色 (sè) as employed here does not refer to things carnal, although it has had such a meaning in ancient times and today; he renders it as “form” because in Buddhist thought it is a reference to the material world. Conversely, 空 (kōng) is rendered as emptiness, suggesting the immaterial world. In any case, Kumarajiva’s translations of the Heart Sutra, Diamond Sutra, and Lotus Sutra are very significant, because they were based upon his classic renditions of a series of such scriptures that Chinese scholars later established their own schools of thought. For example, his translation of the Amitabha Sutra contributed to founding the Pure Land Sect. Simply speaking, to fast track your enlightenment you needn’t study a pile of scriptures; just frequently recite the Amitabha, and you can purify your spirit and gain entry to that state of consciousness. As a result, many believers nowadays have taken to reciting it, incessantly. The holiest of Pure Land Buddhism’s places of worship is Guoqing Temple atop Mount Tiantai (Taizhou, Zhejiang Province). Many Japanese pilgrims make their way there because they are also devotees of the Pure Land Sect. Xuan Zang’s Haul From His “Journey to the West” The last of China’s intrepid monks whom I will introduce is Xuan Zang (602–664). Figure 5.2 is his supposed likeness, painted by an Indian artist, which is housed in the Tokyo National Museum. Xuan Zang’s paternal great-grandfather and

Buddhism’s Spread in China 85

Figure 5.2  Portrait of Xuan Zang

86  Buddhism’s Spread in China grandfather were both officials, and the latter served as the equivalent of deputy prime minister during the Sui Dynasty. Xuan Zang became a novice monk at 13, and in his 20s was determined to journey to the west, i.e., India, to fetch reliable versions of Buddhist scriptures. As a member of the elite class in the early Tang era, he had the opportunity to inform Emperor Taizong of his desire to set out for the Western Regions, but reportedly met with neither approval nor rejection. Unfazed, Xuan Zang set out, but when he arrived at the border, he was forbidden to exit because the Tang and Eastern Turkic Khaganate were then in conflict and the borders were closed. Fortunately, the commanding officer, moved by Xuan Zang’s sincerity and honesty, turned a blind eye and let him slip across, despite risking repercussions. As indicated in Map 5.1, Xuan Zang’s westward route was roughly as follows: From Chang’an to Yiwu (now Hami), Gaochang (Turpan), and Qiuci (now Kuche). At that time, these places were peopled by Buddhists, and because he was a wellspoken, senior monk at the Tang court, he was welcomed by the local rulers who even provided him with horses and donations toward his travel expenses. As described in Wu Cheng’en’s Journey to the West (aka Monkey King), there are actually “flaming mountains” on the way to Gaochang. Situated not far from Turpan, the dramatic red sandstone hills are now a tourist attraction.

Map 5.1  Xuan Zang’s pilgrimage route to India

Buddhism’s Spread in China 87 Xuan Zang continued onward to Suyab (on the Chu River not far from Bishkek, capital of present-day Kyrgyzstan), Samarkand (in Uzbekistan), then passed through Gandhara (northwest Pakistan and northeast Afghanistan), and Kannauj (in India’s Uttar Pradesh), until he finally reached Nalanda in the lower reaches of the Ganges River. This was the cradle of Buddhism. At the time, India was in the latter stage of the Gupta Dynasty when many local rulers no longer embraced Buddhism, having converted to “New Brahmanism” or Hinduism, as it is known in the West. This is what I referred to in Chapter 4 as the revival of Hinduism during the Middle Ages. Nalanda’s rulers still believed in Buddhism, so the region was considered Buddhist. Generally speaking, the religious beliefs of the ruling class impact its subjects. For example, the 16th-century Reformation in Europe offered the opportunity for each sovereign to choose to maintain the “old” religion, i.e., Catholicism, or convert to Protestantism. For continental Europe, that meant mainly Lutheranism, but in the British Isles there was also the Church of England founded by Henry VIII, and it is still headed by the British monarch in the 21st century. Once a ruler has made a decision, under normal circumstances he will find a way to ensure that his subjects follow suit. After three decades of war between Europe’s Catholic and Protestant states, in 1648 the belligerents signed the Peace of Westphalia, a series of peace treaties that were finalized between May and October 1648 in the Westphalian cities of Osnabrück and Münster. They declared respect for the “sovereignty” of each country. In other words, whichever faith the ruler chose, it also became the faith of the common folk. Other states must not interfere in this matter, or go to war over religion. Beginning in the Middle Ages, a similar custom prevailed in the subcontinent. In Xuan Zang’s time, rulers of various states practiced Hinduism, or this or that sect of Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism. During his stay in the Indian peninsula that lasted more than a decade, Xuan Zang mastered the local language and learned excellent Sanskrit, an early IndoEuropean tongue that later functioned as the classical language of the peninsula and liturgical as well as the literary language of much of India. He also translated the Book of the Tao into Sanskrit. At the time, there were often Buddhist forums—“arenas” for rhetorical debate— where participants took turns on stage arguing for various schools, including Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism. A less-persuasive speaker would be replaced by a new competitor. Xuan Zang was once invited by the Nalanda Abbot to present his arguments at such a forum sponsored by the king of Magadha, and reportedly held his own for 18 consecutive days. Therefore, he became one of a handful of leading Buddhist scholars in India. He was hailed by both the Mahayanists as “Mahayana Champion” (dacheng tian) and the Theravadists as the “Champion of Deliverance” (  jietuo tian). The old abbot offered to cede his post to Xuan Zang, but the latter countered, “The purpose of my stay is to return to China and promote greater understanding of the Dharma. My return is more meaningful than my presence here.” “Since you insist on going back,” said the king of Magadha, sensing Xuan Zang’s determination, “let me lend you a helping hand.” Whereupon the monarch

88  Buddhism’s Spread in China gifted the monk with several fine horses to transport a weighty load of Buddhist classics back to the Tang Empire. Although Xuan Zang had been a monk since childhood and was dedicated to the Buddha, he was born into a family of officials and acquainted with proper court protocol. After all, he had left the country in violation of an imperial ban, so upon his return 18 years later, he halted at the Buddhist kingdom of Khotan. He submitted a petition to the Imperial Court to test the waters for his return, explaining that he had returned with a lode of Buddhist scriptures, and requested permission to proceed to Chang’an. Emperor Taizong dispatched a team of mounted imperial guards to greet him and summoned Xuan Zang to Luoyang. On several occasions Emperor Taizong offered official posts to Xuan Zang, but he declined, insisting that he needed a site where he could translate the Indian scriptures. His Majesty acceded to his request, allowing him to select talented collaborators and work first at Hongfu Temple and then at Ci’en Temple, both located in the Tang capital Chang’an. After Tang Gaozong assumed the throne, Xuan Zang was allowed to build Big Goose Pagoda beside Ci’en Temple, and the former is now a cultural landmark of Xi’an. Emperor Taizong commanded Xuan Zang to chronicle his experiences in the Western Regions, and the monk dared not dally. He immediately dictated them, and his disciples compiled them in a dozen volumes, entitled Great Tang Records on the Western Regions. They detail the topography, waterways, roadways, customs, local produce, and political culture of some 138 city-states, especially Buddhist landmarks and the status of Buddhism, as well as local history and legends, biographies of important local figures, and so on. He clearly possessed a superb memory! Great Tang Records is an invaluable source of information for the history, geography, religion, and culture of the Middle Ages in India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Central Asia. It is also a detailed record of the history of communications between China and the outside world. For the Tang government, it represented a treasure house of cultural, political, and military “intelligence” about the remote Western Regions. Faxian’s travelogue was entitled A Record of the Buddhistic Kingdoms. Also a senior monk, Xuan Zang wisely chose the title Great Tang Records on the Western Regions. Although many of the chronicled places were not yet governed by the Tang, the Chinese title implied they were part and parcel of the “Greater Tang Empire,” as it were, which naturally pleased Emperor Taizong who accordingly arranged for a batch of talented assistants to help Xuan Zang with his two-decadelong translation project. In his later years, Xuan Zang ceased translating Buddhist scriptures, but instead integrated various Buddhist theories and devoted himself to establishing a system of Buddhism that he believed more reasonable, founding the “Avatamsaka Sect” (faxiang zong). Xuan Zang’s achievements were not limited to Buddhism in China. Several major discoveries by European archaeologists in India were inspired by his Great Tang Records. For example, Nalanda Temple, where Xuan Zang lived for a long

Buddhism’s Spread in China 89

Figure 5.3  Nalanda Temple ruins

time, had gone to ruins that were subsequently concealed by jungle growth. In the 19th century, British scholars discovered its foundation on the Ganges Plain and reproduced its basic appearance through excavations based upon its description in his famous travelogue. Figures 5.3 and 5.4 show the ruins of Nalanda Temple and its iconic “Pillar of King Ashoka the Great” that were located thanks to Xuan Zang’s account. Country, People, Religion Today’s India is a unified country. In Xuan Zang’s era, the Indian subcontinent was a patchwork of kingdoms, and unification was not even on peoples’ minds. The 6th–9th centuries were the period when India began its transition away from Buddhism, and its political center relocated from the Ganges River Basin in the north, where Faxian and Xuan Zang studied, to the south. At this time, the Gupta Empire, which was based in the north, gradually disintegrated, and the Chola Dynasty established by the Dravidians in the south to rebuild Brahman society gradually began its rise. The 11th century marked the full revival of a “new” Brahmanism, or Hinduism. During the 12th–16th centuries, most of northern India was occupied by Turkicspeaking Muslims migrating southward from Central Asia who separated into relatively independent princely states or nawabs. The turf of these invaders was scattered, bordering on or newly inserted between Hindu kingdoms, so there was no shortage

90  Buddhism’s Spread in China

Figure 5.4  Pillar of King Ashoka the Great

of contacts between Muslim and Hindu rulers. The result was military conflict as well as social interaction, and crisscrossing relations based on geopolitical concerns, regardless of faith or ethnicity; marriage outside one’s group was not untypical, nor was conversion of a newlywed to his or her spouse’s religion. This period is known as the “Delhi Sultanate.” The dominant force was Muslim soldiers from Central Asia. Although their sphere of influence covered Northern India, they did not fully occupy the north. In the first half of the 16th century, Timur’s descendant Babur pioneered a new political situation in India. The sixth-generation grandson of Timur,

Buddhism’s Spread in China 91 Babur was one of the creators of modern Turkic literature. A Persophone Muslim who wrote poetry and designed gardens, he was also capable of ruling his kingdom and leading his troops in battle. Hounded out of Central Asia by Uzbeks who were extending their power southward, Babur established a new order in the Indus Valley, the Mughal Dynasty, despite his earlier ignominious flight. “Mughal” is the Persian and Indian pronunciation of the Mongol’s self-appellation. By the mid-17th century, the descendants of Genghis Khan and Timur had gradually been Indianized. They ruled the lion’s share of the Indian subcontinent, Islam was the dominant faith, and the number of Muslims coming from Central Asia gradually increased. There is no concept of “caste” within Islam, so it was attractive to India’s lower castes and inspired large numbers of conversions among them. During the 18th–19th centuries, after the British had defeated the Netherlands and France, they signed various treaties with local rulers, securing control of most of what is today’s India. Indian soldiers in the British army led an uprising against the rule of the British East India Company (which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown), known as the “Indian Rebellion of 1857,” sweeping the peninsula for almost a year. The British tried to summon troops from far-away Europe, but ironically it was thanks to the loyal support of Sikh soldiers— who were both anti-Muslim and anti-Hindu—that they finally squelched the rebellion and banished the last emperor of the Mughal Empire, who had supported the uprising. Beginning in 1858, the British government exercised direct rule over India and dispatched a representative to serve as governor general and viceroy. In 1877, Queen Victoria was officially crowned Empress of India, and crown rule of India—the “British Raj”—endured until independence in 1947. The British Parliament passed the Indian Independence Act of 1947, transferring legislative sovereignty to the Indian Constituent Assembly. However, because of a stalemate between Hindus and Muslims, as well as infighting among much less populous minorities such as Christians, Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Zoroastrians, the British served as a mediator and subsequently divided British India into two new countries: The Hindu-dominated Republic of India and the Muslim-majority Islamic Republic of Pakistan, which incorporated East Pakistan, now known as Bangladesh. India and Pakistan have been at loggerheads continuously since their establishment and have fought four wars: 1947, 1965, 1971, and 1999 as well as several major military conflicts, the last of which occurred in 2019, when both conducted airstrikes against targets in each other’s territory. More than nine out of ten Pakistanis are Muslim, while Muslims account for 15 percent of India’s inhabitants. That makes Pakistan the third largest Muslim nation worldwide, behind Indonesia and India, which ranks number 2. As mentioned earlier, 17th-century European countries negotiated treaties such as the Peace of Westphalia that recognized that the religious beliefs of a king may determine the religion of his subjects. In the middle of the 20th century, under the

92  Buddhism’s Spread in China auspices of the British, the nature of the two new republics occupying the Indian subcontinent was determined by different religious beliefs save in one important princely state. In the northernmost part of Indian subcontinent, sitting between northeastern Pakistan and northwestern India as well as bordering China in the north, was the princely state of Kashmir. Over the past 1,000 years, its population has embraced several religions including Catholicism, but in the last few centuries its population has been predominantly Muslim. Oddly enough, during British Raj the ruling family was Hindu. In 1947 when the British Raj was about to be divided into a Hindu-dominated India and Muslim-dominated Pakistan, the Kashmiri ruler Maharaja Hari Singh—himself a Hindu—wavered until the last minute when he aligned Muslim-majority Kashmir with India. This immediately led to the first war between India and Pakistan. After mediation by the newly established United Nations, a cease-fire was agreed upon and it was decided that, as an interim measure, Pakistan would administer the part of Kashmir that lies to the west of the ceasefire line and India would rule over a larger piece of territory to the east of the ceasefire line (which India called Jammu and Kashmir and in 2019 designated as a regular Indian state). Four wars have been fought over Kashmir between India and Pakistan, and a multitude of civilians have been killed or injured during the long strife, including frequent terrorist attacks. Kashmir’s allotment to India upon partition has in a way affirmed the concept of sovereignty established in Westphalia, but it also contradicted the principle of national self-determination advocated by the US after World War I. Assessment of Interactions Between China and India Most states in the 21st century belong in the category of “the developing world.” Both in terms of religion and population size, China and India, the two neighboring developing countries, each representing an ancient civilization, most definitely deserve our attention. A historical review of the interactions of these two major countries would not only reveal matters of great historical significance but also provide inspiration for the future. From my personal point of view, in terms of knowledge and ideas, India’s “exports” to China have far exceeded its “imports”; China has been a net importer. For nearly two millennia, Chinese views on life and death, the universe, and many types of behavior (such as meditation) and ways of thinking (such as the concept of karma) have all come from India. Therefore, if there were no neighboring country like India, the modes of thought and daily life of the Chinese people today might be very different. I believe that within the Sinosphere, whether one burns incense to worship Buddha or professes to hold no Buddhist beliefs, no one is completely untouched by Buddhist culture. Buddhism has been deeply internalized, including in our daily language and thought process. Examples of this profound influence abound: the term chana, a popular term for “a split second,” is derived from the Sanskrit ksana, signifying an imperceptibly short block of time; and there are many

Buddhism’s Spread in China 93 Buddhist-inspired adages such as, “A killer becomes a Buddha the moment he drops his knife.” In such a long history, China and India have had almost no military conflict— but mutual cultural influence has been so great that it stands to illustrate that when civilizations encounter each other, war is not an inevitable outcome. More often, the relative superiority or inferiority of a civilization does not depend upon military victory; exchanges that involve multiple modalities, levels of society, and orientations are historic tendencies. As we all know, each of us is a living organism and a social being with a spiritual dimension. Because human beings are animals, we have biological needs such as eating; as far as the collective is concerned, there is an innate need to create the next generation, so human beings have the same urge to mate as other animals. But human beings are also superior to animals. Since each of us is a social being, all contacts between people possess a certain etiquette and take the form of specific types of relationships. In addition, each person capable of thought has certain innermost needs, a yearning for spiritual belonging, and a desire for a sense of satisfaction beyond mere material enjoyment and recognition by society at large. So, religion cannot be considered unimportant. It can be roughly divided into two types: One is “religions of salvation” such as Christianity and Islam. They advocate that one should do good deeds and await redemption by the Savior, or one should actively seek entry to Heaven by showing mercy to others. The other is faith that focuses on meditation, which can be called “transcendental religions.” They are achieved through realizing transcendence of the self and transcendence of time and space in order to attain a selfless state, in which the mind obtains spiritual satisfaction and unique experiences. Literally thousands of religions worldwide fall into these two broad categories. One question is worthy of everyone’s consideration: What exactly motivated the early Chinese Buddhist pioneers, including Faxian, Xuan Zang, and others such as the Chan Buddhist Dajian Huineng, to meditate and achieve a high level of transcendence, and then return to the material world to seek better understanding of the Dharma and to propagate it?

6

Sogdians Along the Silk Road

During the Tang, many Hu people resided in the western district of the capital Chang’an. The great majority came from Transoxiana, situated between two rivers, the Oxus (now Amu Darya) and Jaxartes (now Syr Darya), a region corresponding to modern-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, southern Kyrgyzstan, and southwest Kazakhstan. Transoxiana (“land beyond the Oxus”) was home to many city-states inhabited by Sogdians who spoke an East Iranian language. Sogdian merchants were active on the Silk Road for many centuries, forming an extensive business network. They gathered in settlements within China, were relatively self-governing, and represented a considerable force in Tang society. The Sogdians practiced Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Buddhism, and NestorianChristianity, and through frequent contact and exogamous marriage, they passed on their faiths and religious texts to nomads of the northern grasslands. They also left behind many documents in Turpan and Dunhuang. Thanks to their employ and commercial activities, many Sogdians became emissaries of a sort between the rainbow of cultures that interacted along the Silk Road.

Changan’s Colorful Lifestyle Under the Tang Active mainly during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, Li Bai (aka Li Bo, 701–762) is a world-acclaimed “poetry immortal.” Here are lines of verse excerpted from his Youthful Adventures that suggest the citified pleasures of his era: Into eastern Changan’s jewelry market Prances a silver-saddled white steed An opulent Wuling youth astride. Trampling the capital’s fallen petals At length—but to what destination? Grinning, he enters a pub for exotic Hu entertainment. The capital at times during the Han and Sui, the “new” Chang’an in the Tang was laid out on a north-south axis in a grid pattern, dividing the enclosure into wards DOI: 10.4324/9781003369899-6

Sogdians Along the Silk Road 95 and featuring two large marketplaces, one in the east and one in the west. The eastern district was inhabited mainly by “Tang ren” (mainly Han Chinese), and shops sold mainly local items. The western district housed many stores supplying goods transported along the Silk Road and was occupied by many “Hu ren.” In ancient Chinese chronicles, the term “Hu” generally referred to various non-Han peoples living on the northern or northwestern fringes of the Chinese empire, but during the Tang, it referred mainly to Sogdians originating in the Western Regions, as well as Persians. In modern Chinese, when we say we are going shopping, a more direct translation would be “going on the street to buy things.” The word for “things” is a two-syllable noun “dong xi,” that literally means “east west.” This word may well be derived from Chang’an’s commercial layout. The reason behind this is simple enough: The Hu Chamber of Commerce, peopled by merchants who arrived earlier from the remote Western Regions, converged and formed the western marketplace, while small-time retailers in the eastern district who originated in places such as Henan and Shanxi entered Chang’an from the east, and naturally congregated to form the eastern marketplace. The musician with brocaded headdress did the monied Wuling lads seek to please And for but one ballad gifted the lute player with countless bolts of raw silk. (from Bai Juyi’s Song of the Lute Player) After their visit to the eastern marketplace, in Li Bai’s time if those affluent youths sought further entertainment, they would often head for the western district and its pubs with their “Hu ji.” The term refers to hostesses from the Western Regions who ran watering holes that served liquor and offered lute music, singing, and dancing, arts at which the women excelled. Not all the Hu who settled in China were engaged in trade; they were a diverse bunch who also came to study, join the army, or operate taverns. The content of this chapter focuses on the Tang Dynasty but also includes the commercial and social conditions of Eurasia from the early 4th century to the end of the 8th century, especially the role played by Sogdian merchants. From the history of this period, we should be able to gain insight into how different cultures interact. Central Asia: Several Geographic Zones But before we explore these topics, a word or two about Central Asia’s geographic features. Transoxiana constituted the heartland of today’s Central Asia, comprising mainly Uzbekistan but also including parts of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan. Prior to 1991 these four countries plus Turkmenistan were all Soviet republics, but in fact, aside from western Kazakhstan, none of them had long been ruled by Tsarist Russia.

96  Sogdians Along the Silk Road Afghanistan, also a Central Asian country but culturally more akin to the Persian world, was the object of long-term competition—known as “The Great Game”—between the British Empire and Tsarist Russia. It also served as a buffer zone between the two would-be colonizers. Further to the southeast lies Pakistan, whose territory was governed by the British Raj until India’s independence and partition in 1947. Of the five former Soviet republics, the one with the largest territory and most abundant resources is Kazakhstan. During Mongolian rule, it belonged to the Kipchak Khanate (aka “Golden Horde”) founded by Khan Batu, grandson of Genghis Khan, after the Western Expedition (i.e., the Mongol invasion of Eastern Europe). So, even though the Kazakh language is Turkic, the people’s lifestyle was strongly influenced by the Mongols. The formation of the Kazakh as a distinct people, and the establishment of the Kazakh Khanate (15th–19th centuries), located roughly on the territory of presentday Kazakhstan, took place as a consequence of repeated internecine fights among the Mongol hordes. In early 14th century, the Golden Horde split into the “Blue Horde” in the west and the “White Horde” in the east. Subsequently in the 15th century, the White Horde was again factionalized. The faction that left the main White Horde and went further east were called Kazakhs. Their rulers, however, were descendants of Genghis Khan’s “Golden Clan.” Northern Kazakhstan is mainly steppe, while the Chu River Basin in the south is farmland. The capital, once located in Almaty south of the Chu, relocated to Astana up north after independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Among the five Central Asian quintet, Russian culture is most evident in Kazakhstan, where one of four residents is of Russian stock. Kazakh and Russian are both official languages, and both are written in Cyrillic, but the full transition to the use of Latin letters for Kazakh— underway but highly controversial—has been rescheduled (again) for 2025. Many residents, especially those with a higher education level, have a superior mastery of Russian, but daily interactions often involve mixed usage. Uzbekistan is the most populous country among the five, and historically speaking, it was part of Transoxiana. It classifies as the heartland of Central Asia and possesses the richest cultural heritage. Many important historical events occurred there. In recent centuries, several of the regions’ ruling clans had their origins in the White Horde of the northern grasslands who migrated southward, crossing the Syr Dara (Syr River), after defeat by their kin. They referred to themselves as “Uzbek,” the name of a descendant of Batu Khan, and eventually vanquished and replaced the Timurids who ruled a large empire in Central and Western Asia during the 14th–15th centuries. Due to geography and climate, the Uzbeks carried on the cultural and economic practices of the Timurids while abandoning their original nomadic, grassland-based lifestyle. The Kyrgyz are an ancient Turkic people originating in regions north of today’s Mongolia, and their lifestyle in modern times remains deeply influenced by their erstwhile Mongol rulers. Turkmenistan is mainly peopled by Oghuz Turks who migrated southward, crossing the Syr Darya and Amu Darya during the 10th century. Bordering on

Sogdians Along the Silk Road 97 Persia for many centuries, they have integrated many aspects of their neighbor’s culture. Four of these five Central Asian “stans” speak a form of Turkic, the exception being Tajikistan in the southeast where the indigenous Tajik majority speaks Tajik, an Indo-European tongue that is nearly identical to both Iran’s Farsi and the dominant language of Afghanistan, Dari. The jigsaw-like, uneven borders of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan are partly due to the mountainous twists of the topography and partly to human factors. When the Soviet Union demarcated these three countries in 1925, it did so mindful of the different peoples involved. To put it simply, if a certain ethnic group’s distribution was relatively concentrated, this region was classified as an autonomous region of this ethnicity. Born in Georgia, Stalin was the first commissar of nationalities (1917–1923) in the USSR’s People’s Commissariat of Nationalities. Initially enrolled at an Eastern Orthodox seminary, he abandoned his religious studies because of his Marxist beliefs. Reared in the Caucasus where the mix of ethnicities, cultures, and faiths were complex, he naturally understood the concept of “divide and rule,” and so he purposely drew these jagged borders. Given that the actual distribution of ethnic groups on the ground was already very scattered, his task was not an easy one, and the result is easy to see. For example, Dayuan, where the 2nd-century BCE envoy-explorer Zhang Qian happened upon the much-prized “blood-sweating” horses of the Ferghana Basin, had been populated since the 16th century by Uzbeks who spoke a Turkic tongue similar to Uighur. However, at the time of demarcation, the basin was intentionally divided into three blocks, in terms of geography and culture, as well as the three key cities situated there: The largest block, including the famous cities of Andijan, Ferghana, and Kokand, were allotted to Uzbekistan; a smaller block went to Kyrgyzstan, including the sizeable city of Osh; and another small portion was incorporated in Tajikistan, including the ancient city of Khujand, once visited by Alexander the Great. Central Asia’s heartland has two important rivers, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya. The most significant events in the region’s history have occurred between the two. Known as Transoxiana to foreign scholars, the Chinese refer to it as “he zhong,” [the] “land between two rivers.” Amu Darya, widely known by its Latin name Oxus in ancient times, originates in the Pamirs and flows westward into the southern Aral Sea. As early as the Hellenistic Era, Syr Darya was known as Jaxartes, said to derive from the Persian. Tang-Era Hu People: Sogdians From Transoxiana In 5th century BCE, a very important people in the history of the Silk Road inhabited Transoxiana, mainly in the Zarafshan Basin, itself a tributary of Amu Darya. Known as Sogdians, their home territory Sogdiana was situated roughly at the meeting point of today’s Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. You may recall that this is where Alexander the Great took a Sogdian princess as his wife (Chapter 2).

98  Sogdians Along the Silk Road One of the early centers of Zoroastrianism, the ancient region of Bactria was located within modern Afghanistan’s borders. The Indus Basin to its east lies mainly in Pakistan. Northwest of Pakistan is Afghanistan and to its southwest is Iran, the modern name for ancient Persia. Farsi, Iran’s official national language, is an Iranian dialect that originated on the eastern coast of the Persian Gulf where the Sassanian Empire (205–651 CE) was initially based. Once the Sassanids made Zoroastrianism their state religion and emphasized cultural development, the ruling elite gradually turned their own dialect, Farsi, into the standard form of speech and script (known as Pahlavi) throughout the empire. After the Sassanians were vanquished by the Arabs in the latter half of the 7th century, many members of the royal family fled to the east (Khorasan) and in the 8th and 9th centuries, established quasi-independent states, e.g., the Samanid Kingdom. Although as Muslims they pledged allegiance to the caliph in Baghdad, these Persian rulers were still Persians at heart and promoted Farsi and Dari (Farsi as formerly spoken in the Sassanian court) in their domain. Hence, many Sogdians who lived in these areas began to switch to Farsi or Dari in the 10th century. Today, there are large numbers of city dwellers (often called Sarts) in Central Asia who speak Farsi; many of them are descendants of the Sogdians. Sogdians originally spoke a language that belongs to the East Iranian branch of Indo-Iranian, itself a member of the greater Indo-European family. They settled in Central Asia around the 5th century BCE and were mentioned in chronicles around the 1st century BCE. Even the records of the Persians and Greeks, who were foes, both noted the Sogdians. Proceeding directly north of the territory inhabited by the Sogdians first lies the Eurasian Steppe, then the taiga zone (boreal forest). Therefore, they conducted their commerce and left traces, aside from areas where they farmed, mainly in the steppes where nomads roamed. If you begin in Xi’an and proceed westward, skirting the Taklamakan Desert by traveling along the southern or northern edge of Tarim Basin, you will arrive in Kashgar. Further west is the former abode of the Sogdians. Once the Silk Road was established, the Sogdians could access China to the east, the Persian Empire and Arabian lands to the west, and India to the south. Because the north was covered in grasslands where commerce did not easily prosper, it was not until the rise of the Turkic Khanates that pathways to the north were pioneered. Initially, the Sogdians were motivated by commerce, but as trade picked up the Sogdian religions and script were widely disseminated. The idea that ancient non-Han peoples inhabiting northern and northwestern lands outside the Great Wall of China were all nomads who regularly migrated to seek water and fresh grasslands for their livestock is a widely held misconception. For the typical Chinese, the term “Western Regions” conjures romantic images of nomads and desert. But this impression is not based on reality; the Sogdians, for instance, traditionally farmed or traded. Similarly, the single-minded association of today’s Xinjiang in China’s far west with grasslands and livestock, reared by Mongols and Kazakhs, is also inaccurate. In what is now southern Xinjiang, the people’s livelihood was actually based on both agriculture and commerce. Many centuries ago, locals had evolved a system

Sogdians Along the Silk Road 99 of underground aqueducts, known as “qanat” or “kariz,” i.e., a gently sloping underground channel that transported water from an aquifer or water well to the surface for drinking and irrigation. During that era, Xinjiang’s inhabitants were not yet Turkophone, like today’s Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz are; they spoke Tocharian or Scythian, both Indo-European languages. The term “Sogdian” to describe Central Asians has not long been in use. Traditionally, the Chinese referred to the Sogdians as the “Nine Surnames of Zhaowu.” This is because according to the habits of ancient Chinese, alien ethnicities were named according to their place of origin. For example, immigrants from the Kingdom of Anxi (Parthia) took the surname “An.” Among these family names were Cao, Mi, Kang, Shi, He, An, and Bi, each representing a different country. Persons surnamed “Kang” were inhabitants of Samarkand or their descendants, while the family name “Shi” was a reference to the Kingdom of Shi in the Western Regions, now Tashkent. Several of the nine surnames were derived from sites along the banks of Zarafshan River in what are now Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In the three or four hundred years after the founding of the Tang Dynasty, there were many descendants of Sogdian lineage identifiable by one of these nine surnames. They include historical figures such as An Lushan (instigator of the AnShi Rebellion), Shi Siming (who joined in the rebellion), and Cao Yuanzhong, the general who effectively ruled Dunhuang during the latter part of the Five Dynasties (907–960). Although the Sogdians were gradually assimilated, under the Tang until the middle of the 8th century, they still communicated with one another through their communities situated in various places; though scattered, they were the organizers and main supporters of the An-Shi Rebellion (755–763). After the chaotic Five Dynasties period, the great majority of Sogdians in the interior of China were thoroughly Sinicized and integrated, but their surnames left traces of their origins in the Western Regions. Many of Uzbekistan’s important cities are located along the Amu Darya and in the Zerafshan Basin. Tashkent is the capital, Bukhara the premier center of culture, and Samarkand, situated near the birthplace of the founder of the Timurid Empire, has been a city of great culture and commerce for more than two millennia. At the place where Uzbekistan and Tajikistan meet is a city called Panjikent, whose name is derived from Sogdian for five (panji) and city (kent). Among Indo-European languages, the prefix “panji” signifies “five.” The geometric term “pentagon” is derived from the Greek for “five-angled,” and both India and Pakistan have provinces named “Punjab,” from the Persian for five (panj) and waters (ab). “Nine Surnames of Zhaowu” referred to Zhaowu because Chinese chroniclers believed that the original rulers of these immigrants resided in Zhaowu City, now Zhangye, Gansu Province. This assumption may well have been inaccurate, but it is true that as mentioned the Hexi Corridor was populated by Indo-Europeans such as the Yuezhi or Tocharians. In Chapter 4, I recounted Aurel Stein’s 1907 discovery of some ancient letters, which he subsequently donated to the British Museum (Figure 6.1), in a beacon tower on the Great Wall of China near Dunhuang. Prior to World War II, a German

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Figure 6.1  Ancient letter in Sogdian

scholar deciphered the letters and found that the Sogdian text used an ancient form of Syriac letters derived from written Aramaic. Five of the eight missives were largely legible, and four have been translated. These letters are very helpful to us today in understanding the ancient Silk Road, commercial practices of the era, and the life of Sogdians in China.

Sogdians Along the Silk Road 101 Here I’d like to emphasize that in a genuinely “developed” society, not everyone should simply master a given technology or single-mindedly pursue the accumulation of wealth. Ideally, there will be others—assuming they possess the means to support themselves—who are willing to contribute their time and energy to doing something meaningful to humanity as a whole. If everyone in a society only wishes to play the stock market and invest in real estate, then the society will lack in-depth cultural substance, and social cohesion will not be very strong. Although the Sogdian letters were discovered on Chinese territory, they were decoded by Europeans, a fact that illustrates the weakness of China’s cultural power of the day. Subsequently, such a phenomenon occurred repeatedly, so gradually domestic academics realized that China needed to nurture its own scholars with a mastery of Sogdian. In recent years, the study of archaeology has indeed flourished in China, and many Chinese have studied Sogdian, even following in the footsteps of Ji Xianlin (1911–2009), celebrated paleographer and linguist, to learn earlier Central and Western Asian scripts. Nonetheless, expertise regarding these ancient scripts currently rests mainly among Europeans. Scholars have ascertained that this batch of Sogdian letters was written in the early years of the Jin Dynasty (266–420), when western Gansu already had an extensive network of postal relay stations. Beacon towers built during the Han were still functioning under the Jin, and the stations—both with clear military functions—also ensured commercial communications. The senders and recipients of these letters were Sogdians, but it is a mystery why the pouches that contained them, discovered by Aurel Stein in 1907, were left in a lookout tower. The content of these letters, plus supporting evidence including more recent archaeological finds such as utensils (Figure 6.2) and inscriptions on tablets, confirm that most Hu businesses at that time were actually small-scale ones run by Sogdians. So, we can infer that the pubs frequented by poet Li Bai and friends would have been operated by small-time businesspeople of Sogdian origin. As noted earlier, the word “Hu” was a general term applied to various nonHan peoples inhabiting China’s northern borderlands and the Western Regions. For example, the Xianbei, a nomadic people of the eastern Eurasian Steppe (today’s Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Northeastern China), were also known as the Eastern Hu, or simply Hu. But during the Tang, most Xianbei had merged with the Han and other ethnicities, so the “Hu” mentioned here refers to Sogdians from the West. In recent years, traces of former habitation by Sogdians have been discovered in China and abroad, including headstones and tombs. They reflect the process of this people’s gradual Sinicization, as well as the evolution of their religious beliefs, languages, and script. The Sogdians constructed a far-reaching business network that connected Eastern and Western civilizations, and they were situated at the very heart of this matrix. I assume that there was no Sogdian who, from childhood, consciously undertook to “facilitate communications” among Eurasian societies; their intent was simply

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Figure 6.2 Left, Sogdian silver bowl in the British Museum, and right, in the Smithsonian’s Freer Art Gallery

to do business, and so they proceeded from stop to stop, such as from Luoyang to Xingzhou, buying and selling their wares. In the midst of this process, people with similar customs who were the easiest to locate and communicate with were naturally other Sogdians residing in China. Thus, the Sogdian “business network” grew gradually in an organic manner. A similar phenomenon also occurred in Europe, roughly during the interim between the Crusades and the maritime exploration, with Jews engaged in lively international trade in what are now Germany, Italy, and France, much like Central Asia’s itinerant Sogdian merchants. More recently, it is China’s Cantonese and Fukienese who performed this function across Southeast Asia. Before Europe’s Middle Ages, the Sogdian business network was arguably the most extensive of its kind in the world. China, India, Persia, and Europe hosted the leading societies of their era, and the goods trafficked by Sogdians were characteristic of their prosperity. From China, the Sogdians brought precious, high-end items such as silk, lacquer ware, and a small amount of porcelain—heavy and fragile, it was not easily transported—and returned with spices, wine, gold, and silver utensils. Commencing with the Wei, Jin, and Southern and Northern Dynasties, the policies of successive Central Plains’ governments operated as follows: Foreigners were grouped within a designated area and allowed to form their own community, and these communities were granted autonomy in religion, marriage, inheritance, and civil disputes; however, each community had a government-appointed leader, usually a well-respected person from his group, who was responsible to the Chinese central government in terms of taxation, litigation, public order, and so on. Under the Tang, an esteemed Sogdian community figure would be appointed by the court to serve as the leader of a settlement and named to an official administrative post entitled “Sabao.”

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Figure 6.3  Dunhuang mural depicting robbery of itinerant merchants

Later, even Hu living in such settlements gradually underwent Sinicization. Although they still used their previous language for liturgical purposes, they spoke Chinese when doing business with Chinese, used Chinese in their daily life, and wrote in hanzi. Many documents left by Sogdians discovered in recent times were in Sogdian, but a larger proportion used Chinese characters. China-based Sogdians principally engaged in commerce. But even if the place was peaceful and officials could maintain social order, the occasional robbery on the road was a reality. Figure 6.3 is a Dunhuang cave mural that illustrates several Hu merchants being mugged. Businesspeople inevitably need to protect themselves, and since they were self-governing, Sogdian groups in various locales often armed themselves. Many Sogdians revered military talent, and some served in the Tang court’s Imperial Guard. As a people, however, the Sogdians did not represent a major military force within China. An Lushan, whose father was Sogdian and mother Turkic, was Sinicized and rose to become a general, but he also formed a group of confidantes among scattered Sogdian communities, merchants, and military officers. During the An-Shi Rebellion, military leaders An Lushan and Shi Siming successfully mobilized many of their fellow Sogdians and almost overthrew the Tang Dynasty. Figure 6.4 is a relief of a fire alter inside the Anjia Tomb (Northern Zhou period) discovered in Xi’an in 2000. Part of this tomb reveals the religious beliefs of the tomb’s occupant, as it contains elements of Zoroastrianism. In fact, the state

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Figure 6.4  Fire altar relief in Anjia Tomb

religion of Persia’s Sassanid Dynasty, contemporaneous with the Tang, was Zoroastrianism, and most of the Hu who came to China practiced this faith. As mentioned earlier, Buddhism flourished in the Western Regions and Hexi Corridor, so Buddhists also figured among the Sogdians. Some of the illustrated patrons of the Dunhuang Grottoes appear to have been Sogdians, and their faith also later influenced the Uyghurs. Featured in Figure 6.5 is Cao Yuanzhong, an official of Sogdian extraction. Near the end of the Tang, the Tubo (Tibetans) occupied Dunhuang and wrested control from the Central Plains. Later, local forces led by a man named Zhang Yichao

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Figure 6.5  Dunhuang portrait of Cao Yuanzhong

expelled the Tubo, and Zhang became the de facto ruler. His forces won recognition by the Tang and were designated as the Guiyi Circuit (aka Guiyi Army). In later years at the end of the Five Dynasties and early Song, the Guiyi Circuit governor was surnamed “Cao,” one of the Nine Surnames of Zhaowu. In this portrait of him in one of the Dunhuang Grottoes, his robe, accessories, and demeanor are all consistent with Song court custom, probably because he hoped to be formally recognized by the emperor.

106  Sogdians Along the Silk Road Historically, the Sogdians never established a unified and powerful kingdom in Central Asia. During 500–400 BCE, they were ruled by the First Persian Empire, and later by several other alien overlords. Although the Sogdian and Persian languages were relatively close, they were not one people. It is doubtless because they did not have their own country that they learned how to survive under different regimes and cultivated proficiency in various tongues and their ability to deal with different ethnicities. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, after the 10th century, the Sogdians in Transoxiana in the river area were gradually conquered and assimilated by nomadic peoples who originated further north in the Kipchak and Siberian Steppes. Most Sogdians no longer spoke an East Iranian language, instead speaking a form of Turkic, and the remainder were concentrated in central Bukhara and Samarkand. Of course, there are still many Sogdians living in what are now western Tajikistan and northern Afghanistan. Figure 6.6 depicts a hunting scene, from which you can visualize the male Sogdian look at the time—donning a hat, and bearded with long sideburns. The Sogdians were also renowned for their “Hu Whirling Dance,” which was all the rage in the Tang. It is said that the stout Sogdian general, An Lushan, danced it with great vigor. The rulers of the Tang Dynasty were very open-minded. They never established fixed psychological boundaries, and attitudes were not conservative or xenophobic. Therefore, in the Tang Dynasty, whoever could be of use could serve the court; it

Figure 6.6  Sogdian hunting scene

Sogdians Along the Silk Road 107 could be described as a “meritocracy.” This also meant that various faiths and customs could be passed on from one generation to the next. From our standpoint today, the High Tang was remarkable, and there are 21stcentury Chinese who wish to relive the glory of the Han and Tang eras. By wearing a rounded “melon cap” and memorizing Di Zi Gui (Standards for Being a Good Pupil and Child)—written during the Qing, they feel they have not abandoned the memory of their ancestors. Judged against these standards, those of us who, like me, wear a coat and tie may not qualify. So, we should reflect on this question: Why do we retain such a prosperous image of the Tang Dynasty in our minds? Is it simply a desire to imitate the past, i.e., to apply Han Dynasty philosopher Dong Zhongshu’s proposals to promote Confucianism as the “official state ideology” once again in the 21st century? Or is it to promote a relatively open society, wherein tolerance can be considered a virtue? If one’s sole aim is to maintain tradition, such a path is doomed to become more and more narrow. And by the way, the melon cap’s origins cannot be traced back to the glorious Han and Tang! Figure 6.7 shows a cup, unearthed from a Sogdian village, with a distinctly West Asian style and a Sogdian handgrip. Figure 6.8, a mounted Hu with his cheetah, is a relic unearthed from a Tangera tomb. This figurine suggests that Tang hunters had adopted some methods from the Arabs, for the trained killer cat likely originated in Arabia. The Sogdians themselves seldom hunted, as they were farming people who settled in oases. However, in the pursuit of trade, they went as far west as the Arabian

Figure 6.7  Cup with Sogdian-style handgrip unearthed in Shaanxi’s Hejia Village

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Figure 6.8  Hu figurine: Hunting with his cheetah

Peninsula or even the Mediterranean, east to Liaoning and the Korean Peninsula, and south to India, buying and selling all sorts of wares along the way. Evidently, the use of tamed cheetahs as hunting companions spread via such trade routes. Figure 6.9 reflects a belief in Manichaeism, a dualist religion that was born slightly later than Christianity. Manichaeism asserts that there is an eternal struggle between Light and Darkness in the universe, in contrast to the Christian doctrine that there is

Sogdians Along the Silk Road 109 but one God and savior. During the 4th century CE, many Sogdians converted from Zoroastrianism to Manichaeism. Later, many Turkic tribes and Uyghurs on the Silk Road established relationships with the Sogdians through Manichaeism. Many Sogdians who left their homeland also believed in Buddhism, and many Uighurs became Buddhist thanks to contact with the former. In fact, under the Tang many Buddhists in Transoxiana were Sogdian. In the early years of the 20th century, Western scholars such as Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot obtained many Sogdian-language Buddhist documents in the Dunhuang Grottoes and Turpan; many patrons portrayed in the Dunhuang frescoes were Sogdian or, in somewhat later periods, Uyghurs. From Zoroastrianism to Manichaeism, Buddhism, and then Nestorian-Christianity (aka “Church of the East”), these four faiths were popular in Sogdiana during various periods and spread widely in tandem with the expansion of Sogdian trade. This is not to say that the Sogdians themselves were ardent evangelizers, but since they often interacted with members of their community or married outside it, objectively speaking they promoted the dissemination of several faiths, especially the successive transmission of these religions to the steppe peoples. Since the Uyghurs were influenced by the Sogdians’ religious beliefs, they also adopted elements of the Sogdian script to write their own language. Because the medium of religious classics is written language, many scripts around the world have inspired or been preserved because of religion. In history, the most illustrious examples have been the propagation of Latin and Greek due to the spread of Christianity; Arabic becoming widely known due to the spread of Islam; and the adoption of Sanskrit and Pali by countries with a majority of Buddhists. Around the 10th century, the Uyghurs created their own script thanks to increased interaction with Sogdians, which resulted in the Uyghurs’ conversion to religions such as Manichaeism and Nestorian-Christianity. Nestorian-Christianity’s Dissemination Within China Nestorian-Christianity was introduced from Persia to China during the reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang (626–649), who permitted church construction and propagation of the faith. By the Middle Tang, there were already many believers, and in 781 a Persian priest erected a stone stele in a Nestorian-Christian church that was inscribed with nearly 1,700 hanzi as well as Syriac script. The “Xi’an Stele” chronicled Nestorian-Christianity’s history under the Tang and explicated its central doctrine. When Emperor Wuzong proscribed the “Three Alien Faiths” in 845, although Buddhism was the main target, Manichaeism and Nestorian-Christianity were also negatively impacted, and the Nestorian-Christian stele disappeared, not to resurface until some six centuries later during the late Ming. Because this is the earliest evidence of Christianity’s introduction into China, European Christians are very interested in this stele. In the closing years of the Qing, some European Christians planned to ship the stele to Europe, but they were stymied by Shaanxi officials. In the end, they commissioned a highly similar facsimile that they successfully shipped to Europe.

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Figure 6.9  Manichean mural

Sogdians Along the Silk Road 111 After years of research, using this copy European scholars deciphered the Syriac inscriptions by comparing their content with the Chinese. After the death of Jesus, Christians in Syria, Iraq, and Iran formed the Christian Church of the East, and they penned their religious documents in a Syrian dialect using cursive Aramaic script, which modern scholars have dubbed “Syriac.” The early Sogdians who had embraced Zoroastrianism were inspired by contact with the Manichaeans and created their own Sogdian script. Since the Uyghurs were converted to Manichaeism and Nestorian-Christianity by the Sogdians, they drew upon the Syriac script—which was written horizontally from right to left—to create their own Uyghur script that was, however, written vertically and top-down like hanzi. Similarly, the 12th-century Mongols were inspired by the Uyghur script and created a vertical script for their own language. The majority of Keraites, one of the dominant Mongolian tribal confederations, were Nestorian-Christians, Kublai Khan’s mother and wife were both Christians. Since Mongolian garrisons were widely stationed, the Nestorian-Christian ornament and talisman—a “cross-lotus”—has been uncovered in various parts of China in modern times. As a branch of Christianity, that Nestorian-Christian items should show the cross is quite natural. Buddhism has prospered in China, and the common symbol of Buddhism is the lotus flower. Nestorian-Christian was therefore somewhat influenced by Buddhist ritual, so one often sees the cross and lotus combined in a single Nestorian-Christian item, a natural by-product of the encounter of Christianity and Buddhism in the China context. Since the Chinese generally do not hold particularly strong “exclusive” religious beliefs, it is perhaps only in China that the phenomenon of the “cross-lotus” could have occurred. Figure 6.10 are various examples of the cross-lotus, which is generally crossshaped but blended with lotus elements such as petals. Many similar artifacts have been unearthed, and these were discovered in Ordos, Inner Mongolia. Figure 6.11 is a mural in the Dunhuang Grottoes, illustrating a Huihu tribal leader (huihu, an early Chinese transliteration of the term for “Uyghur” or “Uighur”) who was a patron of the mural-filled caves. Around the 10th century, the principal inhabitants of Gaochang were Huihu, and while some were followers of Manichaeism or Nestorian-Christianity, more were Buddhists. Within a few centuries, along with the indigenous Tocharians and large number of Han who migrated there during the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420–589), the Huihu became “Huihu-speaking Gaochang people.” After the 14th century, a large number of Mongols arrived, and the two merged into the Uyghurs we know today. The ancient Gaochang Kingdom situated near contemporary Turpan was once a Silk Road oasis city where Buddhism prospered, but Manichaeism later gradually prevailed, followed by a surge in the popularity of Nestorian-Christianity. Figure 6.12 shows a restored mural from the Nestorian-Christian Church at Gaochang (aka Qocho). After the 13th century, Gaochang gradually transformed into an Islamic territory, and Manichaeism and Nestorian-Christianity disappeared. But NestorianChristianity and Manichaeism continued circulating in the Central Plains for a

112  Sogdians Along the Silk Road

Figure 6.10  Examples of the “cross-lotus” unearthed in Ordos

Figure 6.11  A Huihu tribal leader as portrayed in a Dunhuang Grotto

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Figure 6.12  A restored mural in the Nestorian-Christian Temple at Gaochang (near Turpan)

longer period of time. Beginning with Emperor Wuzong’s campaign to eradicate Buddhism, Manichaeism gradually went underground and later underwent Sinicization, transforming into Mingjiao (lit., “religion of light”), a form of Chinese Manichaeism known by the same name. It also became a convenient term and call to arms for rebels looking to distinguish their movements from the status quo. During the Song, there were simultaneous peasant uprisings popularly described as “Song Jiang in the north and Fang La in the south”—both of whom were rebel

114  Sogdians Along the Silk Road leaders fictionalized and immortalized in Outlaws of the Marsh—and the military forces in the south (Huainan) were followers of Mingjiao. Mingjiao had spread throughout Jiangsu and Zhejiang, so Fang La took advantage of this unorthodox faith to recruit troops there. Near the end of the Yuan, Mingjiao devotees were opposed to further rule by the Mongols. On the one hand, they used nationalist slogans such as “Expel the Hu Barbarians!”; on the other hand, they also used Mingjiao concepts to oppose the Yuan who officially professed Tibetan Buddhism. Figure 6.13 is an example of Syriac script unearthed at Turpan. Many similar texts have been discovered in recent years. Earlier discoveries were taken to Britain, Germany, and Russia, while more recent ones have all remained in China. An elite handful of scholars can decipher and annotate this script, which is a daunting task. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, an elderly friend of mine gifted me a book that was not thick but very weighty in its own way. It was created in collaboration with

Figure 6.13  Fragment of a text in Syriac script unearthed in Turpan

Sogdians Along the Silk Road 115 a group of experts studying dead languages. Each one wrote the Olympic slogan, “One World, One Dream” in the script with which they were familiar, including bronzeware script, Göktürk, Mongolian (Phags-pa), Tangut, and Khitan. Historically, more than 30 such extinct scripts once existed somewhere in China, but no one uses them now. Fortunately, thanks to these scholars the culture represented by these scripts can still be understood. We should pay tribute to these scholars. With their intelligence and perseverance, they would doubtless have been successful in business or government, but they have elected to devote their lives to the study of these ancient scripts. Chinese society should give them appropriate respect and recognition. In Europe and North America, their income would suffice to lead a life of dignity, but given the current fickle and superficial ambience in today’s China, this group of experts could only collectively manage to print a booklet in 2008 and enjoy a brief instant of recognition, before retreating to his or her austere study. Scholarship is indeed a lonely pursuit, but solitude does not signify loss; accumulating wealth can be pleasurable, but such enjoyment does not signify genuine contentment.

7

Golden Peaches of Samarkand

During medieval times—the centuries-long interlude between the fall of the Western Roman Empire until the Renaissance—Chang’an was the world’s most populous and flourishing metropolis. Samarkand on the eastern edge of the Persian “cultural sphere” was the most important urban center in Transoxiana, and during this period, it was inhabited principally by Sogdians. During the 4th–10th centuries CE, these two cities respectively represented East Asian and Central Asian cultures, as well as some West Asian ones. They interacted ceaselessly, with equal emphasis on commerce and culture. During the 7th and 8th centuries, Turkic peoples entered Transoxiana from the northeast, while the Arabs arrived from the southwest. Henceforth, a potpourri of spoken languages, scripts, religions, peoples, and even animal species converged to pen an important chapter in the history of human civilization.

Lay of the Land Let’s review the geography of east-west communications. The northernmost part of the Eurasian continent consists of barren permafrost, where the soil is frozen solid all year round, as has been the case for several tens of thousands of years. Therefore, in places such as Siberia, one need not lay a foundation for railways or buildings. To the south of the permafrost zone lies a swathe of coniferous forest that is several hundred kilometers wide. The far eastern edge of the forest zone—around Russia’s Lake Baikal—has traditionally been inhabited by speakers of Tungusic tongues in the Altaic language family, such as the Jurchen and their descendants, the Manchu. Meanwhile, at the western end of the steppe, the Dnieper River Basin north of the Black Sea was homeland to speakers of Indo-European languages, including Slavic languages like Russian. Further south of the forest belt lies the vast Eurasian Steppe, or grasslands. From the Selenga River, situated in the eastern portion of the Mongolian Plateau, they stretch eastward to the Greater Khingan Mountains of Inner Mongolia, westward to Dnieper River in Eastern Europe, and onward to the Danube. The steppe constitutes the most convenient route for traversing the entire Eurasian continent, since there is sufficient grass for one’s horse throughout. Due to the cold climate and sparse population, however, in premodern times travelers were infrequent. Temperate regions in lower latitudes, whether in the northwestern part of India, the DOI: 10.4324/9781003369899-7

Golden Peaches of Samarkand 117 Yangtze and Yellow River basins in China, or elsewhere, attracted denser fixed populations and itinerant merchants. Culture and Commerce Take Flight in Tandem As noted earlier, the northern grassland route offered more convenient travel. But it was less attractive to merchants since there were fewer potential customers than in the temperate zone to the south, including a string of oases settlements, where travel conditions were more challenging. The “relay” commerce practiced by Sogdian traders—few traveled the entire route—detailed in Chapter 6 thus mainly took place along the Silk Road in the temperate zone.

Figure 7.1 This gold mask inlaid with rubies was most likely brought to China from Mesopotamia by Sogdian merchants during the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420–589 CE)

118  Golden Peaches of Samarkand In terms of long-distance trade and cultural exchange, the latter is generally a by-product of the former. However, there were also a small number of people who, due to earlier cultural interaction, sought to disseminate that culture more widely, including Buddhist missionaries such as An Shigao, Faxian, and Xuan Zang, whose adventures figure in Chapter 5. The most persuasive evidence of commercial activities on the Silk Road is a number of archaeological excavations along the way, especially in Shaanxi, Ningxia, and other places within China, where many gold and silver coins have been unearthed. Thanks to the names and busts of emperors that figure upon them, we can conclude that they originated in Persia’s Sassanian Empire. Its commerce flourished during the 2nd–6th centuries, and most of the Persian coins date from this period. After the Arabs overthrew the Sassanids in the 7th century, however, the Kai Yuan Tong Bao coin, first minted in 621 CE during the reign of its founding emperor and widely used throughout the Tang Dynasty, replaced Persian coinage as the most widely circulated currency on the Silk Road. This is concurrent and consistent with Tang reaching its epoch in the early 8th century. As we can see, the favored languages and currencies used along the Silk Route underwent earth-changing changes over the centuries, and this is not dissimilar to current global trade settlement practices. At present, China and Japan trade in various currencies via SWIFT, mainly in Japanese yen, but there are those who predict that the day when their trade will be transacted predominantly or exclusively in Chinese yuan will signify the arrival of a truly strong China. The heyday of Persian coinage in the western segment of the Silk Road (2nd– 6th centuries) gave way to coins minted under the Tang in the 7th–8th centuries, but when the Mongols emerged in the 13th century to rule China (1271–1368), the currencies of Yuan China as well as other Mongol Khanates in Central, West Asia, and Eastern Europe circulated widely along the Silk Road. The box at far left in Figure 7.2 features a typical Western Asian design. In the past, China did not make such items, but the hanzi on it suggest that it was a product of “cultural integration.” The buyer would have been a Chinese-speaking person who appreciated the item, but if he were to commission a craftsman to fabricate one, he would want the words on it to be in a script he could read. The photo in the middle shows a fragment of silk fabric found on the Silk Road. Because silk rotted easily, not many silk fabrics have been found there, so this example is extremely

Figure 7.2  Silk Road artifacts illustrating fusion of Chinese and West Asian design elements

Golden Peaches of Samarkand 119 rare and valuable. At the far right are some items of Tang-era tea ware, and from their shapes it is obvious they contain elements of West Asian design. Of a Similar Hue—Great Tang and Western Regions An American scholar, Edward H. Schafer, published a book in 1962 entitled The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T’ang Exotics, which later appeared in Chinese under various titles. Samarkand, base of the 11th-century Turco-Mongol emperor Timur, is also a very important city in modern Uzbekistan, and historically was long a principal commercial center of Central Asia. The syllable “kand” or “kent” denotes “city” in Sogdian, and Chinese chronicles referred to Samarkand as the “Country of Kang” (Kang guo). Professor Schafer was well versed in 18 ancient and modern scripts, and devoted more than 30 years to material exchanges—as opposed to spiritual ones, i.e., the spread of religions such as Islam, Manichaeism, or Nestorianism—between Tang-era China and societies outside its empire. This book encapsulates his life’s work, and the English title itself is very apt. “Golden Peaches” might remind Westerners of the “Golden Apple of Discord” that eventually led to the Trojan War immortalized in The Iliad, while for the Chinese, the association would undoubtedly be with the legendary “Peach of Immortality.” Early European interest in Central Asia was stimulated by a poem entitled The Golden Journey to Samarkand that appeared in James Elroy Flecker’s 1922 verse drama, The Story of Hassan of Baghdad and How He Came to Make the Golden Journey to Samarkand. In addition to these associations, the Chinese were indeed aware of Samarkand’s peach cultivation. During the 7th century, the Kingdom of Samarkand twice presented a variety of rare golden peaches as tribute to the Tang court. In Cefu Yuangui (a Song Dynasty encyclopedia), it is recorded that: The Kingdom of Kang presented yellow peaches the size of goose eggs. Golden yellow in color, they were also denominated ‘Golden Peaches’. Focusing on the High Tang period, Schafer’s book introduces the contemporary state of a host of animate and inanimate items according to classifications such as peoples, domesticated animals, wild animals, fowl, furs and feathers, plants, timber, foodstuffs, spices, medicines, textiles, dyes, industrial-use ores, precious stones, metal products, secular artifacts, religious artifacts, and books. The author spent his entire professional life conducting research whose results filled in previous gaps for a very important period of global cultural interaction. With regard to the Tang Dynasty’s material exchanges with the Western Regions, Schafer had a clear understanding and rich collection of evidence, for which he compiled a list that explained the process of these interactions. A large part of our understanding of the Silk Road trade during that period is due to this American professor. In my opinion, a prosperous and thriving society should not simply develop fashionable technologies such as the iPhone. Humanity-centered domains such as

120  Golden Peaches of Samarkand

Figure 7.3  Polo—during the Tang

the fine arts and written classics, and social sciences such as anthropology and archaeology, should also be the object of serious intellectual pursuit. If a society lacks a certain spirit—a culture of retrospection and quiet contemplation if you like—then the structure and thinking of that society will exhibit biases that prevent it from evolving into a stable and healthy collectivity. This applies to all large societies. Based upon my observations, some Chinese people nowadays are overly impatient and utilitarian. Of course, one cannot expect that each of us would follow Professor Schafer’s example; that is neither desirable nor feasible. But as long as a society can afford to nurture a small number of such people, there should be some who are willing to undertake such scholarship. In the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics that I mentioned earlier, a group of scholars reproduced the Olympic slogan “One World, One Dream” in a variety of extinct scripts. For me, their efforts helped to make our world more beautiful. Sadly, there were not many people in the world who saw the beauty inherent in this undertaking, and so the booklet was printed in a very small quantity. In the China of 2008, some people cherished what this represented; few would take the time to read those words, much fewer spend money to purchase a booklet with no apparent practical value. Polo is a sport in Western Asia, and when it reached China, the refined ladies of the Tang also liked to play. In order to partake, sometimes participants would even order a custom-made garment, a sign that during this dynasty there was little resistance to alien customs. Modes of entertainment were not lacking during the Tang, so why play polo? Perhaps it was just in vogue for a short period, but even that suggests an open-minded Zeitgeist. Figure 7.4 is a famous tableau featuring a typical Tang belle, aptly entitled “Portrait of a Beauty.” I don’t know why Tang beauties tended to be so plump, but

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Figure 7.4  Beauty, Tang-style

122  Golden Peaches of Samarkand these images influenced virtually all female portraiture in Persia and the Western Regions. In this chapter, we are talking about interaction between China and the Western Regions, but if we were to examine those between China and Persia, we would find that the Persians were also influenced by Chinese artistry. Painting techniques and calligraphy used in Persian miniatures, as well as motifs such as colored clouds and gnarled tree roots, were learned from the Chinese. Many females in Persian muraqqa (album in book form containing Islamic miniatures and calligraphy) featured Chinese-inspired beauties with round and rosy cheeks, almond-shaped eyes, cherry lips, and willow-leaf eyebrows. Figure 7.5, from a Dunhuang mural entitled Princes of Various States in Mourning, illustrates the practice of intentional scarring—including the face—as an

Figure 7.5  Princes of various states in mourning

Golden Peaches of Samarkand 123 expression of lamentation among non-Han peoples of the northwest. This wall painting suggests that the Tang did not exclude alien religions or customs. In fact, peoples of various faiths and customs were willing to come to Chang’an for study, and envoys from Japan and Koryo were numerous; some of these diplomat-scholars wrote rather good Chinese poetry. Chinese bards befriended them, and there are many extant lyrics and parting poems bearing witness to these ancient friendships. It is well known that during the Tang a 60-something monk named Jianzhen (Ganjin in Japanese) set out for Japan (unsuccessfully) six times, but on his seventh try, when he finally arrived in 754 CE, he was already blind. Soon thereafter he founded Tōshōdai-ji, a Buddhist temple designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, in Nara. Once Buddhism had undergone Sinicization, other Bodhisattvas joined the historical Buddha as objects of veneration within China. Among them was Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva whose daochang (principal site for immersive learning or meditation) is situated on Mount Jiuhua in Anhui Province. This very important site in Chinese Buddhism was established by a prince from the Silla Kingdom in the Korean Peninsula in the 7th century. This illustrates the fact that during the Tang, Buddhism was open to all nationalities. Sogdians, Persians, and Tujue Figure 7.6 shows a relief of a Sogdian’s tomb in Chang’an, built in the late 6th century before the Tang Dynasty was established. It illustrates a very meaningful phenomenon: The meeting of a group of Tujue and Sodgians. By mid-6th century CE, a new nomadic people, a loose confederation of Turkic tribes known as Tujue, had emerged on the Eurasian Steppe. After migrating south in waves, the Tujue continued relentlessly westward and over a period of almost one thousand years they intermarried with myriad peoples in the Central Plains, Hexi Corridor, Xinjiang region, Central Asia, West Asia, and Eastern Europe, thereby forming a people who, although of mixed blood, all spoke a Turkic language, a major branch of the Altaic family of languages. This process is similar to that of the Portuguese who mixed with many of the peoples they subjugated worldwide over the past five centuries, forming many Lusophone countries and communities that are scattered throughout South America, East and West Africa, and Southeast Asia. Similarly, the Tujue of the Sui and Tang dynasties can be considered the forebears of many Turkophone peoples today, including—listing from east to west—the Yugur, Salar, and Uyghur in China; Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and Turkmen mainly in Central Asia; Tuva, Bashkir, Tatar, and Chuvash in the Russian Federation; and at the western extreme, Azeris and Turks. The gradual appearance of this Turkic force in the northern grasslands during the Sui and Tang was observed particularly by the itinerant Sogdians, with their nose for business. This relief portrays the story of a Sogdian, resident of Chang’an and a Sabo (Sogdian community leader), visiting a Tujue leader in his tent. The Sabo, named Anjia, later died in Chang’an. His family considered that one of his significant achievements had been to pioneer a trade route northward

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Figure 7.6  A relief unearthed from Anjia Tomb, a Sogdian tomb in Chang’an

to Mongolia that facilitated trade with the Tujue, so they had this event portrayed in his tomb. The Tujue originally lived north of the Gobi Desert. Their ethnic origin is complex and may be the result of a fusion of genes and customs among Turkic nomadic tribes, such as the Dingling, Tiele (aka Tägräk, Tölis), and Rouran. Because various

Golden Peaches of Samarkand 125 ethnicities frequently interacted on the steppe, bloodlines were often mixed, and several languages amalgamated into a new one. Many branches now classified under the Altaic umbrella, including those spoken by Turkophones across Eurasia, were probably formed in this manner. The newly arisen Tujue defeated the Rouran and established the first Turkic Khanate, but it eventually divided in two. The Western Turkic Khanate, composed mainly of tribes who spoke Oghuz Turkic (known as “Toquz Oghuz” or “Nine Clans” according to Chinese-language histories), crossed the Pamir Plateau and entered an area west of the Chu River Basin. The Eastern Turkic Khanate mainly occupied the Mongolian Plateau, though a portion of the tribes also migrated south to Shaanxi and northwestern Shanxi. A branch of the Western Tujue, the Seljuks, later expanded as far as Asia Minor (Anatolia), conquered the locals, and changed the administrative language to their own language. Modern Turkish grammar is largely based on ancient Turkic, but it has also borrowed from many other languages, especially the grammar of Arabic and Persian, and French and English specialized vocabulary. Because of these foreign loan words, today’s Turkish no longer strictly abides by the rules of pronunciation and word creation manifested in other Turkic tongues. The great majority of Asia Minor’s inhabitants were originally Greek or Armenian. After occupation by the Seljuks, they merged with the foreign invaders to become the Turks of today. Meanwhile, the eastern Turkic tribes who remained on the northern fringes of the Chinese Empire eventually became vassals of the Tang. In the first half of the 7th century, a Huihe tribal group, originally a part of Tujue Khanate, began to deal frequently with the Tang. In 744, the Huihe (aka Uighur or Uyghur) established their own khanate headquartered on the banks of Orhon River in the Mongol Plateau. Thus, much of the homeland of the eastern Tujue on the Mongolian Plateau was occupied by the Huihe, whose scope of activity had formerly been far removed from the sedentary farmers of the Central Plains. This development was recognized by the Tang court. During the years of the An-Shi Rebellion, Huihe gave assistance to the Tang in quelling the rebellion, thereby expanding their territory, improving living conditions, and acquiring a broader vision of the outside world. Later, perhaps feeling insecure in the complex Tang-Tibet-Huihe three-way tussle, the Huihe Khagan asked to marry a Tang princess and thus became a nephew-in-law to the Tang emperor. Moreover, in order to further demonstrate their closeness and submissiveness to the Tang, they requested in 788 that the Tang sanction their name as “Huihu” (回鹘), one with a more auspicious meaning in the Chinese language. This appellation can be found henceforth in Tang chronicles, and eventually morphed into the similarly pronounced term—Weiwu’er, Uyghur or Uighur in English—used today. In fact, as early as 583 under the Sui (just a few decades before the Tang), the eastern Tujue had established amical cooperation with the Chinese, or even a suzerain-vassal relationship, and the Tang merely rekindled those bonds. In 840, the Khakas, another tribe (possibly the ancestors of today’s Kyrgyz) who also showed admirable endurance as they struggled against a hostile climate and hardscrabble conditions—not to mention their superb ability to wield

126  Golden Peaches of Samarkand bow-and-arrow while riding a horse—swooped southward from the Mongolian Plateau and crushed the Huihu. Both peoples were Turkophone, but their lifestyle and political affiliations were totally different. Eventually, the defeated Huihu were forced to depart, and they migrated mainly in three directions: One group proceeded to the Hexi Corridor where they established the Ganzhou Huihu Kingdom in the late 9th century. A second group relocated to today’s Turpan, where they founded a Huihu kingdom variously known as Qocho or Gaochang. A third group crossed the Pamirs and entered the Chu River Basin, mixing with the Qarluqs, a western Turkic people previously settled there. In the 10th century, as part of a power struggle, some Central Asian Huihu converted to Islam, a religion that already had a firm foundation in the region, and established Central Asia’s first Turkic-speaking dynasty based on Islamic law, the Kara-Khanid Khanate. The Karakhanids were also the first native Turkophones to become Muslim. Over the following century, they waged jihad to convert other ethnicities to Islam, such as the Scythians in Kashgar and Khotan, Kucha’s Tocharians, and the Qiang in Charklik in what are now China’s western and southern Xinjiang. The Islamic Kara-Khanid Khanate and Buddhist Gaochang Kingdom were both established by the Huihu, one in the westernmost part of Xinjiang and one in northeastern Xinjiang, but the two fought each other for two hundred years. Islamic forces eventually eliminated Buddhism in Xinjiang. Hami became Islamized in the 14th–15th centuries, thus completing the dual process of Turkification and Islamization in Xinjiang. Therefore, the main inhabitants of Central Asia and China’s Xinjiang today are no longer speakers of Eastern Iranian, such as the Sogdians or Scythians. Instead, they are largely Turkophones who communicate in various Turkic tongues. Descendants of the Sogdians only exist in Tajikistan, Uzbek cities such as Bukhara and Samarkand, and some areas in northern Afghanistan. After centuries of transformation within the Persianate sphere of influence, the Sogdians are now known as Tajiks, and their language is basically the same as ethnic Persians in Iran. Figure 7.7 is a Tang sancai figurine depicting a Hu astride a Bactrian camel. At the time, the porcelain industry was not yet prosperous, and pottery was the most popular. Sancai—a tricolor glaze—is very difficult to fabricate. Its calcination firing technique is complex and demands precise control of high temperatures. Cheetahs appear again in Figure 7.8, indicating that their domestication was popular during the Tang. The Chinese did not breed this species of feline, so all cheetahs should have been imported. The cheetah, often referred to as the “hunting leopard,” is difficult to train, and it was a specialized technique monopolized by West Asians, so the image of two “Hu” in this painting should have been Arabs or Persians. Arabic is a Semitic tongue that belongs to the family of Afro-Asiatic languages. The Arabs lived and thrived on the Arabian Peninsula for centuries. In 7th century CE, they streamed out of the peninsula holding aloft the new banner of Islam and quickly vanquished two ancient civilizations, Egypt and Persia, as well as inflicting heavy damage on the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium). By

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Figure 7.7  Tang sancai: Bactrian camel with passenger

the early 8th century, the Arab army reached Transoxiana and occupied Samarkand. As Chapters 10 and 11 focus on Arab-related topics, I will not say more about them here. In general, Chapters 6 and 7 mainly introduce the history of Tang-era Central Asia, with the Sogdians as protagonists. The Sogdians continued to prosper, trade, and migrate and eventually went as far eastward as Liaoning. An Lushan, the instigator of the eponymous rebellion (755–763) that almost toppled the Tang, was the son of a Sogdian father and Turkic mother. He mastered six languages and enjoyed the trust of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang. Responsible for governing the multiethnic regions of Hebei and Liaoning, he had held several official posts including governor of Fanyang, Pinglu, and Hedong (modern Shanxi),

128  Golden Peaches of Samarkand

Figure 7.8  Hu with their cheetah hunting partners

as well as Lord of Dongping. Near the end of Emperor Xuanzong’s reign, he fell out with Prime Minister Yang Guozhong and the crown prince, and—invoking the traditional principle that a loyalist must act to rid the court of traitors—led an uprising from his base in Hebei’s Fanyang. It is evident that the Sogdian activities were hardly limited to Central Asia. The Sogdian homeland lay between two rivers, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, mainly in the Zarafshan River Basin. The Sogdians have a special status in Eurasian civilization. This is certainly not the result of a conscious pursuit as such, but looking back at history, they did play a key role. From the aforementioned, one can see that history speaks most clearly. The intent to craft this or that image abroad, or to construct something, rarely meets with success. Often, all that remains is a pile of documents containing propaganda. Real success is based on the accumulation of facts on the ground—historical, geographical, economic, and cultural—rather than wishful statements. The great individuals who have had a huge impact on human history, such as Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, as well as those I’ve detailed in this book like Kumarajiva, Xuan Zang, and Li Bai, never imagined that their influence could be so great. Located in the Tajik portion of the Ferghana Basin is a city, Khujand, that dates from ancient times, and there is a Sogdian museum there. I assume it is government funded. Although the Sogdians adopted Farsi (the language of the ancient Persian court and today’s Iran) under the Samanids in the 9th century, today’s Tajiks (a self-designated name of people in the eastern part of Iranian sphere) remain the sole direct heirs of Sogdian lineage and culture in the 21st century. When I toured the museum, I noted that it makes a point of reminding the visitor that Alexander the Great once set foot in the city and wed a local princess.

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Figure 7.9  Encounters: Tujue and high-hatted Sogdians

130  Golden Peaches of Samarkand In the history of Central Asia, the waterway that constituted the boundary line between nomadic and farming peoples was the Syr Darya. Today, of course, that function is no longer evident. The Syr Darya originates from the melting snow of the Pamirs, and then slowly flows into the Aral Sea. In terms of world history, the nomadic peoples in the northern grasslands and the farming peoples in the south had a largely peaceful relationship, but at times there were conflicts, and some took a very fierce and brutal form. In the eastern portion of Eurasia, this was most evident in China: The farming inhabitants in the south engaged in a constant cycle of contact, conflict, and integration with nomadic peoples to the north. Representative of the latter were first the Xiongnu (Huns), then the Xianbei, Rouran, Tujue, Khitan, and Mongols. The dividing line was the Great Wall of China. This was also the case in the middle of Eurasia. In the heyday of the Greek and Persian empires, the Syr Darya served as Central Asia’s dividing line between north and south. Figure 7.9 illustrates Central Asian nomadic and farming peoples interacting. The Sogdians are the ones wearing high hats, while the Tujue let their hair hang down. Arabs and their turbans had not yet appeared on the scene, but they are the focus in Chapters 10 and 11.

8

Silk and Paper

The inventions of silk and paper symbolized that the development of civilization had shifted from a single-minded search for survival in the form of current warmth and food to the stage where quality of life, efficiency, and planning for the future were the new focus. Silk, first used for decoration and clothing, and paper, primarily for wrapping at first, both became important media for storing information and predicting the future, but this was predicated upon the widespread use of the written word. These two lightweight items—both invented in China—played a very important role in the development of civilization in Central, West, and South Asia as well as Europe. The Greeks’ fruitless search for the secret of silk fabrication and the serendipitous acquisition of papermaking knowhow by the Arabs were perhaps unwittingly captured by the Southern Song poet Xia Yuanding, a Daoist, in two renowned lines of verse: One can wear out iron shoes searching for something, Only to acquire it through no effort of one’s doing. For humankind, the westward spread of silk and papermaking represent two very consequential events in the history of East-West cultural exchange.

Information With Staying Power The ancient Chinese invented paper and printing and thus made outstanding contributions to the spread of ancient culture and the development of civilization. However, in today’s IT-driven world, if culture is to continue to progress, further development of the World Wide Web is key. People can construct countless broad thoroughfares on the internet, and vehicles speaking different languages can travel on them. But in China if one wishes to undertake internet construction, besides Chinese-speaking vehicles, one must also build many roads that can be used by people who speak any language, and connect them with the information highways of other countries. In 2002, I published a book entitled From Moveable Type to the World Wide Web (Cong huoziban dao wanweiwang) to explain this. Nearly two decades later, mastery of the internet has multiplied 100 times over among people globally, especially DOI: 10.4324/9781003369899-8

132  Silk and Paper Chinese speakers. Contemporary dependence upon the internet in our daily lives has reached a point where it cannot be ignored. Whether it is printing or the internet, both are a means of transmitting information. The two earliest methods of transmission over a physical distance involved sound and light. The first, commonly known in Chinese as “blowing the Buddhist trumpet”—a Sanskrit calque—referred to sounding a conch shell as a signal. The second is exemplified by fire on a beacon tower, or the use of light to convey information. The Romans understood that optical communications could be established between a warship and people on shore. They used copper mirrors to reflect sunlight when battling the Carthaginians of North Africa. Both acoustic and optical methods are short-lived, however. As soon as the light is reflected, the transmission ends; as soon as the sound of the trumpeting conch terminates, the information flow ceases. Only words conveyed by certain media, such as printing or the internet, have potential for a longer afterlife in the river of time. So, what were the earliest forms of such media? In China, writing was first etched into so-called oracle bones used for divination, as well as inscriptions engraved upon very ancient bronzeware. Of course, these methods were very limiting, since they could record only a small amount of information and were applied only on august occasions. In ancient West Asia, writing was often carved on stone, and reed styluses were also used to write in cuneiform on clay tablets. Later, narrow slips of wood or bamboo became the main vehicle for written text throughout Asia. Figure 8.1 is a Gandhari text in Kharosthi script unearthed in China’s Xinjiang. The next three figures illustrate the use of three different materials to transmit and preserve written words. Figure 8.2 shows silk manuscript fragments from

Figure 8.1  Gandhari text in Kharosthi script on wooden slips

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Figure 8.2  Silk manuscript fragments from Hunan’s Mawangdui

134  Silk and Paper Mawangdui in Changsha, Hunan, containing excerpts from a version of Lao Zi’s Book of the Tao that was copied in the early years of the Western Han (206 BCE–25 CE). In Figure 8.3, one finds a cloth of reed fiber made by Syrians of West Asia, and the text is probably in Syriac. Figure 8.4 features relics that have effectively been branded in Chinese as the “Shanghai Museum Chu Slips.” Acquired by the museum more than a decade ago, these thin bamboo slips written in ink are very precious. It is well known that the current version of The Analects of Confucius was compiled based on oral accounts sometime after his death (ca. 479). A portion of the slips in the museum’s collection originated in the State of Chu during the Warring States period (475–221 BCE). During the infamous “Burning of Books and Burying of Scholars” targeting nontechnical knowledge

Figure 8.3  A text in Syriac on coarse cloth made of reed fiber

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Figure 8.4 The Shanghai Museum bamboo slips from the State of Chu during the Warring States period

136  Silk and Paper and those who possessed it that took place at the beginning of Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s reign (221–210 BCE), what was set alight was not “paper books” per se— as popularly imagined today—but rather slips of text on wood or bamboo. Chinese nobles used black ink made from ground soot to write characters on silk, and the result was known as “silk writing.” Although paper was probably invented during the Western Han (206 BCE–25 CE), it wasn’t until Eastern Han (25–220) that a more mature form appeared. Media for Chinese writing evolved from stone to bamboo or wooden slips, then silk and finally paper, with each stage generating a new medium that was lighter, capable of conveying greater amounts of information, and easier to write upon. To make a digression here, I personally think that in addition to the “Four Great Inventions”—the compass, gunpowder, printing, and papermaking—China should also be credited with the “Four Lesser Inventions.” The former four have greatly helped civilization progress, but the impact of the lesser ones on our lifestyles has also been significant. One is tea, because its usage as a beverage has impacted daily life everywhere; the second is silk, since its usage in textiles means that it has quietly entered the material lives of people worldwide; “tofu” or “dofu” possesses widely recognized advantages such as preventing high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and various soybean by-products provide high-grade protein to people who cannot digest the lactose in dairy products; and lastly, the game of “mahjong” that has become popular as a form of entertainment in many retirement homes because playing it can keep one’s hands nimble and one’s brain engaged, which helps prevent dementia. In addition to the aforementioned eight inventions, there was another important innovation in Chinese history—porcelain. Porcelain represents an improvement over pottery, remains of which having been unearthed worldwide. Confirming where pottery first appeared has proven difficult, and it may well have been invented independently in various places. Once glaze has been added and the item has been fired at a high temperature, it becomes porcelain. Porcelain produced during the Tang and later was so exquisite that it became synonymous with its country of origin, thus the English name “China” for the Middle Kingdom. Based on written and physical evidence, however, it cannot be proven that China invented glazing that transformed pottery into porcelain. Silk and IPR? Silk was unquestionably a Chinese invention, and the process by which silk fabrication reached the outside world is a tale worth telling. Finished silk gradually reached the Greeks sometime after the explorer-diplomat Zhang Qian pioneered a route to the Western Regions in the 2nd century BCE. The Greeks mistakenly believed that it grew on trees. In the wake of their domination of the Greek city states, the Romans also cherished silk, and at one point their penchant for buying it in large quantities became controversial. It is said that Seneca, the great orator and essayist, opposed the wearing of silk lest it leave the empire impoverished.

Silk and Paper 137 Since silk was such a sought-after commodity, businesspeople naturally wished to master its fabrication. The Sogdians were most familiar with silk, but for centuries even they did not learn how to make it. Although there existed no concept of “intellectual property rights”—much less IPR law to protect them—at the time, the rulers and those who actually made silk knew full well that this was a business secret not to be revealed. The Kingdom of Khotan (now Hetian) in the Western Regions long enjoyed good relations with the Central Plains, and the Chinese court often gifted Khotan royalty with a princess to cement ties. Once upon a time, probably during the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420–589), the court prepared to send a princess to Khotan. Before the wedding, a crafty Sogdian merchant encouraged the Khotan envoy to inform the princess that Khotanese all wore clothing made of either wool or coarse linen that irritated the skin; after she moved to Khotan she would spend the rest of her life there, and dressing like that would be very trying. She’d best bring some raw silk with her and have her clothing custom-made in Khotan. Normally, goods were inspected at the border, but the guards would not dare scrutinize a princess’ possessions. So, the princess had her hair done up in an extraordinary high bun, in which she hid silkworms, and she also packed some mulberry leaves to nourish the young caterpillars before they spun their cocoons. This is how the raw materials for silk found their way out of China and into the hands of Sogdian merchants who often traveled westward. As detailed in Chapters 6 and 7, the Sogdians inhabited the territory between two rivers, the Syr Darya and Amu Darya, neighboring the Persians to whom they often sold silk fabric. It is said that in ancient times an army from the Roman Empire once confronted a Persian army brandishing bright, eye-catching silk banners; never having seen such dazzling ensigns, the Romans thought the Persians had obtained God’s blessing, and so they withdrew and fled. Later the Romans realized that the banners were simply made of silk. In the mid-6th century, Emperor Justinian I (527–565) of the East Roman Empire dispatched two monks on a mission of commercial espionage to Central Asia where they were to acquire the techniques of sericulture (silk farming), mastered earlier by the Central Asians. The pair cunningly used hollow canes, inserted a batch of silkworms in them, and smuggled them back to Byzantium or Constantinople, capital of the East Roman Empire. In this way, the Greeks also learned to produce silk, and they gradually passed the silk-making technology to Italy, now the global center of high-end silk fabrication. The Chinese actually began producing silk back in 3000 BCE, and the spread of silk technology abroad probably occurred during the 5th–6th centuries CE. By mid6th century, sericulture had reached Constantinople. The tale of the Central Plains’ princess who smuggled the silkworms or silkworm cocoons to her new home in Khotan was recorded by the China-bound Buddhist pilgrim Xuan Zang, who stayed there for some time on his way back from India. He noted this explanation for the spread of silk production know-how in his classic travelogue, Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, but there is no way to ascertain if it was based on hard fact. As for the Byzantine priests who brought the silkworms back from the Persians inside hollow canes, they are recorded in several different historical documents.

138  Silk and Paper In today’s silk industry, Italy is the undisputed leader in terms of state-of-the-art design, dyeing, printing, and manufacture. It was a late entrant to the game, but now high-grade silk fabric—and the priciest finished wares—are all “Fabbricato in Italia.” Ironically, China was the birthplace of silk, but it is now at the bottom of the silk industry supply chain. Similar to this is the tea industry. China and India rank among the top two raw tea producers in the world, but it is the United Kingdom that has consistently pocketed the lion’s share of the profits. One finds Twining’s and Lipton tea in any Chinese supermarket or department store, and British black teas classify as the best in their class and the best-selling brands worldwide. The China tea farmer’s role is to cultivate tea plants in bulk, harvest the leaves, and sell this raw material for it to be packaged in barrels or tea sachets and marketed by a third party to resellers worldwide. So, even when it comes to two of China’s “Four Lesser Inventions”—silk and tea—the country is not in a leading position today. Fortunately, China tofu is still the greatest producer of bean curd in terms of sheer volume and product variety, but Japan is home to the most refined, upmarket version of tofu. No foreign country has yet emerged to challenge China on the mahjong front. If the game is ever classified as an Olympic sport, China could easily send thousands of teams to compete! Unfortunately, China’s former leader-of-the-pack role in the supply of silk, tea, and tofu has already been supplanted. Given tofu’s short shelf-life exports were never very viable, but finished silk and tea could have been huge earners on global markets. As for paper, Sweden and Norway used to make the best-quality paper in the world. Recently, I heard that China might well have the potential to supplant the Scandinavians. Since papermaking requires massive amounts of sulfuric acid, serious environmental pollution is an issue, so European countries are reluctant to increase output. Many buyers worldwide are willing to source paper from China, the quality of which is well recognized. The technology behind silk fabrication is complex and requires several phases, including rearing the silkworm, providing an environment for cocoon spinning, and painstakingly unraveling the cocoon to reel the silk filament. Therefore, its invention must have taken a long time and initially required many trials. During the spinning of the cocoon, the silkworm’s “triangular” mouth—note that only certain types of caterpillar possess such a mouth—extrudes silk filament of a triangular cross-section. Once the cocoon has been completed, the farmer boils it in water, locates one end of the filament, and winds it on a reel; this constitutes raw silk thread that can be dyed and woven into finished fabric. The reason why silk fabrics are so pleasingly lustrous is that the triangular filaments can reflect light originating at any angle. A cross-section of cotton fiber is not triangular, so it cannot refract light in this dazzling manner. The visual classifier or radical for silk, “糹” is located at the left side of the character for paper (紙). This radical also appears in a very large number of oneand two-syllable Chinese words, such as organize (組織), continue (繼續), pay

Silk and Paper 139 (繳納), graceful (綽約), and fiber (纖維), as well as traditional four-syllable idioms like “to spin a cocoon around oneself (作繭自縛),” “to unravel endlessly (絡繹不絕),” and “to link via a thousand threads (千絲萬縷).” This suggests that the ancient Chinese had already learned to undertake much more tedious and difficult tasks before making paper. Papermaking is more intuitive. Just take some scraps rich in fiber, such as straw, stir them together, and after some treatment slowly flatten them, and you have a thin sheet of “paper.” Early paper was very coarse, and it was not until the Eastern Han that a court eunuch, Cai Lun, developed a better technique. He presented his improved version to Emperor He in 105 CE. Since the emperor bequeathed him an aristocratic title for his efforts, his invention was dubbed “Marquis Cai’s paper.” The advent of paper came much later than silk, which illustrates the unpredictability of early technologies. Another unpredictable phenomenon is that paper did not serve as a medium for writing; it was just used for packaging. Granted, paper debuted later than silk, but the latter simply altered the way people dress and adorn themselves, while paper revolutionized the dissemination of information worldwide. For this reason, paper became the “star” protagonist of this chapter. Battle of Talas Previously rather obscure in world history, the Arabs, united and inspired in the 7th century by their new faith in Islam, burst out of the Arabian Peninsula and expanded rapidly. Within 100 years, the Arabs had built a great empire that reached west to the Atlantic Ocean and east to the Indus River and Central Asia. In 713 CE, Arab armies conquered Samarkand, then known as the Kingdom of Kang, likely ruled by the Sogdians. This placed the Arabs not far from the borders of the Tang Dynasty at the time, and so there is a connection with the topics of this chapter. This great empire had to be sustained by an army, with Arab soldiers stationed in every major city. The first Arab commander to invade Central Asia and occupy Samarkand was Ibn Qutaybah Muslim, and he yearned to convert the Central Asians to Islam. World history proves that whenever a population is governed by an alien ruler, there will always be a portion of the ruled who voluntarily obey and even imitate the ruler. By this time, Persia already possessed a rich civilization that had accumulated more than 1,000 years of history. The Arabs recognized that by comparison, their culture was far less developed, but by relying on their military might, religious zeal, persuasion, and outright coercion—as well as marriage and economic inducements such as mutual trade and exemption of Muslims from the poll tax (jizya)— they managed to convert many of their subjects to Islam. The Arab Empire stationed troops in Khorasan and Transoxiana, but Arabs were still few on the ground, and the population consisted mainly of speakers of East Iranian languages. Although they gradually came to believe in Islam, they retained

140  Silk and Paper many Persian traditions in terms of their behavior and thinking. Change in any community’s consciousness or lifestyle is not something that can be accomplished overnight with a single order. It is a lengthy process. Because of this, newly converted Muslims (mawali) were often discriminated against by Arabs, and this was even more evident in the appointment of public officials. As a result, the newly converted Persians in Khorasan, as well as the unconverted Sogdians in Transoxiana, were resentful of the Arabs. New believers knew that the Qur’an teaches that there is no distinction among old and new converts, but since they were actually treated as second-class citizens, this created a lot of friction. Some of the region’s Sogdians, dissatisfied with the Arab occupation, were reminded of the autonomy they enjoyed under their erstwhile suzerain, the Tang. Meanwhile, soon after the Arabs arrived in Central Asia they supported the succession of a new king in Ferghana. Supporters of the deposed monarch took refuge in Kucha (Qiuci), headquarters of the Anxi Grand Protectorate, in the hopes of receiving aid from the Tang garrison there in resisting the Arabs. Islam was founded in Mecca, but Muhammad later relocated to Medina where he established a theocracy. In fact, it was the Umayyads, with their capital in Damascus, who really laid the foundations of the Arab Empire. Not only did the Persians resent or even hate the Umayyads, even within the Arab world there were many who opposed their rule. The Umayyad clan was not directly descended from the Prophet Muhammad; it was simply descended from the same tribe. Because of its early mastery of the army, however, it was able to take control in both the political and the theological domains. Two factions within Muhammad’s family opposed them. One faction of Muslims believed that only descendants of Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali, could serve as leaders of Islam, and they became known as Shi’ites (lit., partisans); the other faction, descended from Muhammad’s uncle, Abbas, insisted that the leader must be from the family of the Prophet. The descendants of Abbas were quite powerful in many places, especially in Iraq, which was close to Persia. They took advantage of the discontent of the Persian Muslims to persuade the Persians to join them against the Umayyads, and so the first uprising against the Umayyads occurred in Khorasan (comprising the present territories of northeastern Iran, parts of Afghanistan, and much of Transoxania). With the cooperation of the Persians, the Abbasids defeated the Umayyad Caliphate and established the Abbasid Dynasty in 750. They moved the seat of the caliphate from Damascus, located near the Mediterranean, to Iraq, near Persia, and established a new capital in Baghdad. From the geopolitical point of view, the spheres of influence of the Arab Empire and the Tang were so close that it was only natural that each should seek to restrain the other’s power. Tubo (Tibetans) in the south and Turkic groups (Tujue) in the north were also variables in the Central Asian equation at the time and must be considered. As mentioned earlier, the dethroned king of Fergana left for Qiuci, seat of the Tang’s Anxi Grand Protectorate. At this time, its commander was Gao Xianzhi, a

Silk and Paper 141 Goguryeon born in China’s northeast where his father served as a Tang military officer. He had previously achieved spectacular success in fighting the Tubo and won the trust of Emperor Xuanzong. Accusing the Shi Kingdom (Tashkent) of insubordination and disrespect and hoping to show his power, Gao Xianzhi led about 20,000 troops on a long journey into the Western Regions. His forces were supported by another 30,000 drawn from the Karluk, a Turkic tribal confederacy, which was on friendly terms with the Tang. The king of Shi surrendered on sight, but Gao Xianzhi allowed his forces to plunder the city in violation of a previous agreement. The king was taken back to Chang’an and beheaded by order of Emperor Xuanzong. These developments led other Central Asian states to question their loyalty to the Tang, and the heir to the Shi throne turned to the Arabs for help. In 751, with the support of the local Sogdians and a small contingent of Tubo troops, the Arab army engaged in a military encounter with the Tang in the area of the Talas River near the border of present-day Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan that was to have far-reaching consequences. The Karluk troops, former Tang allies, suddenly rebelled and attacked the Chinese forces from close range, handing them an overwhelming defeat. Of Gao Xianzhi’s nearly 20,000 troops, most were left for dead on the battlefield, several thousand were taken prisoner, and less than 2,000 followed him homeward. The heyday of the Tang Dynasty probably occurred in 751 during the ten-year Tianbao Era (742–756) of Emperor Xuanzong’s reign. Although the overall situation in Central Asia did not change immediately, the influence of the Tang in the region was on the decline. The victory of the Arab army brought Central Asia into the Islamic world from then on and also isolated Chinese Buddhism from its Indian origins, hastening the complete domestication of the former. In 755, the 14-year An-Shi Rebellion erupted. Unable to crush it on their own, the Tang invited the Arab and Tubo armies to help quell the rebellion. This was the first time that Arabian forces entered Chang’an, and it marked the beginning of large numbers of Muslim immigrants settling in China. Westward Spread of Papermaking Know-How China had been using paper heavily since the first century CE. By the Tang, papermaking technology had existed in China for 700 years and was very common. But at that time, the vast majority of foreigners did not know how to make paper, aside from the Japanese and Koreans. Among the Tang captives taken by the Arabs at the Battle of Talas were several who possessed such knowledge, and after the victors learned this through interrogation, these skilled captives were ordered to establish a papermaking workshop in Samarkand. Thus, the first papermaking atelier west of China came into being in the mid-8th century. Paper fabricated in Samarkand was thereafter long considered a superior medium for painting and calligraphy in the Islamic world, and its status until the last century was similar to that of Xuan paper made in Jing County in Anhui Province, often termed Chinese “rice paper” in English. It was only then that Muslims began to copy the Qur’an on paper, whereas before that the Qur’an could only be copied onto lamb skin, and one Qur’an consumed the

142  Silk and Paper skins of 300 sheep. We can therefore imagine the crucial role that paper played in the spread of various religions and scripts. With paper, not only could the Qur’an be copied in large quantities, all sorts of correspondence, trade records, and legal and administrative documents could also use this new product. After the establishment of papermaking workshops in Samarkand, they also appeared in Baghdad around 850 CE. Papermaking began in Damascus in the 10th century and was followed by Cairo. Fes in Morocco began making paper in 1100, and the first European paper mills appeared in Muslim-ruled Spain in 1151. The first paper mills in France did not appear until 1189, and Germany started manufacturing paper around 1390. In 1517, Martin Luther, professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, posted his Ninety-Five Theses on church doors to denounce and resist the Vatican’s support for issuing indulgentia, thereby igniting the Reformation in Western Europe. He encouraged believers to read the Bible, and advocated that the individual could interact directly with God without the aid of a priest designated by the church. This proposition was a manifestation of Renaissance-era humanism, and its material basis was the Bible printed on paper; it no longer needed to be painstakingly handcopied onto parchment. Martin Luther even described printing as “God’s highest and extremist act of grace, whereby the business of the gospel is driven forward.” Du Huan: China’s First Traveler to the Mediterranean Although a significant consequence of the Battle of Talas was the spread of papermaking techniques, another story that is worth telling has to do with Du Huan, a Tang officer who was captured during the battle. He was assigned to fight alongside the Arab troops for more than a decade. Moving from Central Asia to Iraq, then to Syria and Egypt, Du Huan even set eyes upon Tunisia, Algeria, and possibly Morocco, becoming the first Chinese to experience the societies and cultures of the western Mediterranean. He eventually returned to China on a boat from the Persian Gulf to Guangzhou, and authored a book known as Record of Travels ( jingxingji). At the time, there was no such thing as mass media, so we can assume few people knew about his travelogue. However, he had an uncle named Du You who served as chancellor and was later commissioned to compile the Encyclopedic History of Institutions (Tongdian). A few excerpts of Du Huan’s adventures were included in the encyclopedia and thus have been passed on to us, but the lion’s share of his original account has been lost. The following passages are quoted verbatim in the Chinese version of this book. For this English edition, a redacted version in italics with annotations in brackets is presented, followed by some personal observations of the author. In Tongdian (Scroll 191, Border Defense 7, Preface to Chapters on People in the West), we find a brief introduction to the origins of Jingxingji: One junior relative from my clan, [Du] Huan, followed the GovernorGeneral of Zhenxi [Defense of West] Protectorate Gao Xianzhi for the West

Silk and Paper 143 Expedition. They reached the West Sea [most likely the Mediterranean Sea] in the tenth year of the Tianbao reign [751 CE]. In the first year of the Baoying reign [762 CE], he took a commercial ship [from the Persian Gulf] and returned to Guangzhou. Whereupon he authored jingxingji [Record of Travels]. Tongdian (Scroll 193, Border Defense 9, Chapter 5, People of the West) also incorporates a number of passages from Jingxingji: The country of Dashi [the Arab Empire] has its capital here [in Iraq]. Its sovereign is called “Mohmun.” [Du Huan probably meant Prophet Muhammad, but possibly the title of Imam.] The women of this country are tall and beautiful, with their clothes bright and clean. When a woman goes outdoors, she must veil her face. Regardless of whether someone is noble or common, everyone prays five times daily. While fasting, they eat meat and regard butchering animals as a good deed. [Muslims follow the example of Ibrahim (Abraham) in making sacrifice to God, usually by killing a sheep or bull and sharing the meat equally among relatives and neighbors. Known as Eid Ad-Adha in Arabic or Kurban Bayram in Turkic languages, this Festival of Sacrifice occurs roughly 70 days after Ramadan ends.] Men wear silver girdles with silver knives suspended. They abstain from drinking and do not play music. When they have arguments, they do not strike one another. They also have a house of worship [Masjid or Mosque] that can accommodate tens of thousands of people. The Caliph comes here for prayer once every seven days. [He first prays together with the faithful facing Mecca and then speaks to the public while standing on the Minbar with a number of flights like a staircase. His speech could be on any subject, but he usually stresses that] “Life is difficult and the Way of Heaven [Islam, meaning submission to God] is not easy to follow. Whether adultery or robbery or theft, or lying for small trifles, or keeping yourself safe but causing harm to others, or bullying the poor and mocking the humble, each is a serious crime even if you engage in only one such misdeed. At war, if you are slain by the enemy, you can go to Heaven; if you kill one enemy soldier, you will be abundantly rewarded. Such constant preaching reforms peoples’ minds to accept and follow readily the teachings. The law in this country is quite lenient, and the funeral rites very simple. Du Huan’s observations about the “Dashi” (大食)—the Chinese term for the Arab Empire at the time—were quite detailed. The Umayyads, the empire’s first dynasty was followed by the Abbasids, a dynasty founded by the descendants of one of Muhammad’s uncles. The Abbasids began their reign just before Du Huan’s capture, so he had the opportunity to observe first-hand the early days of the Abbasid Caliphate.

144  Silk and Paper Du Huan’s excerpted account in Tongdian also notes: Fu-lin Kingdom [the East Roman Empire] lies in the west of Zhan Kingdom [a neighbor of the East Roman Empire, likely Palmyra in today’s Syria]. It also calls itself Da-qin [the Han Dynasty’s name for the Roman Empire]. The two are separated by a long range of mountains [likely the Taurus Mountains]; the other name for Fu-Lin Kingdom is Da-qin [In the 8th century, the Roman Empire had been succeeded by the East Roman Empire, so this appellation was correct.] In the Fu-lin Kingdom, men wear plain clothes, but women wear silks and pearls. The people like drinking and eating unleavened bread. There are many artisans who can do spinning and fine weaving. There are also captured soldiers inside the kingdom who keep their native customs. [The East Roman Empire was multiethnic in population, with Greeks, Egyptians, Arabs, etc., and almost constantly at war with its neighbors, Germanic peoples in the north, Persians to the East, and Arabs in the South.] The opaque glass produced here is so exquisite that it is unparalleled in the world. The capital is roughly 40 kilometers in circumference and the territories around it stretch several thousand kilometers from its borders in all directions. The Kingdom has a strong army with some to one million soldiers, for defending [the Kingdom] against Dashi. The west part of the Kingdom occupies the West Sea [the Mediterranean] and the southern part, the Southern Sea [mostly likely the Red Sea]; the northern boundary faces Khazar Turkic tribes. According to Du Huan, the favorite colors of Fu-lin (East Roman Empire) residents were white and red, and they enjoyed liquor. He also noticed that there were “many artisans who can do spinning and weaving.” As mentioned earlier, by the 6th century, the Eastern Roman Empire was already making silk. “Opaque glass” is a reference to stained glass. Though invented by the Egyptians, the East Romans (also known as Byzantines in recent centuries) excelled at its production and frequently used it. Du Huan considered that the best of Byzantine glass was virtually “unsurpassed.” Du Huan also mentioned that Fu-lin had a strong army for “defending [the Kingdom] against Dashi,” which was quite accurate; at the time, the Arab Empire was Byzantium’s greatest threat and foe. Finally, he is also quite correct when he says that the state of Fu-lin was bordered to the north by the Khazar Turkic tribes. Constantinople lies across the Black Sea from the Don and Volga River Basins. A branch of one of the Western Turkic peoples, the Khazars, crossed the Volga in the 7th century and occupied the carrefour of the north-south traffic between the Slavs and the Persians and Arabs as well as the east-west communication between China and Europe. The Khazars eventually established a Khanate in the 9th century and became quite prosperous. They did not accept Christianity nor wish to become Muslims, so they practiced Judaism for a time during the 9th–10th centuries.

Silk and Paper 145 Perhaps most significant and eye-opening to the Chinese readers in the Tang Dynasty and even later ages were Du Huan’s descriptions of far-away North Africa facing the western Mediterranean Sea. Du Huan also mentioned a “Mo-lin Kingdom” and reported having crossed a great desert of more than “two thousand li” [one thousand kilometers] to reach this kingdom. The people there were dark and their customs unconstrained. Neither rice nor wheat was grown here. Horses had to eat dry fish and people ate palm dates. Diseases from the miasma were serious. Mo-lin is likely a transliteration of the Arabic word “Maghreb,” which literally means “where the sun sets,” i.e., the west. The “Great Desert” was likely the Western Desert in Egypt and the Libyan Desert. The Mo-lin Kingdom seemed to be on barren land and was inhabited by a rugged people who cultivated few grains. Since horses ate dry fish, this country must not have been very far from the sea. Eating palm dates for food indicates that the region must have had plenty of datebearing palm trees. These facts suggest strongly that Du Huan traveled from Egypt to Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and possibly even Morocco. Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco are still known as the Maghreb, and the indigenous people in these countries are Berbers. The Arabs, mostly soldiers, entered the Maghreb in the late 6th century to the early 7th century and were regarded as alien rulers in Du Huan’s time. Since then, Berbers and Arabs have intermingled and all speak Arabic now, but some still self-identify as Berbers and speak an Amazigh language as well. Du Huan’s Jingxingji records that the residents of Mo-lin belonged to a single people but believed in different religions and followed different laws: The Xun-xun [Manicheist] law allows marriage between one’s own clan members, and such a custom is popular among alien people. When they have their food, they are not allowed to talk. According to the Dashi [Islamic] law, trials should be held in public to determine guilt. When someone is brought to trial, one’s close relatives will not be implicated. [In China, relatives of a condemned criminal were often punished according to law promulgated during the Qin Dynasty in the 3rd century BCE.] They do not worship their parents nor their dead ancestors. They do not believe in ghosts and spirits and worship only the Heaven [Allah or God]. Every seven days, they spend one day as holiday, during which they do not engage in business nor do they receive or pay out money. Instead, they drink and enjoy themselves during the whole day. In addition, the Dashi law stipulates that the flesh of pigs, dogs, donkeys and horses should not be ingested. Du Huan also reported, “the doctors of Da-qin were good at curing dysentery and ailments of the eye. They could foresee the coming of disease, and to cure a certain

146  Silk and Paper ailment in the brain, they could open one’s skull and let worms out.” (These observations about the Da-qin medical practices were probably made during his entire trip from Syria to the Maghreb since most of these areas were still under the rule of Da-qin or the East Roman Empire not long before he visited them in the mid-8th century.) During the Eastern Han (25–220 CE), the great explorer-diplomat Ban Chao sent his deputy Gan Ying to “Da Qin” (the Roman Empire based in Rome) to gather intelligence. After reaching the Persian Gulf, however, he returned to China, unable to complete his mission. Due to his capture and time spent in the Arabian army during the mid-8th century, Du Huan set foot in more foreign lands than Gan Ying ever dreamt of. Du Huan obtained an accurate and detailed understanding of what he observed and was able to author a concise record of his experiences. The earliest Chinese to document the Mediterranean and North Africa was none other than Du Huan!

9

Printing Migrates West, Alphabets Migrate East

About 5,000 years ago, usage of rectangular stamp seals was quite common in Mesopotamia, and at the latest 4,500 years ago cylindrical seals (porcelain or jade) had already appeared in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. The image or mark engraved on the seal was generally employed as a personal signature or to record the content of an agreement, and it could be copied by rolling it onto a flat medium. Because there was no suitable medium, however, a seal’s content could not be widely disseminated. With the invention of paper far away in East Asia during China’s Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), however, incised wooden blocks could be used to “print” in large quantities. Block printing first appeared in the Tang Dynasty (618–907), while movable-type printing was invented in the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127 CE) stimulating widespread distribution of books. Most early Mesopotamian and Egyptian scripts were a mix of pictograms, ideograms, and phonetic symbols. They were very similar to Chinese characters or hanzi that appeared later with their pictographic, combined ideogram, and phonetic components. During the 15th and 14th centuries BCE, however, certain ethnic groups in the Levant (eastern shore of the Mediterranean) began using simple symbols to indicate pronunciation and gradually formed a group of about 20 such symbols. The earliest and most complete set that migrated to other regions was an alphabet invented by the Phoenicians. To serve as examples of cultural interaction within Eurasia, this chapter will touch upon the westward movement of printing technology and the eastward migration of the alphabet. The reader shall see that civilization has indeed progressed to the present via mutual study and enlightened borrowing.

Printing Technology Extends Westward Let’s compare the diffusion of two types of technology from China, their point of origin. Map 9.1 maps the movement of printing know-how, and Map 9.2, paper fabrication. As mentioned in the previous chapter, paper mills appeared in France and Germany in the middle of the 13th and early 14th centuries, respectively, much later than the spread of the secrets of silk processing. But after the era of Europe’s great geographical discoveries by maritime routes, papermaking spread to the Americas and Oceania. DOI: 10.4324/9781003369899-9

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Map 9.1  Spread of printing technology out of China

Map 9.2  Spread of papermaking know-how out of China

Map 9.1 shows the routes taken by printing’s propagation. Printing technology can be divided into two distinct categories, wooden block and moveable type, the invention of the former occurring much earlier. Put simply, block printing is like impressing a seal on a flat surface but on a larger scale; a wood block is prepared as a “relief pattern,” meaning that the area to remain “white” (unprinted) is cut away, while the character or image to appear in “black” is left untouched. Ink is applied to the block surface, which is pressed against the desired medium. Nowadays one can print on various media such as silk, but prior to the Industrial Revolution, a form of paper was the norm. Block printing had appeared by 7th century CE, mainly to produce Buddhist scriptures and images of the Buddha, which greatly benefited the spread of Chinese-style Buddhism. By the Tang, block printing was already a highly developed industry. It wasn’t until the 11th century during the Northern Song that an artisan named Bi Sheng created movable type made of porcelain, an invention inspired by the special nature

Printing Migrates West, Alphabets Migrate East 149 of Chinese hanzi. Each hanzi—numbering in the tens of thousands—required a single, compact, and unique piece of type to reproduce a character that could consist of more than a dozen strokes when written with a brush. Pieces of type were placed within a large frame, arranged according to their pronunciation (including tone), to facilitate selection for typesetting; frequently used pieces in larger numbers, rarely used ones in smaller numbers. Until the Peking University Founder Group invented laser typesetting in 1982, all the world’s Chinese-language publications, including the authoritative People’s Daily, were manually typeset. If a typo occurred in a newspaper or magazine, the editor or the author would emphasize that this was a “hand-made error,” laying the blame on typesetting staff. In today’s world, two peoples—the Chinese and the South Koreans—both believe that they invented block and movable-type printing. I have already briefly described the case for the former, and as it is widely accepted, there is no need to restate here. Nonetheless, the South Koreans believe that their usage of block printing predates that of the Chinese, and as regards movable type, that they were the first to employ metal fonts. It may be true that metal type was first used in South Korea, but while this may qualify as a major improvement, it doesn’t qualify as an “invention.” There exist even more disputes regarding the invention of block printing. Evidence to support the assertion that South Koreans were the first to apply this printing method is not sufficiently solid. The basic evidence is that in 1966 a copy of the Dharani Sutra of Spotless Pure Light printed in hanzi was discovered in South Korea, and the date of its printing is somewhat earlier than any printed matter known to exist in China today. This argument is not conclusive, however, since many volumes of printed Buddhist scriptures and some wooden blocks for printing have also been found in China, with the earliest dating to the reign of Empress Wu of Zhou Dynasty in the mid-7th century. Meanwhile, China’s scholars have conducted considerable research into the history of block printing. Within the edition of Dharani Sutra of Spotless Pure Light currently in South Korea, they have discovered the presence of several hanzi personally created by Empress Wu Zetian (624–705), whose usage ceased after her era. Many Buddhist scriptures were printed while she was alive because she herself was an ardent believer. During her reign, however, the Korean Peninsula was not under her control, so it is unlikely characters she created would have been in use. This suggests that the woodblocks used to print the ancient edition of the sutra currently in South Korea were carved in China during the empress’ reign, and this copy was later transported to the Korean Peninsula by Buddhists. There are others who maintain that printing originated on their soil, and that is the Germans. This assertion is generally accepted in the West because they believe that Germany’s Gutenberg invented printing. In fact, Gutenberg invented a machine that could print using movable type. Unquestionably, once movable type was applied to a language whose script consisted of phonetic symbols, its usage was a game-changer. It is much more convenient to manufacture type for a script based on various versions of the Latin alphabet, with its 20-some odd letters, than on Chinese with its tens of thousands of individual characters.

150  Printing Migrates West, Alphabets Migrate East It was around 1450 that Gutenberg invented his movable-type printing press. As to his sources of inspiration, they are not clear, but there is no doubt that all Europe learned from him. Note that Bi Sheng lived in the 11th century, while Gutenberg was a man of the 15th, a gap of 400 years. During those four centuries, many a Westerner the likes of Marco Polo traveled between Europe and Asia. Could Gutenberg’s invention have been inspired by a Chinese artisan who “created type first, then typeset it”? Note that prior to the 7th century neither Byzantium, Germany, nor Italy had produced any printed texts, because those territories did not even utilize paper. The first text Gutenberg printed was the Bible in Latin, which resulted in a heightened religious atmosphere throughout Europe. In the past, it could only be copied by hand onto sheepskin, which was very costly. In order for the church to maintain its monopoly on the correct interpretation of its holy canon, only priests and monks were permitted to read it, so actual access to and understanding of the Bible among Europeans was effectively restricted to an elite. After fabrication of paper began, an important precondition for reading the Bible was in place, and this resulted in a plethora of personal interpretations that directly weakened the control of the Roman Catholic Church and eventually led to Martin Luther’s early 16thcentury “Protestant Reform.” On the one hand, the Reformation found support among the German-speaking nobility, because they were located in lands far from the Pope in the Vatican and were thus already resistant to his influence. On the other, Martin Luther pointed out that the Holy See was capable of erring and appealed to the faithful to read the Bible on their own. (Interestingly, this thinking is largely consistent with Islamic canon.) Since Christians could now read the text itself, henceforth they were naturally disinclined to show absolute respect for papal authority. With the advent of printing technology, mass production of the Bible became possible. Access to paper lowered production costs as well as the price one paid for a volume. Unquestionably, the application of printing know-how to a letter-based script signaled the dawn of greater prosperity for the culture of that language’s speakers. Due to its non-phonetic nature, Chinese requires a set of at least 5,000 distinctive pieces of type to facilitate printing, not to mention that anyone unable to read that many hanzi cannot digest a typical Chinese text. By comparison, a Spanish-speaking pupil whose written script is highly phonetic can read fluently after just a half year of primary schooling. Letters Relocate Eastward The focus of this section is the eastern spread of the “letter” in the form of an alphabet. Put simply, the premier information revolution engendered the rapid, effective, and concise transmission of information. That it is “concise” is due to the invention of the symbols known as letters. Vowels combined with consonants can spell out the sounds of virtually any language. Letters are relatively succinct, and, in comparison to Egypt’s hieroglyphics, Western Asia’s cuneiform, and China’s oracle bone script, they are more convenient.

Printing Migrates West, Alphabets Migrate East 151 In 21st-century China, however, the importance of letter-based scripts has lessened thanks to the invention of the computer and “smart” Chinese word-processing software that can “anticipate” a word or even generate options to complete a phrase. Many Chinese write so little by hand nowadays that they have trouble recalling how to write certain hanzi. The advantages of moveable-type printing and phonetic scripts remain, if somewhat lessened in the China context. But historically speaking, the invention and spread of both remain profoundly important. The earliest pictographic script that integrated compound ideographic elements was invented by the Sumerians around 4000 BCE. Initially, they pressed glyphs onto clay tablets, but by 3500 BCE, a cuneiform (“wedge-shaped”) script had emerged in Sumerian regions. Impressed with a stylus onto a clay tablet, these symbols employed straight lines, required less strokes, and were simpler than pictographs, and so the cuneiform script gradually spread among other Eastern Semitic-speaking peoples such as the Akkadians, Babylonians, and Syrians, as well as those who spoke an Indo-European tongue like the Hurrians and Hittites. The Egyptians, Hittites, and Cretans also used scripts that combined pictographic and compound ideographic elements, and some hieroglyphs even possessed semiphonetic properties. China’s oracle bone script is very distinct from all the scripts mentioned previously and belongs to another unique system of writing. Hanzi are not very “compatible” with letter-based phonetic scripts. Firstly, Chinese syllables represented in Latin letters cannot easily distinguish the tonal differences in the Chinese language (four tones in Mandarin, seven in Wu dialect centered around

Figure 9.1  Oracle bone script used for divination

152  Printing Migrates West, Alphabets Migrate East Shanghai, and nine in Cantonese, which is spoken in Guangdong and Hong Kong and by much of the Chinese diaspora. The continued usage of many dialects is also a formidable obstacle to a “standardized” letter-based system. Add to this the high frequency of homophones in both single- and multisyllabic words, and one can imagine the difficulties of accurately conveying Chinese sounds using Latin letters. But the motivation of ancient Chinese to use the oracle bone script was identical to that of the Sumerians: To transform spoken language into written symbols. These symbols can be transmitted to one’s own generation or future generations so that collective memory can exceed the limitations of an individual memory. Animals can transfer their experience to other animals with which they have contact, but only humans are capable of transcending the individual in order to pass on experience from group to group and one generation to the next. This is the function of the written word and the reason why interaction involving the written word is the most crucial and meaningful link in communications between civilizations. Once the technique of cuneiform writing had spread widely, people began to represent speech using phonetic symbols. The first to do so were the Semiticspeaking Phoenicians, who invented a simple alphabet comprising 22 consonants. This language family typically comprises just three vowels, and the vowels need not be noted specifically; a literate reader will intuit them. Other languages may possess seven, eight, or even more than ten, so an alphabet must have symbols for vowels. English, for instance, has five-and-a-half single-letter vowels: a, e, i, o, u and a semi-vowel, y, but that ignores its diphthongs (ai, ay, ao, ea, and ou). The great majority of words in the Semitic family are constituted by a set of three consonants, such as SLM or JZR, and voiced by adding a vowel as a prefix or suffix or in between the consonants. For example, the word “Islam” consists of a three-consonant root, “SLM,” and the vowels “i” and “a” are inserted to endow this gerund with the meaning “submission.” When Semitic-speaking people ruled West Asia, and even during the period when the Persians, who spoke an Indo-European language, entered Mesopotamia, the various ethnic groups in the Middle East continued to speak and write a kind of Syriac known as Aramaic, the language of Jesus of Nazareth. The various forms of Aramaic share a common script, and even today, there are still tens of thousands of people in Syria who can speak a dialect that is very similar to ancient Aramaic. After the Romans conquered Syria and Christianity spread to Syria, there evolved a Syriac script that basically consisted of employing cursive Aramaic symbols to spell a western dialect of Aramaic. (Because Syria’s modern inhabitants employ the Arabic script, to distinguish between the two, this once-popular alphabet is often referred to as “ancient Syriac script.”) Belief in Manichaeism and Nestorian-Christianity was widespread in West Asia, so their scriptures were written using the Syriac script as well. But each had its own unique characteristics that distinguished them as “Manichaean” or “Nestorian-Christian” Syriac. Both were written horizontally from right to left.

Printing Migrates West, Alphabets Migrate East 153 Sogdian Script in China As mentioned earlier, the Sogdians traded widely, and gradually some were influenced by Syrians and Persians who believed in Manichaeism or Nestorianism, which led the Sogdians to abandon Zoroastrianism in favor of these other faiths. Sogdian is a branch of Iranian and belongs to the Indo-European language family, while the Syriac script is derived from Aramaic, a Semitic language that belongs to the Afro-Asiatic family of languages. The pronunciation and grammar of the two differ markedly. The Sogdians combined the Aramaic and Syriac scripts with Sogdian pronunciation and grammar to create a unique Sogdian script. In tandem with the Sogdians’ west-to-east migration, the Sogdian alphabet gradually spread to China’s Xinjiang, the Hexi Corridor, and Inner Mongolia, impacting scripts that are still in use among certain ethnicities in today’s China. The earliest inhabitants of Xinjiang in China’s northwest were the Tocharians. Parts of their script were borrowed from the curved Brahmi alphabet found among the Sanskrit scriptures of early Buddhism, while others adopted letters from the Kharosthi script that was employed in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent. So the Tocharian texts on display in contemporary museums are basically variations of these two ancient Indian scripts. After the 9th century, the principle residents of Karakhoja (Gaochang in Mandarin), an ancient kingdom in the Turpan region, were Huihu from the Mongolian Plateau. The Huihu did not possess a script of their own. After the Sogdians brought Manichaeism and Nestorianism to Xinjiang and the Hexi Corridor, many Huihu became aware of the Sogdian script via the scriptures of these faiths. In accordance with the specific characteristics of spoken Huihu, they adapted Sogdian letters to create a Huihu script. It should be noted that Sogdian was an Indo-European language, while Huihu was an Altaic language spoken by a Turkic people. The task of adapting the Sogdian script to use by the Huihu was arguably no less challenging than the earlier hardship encountered by the Sogdians when they adapted Syriac—a Semito-Hamitic language spoken by Semitic peoples that belongs to the Afro-Asiatic family of languages—to the needs of Sogdian, which is a branch of Eastern Iranian, a member of the Indo-European family of languages. An additional complicating factor was the fact that the Huihu, having lived on the margins of Han culture circle for generations, were accustomed to the vertical writing of hanzi. So when the Huihu created their unique script, they did so by rotating the Sogdian text 90 degrees counterclockwise, and then wrote it from top to bottom like Chinese. See Figures 9.2 to 9.4 for examples of Sogdian, Huihu, and Mongolian scripts: Figure 9.2 is a letter penned in Sogdian during the 4th century by a China-based Sogdian businessman, intended for his family who were living in Transoxiana; Figure 9.3 is Huihu script and Figure 9.4 shows Mongolian script. When Genghis Khan set out westward to extend his empire in the 13th century, he first arrived in eastern Xinjiang. The local Huihu quickly collaborated with him, and officials and scholars did his bidding. His advisor regarding Daoist matters was the

154  Printing Migrates West, Alphabets Migrate East

Figure 9.2  Sogdian script

illustrious “Master Changchun”; his advisor for Buddhist affairs was a Khitan, Yelü Chucai; and he also designated two Huihu ministers to advise him regarding the creation of additional scripts for the Mongols who were soon to rule over a huge empire. These two scholars adapted letters from the existing Huihu script to spell Mongolian. Since Mongolian is an Altaic language as was Huihu, the difference

Printing Migrates West, Alphabets Migrate East 155

Figure 9.3  Huihu script

between the two was not particularly great. When Nurhachi unified Manchuria and married a Mongolian princess, around 1620 he ordered two scholars thoroughly familiar with Mongolian script to invent a Manchu script, a bold move not unlike Genghis Khan’s calling on Huihu ministers to create a script for Mongolian; such was the origin of so-called Old Manchu. Mongolian and Manchu looked rather similar, however, so in order to clarify the latter’s pronunciation and ambiguities in its grammar, Abahai (Huangtaiji in Chinese, founder of the Qing Dynasty) ordered a Mongolian scholar to add diacritical marks to the Manchu alphabet, which

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Figure 9.4  Mongolian script

resulted in New Manchu script. This form was officially promoted by the authorities, so archived documents and the plaques that decorate Beijing’s Forbidden City feature Manchu with curious dots and circles. Chart 9.1 illustrates the evolution and dissemination of letters. The earliest letters were those of the Phoenicians, who were based in Beirut and surrounding areas. The Phoenician consonantal alphabet spread to Greece in the northern Mediterranean, but Greek was a different type of language; Phoenician did not have letters representing vowels, and vowel sounds were indicated with diacritical marks placed above consonants. So the Greeks invented letters for vowels, such as α (alpha), and combined them with consonants like β (beta), which resulted in a complete set of letters now known as an “alphabet.” Thanks to this 9th-century BCE invention, literary masterpieces such as Homer’s oral epics, the Iliad and Odyssey, have been passed down to us.

Printing Migrates West, Alphabets Migrate East 157

Chart 9.1  Evolution and dissemination of letters

In the 7th century BCE, the Latin alphabet evolved from the Greek alphabet. Latin is also an Indo-European language. By the 10th century CE, the Slavs began to interact with the Greeks. A relatively backward society at the time, the Slavs possessed no script and/or common faith, and the Greeks converted them to belief in the Eastern Orthodox Church. In order to translate the Greek Bible into Slavic, a pair of Greek brothers named Cyril and Methodius created a new set of letters based on Greek uncials (capitals), now known as Cyrillic. This is the origin of all Slavic scripts, such as those used in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Serbia today. In western Asia, the earliest people to come into contact with written Phoenician were the Hebrews. They transformed it into Hebrew letters and used this ancient Hebrew to record the Bible, the Ten Commandments brought down from Mt. Sinai by Moses, and so forth. In the 1950s, several caches of ancient Jewish and Christian documents were discovered near the Dead Sea that borders Israel and Jordan. Known as the “Dead Sea Scrolls,” they were also written in ancient Hebrew. Today, Israel is the sole country where Hebrew is widely written, but it is a hybrid created by linguists that combines ancient Hebrew letters with the spoken language of 19th-century Jews from Eastern Europe. Due to the effects of the diaspora, Jews in Germany spoke German, those in Russia spoke Russian, and prior to 1948, many Jews in Eastern Europe also used Yiddish to communicate with one

158  Printing Migrates West, Alphabets Migrate East another; none spoke Hebrew as it was more than two millennia ago. For religious rites, Hebrew is pronounced as it is believed to have been spoken in ancient times, but only a few people have mastered it; thus to a certain extent today’s Hebrew is a new, “synthetic” language. Some ancient Hebrews later proceeded to Yemen, and from Yemen to Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa, where they established a government. The 4th-century Ethiopians were Christian, and they adopted Hebrew letters to create a script, Ge’ez, for use in religious texts. Today’s official Ethiopian script, Amharic, evolved from Ge’ez and consists of 105 letters. By comparison, Hebrew has just 22, and Greek 24. From 7th century BCE to 5th century CE, Aramaic was dominant throughout the Middle East. The region’s peoples and languages were numerous, but Aramaic—spoken and written—was the lingua franca as English is today. Aramaic later spread to the area that is now Jordan, and the Nabataean, a trading people who were among the ancestors of the Arabs. They borrowed from written Aramaic to create a Nabataean script, and in turn, the Arabs eventually adapted that script to create one of their own. After the emergence of Islam, this script then served as the basis for the Arabic script used up to the present. In today’s world, Arabic is the official national language of 22 countries. In addition, many peoples use the Arabic script to write their own language, among which perhaps most familiar to the Chinese are the Uyghurs of northwestern China. Slightly altered Arabic script is also the basis for scripts currently used in Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, as well as territories of the former Ottoman and Mughal Empires. Due to ease of use and computerization, some former users of Arabic script, such as Turkey and Uzbekistan, have swapped it for Latin letters. In a move against this trend, however, Uyghur text—Romanized during 1966 to 1976—restored the use of its modified Arabic writing in the 1980s. I have previously chronicled Aramaic’s eastward migration. To summarize: It gradually developed into a written form known as Syriac, from which were derived scripts used by Manichaeans and Nestorian Christians, and went on to influence the Sogdian alphabet. In turn, written Sogdian inspired the Huihu script, Huihu was used as basis for the development for Mongolian, which itself served as the model for spelling Manchu, mother tongue of China’s Qing Dynasty rulers. Beginning with the Huihu, letters underwent a striking evolution that differentiated them from phonetic systems originating further west: Huihu was written vertically, and two other scripts that were inspired by it, Mongolian and Manchu, treated this as a standard. Doubtless this was due to long-term contact of these peoples with the Han Chinese. Figure 9.5 is an image of a bilingual plaque adorning the Forbidden City’s “Palace of Heavenly Purity,” featuring Chinese and Manchu (right). The current, westernmost usage of a Manchu script is found in Xinjiang’s Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County, inhabited by the Xibe people (like the Manchu, a Tungusic-speaking people) who were garrisoned there after they were relocated from China’s northeast during the 18th century. In today’s Beijing, only a few scholars have mastered Manchu, but many Xibe can still read and write their form of the language.

Printing Migrates West, Alphabets Migrate East 159

Figure 9.5  Bilingual plaque with Manchu at right (“Palace of Heavenly Purity”)

From this chapter we know that the Silk Road was primarily driven by the silk trade, but aside from the circulation of goods, culture was also “trafficked.” Thanks to this commerce, phonetic symbols originating in West Asia began their migration in the 13th century BCE and some three millennia later inspired the Manchu script in East Asia. Interaction between human civilizations is indeed a wonderful phenomenon. It is also intriguing to note that on today’s Chinese paper currency, the renminbi, besides the hanzi for “People’s Bank of China,” one finds the same phrase

160  Printing Migrates West, Alphabets Migrate East printed in hanyu pinyin (Romanized Chinese), Tibetan, Mongolian, Uyghur, and Zhuang (also Romanized). Tibetan aside (since the origins of its letters are not easily ascertained), the other three scripts of these four languages have all evolved from a consonantal alphabet created by Phoenicians on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean!

10 Origins and Spread of Islamic Civilization

In 7th century CE, while the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires were engaged in a long-term struggle that weakened one another, Islam emerged in the Arabian Peninsula, south of the Fertile Crescent where human civilization originated. Islamic forces quickly unified the Arabian Peninsula, seized Byzantine territories in the Levantine (Syria, Palestine) and North Africa (Egypt and the Maghreb to the west), and occupied all of the Persian Empire, which led to the conversion to Islam of peoples in Persia’s cultural sphere. Within just one hundred years of the death of its founder Muhammad, Islam had reached the Atlantic Ocean in North Africa, controlled the Iberian Peninsula, entered the southwest of present-day France, and extended its reach to the Indus Valley in South Asia and in the east to Lake Balkhash in what is now Kazakhstan. Such a rapid expansion of Islamic power was a manifestation of its formidable religious and military strength, a fascinating case study in the development of human civilization, and constitutes a unique process of construction of what later generations have dubbed “Islamic civilization.”

Arabian Peninsula: Geographic and Cultural Backstory Islam was born in the 7th century CE, by which time societies across the Eurasian continent already had a long history of cultural exchange. There is plenty of physical evidence for this, such as the discovery of a small, dainty silver coffret from West Asia that made its way by sea to where it was discovered in the Nanyue King’s tomb in Guangzhou, at the mouth of the Pearl River Delta. After Han Dynasty diplomat Zhang Qian explored the “Western Regions”—China’s term for remote destinations in Central Asia—land-based interactions across Eurasia also increased significantly. Map 10.1 shows pre-Islamic (ca. 6th century) West Asia, Southeast Europe, and North Africa. At the end of the 4th century, the Roman Empire had split into two; Italy was the center of the Western Roman Empire, with its capital in Rome, while the Eastern Roman Empire was centered on Greece, with its capital in Constantinople (aka Byzantium, now Istanbul). After the Sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410, the eastern part still called itself the Roman Empire, while later scholars termed it DOI: 10.4324/9781003369899-10

162  Origins and Spread of Islamic Civilization

Map 10.1  Pre-Islamic (ca. 6th century CE) West Asia, Southeast Europe, and North Africa

the Eastern Roman Empire or the Byzantine Empire in order to distinguish it from the erstwhile Roman Empire. To the east of the Byzantine Empire was the Persian Empire, then governed by the Sassanian Dynasty. The Sassanians believed in Zoroastrianism, also known as Mazdayasna. In 392 CE, the Roman Empire officially adopted Christianity, ending a long period of persecution. After the conversion of Emperor Constantine’s mother, there were no restrictions on Christian activity. At this time, Christianity in the Roman Empire and Zoroastrianism in the Sassanian Empire incarnated the face-off pitting East vs. West, recalling the 490 BCE Battle of Marathon in which the Persians invaded Greece, and Alexander the Great’s 4th-century BCE campaign to vanquish all of Persia. In brief, the Byzantines and Persians were in a prolonged standoff, with constant military conflicts that strained their respective finances, heightened the tax burden, and caused the common folk on both sides to complain bitterly. Situated between the two great empires but outside their spheres of influence was the Arabian Peninsula. The climate is unsuitable for agriculture, with only a few oases, barren mountains, sprawling deserts, and higher ground in the west that

Origins and Spread of Islamic Civilization 163

Figure 10.1  Petra’s Hazna Palace

tilts gradually from southwest to northeast, toward the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia. Developing a thriving economy would be difficult, though the environment can support a certain population, but the peninsula’s location has made it historically strategic. Figure 10.1 shows Petra in the northwest corner of the peninsula (present-day Jordan), straddling the gorge between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba. Valuable wares from the east, such as spices and silks, were transferred here to the west,

164  Origins and Spread of Islamic Civilization and Petra (Raqmu) was once home to a small but extraordinarily wealthy kingdom called Nabataea. The Nabateans spoke a tongue that was quite close to Arabic, and one could even say that they were Arabs based in the north. At the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula is Yemen. Early on, Yemen’s myrrh and frankincense were transported along the Arabian coast northward to Syria, Egypt, and Europe, and as far east as India and China. With its high topography, Yemen also served as a major thoroughfare, and traffic and trade between India and the Mediterranean generally had to pass through its territory. Western Yemen faces Eritrea and Ethiopia across the Red Sea, and it is separated from Djibouti and Africa at the narrow point where the Gulf of Aden meets the southern end of the Red Sea. One of the two tributaries of the Nile, the Blue Nile, originates in Ethiopia and joins the White Nile, in Khartoum, Sudan. Inhabitants of the Ethiopian highlands are likely descendants of a long-standing mixture of the early Bantus (darkerskinned, flat-nosed, thick-lipped) of Central Africa, the Middle and Lower Nile populations, and Yemenis with their lighter skin, pointed noses, and thin lips. Today the populations of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia, though divided into nearly 100 tribal and linguistic groups, are mostly dark-skinned and have pointed noses and thin lips. The recently independent Republic of Eritrea was once part of Ethiopia, guardian of the Red Sea—gateway to the Indian Ocean—and traditionally a key transport hub linking Africa, Europe, and Asia. Legend has it that there was once a Kingdom of Sheba in ancient Yemen whose ruler was a beautiful queen. She heard that Solomon, king of the Jews, was wise and strong, so she went to Jerusalem to visit him. King Solomon invited her to reside in his palace, and Queen Sheba agreed, but on condition that King Solomon not lay his hands on her. “I shall not touch you as long as you do not touch what is mine,” replied the king. At mealtime, King Solomon served her very salty dishes. In the evening, Queen Sheba was so thirsty that she took a sip of water. “Since you have touched that which is mine, I am now free to touch you,” said the king. According to Ethiopian legend, ten months later Queen Sheba gave birth to a boy. After she returned home to Yemen, she crossed the sea and conquered Ethiopia, and her child by King Solomon thus became the first king of Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s relationship with the Arabian Peninsula was very close, and occasionally the Ethiopian army crossed the Red Sea and set foot on the Arabian Peninsula. In 570 CE, the Ethiopian (Axumite) governor—a Christian—stationed in Yemen marched upon Mecca with a large army, including war elephants, intending to demolish the Kaaba, Islam’s holiest site. It is said that the Prophet Muhammad was born in the “Year of the Elephant,” in commemoration of this event. Ethiopia is where coffee originated. At one point the Ethiopian army laid siege to Yemen, and Ethiopia’s soldiers reportedly sustained themselves by eating nutritious clumps of lamb fat mixed with fine granules of coffee beans to invigorate them. Not long thereafter, the coffee plant was probably transplanted to the city of Mocha on southern Yemen’s Red Sea coast. As coffee spread throughout the Middle East, “Arabica coffee” gained a reputation for the most authentic taste. It is ground

Origins and Spread of Islamic Civilization 165 using the fruit (coffee beans) of the Mocha plant, known for its relatively small pits and deep, rich flavor. Savvy coffee enthusiasts know, of course, that these beans should not be confused with the American concoction—also dubbed “mocha”— which consists of a sweet mixture of ordinary coffee, chocolate, and milk. During 525–575, Byzantium participated in the occupation of Yemen by Abyssinia (Ethiopia). In 575, the Persian army expelled the Abyssinians, and Yemen became a province of Persia’s Sassanian Empire until it was recovered by the Muslim army in 628. At the time, the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula were divided into many tribes that basically spoke the same language, but each tribe had its own divinities. On the western side of the peninsula along the Red Coast lay a very important commercial route. Although Yemen’s Mediterranean-bound goods could be transported via the Red Sea, the waves were high and dangerous and seafaring knowhow was relatively backward, so wares sourced from Asia such as Chinese silk and porcelain and Indian cotton and spices were generally unloaded at the southernmost tip of the peninsula and transported by camel to the Mediterranean world via Mecca, Medina, Haber, Tabuk, and Petra. Mecca was then the most important town on this trade route and the peninsula’s religious, political, economic, and cultural center. So, once each year Mecca hosted a vast gathering of Arabs when members of each tribe made a pilgrimage to pray to their respective deity. The famous market of Okaz took place then, and with its thriving merchandise sales and poetry competitions, it became an important source of income for Mecca. The poetry competitions are worth mentioning. The Mecca-based Quraysh dialect of Arabic is rhythmic and rhymes easily, and the nomads who normally inhabited the interior of the peninsula enjoyed reciting poetry when at leisure, so each year in Mecca at this time there would be competitions in which storytelling was done in verse form. These rhyming oral texts later deeply influenced the style of the Qur’an. Beginning with the Roman expulsion of the Jews from Jerusalem, many Jewish communities appeared on the Arabian Peninsula. By the 7th century CE, the peninsular Arabs would not have been strangers to either Jews or Judaism. Prior to the advent of Islam, the religions popular in the northern part of the peninsula and its periphery were Byzantine Christianity and Zoroastrianism of the Sassanians. According to the faith started by Abraham, God made Adam and Eve, ancestors of humankind, and put them in the Garden of Eden. God told Adam and Eve that they could enjoy everything in the garden, save the “forbidden fruit.” But the devil transformed into a snake and lured them to eat of the fruit, claiming it would endow them with wisdom. Upon ingesting it, Adam and Eve suddenly became aware of their nakedness and felt ashamed, and tried to cover their bodies. This was humankind’s “Original Sin,” for which God cast them out of the Garden of Eden for eternity. And what was it that Adam and Eve used to conceal their nudity? A fig leaf. So, in today’s English, “fig leaf” is used figuratively to convey covering up behavior or an object that is embarrassing or distasteful with something that appears innocuous.

166  Origins and Spread of Islamic Civilization Christianity later drew on the existing framework of Judaism and injected into it an entirely new concept, “redemption.” This is an idea that had not been particularly emphasized by Jews in the past, but it was quite widespread in the Mediterranean world and not unique to Christianity. One result of this popular concept was the emergence of a Jew who perceived himself as the Messiah foretold in the Torah. He believed in the need to sacrifice himself in order to atone for the sins of others with his own blood, which is the raison d’être of redemptive religion. This man was Jesus. The word Christos is Greek for “anointed,” or mashiyach in Hebrew, transliterated as “Messiah” in English. In the 7th century CE, Christianity was the state religion of the Byzantine Empire, and the Egyptians, who were governed by the Byzantines, had long believed in Christianity. Organized Christianity in Egypt is known as the Coptic Church, for the Romans referred to Egypt as “Copt,” a term possibly derived from Greek or Arabic. This sect has a unique creed, the belief that Jesus was totally divine, that differs from the doctrine of the Trinity as espoused by the Latin and Greek churches. To this day about 5–10 percent of Egyptians are followers of the Coptic Church. Zoroastrianism’s doctrine, rituals, and prayers have been preserved in Avesta, a book written in Avestan, an ancient language that classifies as a form of early Iranian, to which new content in medieval Persian was added in the Middle Ages. Based on Avesta, Ahura Mazda is “Creator of the Universe” and the highest deity in Zoroastrianism. Because this religion possessed a written canon and only one main deity, in the future when Muslims came to dominate, Zoroastrianism would be officially recognized as a monotheistic religion along with Judaism and Christianity. Practitioners were considered “People of the Books” and thus protected under Sharia law. Muhammad Establishes Islam In Muhammad’s time, the Arabian Peninsula was governed by tribes and clans throughout the region, and there was no unified Arab kingdom or empire. He himself came from the Quraysh tribe that governed Mecca, but he was not born into a prominent family and his father died early in Muhammad’s childhood. He was raised by his grandfather and later cared for by his father’s elder brother. This uncle had a son much younger than Muhammad, his cousin Ali. As a youth, Muhammad often accompanied his uncle to Damascus on business, and since it was then an important Christian city, he had some knowledge of Christianity. At the age of 25, he married his employer, a wealthy 40-year-old widow by whom he had a daughter named Fatima. Muhammad loved to absorb himself in contemplation and often went alone to the countryside for profound meditation. Muslims believe that one day in the course of his meditations, Muhammad heard the voice of Jibril, an angel dispatched by Allah, and Jibril delivered Allah’s wahy (revelation) to Muhammad, and began to dictate the Qur’an. In Arabic, the word for god in both its Christian and Muslim senses is “Allah,” while the Chinese terms are “Shangdi” and “Zhenzhu” respectively. Jibril, who appears in the Qur’an, and the biblical Gabriel are references to the same angel.

Origins and Spread of Islamic Civilization 167 Muhammad later told everyone what he had heard from the angel, and some literate persons wrote them down. Some wrote on palm leaves, some on tree bark, and some engraved them in stone. After Muhammad passed, these texts were compiled into the Qur’an. For Muhammad, Allah’s most important principle was that one must never worship other idols; Allah was the one and only God, and worshipping any other was wrong. In addition to the 20 or so prophets from Abraham to Moses and Jesus, now there was another Prophet, Muhammad. Allah informed Muhammad that he would be the last and entitled him the “Seal of the Prophets” (in Arabic, Khatam an-Nabiyyin), i.e., Allah’s final messenger. Muhammad’s earliest followers were his wife, an Ethiopian domestic slave, his paternal cousin Ali, and several friends. Later, as his flock grew, Mecca’s authorities realized that if all worship centered upon just one deity, the city would lose the handsome economic benefits it obtained from hosting various tribes who gathered there annually to venerate a host of deities. Henceforth, Muslims were severely persecuted by the local ruling clique, and at one point, Muhammad even sent the women and children of his devotees to Ethiopia for their safety. In 622, inspired by a sign from Allah, Muhammad decided to secretly relocate from Mecca to Medina. It transpired that a conflict had arisen among three tribes in Medina, and the parties invited Muhammad to act as arbitrator. Muhammad brought two or three hundred believers with him to Medina, and they became the mainstay of what was to become the Islamic community. This migration is known as the Hejira, and it represented the beginning of a new era. Thus 622 CE is Year One in the Islamic calendar. Mecca and Medina are regarded as Islam’s two holiest cities. Mecca is the place where Muhammad accepted Allah’s revelations, and it became the sacred destination for pilgrims undertaking the Hajj. Medina is where he lived out the last decade of his life. Islam’s third holiest city is Jerusalem. According to the Qur’an, summoned by Allah one night, Muhammad rode Buraq—a mythical creature often portrayed as a winged steed with a human head—from Mecca to Jerusalem, where he rose to Paradise from the boulder upon which Ibrahim had once sacrificed a ram (instead of his son Isaac). This is the origin of the festival known to Muslims as the “Night of the Ascent” (Shab-e-Miraj). Later generations built a mosque in the place where Muhammad climbed into the sky, also known as the Dome of the Rock (Figure 10.2). Not far from the dome’s golden cupola is the Western Wall, the remains of the Second Temple (Beit HaMikdash HaSheni) that stood on the Temple Mount between 516 BCE and 70 CE. It represents the most sacred site for Jews, and crowds of believers go there daily to weep loudly for their misdeeds. It is popularly known as the “Wailing Wall.” Many believe that the Jewish diaspora is God’s punishment for the sins of their people, but all Jews who visit the Wailing Wall can find roots at this site. After his arrival in Medina, Muhammad was no longer just a religious leader, he also acquired the status of political and military leader. This signifies that right from its origins, Islam practiced unity of state and religion. When the Qur’an was compiled after Muhammad’s death, it was divided into two parts according to the place where Muhammad conveyed Allah’s revelations to his disciples: Mecca and Medina.

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Figure 10.2  A view of Jerusalem with the Dome of the Rock visible at top right

Among the Medinan surahs, many deal with topics such as interpersonal relationships, the relationship of people with their government, and religious commandments. The Meccan surahs, which are relatively shorter and placed near the end of the Qur’an, discuss mainly theological enlightenment, doctrine, and other religious matters. The Qur’an is the main legal basis of Islam. Later generations formed different schools of Islamic jurisprudence based on different interpretations of the Qur’an, including scholarly annotations over the centuries. While Muhammad was alive, the Qur’an was written down on the spot by a number of scribes as Muhammad dictated them, and those fragments were left in the possession of some of his followers. In 633 the first official “Rightly Guided” Caliph, Abu Bakr, ordered a mushaf (Arabic for a codex or collection of sheets) to be compiled therefrom. In 645–646, the third Caliph Uthman ibn Affan (aka Osman) commissioned what has come to be known as the Uthman Qur’an, for which experts determined the standard pronunciation. In 630, Muhammad personally led troops to attack Mecca, but Mecca’s ruling clique surrendered after negotiations, whereupon he and the masses entered the

Origins and Spread of Islamic Civilization 169 Kaaba and destroyed all the idols representing the pagan gods of various Arab tribes. Muhammad died in 632, having vanquished or converted most of the tribes in the Arabian Peninsula during his lifetime. For nearly 1,400 years thereafter, Muslims around the world set out on the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, during which they essentially repeat a series of rituals once performed by Muhammad. They include Entering Ihram (donning a plain garment, accepting a strict set of rules), prayers, tawaf (circumambulation of the Kaaba seven times in a counterclockwise direction), and Stoning of the Devil (ramy al-jamarat). The “Five Pillars” of Islam stipulates that, provided he or she has the means, every Muslim should make the pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime in order to follow the example of Muhammad. Muhammad and his first wife, Khadija, had a daughter named Fatimah, whom he married to his cousin Ali. Aisha, youngest daughter of Muhammad’s close friend Abu Bakr (the first caliph after Muhammad’s death), was Muhammad’s last wife and only 16 years old when they wed. Later, in the midst of internecine conflict for leadership of the Muslims, Aisha opposed Ali and even rode a camel into battle against him, which was a great blow to Ali and certainly had an impact on Muslim unity. Ali was later assassinated by a supporter who was extremely disappointed in him. Strongly influenced by Confucianism, Han Chinese attach great importance to proper relations within the clan and consider it unethical for a male patrilineal cousin to become one’s son-in-law; for him to marry the youngest daughter of an old friend is also worthy of reproach. But many other ethnicities do not share this viewpoint. I wrote earlier about the practice among northern nomads in which a son was obligated to marry his father’s widow, provided she was not his biological mother. But for a long time, the Han custom permitted marriage between cousins of different surnames, such as the famous poet Lu You in Southern Song Dynasty and his cousin Tang Wan. Therefore, we must avoid applying our own beliefs or modern standards to other societies or peoples in the past. Nowadays, some Westerners are used to judging China according to their own subjective beliefs, and many Chinese also judge others according to our own ethical views. Both phenomena are problematic. When Islam first emerged, Arabia was still in the “Age of Obscurantism,” and there were many customs that seem “uncivilized” today, such as blood feuds, slavery, polygamy, and usury. Sharia law made specific provisions in these areas, such as the Qur’anic prohibition against taking more than four wives, which was actually a restriction in the historical context of the time. The Qur’an also emphasizes the principle of equality in marriage by stipulating that a man should treat each spouse equally, not only in material terms, but also in terms of affection. Prior to Islam, wives were considered mere chattel. The need to struggle for women’s rights in the Islamic world is globally acknowledged, and many modern Muslim women demand it too. Aisha is often mentioned as proof that the status of early Muslim women was hardly low. Saudi Arabia has recently passed a law allowing women to drive cars, yet in the countryside, females are even now promised in marriage while still children. In fact, in Muhammad’s era there was a provision that upon marriage each spouse contributed to the family’s assets, and upon divorce, each was permitted to

170  Origins and Spread of Islamic Civilization depart with a portion thereof. This was tantamount to treating marriage as a covenant, and this custom has prevailed to our times. In Islam, a woman’s remarriage has never been a social taboo; women can remarry as long as this takes place more than three months after the divorce (or after the birth of the child if the woman was pregnant at the time of divorce). On the other hand, a negative attitude towards remarriage of women, whether widowed or divorced, existed in traditional Chinese society for many centuries, and it has not disappeared entirely even in post-1949 China. From these examples, one can see that when it comes to interactions among civilizations, mutual understanding is very important. Islamic Civilization Muhammad began his surreptitious relocation to Medina in 622 CE, the year that marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. It is a lunar calendar. Each month commences with the appearance of a new moon and lasts 29 or 30 days, and therefore a year consists of 354 or 355 days. According to the Islamic calendar, this year—2021 CE—is year 1442 in the Hijri calendar. Today in Muslim-majority countries like Pakistan and Iran, the Islamic era is standard. According to the Hijri, religious festivals are fixed on a certain month or day, so from the viewpoint of the solar-based Gregorian calendar, the seasons appear to vary from year to year. What is most noticeable to non-Muslims is that Ramadan (the ninth month of the Islamic calendar) takes place in different months (even seasons), as does the Hajj. The Hijri clearly evolved from the lunisolar Jewish calendar, which in turn was influenced by the Babylonian calendar. Nomads or long-distance traders naturally observed the moon at night, so it made sense to use a lunar calendar. Promulgated by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, the Gregorian calendar now widely used in the non-Muslim world is itself a revised version of the Western Julian calendar that dates back to Julius Caesar’s era. China adopted the solar calendar in 1912, when the Republic of China was established. Since ancient times until very recently, China was a fundamentally agricultural society. It was crucial to understand how the sun affected the seasons, but ancient Chinese also heeded the visible waxing and waning of the moon. China’s yin-yang calendar was actually lunisolar as well, i.e., the length of a month was determined by the moon’s recurring evolution, while the number of days in a year was a “tropical year” in which the year was defined as the period between successive equinoxes. Every few years, this yin-yang calendar required adjusting the date for one of the 24 “solar periods” and the addition of a leap month. This is why the calendar was formally adjusted each time one dynasty replaced another. When the Ming Dynasty was founded, Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang appointed a Central Asian Muslim to the post of Director of the Imperial Observatory, who used the Huihui Li (Islamic calendar) as a benchmark for the Ming calendar. Under the Qing, a Jesuit priest, Johann Adam Schall von Bell, was among those tasked by Emperor Shunzhi with revising the calendar.

Origins and Spread of Islamic Civilization 171 As mentioned earlier, by 732 CE, exactly 100 years after the Prophet Muhammad’s death, Muslim power had taken control of the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa, and also extended to the Indus and Samarkand in Central Asia. In other words, in just a century, the power of the Arab-Muslim Empire had reached the Pyrenees in the north, the Atlantic Ocean in the west, and as far east as the borders of the Tang Dynasty, making it the most rapidly formed empire in history. Thirty years after Muhammad’s death, infighting broke out among the Muslim leadership and Muawiyeh, the Syrian governor, sought to seize power from Ali, the fourth Rashidun Caliph. Muawiyeh triumphed, established himself as caliph, moved the capital from Medina to Damascus, which he knew well, and established the Umayyad Dynasty, known as the “White-robed Dashi” in Chinese history. By 750, descendants of Mohammed’s uncle Abbas united with Persian Muslims to overthrow the Umayyads and moved the capital from Damascus to the Iraqi region near Persia. They established the Abbasid Dynasty, known in Chinese history as the “Black-robed Dashi.” The Abbasids quickly decided to build another new capital, Baghdad, where they constructed a hospital and a large library called the Palace of Wisdom. They recruited experts in Judaism, Christianity, and Manichaeism and other scholars to translate classical works from Greece, Persia, and India into Arabic, which became known as the “Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement.” Through a hundred years of continuous efforts, the Abbasids created a glorious Islamic-Arab civilization during the 10th–12th centuries, leading Europe and even China in philosophy, jurisprudence, theology, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and chemistry, a time widely recognized as the “Golden Age of Islamic Civilization.” The Mongols overthrew the Abbasid Caliphate in 1258, the caliph was executed, and Islam suffered severe trauma as a result. The Mongol leader of this conquest was Hulagu, one of Genghis Khan’s grandsons and brother of Kublai Khan. Strikingly, within another 100 years the conquerors had all converted to Islam and continued to rule, albeit via various khanates. In fact, most of Central Asia was ruled by the descendants of Genghis Khan until occupation by the Russians in the 19th century. The locals even believed that people who could not claim blood ties with Genghis Khan, i.e., members of the “Golden Clan,” were not their legitimate rulers. During the 10th–13th centuries, the Muslim-ruled Iberian Peninsula was the most economically and culturally advanced region in Western Europe. Output of cash crops such as oranges and olives soared, the leather industry developed, and shipbuilding and marine navigation know-how were cutting edge. Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived under the same government, and interaction between different ideologies occurred without conflict. Modern European scholars agree that Spain’s Córdoba was the most culturally progressive place in Europe of that era. This period was the “Golden Age of Jewish Scholarship,” the beginning of Christianity’s return to humanism from mysticism, and also the most innovative period for Islamic philosophy, theology, and jurisprudence. Jewish scholars offered many new interpretations of the Talmud, the primary source of Jewish religious

172  Origins and Spread of Islamic Civilization law and theology. Arab philosophers delved into the philosophy of ancient Greece, among them Ibn Rushd (Averroes), who lived in 12th-century southern Spain. He espoused Aristotelianism and attempted to explain the origins of the universe in terms of matters moving in time, and proposed the notion that knowledge based on divine revelation should be compatible with that arrived at by human reason. These religious and philosophical writings, as well as some Arabic works on geography and maritime navigation, were gradually translated into Latin in Spain or Sicily and proved influential in Europe’s coming Renaissance. In particular, Averroes’ ideas about faith and reason influenced the 13th-century Christian theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas advocated this view, attempting to give Christian faith a rational basis, and he became the most influential scholar of preRenaissance Christian philosophy and theology. After centuries of economic revival and scientific progress, the Iberian Christians undertook their two-century “Reconquista” beginning in the 13th century, gradually pushing the Muslim Moors of Spain and Portugal toward southern Iberia. In 1492, the year Columbus arrived in the Americas, under Queen Isabella Spain drove the last Muslim rulers across the Strait of Gibraltar, triggering the mass exodus of Muslims and Jews to Morocco and the Ottoman Empire, then at its peak. Despite the Iberian debacle, Islamic civilization continued to expand after 1500. The Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires still controlled vast territories and large populations (Map 10.2). In Africa, areas south of the Sahara Desert, the east

Map 10.2  Three principal Islamic empires during 1500–1800

Origins and Spread of Islamic Civilization 173 coast, and central Africa; most of the Indian subcontinent; all of Central Asia; and much of Southeast Asia also fell within the sphere of Islamic civilization. Islam’s influence reached as far east as Mindanao in the southeastern Philippines, where today many of the island’s inhabitants are Muslims, known as “Moros”—literally, natives of Morocco—because the Spaniards who colonized the Philippines used the term as a synonym for “Muslim.” Spanish occupation of the northern Philippines in 1565, however, put a halt to the expansion of Islam beyond Mindanao. Deep in the interior mountains of Kalimantan on Borneo, there are still many followers of indigenous religions, but the key coastal areas of the Malay Archipelago (Nusantara), including Indonesia’s Sumatra and Java, have long been Islamic. The Arabs never conquered the region militarily, and the process of Islamization there was carried out by merchants via trade, intermarriage, and the like. Today, Indonesia is home to the largest Muslim population worldwide. Islamic Sects After Muhammad died, there were four leaders of the Muslim world in quick succession (632–661), collectively known as the “Rashidun (The Rightly Guided) Caliphs.” The first caliph was Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s good friend and fatherin-law. Next was Umar Ibn al-Khattab (aka Umar I), also Muhammad’s friend and father-in-law. The third caliph was Uthman ibn Affan (aka Osman), originally a nobleman in the city of Mecca, but also one of Muhammad’s earliest and most devoted disciples, who married Muhammad’s two daughters by Khadija. Uthman’s descendants established the Umayyad Caliphate, Islam’s first hereditary dynasty. The fourth was Ali ibn Abi Talib, often referred to simply as Ali, who was Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law. Subsequently, Islam split into Shia and Sunni factions. Shi’ites—shia meaning “partisan” or “follower”—professed that solely the descendants of Muhammad’s cousin Ali, i.e., those whose lineage derived from the Prophet Muhammad, could be the supreme “Imam” of all Muslims. In contrast, the Sunni recognized the Rashidun Caliphs as legitimate, and referred to themselves as “Sunni,” which means “[follower of] tradition.” Muslims now number about 1.7 billion, accounting for nearly one quarter of the world’s population. Sunnis make up about 85 percent, and Shi’ites the remainder. Iran is the current Shi’ite stronghold, but there are pockets of Shi’ites scattered in the Levant, the southern Arabian Peninsula, and countries where an Iranian language is widely spoken, such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. Muhammad’s cousin Ali was assassinated and is considered a martyr, as were his two sons and grandson, so Shi’ites believe that Ali’s family was treated unfairly. Moreover, when Ali’s son Husayn Ibn Ali was under siege in Karbala and almost all those around him gave their lives on the battlefield, his supporters in Kufa and elsewhere were unable—or did not do their best—to rescue him, so he too was killed. That’s why the 10th day of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, is dubbed “Ashura” (ashura means “tenth” in Semitic languages), a Shi’ite

174  Origins and Spread of Islamic Civilization festival commemorating Husayn’s martyrdom at the Battle of Karbala. On this holy day some Shi’ites engage in self-flagellation to repent for their sins and personally experience Husayn’s painful end. This is not to say that the Shia branch of Islam has ever been monolithic. For example, mainstream Iranians believe in Twelver Shia Islam, while the Houthi currently engaged in Yemen’s civil war are followers of the Zaidiyyah sect. The Seventh Imam (Ismaili) school, which established the Fatimid Caliphate (909–1171) in North Africa, is also an important faction in Shia history, and it was the Ismailis who founded Cairo’s Al-Azhar Mosque and the affiliated university. Later, in the struggle against the Sunnis, many Ismaili missionaries (dai) with strict religious training infiltrated the Sunni community. The leader of today’s Ismaili sect is Aga Khan IV. His family was based in India, but he was born in Switzerland and schooled at Harvard University, and his contemporary followers reside mainly in Pakistan. One wing of Shia Islam is worthy of mention here, as it has assumed a higher profile internationally in recent years. It is the Alawites, variously known as Alawis and Alevis, who form about 12 percent of the Syrian population and have many followers in Turkey and Lebanon too. The Alawites have emerged as politically dominant since Syria’s independence in 1946. Two successive presidents (Hafez al-Assad and son Bashar), the upper echelons of the military and intelligence services, and the top management of many state agencies all belong to this faction. Alawite means “descendant of Ali,” but this is an appellation that has been coined in modern times in order to emphasize their authentic Muslim identity to outsiders. In fact, the Alawites are a spin-off from Twelver Shia back in the 9th century and possess doctrine whose content is known only to members; these secretive beliefs are similar to the Christian’s concept of Trinity. Ironically, during the Crusaders’ occupation of Syria, the Alawites escaped persecution because they were not considered true Muslims. But later, other Muslim rulers—Egypt’s Mamluks and the Ottomans—discriminated against and persecuted the Alawites, treating them as heretics. However, when France governed Syria, intending to make the formerly discriminated and persecuted Alawites their allies in keeping the Sunni majority under control, it recruited many Alawites to serve as soldiers, police, and civil servants. A special district for the Alawites was also set aside near the Mediterranean coast. In 1970, Syrian Air Force commander Hafez al-Assad became president and bombed the Sunni rebels with airplanes, causing many injuries and deaths. The civil war in Syria today is in fact largely a continuation of nearly a thousand years of sectarian strife and seven decades of post-independence political struggle. The West opposed Iran and disliked al-Assad the son too, leaving the regime little choice but to cozy up to Iran and Russia. So, for several years the West supported all anti-Alawite forces, including extremists such as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and the Al-Sham), an unwise policy later abandoned for obvious reasons. Gradually, four different schools of jurisprudence (madhhab) evolved among the Sunnis, each deducing its doctrine based on distinct principles. Although all

Origins and Spread of Islamic Civilization 175 are rooted in analysis of the Qur’an, each school applies a unique set of principles and therefore arrived at different conclusions concerning Islamic doctrine. This is not dissimilar to alternative readings of the Analects of Confucius; Xunzi had his interpretation back in the 3rd century BCE, and 12th-century Zhu Xi had his. The main basis and methods applied by Qadi (Islamic judges) in their judgements are the Qur’an and Hadith, consensus, analogies, and personal determinations. The Hadiths recorded what the Prophet said, did, and tacitly acknowledged when he preached; the Sunni recognize six volumes of Hadith, while the Shi’ites have four, all of which form part of Sharia. For questions covered in neither the Qur’an nor the Hadith, they can also be determined by extrapolation or analogy. For example, the Qur’an prohibits alcohol consumption, and by analogy, smoking marijuana and opium are also prohibited. Alcohol itself is not the reason for banning its consumption; it is because alcohol distracts the mind and confuses it, as may ingestion of marijuana or opium. Consensus, i.e., a gathering of ecclesiastical jurists’ judgements and scholarly works, contains an element of democracy. Of course, the participants in the public debate must be recognized Islamic scholars with relevant education—members of the Ulema. The differences between these four schools of jurisprudence lie in how the legal sources noted earlier are viewed and applied. Geographically speaking, the most widely disseminated are followers of the Hanafi school of jurisprudence, with practitioners in the former territories of the Ottoman Empire, Central Asia, India, and northwest China. This school is more lenient in its interpretation of doctrine, emphasizing reasoning, and most of all the Qur’an, as well as the personal judgements and opinions of the judges. The Shafi’i school of Islamic law, popular in Egypt and nearby countries, attaches great importance to the Qur’an and the Hadiths, but it is less supportive of the expression of a judge’s personal opinion, and has very strict requirements for the usage of analogy. The Maliki school places the greatest importance on the Qur’an, followed by the Hadiths, and then analogy and consensus. It is dominant in West Africa, North Africa (Egypt excepted), Bahrain, and northeastern Saudi Arabia. The Hanbali school only recognizes the Qur’an and the Hadiths, and if a matter is not touched upon in these scriptures, the judge may not judge for himself, nor may he decide on the basis of custom or public opinion. This school is the statutory school of jurisprudence in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and is also important in Oman, Bahrain, and Jordan. In today’s world, the Hanbali school remains very influential. In the mid-18th century, a Saudi tribal leader named Muhammad ibn Saud was born in the interior of the Arabian Peninsula. Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703– 1792) was a theologian who received a Sufi-inspired education in the peninsula’s Najd region. The pair got along well and married each other’s daughters. Ibn Saud possessed political power and ibn Abd al-Wahhab was influential in religious circles, and they joined hands to oppose the religious and cultural policies of the Ottomans in the Arabian Peninsula, first establishing an alliance and then a kingdom. Later, ibn Saud’s son inherited his father’s position and expanded his power to include governing the peninsula’s western and northeastern regions. Meanwhile,

176  Origins and Spread of Islamic Civilization the son of ibn Abd al-Wahhab eventually obtained hereditary rights to the position of “Mufti” or religious judge under the Saudis, so political and religious powers were deftly fused via intermarriage. The country they founded was the powerful, later British-backed Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab was influenced by the Hanbali school of jurisprudence, and Wahhabism—with his ideas at its core—is the most conservative and “fundamentalist” doctrine in the Islamic world today. The basis for two 20th-century extremist movements derived from Wahhabism, first al-Qaeda and then Daesh, better known in the English-speaking world as ISIS. Of course, their emergence cannot be blamed on the Hanbali school that emerged in the 8th century, since its philosophical basis, like those of other Sunni schools of jurisprudence, was distilled from traditions in vogue a century after Islam’s founding. There is another “sect” that we hear about a lot—the Sufis. First of all, it needs to be clarified that Sufi is not a religious sect but a group of devotees under the guidance of a spiritual master who employs certain means to achieve a religious experience of unity with Allah. When Sufism appeared during the 8th–9th centuries, some Muslims felt that although they prayed regularly, their worship lacked a genuine sense of religious experience and reciprocated spirituality; at the same time, they worried that the ordinary person would not have a profound understanding of the Qur’an, so they “borrowed” from Christian traditions of asceticism to practice self-cultivation. These ascetics deliberately wore garments made of coarse wool, thus the term “Sufi,” derived from the Arabic word for ṣūf that means “wool.” In fact, the concept of asceticism is also found in other faiths, such as Buddhism. Sufism has nothing to do with the Shia-Sunni schism. A Sufi can be a Shi’ite or Sunni. Sufism is a unique form of worship and ascetic practice in the Islamic world. As Sufist thought has spread throughout various regions, it has taken the form of factions, religious orders, associations, and the custom in which the father passes on his mantel of spiritual leadership to his son. Similar to yoga, Sufi adepts have distinct ways of drawing closer to Allah via music, dance, and repetition of the scriptures, and thereby experiencing unity. When a Sufi is at one with Allah, he is effectively speaking for Him—as if Allah has temporarily inhabited his body—and this enables other believers to receive revelation. The peoples of the Central Asian steppes originally believed in Shamanism and practiced similar rituals, so Sufism found fertile soil in Anatolia, Central Asia, northwest India, and China’s Xinjiang. There are many Sufi factions, and the most widely distributed is the Naqshbandi Order, a major Sunni spiritual order of Sufism that originated near Bukhara in present-day Uzbekistan. These orders are distinguished by whether they recite the scripture out loud or silently. In addition, associations with the same Sufi sect are based on geographical locations and social connections (e.g., in Xinjiang’s Yarkant and Kashgar). Sufism, though not a faith in and of itself, has been a very important factor in Islamic civilization and Muslim societies.

11 Islam in China

In the first half of the 8th century, Arabian Islamic forces entered Central Asia and came into contact with the Tang Dynasty that had been operating there for many years. During this period, the Tang, Tubo (Tibetans), and Dashi (“大食” as the Arab Empire was known then to the Chinese) were all strong competitors in the region. After the Battle of Talas (751), however, Tang power in Central Asia diminished markedly. When the An-Shi Rebellion broke out in 755, the Tang court invited Arabian and Tibetan troops to China to help quell the uprising. Some 2,000 Arabian soldiers entered China by land, and these Muslims later settled in China where they prospered and multiplied. In fact, Arab and Persian traders had already arrived by sea at Guangzhou, but their numbers had been limited. In the 10th century, the Karakhanate established by Turkic tribes in Central Asia converted to Islam. Using Kashgar as their base, the Karakhanids waged jihad against the oasis states to the east and succeeded in converting Buddhist kingdoms such as Shaju (Yarkand) and Khotan. The Karakhanids were also rivals of Buddhist Gaochang (capital: Turpan) founded by the Huihu of northeastern Xinjiang. Within two centuries, the northern and southern routes of the Tianshan Mountains were largely Islamized. It was during the Mongol-ruled Yuan Dynasty (13th–14th centuries), however, that the main influx of Muslims occurred. Traffic along the major roadways of the Eurasian continent was unobstructed. People of various non-East Asian origins, largely Muslims from West and Central Asia, were valued by the Mongols and poured into China in large numbers. They scattered all over China, and since they accounted for a small proportion of the total population, their language and lifestyles were influenced by the Han Chinese. They recognized one another as fellow Muslims and were known as “Huihui.” In Xinjiang and Ningxia they congregated in greater densities, but otherwise they dispersed widely throughout China in small but concentrated communities. The entry of Islam into China is an important chapter in the history of civilization. Many of China’s early Muslim scholars were well versed in both Confucianism and Islamic civilization and have left behind many Chinese-language Islamic classics that “use Confucianism to interpret Islamic scripture.” These works are a precious outcome of the blending of civilizations.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003369899-11

178  Islam in China Islam Enters China How did Islam come to China? One version has it that in 651, during the second year of Emperor Gaozong’s reign when the Arabian Caliphate was just emerging, Caliph Othman—famous for promulgating the final version of the Qur’an—sent an envoy to the Tang court. Later on, some people made a mountain out of a molehill by claiming that Muhammad’s maternal uncle personally set foot in China; there is no evidence to support this, and as far as I know, no serious historian supports this factoid. However, there is a record of Arab emissaries arriving in China during Year 2 of the Yong Hui Era (651) in both the Old Book of Tang and the New Book of Tang. Before the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) and even before the Qin (221–206 BCE), the “Maritime Silk Road” had gradually been pioneered, and small numbers of Arabian and Persian merchants, known as fanke (番客), had arrived by sea. After the emergence of Islam in early 7th century CE, trade via this route became more organized and flourished because the Arab Empire was originally founded by the merchant class who resided in towns. In fact, many Islamic traditions are characterized by the lifestyles of an urban population. For example, Islam requires believers to congregate for prayer on Fridays, a custom that would be practical only for a sedentary urban community. How could people scattered among the steppes conveniently gather at a mosque once weekly? Throughout the history of the Muslim Caliphate, all caliphs encouraged trade. It was trade, not religion, that motivated most fanke to journey to China during the Tang and Song. In the closing years of the Southern Song (1127–1279), many Muslim merchants came to settle in port cities of southeast China. For example, a descendant of Pu Shougeng, a Muslim from West Asia, was entrusted by the imperial court with Quanzhou’s administration and trade. After the 9th-century southward migration of the Turkophone Khakas from their homeland north of the Mongolian Steppe, the Huihu, who had earlier migrated southward to Mongolia themselves, then split into three branches: those who settled in the Hexi Corridor and became known as “Ganzhou Huihu”; the Gaochang Huihu who relocated near to Turpan; and a third wing that moved west of the Pamirs and the Chuhe River Basin, and henceforth came into direct contact with the Islamic world. In the 9th century, a prince of the Huihu who settled in the Chuhe Basin seized power from his uncle, converted to Islam, and proclaimed Islam as the state religion. This was the aforementioned Karakhan Dynasty. In the Turkic family of languages, “kara” (qara) means black, upright, and large. This dynasty later migrated eastward and southward, with Kashgar as its second capital, and started the Islamization of what is today’s Xinjiang. The era of the largest immigration of Muslims occurred during the Yuan Dynasty, i.e., the 13th–14th centuries, because once the Mongols had opened up traffic throughout Eurasia, many West and Central Asians, known as semuren under the Mongols, came to Xinjiang of China to serve as civil servants, soldiers, and skilled laborers. The great majority were Muslim. During the 14th–17th centuries, when

Islam in China 179 transport by both land and sea was more developed, many Sufis from the same regions arrived in China to spread their faith. Conversely, during the Yuan many people migrated from east to west, transporting China-made silk and porcelain to Central Asia and Persia. The Mongols founded the Il-khanate in Persia whose core territory included parts of what are now Iraq, Iran, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. Marco Polo left China as part of the retinue to accompany Kököchin, a princess of the Mongol Bayaut tribe, whom the Great Khan Kublai had betrothed to the Ilkhan Arghun in Persia since she was a kinswoman of Arghun’s recently deceased wife. But after a rough sea voyage lasting more than two years, by the time they arrived the bridegroom-to-be had already passed away, so she was transported to eastern Persia where she prepared to marry the newly anointed Il-khan, Gaykhatu, who was Arghun’s younger brother. But due to a fierce struggle among the Ilkhanate’s elite just then, Gaykhatu was soon replaced by Ghazan, Arghun’s son, and eventually princess Kököchin became Ghazan’s wife. Islamic Doctrine: An Introduction The Qur’an consists of 30 volumes and 114 chapters, divided into two parts— Mecca and Medina—according to the city where Muhammad is believed to have conveyed Allah’s revelations to his disciples. Professor Ma Jian of Peking University, who was born in Yunnan and studied for eight years at Cairo’s al-Azhar University, translated the entire Qur’an into Chinese (Figure 11.1). The Prophet Muhammad’s verified words and deeds during his lifetime were compiled in what is known as the Hadith; the contents of the Hadith are often known as Sunnah. In the early years of Islam while the disciples and their immediate successors were still alive, there was little controversy concerning the veracity of the Hadith and Sunnah. But in the 8th century, the exact quotations began to differ markedly depending on who cited them, and forgeries even began to emerge. Therefore, some people began to systematically trace and verify what Muhammad and his disciples advocated for society and religion. By the 9th century, the Sunnis had compiled six volumes of the Hadith, while the Shi’ites had compiled four; their contents were similar but not identical. Among editions of the Hadith, that of Muhammad al-Bukhari in the 9th century is the most trusted and valued by scholars and therefore subsequently the most often annotated in detail. Figure 11.2 features a Chinese translation of the Hadith published in 1981 by two Uyghur scholars. One was translated from Arabic into Uyghur, while the other from Uyghur into Chinese. Islamic law is known as “Sharia.” Today, many Muslims advocate for the application of Sharia in governing society, effectively replacing civil and criminal law. This is currently a major controversy in today’s Muslim world: Should secular or religious law be used to govern both believers and non-Muslims? In fact, Sharia does address the question of how to rule believers in other religions as well as those who profess no faith. In the Qur’an, monotheists, i.e., those who believe in

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Figure 11.1  The Qur’an translated by Ma Jian

Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism are called “People of the Book,” and they are regarded as second-class citizens worthy of protection. Polytheists, animists, and those without a faith are referred to as “non-believers” (kafir or infidels), and they are regarded as third-class citizens. Muslims must believe in the Six Articles of Faith: The existence and oneness of God (Allah); the existence of angels; the existence of the canons of which Allah

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Figure 11.2  The Hadith

is the author; the Prophets; the Day of Judgment, and Allah’s Predestination. They must believe that Allah is the one and only God, the Creator and Ruler of the Jewish and Christian faiths who has no beginning or end, and is formless, silent, omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. They must believe that angels are Allah’s creation who serve as messengers between God and humankind, the best known of whom is Jibril (Gabriel), who delivered the Revelations to Muhammad. The canons refer specifically to the Qur’an, but also include the Jewish Torah, Christian Gospels, and other holy texts of the principal monotheistic faiths.

182  Islam in China There were many prophets, the early famous ones being Ibrahim (Abraham), Moses, and Jesus, but the final and most important was the Prophet Muhammad. Belief in the Day of Judgment and resurrection from the dead is very much in line with the Christian faith. Muslim parents often remind their children that there are always two little angels on their shoulders. One on the right who notes good thoughts, words, and deeds, and one on the left who notes your misdeeds; on the Day of Judgment (Yawm ad-Di), it is their records that will determine how your afterlife will be spent. As to what precisely constitutes “predestination,” experts in the Hadith, Sharia, Islamic doctrine, and annotators of the scriptures have not been able to agree upon a clear and consistent definition. Many Muslims interpret “predestination” to signify that everything is predetermined by Allah and are therefore “fatalists.” In daily life, the great majority of Muslims are careful to add “Inshallah!”—God willing!—whenever they speak of their future plans. However, Islamic doctrine and history show that Islam is not a solely “afterlife-oriented religion.” Believers can enjoy the pleasures of the present as well as the blessings of life after death. Muslims should also engage in the “Five Pillars of Islam”: Shahada (profession of faith), Salat (prayer), Zakat (almsgiving), Sawm (fasting), and the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca). Within Sharia, however, accommodation can be made for those unable to perform these tasks. The Shahada—“There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God”—is a Muslim’s most important declaration, and should be recited in a host of situations. This is a core Muslim belief, and when first repeated three times in the presence of witnesses, represents formal conversion to Islam. Salat is the act of praying five times daily and includes communal prayer at the mosque on Fridays. In reality, only a minority of Muslims are able to fulfill the requirement of Salat as previously specified. Sawm refers to the act of fasting, and the entire ninth month of the Islamic calendar—Ramadan—is devoted to fasting on a daily basis. During this month, after sunrise one must not eat, drink liquid, or engage in sex; only after the sun sets may one ingest food or drink. Therefore, in Muslim societies family and friends happily gather together for Iftar, i.e., to “break the fast” after the sun has gone down. During Ramadan, travelers, the sick, and pregnant women are exempt from fasting, but they should later set aside a period of time to make up for it. Zakat is a form of almsgiving and refers to donating to the needy one-fortieth of one’s wealth that is left over once you have satisfied your daily needs. This is not an optional act of charity; it is a religious obligation. In some Islamic countries it is collected as a tax by the government and then distributed to charities, but in most Muslim countries it is collected directly by religious institutions. The concrete details of carrying out the Five Pillars are sometimes debated by jurists: How does one estimate one’s “daily needs”? If you own just one camel, how do you figure the “one-fortieth” that exceeds your daily needs? The Hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca should be effected once in a lifetime by every able-bodied Muslim. But due to issues related to one’s economic status, health, and

Islam in China 183 travel safety, many are unable to make this pilgrimage. Eventually, Sufis who could not journey to Mecca were encouraged to make a pilgrimage to the tombs of Sufi masters (hojas); seven visits to one such tomb would be equivalent to one pilgrimage to Mecca. Adherents to Wahhabism are vehemently opposed to this practice, but many Muslims in South and Central Asia, as well as China’s Xinjiang, find this Sufi concept acceptable. A Brief Portrait of China’s Muslims According to their origins, China’s Muslims can be divided into two distinct groups: One group comprised gradual arrivals via the maritime and land-based Silk Roads, principally during the Tang and Song dynasties, in order to conduct business. Almost all their descendants intermarried with Han Chinese for generations, speak Chinese as their mother tongue, and self-identify as “Hui,” one of the country’s 55 recognized minority ethnicities. Scattered throughout the country, they are more numerous in the northwest (Xinjiang, Gansu, Ningxia, and Qinghai), in Yunnan in the southwest, and in certain cities in the east. In general, the Hui population shows a pattern of “wide dispersion and small but concentrated communities.” The other category of Muslims came to China by land following the Arab Empire’s expansion into Central Asia through war, trade, or marriage, or they are earlier inhabitants who were converted to Islam by these migrants. These peoples mainly speak languages belonging to the Turkic branch of the Altai language family, residing in Xinjiang or its surroundings, including Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Salar, Tartar, and so on. In addition, there are small numbers of people who speak Indo-European languages, such as Tajiks, and speakers of the Mongol branch of the Altaic tongues, namely, Dongxiang (Sarta) and Baoan. In Chapter 12, we will discuss the migration of the Tujue (Chinese collective designation for Turkic peoples). The ancestors of the Salar, a Turkophone people, arrived in today’s Turkmenistan in the course of more than a thousand years of Turkic westward migration. But due to internal disputes, some Salar migrated back eastward more than 700 years ago and settled in the Qinghai-Gansu border region, on both sides of the Yellow River. They now number over 100,000. I visited there and heard Salar spoken by adults and children. I later played a tape of Salar for some Turkish friends. They all said they could make out certain words but could not grasp the entire conversation. Kashgar’s Id Kah, constructed in the 15th century, is said to be the nation’s largest mosque. On Fridays, worshippers who have come to take part in collective prayer often overflow the famous mosque, and many people have to crowd in the plaza in front of it. Since the 10th century, Kashgar has been an important cultural center of Central Asia, radiating culture toward both east and west. The first comprehensive dictionary of Turkic languages, Compendium of the Languages of the Turks (Diwan Lughat al-Turk), was compiled largely in Arabic there in the 11th century by the lexicographer Mahmud al-Kashgari.

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Figure 11.3  Beijing’s Niujie Mosque

Figure 11.3 shows the mosque on Beijing’s Ox Street (Niujie), which was built during the Yuan and has a history of nearly 800 years. The influence of Han culture is evident in its architectural style. Figure 11.4 features Guangzhou’s Huaisheng Mosque (Great Mosque of Canton), which was built during the reign of Emperor Gaozu of Tang. It is China’s earliest surviving mosque. The minaret next to the main building is leaning a bit due to groundwater erosion, and it has been under constant observation and delicate care to protect it. The white-shirted man is the mosque’s Imam (Ahong), and he not only welcomed me to visit inside, he also accepted to join me in a photo. In front of the entrance to Nanda Mosque in Jinan, Shandong Province, there is a stone tablet. It is entitled The Inscription of Lai Fu and was authored by Chen Si, a 16th-century Imam. In Chinese, it reads like an excellent essay on Chinese philosophy, with phrases extracted from the I-Ching and classic Confucianism as well as nomenclature developed by neo-Confucianist scholars of the Sung and Ming dynasties. Throughout this elegant exposé, there is not a single word of Islamic terminology. Yet, the text is entirely consistent with Islamic faith. Its title as well as the main theme are to remind the reader that we all come from the Creator. It is hoped that we shall, by our respect for the truth, through self-cultivation, and in fear of chastisement, return to him with grace and become his disciple. Around 2007, I visited Na Zhong, an elderly professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University. He has authored many works on Arab history and culture and is a very knowledgeable scholar. When young, he studied at Cairo’s al-Azhar University in

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Figure 11.4  Guangzhou’s Huaisheng Mosque

Cairo and received a degree equivalent to a doctorate in Arabic. After returning to China, he first served as an advisor to the KMT general Bai Chongxi (who was Muslim), and then after 1949 remained on the mainland of China where he conducted academic research. Like professor Ma Jian, who studied in Cairo concurrently, professor Na Zhong was also a native of Yunnan province. Yunnan is very close to Buddhist-majority Myanmar and Thailand, and Islam spread by sea to Guangdong and Fujian, and by land to Xinjiang, Gansu, and Ningxia, and as far northeast as Hebei. But why are there so many Muslims in Yunnan? Many Central Asians surrendered to Genghis Khan when he and his forces arrived there during his Western Expedition. Great khans such as Genghis, Ögedei, and Güyük were very fond of these peoples, and so under Mongol governance they were strategically employed.

186  Islam in China Initially unable to vanquish the Southern Song, Kublai Khan first occupied Yunnan and Myanmar. He then stationed many Central Asian soldiers and officials in Yunnan. Later, when administration of Yunnan became difficult, Kublai Khan appointed a long-serving Central Asian, Sayyid al-Din, as provincial governor. Upon his death, his son succeeded him and the family ruled Yunnan continuously for nearly 100 years. Many Yunnan inhabitants surnamed Sa, Na, Su, and Ma are actually descendants of Central Asians. The famous Muslim maritime explorer Zheng He hailed from Yunnan. Originally surnamed Ma, he was conferred with the Han surname “Zheng” by Emperor Yongle of Ming. Another example of Muslims’ unusual entry into China occurred in Shandong in the early 15th century. This was the era of Zheng He’s historic “Voyages to the Western Seas” (aka the Ming Treasure Voyages), when the Ming and Southeast Asian countries frequently interacted. The ruler of a minor kingdom in the Sulu Archipelago near Mindanao came to China for an audience at the court, and the emperor gave him many gifts. On his way home, however, the king fell ill and died. He was buried with royal honors in Shandong’s Dezhou, where a tomb was built for him. As there were already many Muslims in China, the Ming government appointed two Muslim families to guard his tomb. To this day, there are still many Muslims living near the grave of this king from the Sulu Archipelago. The king’s eldest son returned to Mindanao, but his younger brother and the king’s widow remained in Dezhou. Some of Dezhou’s current residents are descendants of the families that stood guard over the tomb beginning some six hundred years ago, while others are descendants of the Sulu king’s entourage that accompanied him on his way back from the Ming court in Beijing. The fact that Shandong hosts Muslims whose forebears hailed from the Sulu string of islands in “Nanyang” (China’s term for Southeast Asia and its nearby islands) is a tantalizing bit of history. Muslims in China comprise several sects, mainly Sunni, but they were also influenced by Shia Islam. Sufism spread to China just prior to and after the 11th century and became popular in places such as Xinjiang, Gansu, and Ningxia. But no matter which sect they belonged to, Sufist philosophy and rituals were all introduced from outside and integrated into existing practice. Therefore, China’s Islamic sects can all be considered as “tributaries,” not original sources per se. The division of Chinese Islam into various sects does not have a very long history. Prior to the thriving maritime routes, West Asia remained a very remote region, and the Chinese were largely unaware of the dynamics of Islam there. When Islam did spread to China by land, its content was fairly consistent from Hami eastward. Awareness of different sects occurred only after maritime travel began to facilitate the pilgrimage to Mecca. Upon their return, some haji realized that the Islam they witnessed there was different from the religion they had experienced beforehand.

Islam in China 187 As a result, distinctions were drawn between these traditional and reformist versions of Islam, and opposing ideologies and even conflicts arose. Nonetheless, theoretical differences among Chinese sects have never been as intense as those among Arabs. Islam: Confucianist Interpretations Among Muslim communities in China, the “traditional schools” are collectively known as “Qadim,” while the “reformist schools” consist of factions such as the Ikhwani. The prominent “Menhuan” orders came into being during the process of the spread of Sufism in China, and comprise Khufiyya (which places equal emphasis on Tariqa and Sharia, and advocates “silent dikhr”); Jahriyya (equal emphasis on Tariqa and Sharia, but practices “audible dikhr”); Qadiriyya (recognition of Allah must come before the recognition of oneself); and Khubrawiyya (meditation for enlightenment). There was also a faction entitled Xidaotang (“Study the Han” faction, i.e., adapting Islamic thought in the Chinese social mode). “Sharia” signifies observance of the “Five Pillars of Islam.” “Tariqa” means that while observing the basic Islamic teachings and under the guidance of a spiritual leader, one transitions from external comportment to internal spiritual practice via salat (five daily prayers), fasting, meditation, and repetitive utterances of short sentences glorifying Allah. “Delving deeply into the creation and transformation of the Heaven and the Earth, and comprehending Allah’s omnipotence and virtuousness” renders one aware of Allah and draws one close to Him, in order to “attain a clear mind and a manifest heart.” The Xidaotang—“Hall of the Western Dao,” i.e., Islam—was founded by Ma Qixi (1867–1914) in Lintan County, Gansu. He firmly believed in purifying the religion from Arabia, recognizing the one and only one Allah who is the noblest and the greatest. This school represented a synthesis of much Chinese tradition with Islam and, of all the Muslim schools of thought, is considered the one most strongly influenced by Chinese philosophy. In the early 20th century, some Xidaotang devotees established a string of hallbased congregations that practiced a collective lifestyle, including jointly held property, group worship, and so forth, resembling Utopia but fundamentally based on Islamic faith. In fact, Catholicism had similar bodies where monks could engage in occupations other than missionary work, such as teaching, editing, and medicine. The Jesuits belong to this sort of order. The monks had to take vows to show obedience to their superiors, maintain chastity, and accept lifelong poverty, i.e., they were forbidden to own property, and in return, they would be cared for in illness and provided for in their old age. Xidaotang made similar demands of their devotees and provided similar guarantees to them. There is a couplet by Ma Qixi that sums up Islamic thought in Chinese: Purity is not easily attained; one must remain pristine. True devotion is a difficult task; best unburden oneself of all worldly things.

188  Islam in China In fact, many aspects of Islamic belief have similarities with Confucianism. Confucius taught that improper behavior should be neither “seen” nor “heard.” Islam also calls for such transcendence: The Five Pillars of Islam are experienced as a form of sense deprivation. During a fast, one neither sees nor smells food. The fundamental difference between the two lies in the fact that Confucianism does not believe much in spirits and ghosts. Confucius did not deny ghosts and deities per se, but he was reluctant to discuss them: I do not hold forth upon that which is uncanny, violent or demonic. China’s Muslims, on the other hand, have taken many of the principles of Confucianism and enriched Islamic lingo by giving it fresh meanings. During the 16th–17th centuries, an Islamic scholar named Wang Daiyu, who dubbed himself “The True Old Man of Hui,” wrote A True Explanation of the Right Religion (Zhengjiao zhen quan), an explication of Islamic doctrine. Among Chinese Muslims, one is not considered an Imam or Islamic scholar unless fluent in Arabic and Persian, and Wang mastered both. The most renowned scholar of the Huiru or Muslim School of Neo-Confucian Thought was Liu Zhi, a Nanjing native in the early years of the Qing Dynasty, who wrote his Metaphysics of Islam (Tianfang xing li) complete with references to Chinese, Persian, and Arabic texts. Liu also authored books such as The Rites of Islam (Tianfang dianli), which contain much Sufist thought. Plaques and couplets in many mosques reflect the belief of the Chinese Muslims’ belief in religion itself, their understanding of duty, and their concept of good deeds. They are conscious that there is no other god. For example, the phrases “God is One and Single” and “There is no God but God” reflect their thinking that God (Allah) is the one and only. Originally a Confucian term, the phrase “being refined and focused” (wei jing weiyi) has also been borrowed by Muslims. The Buddhist term “universal compassion” (pu ci) also appears in Islamic terminology. The phrases “Truth is intangible” (zhen you wuxiang) and “Truth is infinite” (wuji zhi zhen) refer to God’s formlessness and immaterial nature. Islam does not permit creation of representations of God. Phrases such as “His aweinspiring presence” (Lin xia qi he), “His ubiquitous presence” (Tian lin zai zi), and “All observant” (Cha hu shangxia) emphasize God’s omniscience and omnipotence. In the Arab world, one finds excerpts from the Qur’an in flowery calligraphy on mosque walls and ceilings. Mosques in China, however, often have pillars inscribed with a couplet, a feature of traditional Chinese culture. Here is one from a mosque in Baoding, Hebei: Wise men disseminated the scriptures in the Western Regions, and taught their descendants to recognize the Only God; many Muslims came to the

Islam in China 189 Eastern Land, kept the Halal rules, observed the Sunnah and believed in the Unique One. Note that “My doctrine is consistency in all things” are the words of Confucius (The Analects), and they have been adopted in China’s Islam. They are cited here in a couplet that adorns Xinwang Mosque in Linxia, Gansu: One must put the Five Pillars into practice; only then is the Divine Will visible. Sharia, Tarika and Hakika are inseparable; my doctrine is consistency in all things. This is one of the couplets seen in Ningxia’s Tongxin Grand Mosque that I took special care to visit: Have you come to worship? Sincerely query your heart: How many are your sins? Bow deeply and put your head to the ground. Whosoever preaches the scriptures, let him ignore face and utter frightening words that enter the worshipper’s ears and make him tremble before God. It can be said that no matter which sect of Islam is practiced in China, all are influenced by traditional Chinese culture. When practicing dikhr (devotional acts) such as repetition of words that glorify Allah, Chinese Muslims often touch their misbahah or prayer beads. They typically number 99, because Allah is said to have had 99 sacred appellations, such as the Most Compassionate. Seated in a quiet place, devotees finger the beads as they do their recitations and gradually experience a sense of tranquility inspired by religious ritual. Misbahah serve essentially the same function as prayer beads used by Buddhists, Catholics, and believers in other faiths. Certain aspects of Islamic civilization have had notable impact on China in several domains. For instance, Islamic medical know-how was very important during the Ming when “Hui Hui bone grafting” and “Hui medicine” were introduced from Central Asia. Contributions were made in astronomy too. When the traditional Chinese calendar proved problematic during the reign of Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of the Ming, he ordered a revised calendar using the Islamic calendar as a reference. Even non-believers are familiar with halal cuisine, of course. Navigation was another field in which Arabs excelled, and China’s great maritime explorer Zheng He, his deputy Ma Huan, and many sailors in the Ming “Treasure Ship Fleet” were all Muslims. During the Song Dynasty heyday of the 11th century, China saw the emergence of cultural icons—often combining one or more of the talents of poet, historian, statesman, and military strategist—such as Fan Zhongyan, Sima Guang, Ouyang Xiu, Su Dongpo, Wang Anshi, and Cheng Yi. But it should be noted that during this period, Islamic civilization also gave birth to many important figures. For example, Islam’s most renowned poet Ferdowsi was active and penned the Shahnameh (Book of Kings), an epic poem narrating the ancient history of Persia.

190  Islam in China Ibn Sina is another Muslim figure who must be mentioned. Better known in the West as Avicenna, this polymath was born near Bukhara (present-day Uzbekistan). As a child, he studied the Islamic scriptures and was versant in law and Aristotelian philosophy. He realized that his talents lay in medicine, and when just 19, he was transferred to Baghdad where he worked as an imperial physician and later compiled his comprehensive Canon of Medicine (a medical encyclopedia) in Arabic. It was translated into Latin and served as Europe’s principal medical textbook until sometime after the Renaissance in the 16th century. During the early years of the 11th century there was a Turkic-speaking Muslim leader named Mahmud in Central Asia who conducted many raids on Delhi, looted treasures from India, and founded a new dynasty. His territory included the southern portion of Central Asia, the eastern Iranian Plateau, Afghanistan, and the Indus Valley. With its capital situated at Ghazni in present-day Afghanistan, it was dubbed the Ghazni Dynasty. At almost the same time, Otto III became king of Germany in 983 at the age of three. In his teens, he took power from his regent and wished not only to be king of Italy, but to take control of the Catholic Church as well. He marched into Italy and installed his paternal cousin as pope. The new pope returned the favor by crowning Otto III—then just 16—Holy Roman Emperor, a title left vacant by the death of his father Otto II. When we discuss the history of Muslims in China, we should not forget that China is part of the world, and China’s Muslims are a subset of the global Islamic community. The evolution of Eurasian civilization has been dependent upon interaction and mutual learning, and the spread of Islam within China is a manifestation of such exchanges.

12 Rise of the Turkic-Speaking Peoples and Their Westward Migration

The theme of this chapter is the westward migration of the Turkic-speaking peoples. We will focus on the process of their relocation from East Asia to Europe and the factors driving it. As a whole, there have been three movements within the Eurasian continent large enough to impact humankind’s history. Whenever such movement occurs on a massive scale, it inevitably results in interaction and conflict between civilizations, the spread of culture, and its fusion as well. Three trans-Eurasian migratory waves stand out: The first was the westward relocation of the Xiongnu (aka “Huns” in Europe); the second, the passage of the Turkic peoples in the same direction; and the third, the Mongols’ military campaigns into Europe and the huge changes wrought under their subsequent rule. The westward migration of the Tujue (Turkic peoples) occurred seven hundred years after that of the Xiongnu, and the Mongols’ expeditions began another seven hundred years after that. In the 6th-century CE when Turkic warriors began their march westward, however, the Xiongnu no longer existed as a distinct entity. By the 13th century, when the Mongols conquered and ruled Central Asia, West Asia, and Eastern Europe, many local inhabitants adhered to Islam and spoke a Turkic language belonging to the Altaic family.

Turkic Origins The primordial birthplace of the Tujue is roughly the same as that of the Xiongnu, in the Mongolian Plateau, south of Siberia’s Lake Baikal and to the west of Greater Khingan Mountains. During the 5th and 6th centuries, in the upper reaches of the Yenisei River located in present-day Mongolia, there lived confederations of Turkic tribes; the Chinese term for them, romanized as “Tujue,” first appeared in the mid-6th-century historical texts. Earlier, ethnic groups in that region were variously referred to as Dingling, Chile, and Tiele. At the time, Asia’s grasslands were dominated by the Hephthalites to the west and the Rouran to the east. The former were also known as “White Huns,” a people who evolved after the Xiongnu moved to Central Asia and intermarried with indigenous inhabitants. The Tujue were initially vassals of the Rouran, but once they became stronger, they supplanted both the Rouran and the Hephthalites as rulers of the steppe. DOI: 10.4324/9781003369899-12

192  Rise of Turkic-Speaking Peoples and Their Westward Migration The language of the Tujue belongs to the Altaic language family, which consists primarily of Mongolian, Turkic, and Tungusic branches. Manchu, as well as the languages of other ethnic groups in Northeast China and eastern Siberia, such as Hezhe (Nanai), Oroqen, and Evenki, are Tungusic. Regarding the Hephthalites, some historians believe that they are one and the same as the Avars, who once made a major impact on European history. Expelled by the Tujue, they proceeded westward, crossing the Volga and reaching what is now Hungary. They fought the Byzantines and almost captured their capital Constantinople. This is a fine illustration of the wave-like movement migrations can engender. Early Tujue possessed advanced ironworking know-how, and during the period when they were vassals to the Rouran, they were called “forge servants,” suggesting they knew how to fabricate horseshoes, spurs, and the like. They could also cast fine weaponry, a skill that would eventually provide them with a military advantage. At the time, most nomadic peoples believed in Shamanism, a form of animism that posits that mountains, rocks, rivers, and trees are imbued with spirit. Shamanists also believe that the sky is synonymous with a deity known in Turkic languages as “Tengri”; Tengri is capable of temporarily inhabiting a human intermediary— dubbed “Shaman” among peoples of northeastern Asia—who performs a “trance dance.” Temporarily possessed by a spirit, the Shaman speaks in an unearthly voice, revealing how to heal the afflicted, exorcise demons, and even foretell the future. While the Han may also have had such beliefs and customs, they were more likely transmitted to them by northern grassland tribes, since people in southern China practiced such rites much less commonly. After the rise of the Tujue, they quickly came to dominate the grasslands of Mongolia and those in the Syr Darya area to the west, and then they gradually migrated southward to Transoxiana in Central Asia. Tribal groups on the Mongolian Steppe were typically nomadic, while the inhabitants of the Tarim Basin and Transoxiana engaged in agriculture and trade. Therefore, after the nomadic Tujue expanded into these regions, the essentials of farming found a place in their collective existence, and this impacted their lifestyle, ruling methods, and even mode of thinking. One notable change was the emergence of a script. According to archaeological finds available to date, the Tujue possessed their own writing system quite early, one that has long been misleadingly labelled “runic” by European scholars. This is a potentially confusing term, because it was first used to describe mysterious symbols (“runes”), invented by Germanic peoples in the 2nd century CE before Latin letters were popular. The Europeans who discovered the first example of ancient Turkic could not decipher it and thus dubbed it “runic,” and the name stuck. In this chapter, “runic” refers solely to an Old Turkic script that has since been decoded. The best-known example of Old Turkic script can be seen on the “Kul Tigin” stele (Figure 12.1) discovered during the late 19th century by a Russian scholar in what is now Mongolia’s Orkhon Valley. It was erected in 732 CE by Bilge Khagan, ruler of the Second Turkic Khaganate, to commemorate the exploits of his younger

Rise of Turkic-Speaking Peoples and Their Westward Migration 193

Figure 12.1 Old Turkic script on the Kul Tigin stele erected in the 8th century CE (Orkhon Valley, Mongolia)

brother, Kul Tigin, a prince. Three sides of the monument are covered in Old Turkic script, while the backside is in Chinese, authored by Emperor Xuanzong of Tang. Chinese scholars of the late Qing did not possess the know-how required to compare the two texts and “decode” the Old Turkic script. A Danish scholar succeeded in deciphering the Old Turkic script and published his translation in Danish in 1922. It was more than a decade later when Chinese scholars—aided by referring to English and German renditions—were also able to understand the inscriptions found on the bilingual Kul Tigin stele. It is worth mentioning that this stone tablet was likely the work of Tang-era artisans, and the hanzi were certainly engraved by Han Chinese artisans. But the content, tone, and attitude conveyed differed from the Old Turkic text. Similar to the ancient Persians, the Tang often granted non-Han peoples on the borders of its empire a form of autonomy, leaving the local chief in place, instead of implementing direct rule. As a foreign land under the policy of self-rule, at times it naturally paid lip service to the Tang Dynasty. But one can say this bilingual stele went so far as to profess loyalty on one side, while rebelling on the other three—in broad daylight! Archaeologists have also discovered many stone “people” scattered about the northern grasslands, and their faces have a very Mongolian look. Based on their age and other corroborating factors, experts confirm that these anthropomorphic stone statues are relics of the Tujue. What is not clear is whether they had a religious

194  Rise of Turkic-Speaking Peoples and Their Westward Migration

Figure 12.2  Turkic anthropomorphic statue in Zhaosu Prairie (Xinjiang)

function, marked boundaries, or commemorated leaders. Figure 12.2 is located in Zhaosu Prairie in Xinjiang’s Ili. The Turkic peoples originally inhabited the northern steppe, home to coniferous forests with an endless supply of wood for fabricating bows. They took two long pieces of birch, bent each into an arc, and applied glue (made from horn and sinew) to them to create a double-curved shape, and then added a string made from cow’s

Rise of Turkic-Speaking Peoples and Their Westward Migration 195 sinew to make a bow. The arrows released from such a bow featured high speed and range, similar to the longbow, the proud possession of a 13th-century Englishman. However, due to its length—about 1.8 meters, the height of a grown man—the longbow required that the archer plant both feet firmly on the ground. The doublearched Turkic version was lighter and could be used on horseback. The Turkic warrior used the stirrups to great advantage, guiding his mount via his legs and feet rather than the reins, thus freeing his hands for bow and arrow. Like nomads everywhere, they made a living by hunting and herding and were superb horsemen and archers. They often feigned retreat, luring the enemy in pursuit. When they judged the sound of hooves had brought their opponent within shooting distance, they suddenly swiveled and let fly their deadly arrows. Turkic Khaganates In the first half of the 6th century, the Tujue leaders confederated their various clans and tribes to attack the Rouran. In 552, the First Turkic Khaganate was quickly established. “Quickly,” because nomadic peoples of the steppe govern themselves differently than do sedentary agricultural peoples. Nomads gather on a rather random basis; they may herd and graze, may relocate and live together in large numbers, and are capable of rapidly occupying large swathes of territory. In contrast, when farmers in one region wish to take control of others’ land, they must do so step-by-step. Take the case of the State of Qin during the Warring States period in China. It carried out a series of internal reforms for almost two centuries before it became stronger than any other state. Then it still required very skillful application of its “horizontal alliance” strategy to enable Qin Shi Huang (reigned 221–210 BCE) to become the emperor of China. Like other empires of the steppe, the Turkic Khaganates did not possess a clear system of inheritance. Even the Turkic Ottoman Empire—a millennium after its people were no longer nomadic—still suffered from the same state of affairs. Seniority among relatives was not well defined. Turkic languages are similar to Mongolian in that they use the same term for a middle-aged older male in an extended family, regardless of whether he is someone’s brother, maternal or paternal cousin or uncle, and so on. A different term applies to a string of female relatives and is equally ambiguous, i.e., these terms do not help to determine seniority. The advantage of not having a fixed inheritance system lies in the fact that the strongest tends to dominate, which prevents the emergence of a weak-brained or lazy ruler. But the downside is that many would-be leaders joust for the top position, resulting in conflict, division of territory, and even frequent, blood-curdling fratricide. In addition, because the area under rule was so vast and the steppe peoples had no tradition of managing distant lands or collecting taxes in kind, their ability to govern at such distances was limited. Therefore, as soon as the Xiongnu or Tujue expanded their realm, they inevitably split into two or more khaganates. This meant that grassland empires often risked division. The earliest and most extensive chronicles of the Tujue were recorded by the Chinese, so Turkologists worldwide are obliged to consult Chinese historiographies,

196  Rise of Turkic-Speaking Peoples and Their Westward Migration especially the Old Book of Tang and New Book of Tang, compiled in the 10th and 11th centuries. After the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), the Central Plains—middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, centered in today’s Henan province, and considered one of the main cradles of Chinese civilization—were either under military threat from non-Han peoples in the north or actually ruled by them. After the Jin Dynasty (266–420) relocated south, the first state established by one of these northern tribes was headed by a Xiongnu who assumed a Chinese surname, Liu, and crowned himself “Emperor Guangwen of Han.” The Xiongnu were the first among the ancient non-Chinese “Wu Hu” (lit., Five Hu groups)—the others being the Xianbei, Di, Qiang, and Jie—to migrate to northern China during the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420–589). At the time, the power of the Han shifted to the south of the Yangtze River, and Luoyang (in modern-day Henan) was already the capital of the Northern Wei Dynasty founded by the Xianbei. The Sui Dynasty’s reunification of the Central Plains ended China’s northsouth division, and territory south of Hetao (the northernmost bends of the Yellow River) and the Yellow River Basin were once again within the Han sphere of influence, but this did not signify the end of the threat from the north. During this short-lived dynasty (581–618), Emperors Wen and Yang of Sui were both ambitious monarchs who were active in the north. To cope with the challenges posed by the Tujue, they implemented strategies such as befriending distant states while attacking those nearby, and maintaining distance from powerful states while allying with lesser ones. In 582, Taspar Khagan, the fourth ruler of the First Turkic Khaganate, dispatched 400,000 troops from the northeast, north, and northwest to attack the Sui, but the Sui court used diplomatic means to neutralize some of the Tujue chiefs. In 583, the Sui army employed an eight-way counterattack, and via a combination of military and political schemes, eventually subdued the Tujue. In Han history, this is referred to as the “assimilation of the Eastern Tujue.” In passing, I should mention that once assimilation of northern nomads began, it was a process of Sinification involving much intermarriage that resulted in a mixing of bloodlines and a lifestyle revolving around Han culture. But simultaneously, it engendered a new Han culture that absorbed elements of the style and content of these “borderland” ethnicities. In other words, historically they also made an undeniable contribution to the evolution of Han culture. Map 12.1 illustrates the territories occupied by the Eastern and Western Turkic Khaganates as of 622, the fifth year of Emperor Gaozu of Tang’s reign. The Western Tujue had arrived in Samarkand and Bukhara, both Sogdian kingdoms. The Syr Darya had previously been the dividing line between nomadic and farming peoples. By now, the nomads had crossed the river and controlled much of Transoxiana, with Amu Darya serving as the line of demarcation separating them from the realm of Persia’s Sassanid Dynasty. Not long after the demise of Emperor Yang of Sui and the upheaval that ensued in the Central Plains, the Eastern and Western Tujue regained momentum. As noted

Rise of Turkic-Speaking Peoples and Their Westward Migration 197

Map 12.1  Eastern and Western Turkic Khaganates (ca. 622)

earlier, the Sogdians never formed a government of their own, but they were savvy traders able to interact successfully with various peoples. Compared to the Tujue, the Sogdians possessed a longer history and a more refined culture and were more familiar with the tasks of administration and social management, so the Turkic Khaganates often designated them to serve as senior officials. At times when Chinese dynasties were at a low ebb, upper-class Han based in the north frequently intermarried with Tujue and were bestowed with titles of nobility by Tujue. Li Yuan, founder of the Tang, was the beneficiary of such a title and official post. The Old Book of Tang (Tujue Biographies) chronicles the exploits of Illig Khagan, ruler of the Eastern Turkic Khaganate. When Li Yuan, the future founder of the Tang Dynasty, raised an army to attack the Sui, the khagan did his best to resist the unification of northern China by the Tang. Not long after Emperor Taizong of Tang launched a palace coup (the “Xuanwu Gate Incident”) and murdered his two brothers, the khagan dispatched troops to attack Chang’an, the Tang capital. The emperor dispatched his general Li Jing to attack the Tujue from the rear, and meanwhile, with a handful of loyal followers at his side, he rushed on horseback to the Wei River. Standing on the bank opposite the khagan, the emperor admonished him for going back on his word; with the enemy pressing from behind and realizing he was in the wrong, the khagan agreed to a pact with the Tang—the “Alliance of

198  Rise of Turkic-Speaking Peoples and Their Westward Migration the Wei River”—and sealed it by sacrificing a precious white stallion. The killing of a stallion to secure this pact illustrated that the customs of the northern ethnicities had entered into the Han culture in the northern frontiers of China, as was pointed out earlier. In addition, Illig Khagan had opponents within his khaganate. They reproached him his preference for employing non-Turkic Central Asians (Hu), forsaking his own people and their ancestors, promulgating complex and severe laws, and his bellicose attitude and overuse of the military. Add to this several consecutive years of natural disasters and heavy taxes imposed to maintain governance—all this had combined to foment insurrection. In 629 Emperor Taizong of Tang dispatched his army to attack the Eastern Turkic Khaganate. With his victorious campaign, the entire realm, including today’s Inner Mongolia, were henceforth incorporated into the empire of the Tang. Meanwhile, the Western Tujue occupied a vast area extending from the Junggar Basin (Dzungarian Basin) to Transoxiana. This commercially prosperous region was originally home to the Hephthalites. In order to wrest control from them, the Western Tujue reached out to the Persian Sassanids and formed an east-west “pincer” to defeat the Hephthalites. This left the Tujue sharing a border with the Sasanian Empire, but eventually the Tujue joined forces with the Byzantine Empire to the west and applied the same tactic to defeat the Sasanians. The Byzantines and Sassanids were long-time foes, and their intensifying struggle was conducive to the rise of Arabo-Islamic forces. The Byzantine Empire was able to maintain its rule thanks to the barrier posed by the Mediterranean, while the Sassanids were quickly wiped out by the Arab troops. The reason that the forces of Islam were able to expand rapidly was not unrelated to the efforts of the Western Tujue to fan the Byzantine-Sassanid conflict. The Western Tujue mistakenly believed they could “sit on the mountain and watch the tigers battle it out” (a colorful Chinese maxim); as it happened, it was the Arabs who benefited. The same year that Emperor Taizong of Tang defeated the Eastern Turkic Khaganate, a Chinese Buddhist monk named Xuan Zang—despite an official ban on travel to the west—began his 18-year-long journey to India and back. In his chronicles of his voyage, Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (published 646), he notes that in 630, the king of Kucha: lured the Tujue into the city where they massacred the inhabitants, young and old, with no living creature excepted. The city became wasteland, devoid of hearth and home. This is what Xuan Zang witnessed when he passed through Kucha, a small kingdom located along the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert, inhabited by Tocharians. Dismayed that his subjects did not obey his commands, the king requested assistance from the Tujue, who helpfully slaughtered them en masse. The earliest nomads did not understand or respect farming; they sought only short-term benefit, so pillage and slaughter were commonplace. Meanwhile, in 628, the Western Tujue Khaganate had split in two. The Tang quickly exploited the opportunity posed by its endless internal disputes, and by 659,

Rise of Turkic-Speaking Peoples and Their Westward Migration 199 the entire territory was annexed, with the Chinese dynasty’s sphere of influence now extending to modern-day Uzbekistan. A series of autonomous prefectures were established, governed by local chiefs. Due to their distance from the center of Tang power that made management difficult, in 680 the khaganate was revived. However, in 744, in coordination with the Tang army, a newly formed alliance that had migrated south from the Mongolian Plateau overthrew the revived khaganate, executed the khagan, and founded the Huihe (回纥) Khaganate north of the Gobi Dessert. The remainder of the Tujue grouping scattered. Since the Huihe were so closely allied with Tang, they requested to be renamed “Huihu” (回鹘). The Chinese character “鹘” (hu) signifies a brave, high-soaring falcon. The request was granted by Emperor Dezong of Tang, and henceforth, “Huihe” became “Huihu” in Chinese chronicles. As mentioned previously, the core area of Central Asia is located north of the Amu Darya and south of the Syr Darya. Known as Transoxiana, it was the Sogdian homeland and most of it is now part of Uzbekistan. By the mid-7th century, Islam had conquered Iran, and in the early 8th century, its influence extended to Samarkand. Therefore, when the Turkic-speaking groups (mainly Huihu during the 8th–10th centuries) arrived in large numbers in Central Asia, the Persian-speaking inhabitants of Transoxiana, formerly devotees of Zoroastrianism, then began to convert to Islam. In the 9th century, an early Islamic government founded by nonArabs was established in Transoxiana. Known as the Samanid Dynasty, its capital was located in modern-day Bukhara (Uzbekistan). Although the Samanid rulers were not Arabs, they were conferred official titles by the caliphate in Baghdad. Due to the dynasty’s location, its military personnel were often Turkic and from the northern steppe. During the 9th–10th centuries, Bukhara had a slave market, and many Turkic-speaking young men were willing to be sold there in the hopes of becoming a soldier or servant of the Persians. Gradually, some Turkic soldiers rose to become officials. Islamic law stipulates that a Muslim cannot enslave another Muslim, so once a Turkic slave converted, he was considered a free man. Unlike Christianity, Islam has no professional missionaries and does not purposely seek to convert people outside its existing community. But there are also Muslims who are willing to preach, the most representative being Sufis. Centuries ago, these Sufi, who were Persians or Arabs, practiced asceticism, lived off charity, and proselytized, and they influenced many nomadic peoples of the steppe who originally believed in a primitive and simple form of worship. When exposed to Islam, these nomadic peoples found that the Qur’an was not in contradiction with their original beliefs. They not only accepted Islam, but also brought some shamanistic ideas and concepts to their practice of Islam. Therefore, there are differences between Islam in Central Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. Islam in China’s Xinjiang, while closer to Islam in Central Asia, is also distinctive due to the influence of Chinese culture. The result of this interaction was that some Turkic tribes entered the Islamic ummah (global community of Muslims), and Sufi Muslims penetrated the Turkic-speaking realm. In Persian, the Syr River is a key boundary of sorts: South of the Syr River was called “Iran, and inhabited by Aryans, i.e., Iranians, while the region north

200  Rise of Turkic-Speaking Peoples and Their Westward Migration of the Syr River was called “Turan,” the territory of Turkic peoples. Once the two societies intermingled, the religions fused, engendering Turkic speakers who believed in Islam but whose religious rituals and thinking were colored by traces of Shamanism. A similar evolution occurred in Tibetan Buddhism. While it is a branch of Mahayana Buddhism, it also incorporates many elements from Bon, an indigenous Tibetan faith featuring shamanistic and animistic practices that predate Buddhism. This distinguishes Tibetan Buddhism from Buddhism in India and China’s Central Plains. Due to the traces of Shamanism in Central Asian Islam, many Muslims in the Arabian Peninsula consider it unfaithful to the canon. In fact, it represents a fusion of two religious cultures, a typical example of what happens when two civilizations meet and intermingle. One can site one more example of this between Zoroastrianism and Islam. The Samanid Dynasty in Central Asia was founded in the 10th century by descendants of Sassanid nobles who fled to Khorasan after the Arab invasion. Although these Persian nobles had abandoned Zoroastrianism and converted to Islam, the architectural style of some of their early monuments still exhibited characteristics of Zoroastrianism. For instance, a 10th-century mausoleum still standing in Bukhara today has a dome with pointed studs, which can be said to represent the sun shining in all directions. Islam does not worship the sun, however. Muslims pray five times daily, one of which takes place shortly before sunrise and the other after sunset. Because Zoroastrianism and pharaonic Egypt worshipped the sun, Muslims deliberately avoid the exact moments of sunrise and sunset to engage in religious activities. Yet, when the Samanids built a mausoleum, remnants of their former religion still managed to show up in the dome of the new Islamic building. Qarakhanid Dynasty In 840, the Khakas (possibly the ancestors of today’s Kyrgyz) came south from the northern Mongolian Plateau and attacked and defeated the Huihu. The Huihu—a confederation of Turkic-speaking tribes—were once vassals of the Tujue who inhabited territories to their north. After the Huihu were defeated, they fled in three directions. One group fled to the Hexi Corridor and were henceforth known as the Ganzhou Huihu. Another migrated to the Turpan region in Xinjiang, where they ruled the Tocharian-speaking and Han inhabitants, who believed in Buddhism and Manichaeism. They were the so-called Gaochang Huihu (Turkic: Qocho). A cradle of Buddhist faith, Gaochang eventually succeeded in converting its new masters to Buddhism, even though the Huihu administered the territory in their Turkic tongue. That is to say, after the 9th century, the Huihu became Buddhists but the locals also underwent “Turkification.” The third group of Huihu crossed the Pamir Mountains and entered the Chu River Basin, where they became known as the Pamir Huihu. The area where they settled originally belonged to the Karluks, a nomadic Turkic tribal confederacy,

Rise of Turkic-Speaking Peoples and Their Westward Migration 201 and the two eventually merged to form the Qarakhanate in the mid-9th century. It immediately came into a bitter struggle with the Persian-speaking Samanids who were Muslim. As was usual in nomadic tradition, the Qarakhanate was administered by two branches of the ruling clan. Early in the 10th century, a prince from one branch stationed near Kashgar converted to Islam under the influence of a Samanid prince. This irked the uncle who had earlier been driven out from his seat in Talas by the Samanids and escaped to rule in Kashgar. Subsequently, the nephew led his army with the help of Samanid army to seize Kashgar and declare himself the khan of Qarakhanate. After his death, his son proclaimed Islam the state religion of Qarakhanate in 960. By the end of the 10th century, a large number of grassland nomads had converted to Islam. The Qarakhanid Dynasty strictly enforced the religion and commenced a 40-year jihad. In Arabic, “jihad” has two distinct meanings: One is the battle to overcome one’s sins and truly believe in the Qur’an, and the other is to wage holy war against infidels to forcefully convert them to Islam. Today’s terrorists often claim to be “jihadi,” while most Islamic scholars emphasize that true jihad is a spiritual struggle that takes place within one’s self. Once the Qarakhanids established Islam as the state religion, they used Kashgar as their base from which to launch several military campaigns eastward, targeting Buddhist kingdoms in the Tarim Basin, such as Khotan, Aksu, and Kuqa, that had been established by Scythians and Tocharians. Some four decades later, Khotan succumbed to Islam, but the Huihu located in eastern Xinjiang’s Gaochang and Hami were not thoroughly Islamized until the 15th century, i.e., the early years of the Ming Dynasty, when the Huihu were already known in Chinese as “Uyghurs.” Actually, during the Ming and Qing, northern Xinjiang and parts of southern Xinjiang were ruled by the Junggar Khanate (Dzungar) founded by the Mongol Oirats, who were followers of Tibetan Buddhism. This situation did not change until the mid-18th century, during the reign of Emperor Qianlong of Qing. Many people assume that the indigenous inhabitants of Xinjiang were all Turkic speaking and Muslim, but neither assumption is historically correct. It is a fact that Kashgar, once a center of Islamic scholarship and the spiritual homeland of the Turkic Uyghurs within China, was Muslim-dominated by the 11th century, but some other regions of Xinjiang were more or less Islamized only after centuries, and even today there are Mongols and Tibetans in Xinjiang who practice Buddhism. The Han people in Xinjiang are neither Muslim nor Turkic speaking; the Hui population are Muslim but not Turkic speaking; the Tajiks are Muslim but do not speak a Turkic tongue; and moreover, while the Kazaks and the Uighurs are both Muslim and Turkic speaking, they have different ethnic and cultural identities. At the end of the 10th century, the Qarakhanids joined forces with another people of Turkic descent, the Ghaznavids, to swallow the Samanid Dynasty. At its height, the Qarakhanid rule extended from the Tarim Basin in the east to Transoxiana to the west, undeniably a vast territory. Two important works were penned in 11th century Kashgar. One was Kutadgu Bilig (Wisdom Which Brings Good Fortune), a tale of the moon and the stars—told

202  Rise of Turkic-Speaking Peoples and Their Westward Migration in the form of an allegory—that offers a guide to governance and the ethics of the relationship between a sovereign and his ministers. Written by Yusuf Khass Hajib for the prince of Kashgar, it is actually a work of political philosophy. The other masterwork was the Diwan Lughat al-Turk (Compendium of the Languages of the Turks), compiled in Arabic by Mahmud Kashgari. This tome is not simply a dictionary; it is closer to an encyclopedia of things Turkic, including astronomy, geography, details regarding the various tribes that constitute the Turkic people, and their languages. It has become a must-read for scholars of Turkology and Turkic tongues. The Ghaznavid Dynasty The Samanids engaged many mercenaries from north of the Syr River who spoke various Turkic languages. One of them, Sabuktigin, became governor of the Khorasan region, similarly to An Lushan—reputedly of Sogdian and Turkic extraction—who rose to become military governor in the northeast of China and instigated the major rebellion against the Tang who had commissioned him. Khorasan, which means “eastern” in Persian, has played an important role in Persian history. The hinterland of Persia’s sphere of cultural influence generally included Afghanistan, most of Turkmenistan, and northeastern Iran. Having fallen out of favor, Sabuktigin led an army of Turkic soldiers to capture the region of Ghazna (modern Ghazni Province in Afghanistan), established the Ghaznavid Dynasty (Map 12.2), and began his battle to supplant the Samanids. Sultan Mahmud succeeded his father Sabuktigin and, around the year 1000 CE, his forces repeatedly attacked and sacked the region of Delhi, inaugurating the long-term Muslim rule of parts of India.

Map 12.2  The Ghaznavid Empire under Sultan Mahmud (998–1030)

Rise of Turkic-Speaking Peoples and Their Westward Migration 203 Beginning with the 12th century, the most important state in the Indian subcontinent was the Sultanate of Delhi, with Delhi as its capital. Its rulers originated in Central Asia. If the subcontinent was peopled largely by Hindus, its rulers— particularly of Delhi—tended to be Muslims during the 12th–19th centuries. At various times, the Portuguese, Dutch, French, and British occupied parts of the subcontinent, until 1858 when Great Britain’s Queen Victoria was enthroned as the “Empress of India.” In the 12th century, the Ghaznavid Dynasty emerged in the Persian region; the Delhi Sultanate was established in India; mainly Buddhist Xinjiang in northwest China was undergoing Islamization; and a branch of the Oghuz Tujue had founded the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm in Anatolia. These new rulers all had two things in common: They were the descendants of Turkic-speaking peoples, and they were adherents of Islam.

13 Westward Migration of the Turkic Peoples From the Syr Darya to the Danube

Loose confederations of Tujue—hereafter referred to as Turkic peoples—roamed the Mongolian Plateau while migrating westward in the 6th–7th centuries. They crossed the Syr Darya (Syr River) and proceeded southward in large numbers during the 9th. From the 10th century onwards, these Turkophones crossed the Amu Darya (Amu River) and gradually penetrated the Persian world. The 10th and 11th centuries witnessed a formidable westward expansion of territory ruled by Turkic peoples: The Pamir-Huihu group combined with the Karluks who had been in Central Asia for several centuries to form the Karakhanate; a Turkophone Muslim army established the Ghazni Dynasty in the eastern part of the Persian cultural sphere; and the Delhi Sultanate was taking shape in northern India. The Karakhan Dynasty had a two-khan system with Balasagun in the Chu valley and Kashgar south of Tianshan being the twin capitals. In the late 10th century, the two branches of Karakhanate converted to Islam and, with Kashgar as their base, waged jihad against the oasis states of China’s Xinjiang. Speakers of the Oghuz branch of Turkic established the Seljuk Dynasty in Asia Minor, which had been dominated by the Greeks for centuries. In the 13th century, the Mongols undertook three Western Expeditions and became rulers of large chunks of Central Asia, West Asia, and Eastern Europe. However, from the middle of the 14th century, most of the migrant Mongols were assimilated into the Turkic-speaking Muslim populations of these areas. Their fusion forms the vast majority of the Turkophone peoples of today, including Turks, Azeris, Tartars, Bashkirs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Uyghurs, and Salars.

Oghuz Cross the Amu Darya During this grand migration of the Turkophones, the Karluks chose to remain in Central Asia, while a tribal confederation of newly converted Muslims known as the Oghuz broke with them and continued westward. Among the Oghuz, the Seljuks (named after their chief Seljuk Beg) traveled the furthest in that direction. Their most decisive step was crossing the Syr Darya and Amu Darya at the turn of the 11th century, which marked their momentous entry into the Persian realm. The Seljuks then went south and west in waves, reaching the Persian town of Hamadan DOI: 10.4324/9781003369899-13

Westward Migration of the Turkic Peoples 205 in 1042, and moved further south to occupy the territory of the Ghaznavid Dynasty, already dominated by Turkophones. Seljuk Beg’s grandson Tughril Beg then proceeded westward to Baghdad. In 1056, draped in the Prophet’s cloak and clasping His cane, the Caliph of Baghdad— by then, caliph only in name (see later)—exited the city gates to greet the new conqueror. He appointed Tughril Regent of the Abbasid Empire, and bequeathed him with the titles of “King of the East and West” and “Sultan.” This marked the transfer of dominant power in the Islamic world from the Arabs to Turkic tribes who were deeply influenced by Persian culture. Soon the Seljuks were on the move again, this time into Syria, and then some decided to enter Asia Minor, hitherto untouched by Islamic forces. An event that had a great impact on world history was the Seljuks’ arrival in Manzikert in 1071 (present-day Malazgirt in Turkey), where they captured the Byzantine emperor. The victorious and heady Seljuks inspired other Turkic tribes to pour into the region and they rapidly occupied Anatolia, the most important hinterland of the Byzantine Empire. By the early 12th century, the Seljuks had established their own dynasty in Asia Minor. In addition, other offshoots of the Oghuz settled on the west and east coasts, respectively, of the Caspian Sea and came to be known as Azeris and Turkmen. After the Seljuks and other Turkic-speaking tribes entered Asia Minor, they came into frequent contact with the local Greeks and Armenians. Many locals converted to Islam—partly to enjoy freedom from jizya, a tax leveled on nonMuslims—and Oghuz became the official language. Many inhabitants were already Muslim, such as the Tartars, Persians, and Kurds, and they gradually became the backbone of the Ottoman Empire. After a few centuries, the Seljuks, who had originated in the steppes of Asia, grew accustomed to a diet of olives, figs, cuttlefish, and prawns, while the Greeks, Persians, and Kurds adopted the Turkic tongue as their daily lingua franca. This is yet another case study—on a grand scale—of the successful intermingling of different cultures. Seljuk Dynasty

Seljuks first took control of eastern Persia and occupied the west too. Ironically, before 1055, it was the Persian-speaking, Shi’ite Buyid Dynasty that controlled the caliphate in Baghdad. Yet this caliph of Arab descent was nominally the political and religious leader of the Sunnis. Thus, the destruction of the Buyids was welcomed by many, and from 1055 onward the Seljuks became the undisputed dominant power of the Islamic world (Map 13.1). Their popularity among Muslims of all stripes only increased when they captured the Byzantine emperor at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. In the 12th century, Seljuk power in West Asia fragmented and divided into several small states, the largest and most powerful of which was the Sultanate of Rûm (Rome). With Konya in south-central Turkey as its capital, its language of administration was Persian, while Oghuz was spoken by the common folk.

206  Westward Migration of the Turkic Peoples

Map 13.1  Seljuk expansion and empire

The onset of the 13th century coincided with the westward march of the Mongols, so many Muslims living in the eastern part of the Persian cultural sphere took flight. The furthest place westward that they could reach was Konya, but the Mongols occupied Konya in 1243 and the Seljuk Sultanate became a Mongol vassal state. The refugees who gathered in Konya probably did not suffer greatly, and among them was the famous Sufist mystic poet born Jalal ad-Din Muḥammad Balkhi. How did he become known simply as “Rumi”? The Turkophone rulers of this territory, formerly part of the Roman Empire, were known by speakers of Arab and Persian as the “Seljuks of Rûm.” Born and raised in Afghanistan, this Persianspeaking poet had moved there with his father to escape the Mongols. The most infectious aspect of his poetry was images of female beauty and fine wine to express the mystical religious experience of Sufism. He composed The Spiritual Couplets (Masnavi-ye-Ma’navi), consisting of tens of thousands of rhyming couplets, and created a Sufi sect of his own. Its iconic ritual—the sema, a form of physically active meditation—requires donning a robe, extending the arms to the left and right with one palm towards the sky and the other towards the ground, and maintaining one foot in place while twirling the body continuously to music. At a certain point in time, the dancer is said to experience a sense of closeness to God. As mentioned previously, there is a Sufi concept that—for a brief period of time under specific circumstances—the devotee can come into contact with God as if divinely possessed. There are those who believe that genuine and lasting unity with God can be achieved, and Rumi initially professed the latter; however, an

Westward Migration of the Turkic Peoples 207 Azeri philosopher whom he admired criticized him for this view. Realizing that he had erred, Rumi subsequently abandoned the sect he had founded and went into seclusion in the mountains. Now known as the Mevlâna Museum, the combined dervish lodge (where the sema was performed) and mausoleum for Rumi’s father still stands in Konya and is one of the Republic of Turkey’s most important cultural heritage sites. Turko-Mongol Ethnocultural Synthesis

When we discuss the history of Turkic tribes, we cannot ignore the Mongols. During the Mongols’ Western Expeditions and subsequent rule, a large number of descendants of the Turkophone Tujue, now Muslim, integrated with the less numerous Mongol population. Eventually, when the Mongols established khanates beyond the territory of Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368), the Mongols found themselves Turkified and Islamized within a few generations. In addition to the Yuan Dynasty, which was directly subordinate to the Mongol’s Great Khan, the Mongols also established the Ogedei Khanate, Chagatai Khanate, Kipchak Khanate (Golden Horde), and Il-khanate. Within a few decades after Genghis Khan’s death, the Ogedei Khanate was split between the Kipchak and Chagatai Khanates, and so-called Turko-Mongol culture took form mainly within the borders of these two khanates. Since the Il-khanate was dominated by Persian culture, Turko-Mongol culture did not make inroads there, but the latter did influence territories on its fringes, i.e., present-day Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. Before the Mongol Western Expeditions, there were many Turkic-speaking tribes, commonly known as the Kipchaks, who inhabited the Eurasian Steppe north of the Caspian Sea, including the lower reaches of the Volga River and the Ural Mountains. Most of these Turkic tribes were already Muslim. Intriguingly, to the northwest of the Caspian Sea there was also a Turkic-speaking, Judaic khanate ruled by the Khazars, which occupied a key trade route in the 9th–10th centuries. During the Mongol campaigns, a virtual tidal wave of Turkic nomadic tribes that shared similar languages and lifestyles migrated from east to west. The relatively few Mongols in the Kipchak Khanate gradually grew distant from their cousins back in the lands under the Great Khan, integrating with the local population, converting to Islam, and adopting the Turkic tongue. The ruling class of the Chaghatai Khanate was physically closer to the Mongolian homeland and retained a distinctive Mongolian character, but it too became Muslim and Turkophone. The Chaghatai Khanate roughly covered present-day Xinjiang of China, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. In the latter half of the 14th century, the khanate split into two, one to the east and one to the west. During this era, a junior military officer named Timur emerged in the western rump state, and his later actions were to change the course of world history. Injured in battle, Timur was given the unflattering name of “Tamerlane” by Europeans, i.e., a reference to the term “lame.” Timur was born into the Barlas, an early Turkic confederation dependent on the Mongols. He spoke the Turkic dialect of Central Asia but claimed to be Mongol.

208  Westward Migration of the Turkic Peoples Samarkand was Timur’s base, and he accumulated power via sworn brotherhood. It is worth noting that among Eurasian steppe nomads, “blood brothers” who took a blood oath henceforth formed a tightly knit political bond. Timur claimed to be the successor of Genghis Khan and followed his example in warfare by showing leniency to foes who surrendered voluntarily, while sacking the city and coldmindedly slaughtering the local populace of those who refused. Surviving enemies fled and spread word of the looming Mongol terror, which in turn motivated further voluntary surrender. This tried-and-true method of accumulating territory came at a relatively low cost for the invaders. It is estimated that in Genghis Khan’s time there were only about one million Mongols, but they conquered tens of millions of people in the Islamic world and possibly more than one hundred million if one includes the Southern Song (1127–1279), the Kingdom of Dali in Yunnan, and Tibet. Timur considered himself Mongol, although his ancestors actually hailed from a Turkic tribe that had joined the Mongols group during the war. Regardless, there was no way he could trace his lineage back to Genghis Khan and his “Golden Clan.” For this reason, although he founded a massive empire, he never dared use the title of “Khan”; he could only claim to be an emir, and even his mausoleum in Samarkand is called “Guri Amir.” Eventually he married a Chagatai princess, thereby gaining the title of “prince consort.” This allowed his descendants to claim membership in the Golden Clan, albeit via marriage, and so they could henceforth legitimately use the “Khan” title. One consequence of Timur’s conquests was to prolong the life of the Byzantine Empire. At the time, Byzantium was largely moribund due to repeated attacks by the Ottomans. In 1402, Timur fought his way into Asia Minor. He roundly defeated the Ottomans at Ankara, intentionally humiliating the Ottoman sultan, who then had little choice but to focus on his Turko-Mongol enemy to the east. This provided a lengthy respite to the Byzantines, who languished until their capital Constantinople fell to Mehmed the Conqueror in 1453. Timur’s forces also attacked the Kipchak Khanate to the north, more memorably known in the West as the Golden Horde. Thus, a secondary consequence of Timur’s war campaign was an overall loss of power among Mongol leaders in the northern grassland. In 1370, Timur killed the khan of the Western Chaghatai Khanate and founded his own state. Meanwhile, in China Zhu Yuanzhang was busy establishing the Ming Dynasty (1368). Timur died in 1405, just when Zheng He’s fleet set sail on the first of seven naval expeditions bound for the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Timur’s rise to power coincided with the Ottoman penetration into Europe and its string of military victories, and he breathed his last breath on his way to do battle with the Ming to the east. The great empires of Eurasia were thus linked together through establishment and subsequent expansion and exploration. Back to the Mongols. Genghis Khan’s wife Börte, who was abducted by a rival tribe early in his career, was pregnant with her son Jochi when she was rescued. The three younger sons of Genghis Khan doubted that Jochi was truly their father’s offspring, and often quarreled with him. Relations between the second son Chagatai

Westward Migration of the Turkic Peoples 209 and Jochi were particularly poor. But Genghis Khan was very understanding of his first wife and was affectionate toward Jochi, treating him as his own son. Genghis Khan regarded Batu, Jochi’s son, as his own grandson. After conquering Khwarazm, an oasis region now located partially in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, Genghis Khan returned to the east and passed away. His third son Ögedei succeeded him as the Great Khan and ordered an attack on a region west of the Volga that the Mongols had never penetrated. This military campaign lasted seven years (1237–1244) and was dubbed “Expedition of the Eldest Sons” by Chinese historians. The first son of the Great Khan’s four sons, as well as the eldest sons of his sons-in-law, were all drafted. Batu, because of his leadership qualities and bravery in battle, was designated commander-in-chief. This “long march” was highly successful and proved that the third generation of Mongols were still very capable of fighting. In 1242, Ögedei Khan died and Batu quickly began his return to the Mongolian heartland, intending to compete for the title of Great Khan. But along the way he learned that Guyuk, Ögedei’s son, had obtained the title at a Kuriltay convoked in Mongolia. Instead, Batu established the vast Golden Horde, with its capital at Saray on the Volga, and ruled the western steppes of Asia, Volga Valley, the Caucasus, and a large part of Eastern Europe including Moscow and Kiev. In the early 14th century, under the rule of the Golden Horde’s ninth khan Uzbeg (Sultan Mohammed Öz Beg), the khanate practiced Islam. While Uzbeg was personally influenced by a Sufi to convert, more significantly a high percentage of the khanate’s vassals and common folk were already Muslim. Once the Golden Horde was fully Islamized, it split into the Blue Horde in the west and White Horde in the east. The Blue Horde continued to rule the Slavs for more than a century and later merged completely with the Tartars to form the Turko-Mongol forces of Europe. In the late 14th century, the White Horde cooperated with the Timurids but was soon defeated by them, leading to intense internal strife. This led to a fierce civil war within the White Horde, which in turn became the origin of present-day Kazakhstan. Another wing of the White Horde claimed to be descendants of Uzbeg. In the 15th century, the Uzbeks relocated southward to Transoxiana, destroying the Timurid Khanate and becoming the new rulers of Transoxiana. The newly arrived steppe people intermarried and fused with the indigenous population to form the modernday Uzbek nation. It is interesting to note that today, 500 years later, the Uzbek Republic regards Timur as its ancestor and national hero! The Uzbeks expelled the descendants of the Timurid Khanate, one of whom was Babur, a sixth-generation descendant of Timur (Figure 13.1). A handsome man, he excelled at both civil and military affairs, but he had bad luck in his youth. Driven out of the Ferghana Basin in present-day eastern Uzbekistan by the Uzbeks, he fought his way across Central Asia and occupied—but lost—control of Samarkand three times. A descendant of Genghis Khan through his mother as well, Babur was perceived sympathetically as a khan without a khanate. But luck eventually sided with this distant member of the Golden Clan. Out of desperation, in 1526 he led a group of

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Figure 13.1  Babur, Badishah of the Mughal Empire

soldiers to the Indus Valley, where he defeated the local rulers and founded the Mughal Empire, with its capital at Lahore (present-day Pakistan). The Mughals were to govern India until 1857. Babur, who could write in Central Asian Turkic and Persian, penned his memoirs, The Baburnama, in the Chagatai language known to Babur as “Türki” (meaning Turkic), the spoken language of the Andijan-Timurids. Chagatai was a standard script frequently used by Uzbeks and Uyghurs prior to the 20th century. The Baburnama contained so much detail that it has not only become a literary classic among Turkophones worldwide, it is also an invaluable source

Westward Migration of the Turkic Peoples 211 of information about Turkic linguistics and the history of Central Asia and the Indian peninsula. Another person who wrote in a Central Asian Turkic language was Ali-Shir Nava’i. He was born in what is now Uzbekistan but lived in Afghanistan at about the same time as Babur. Nava’i wrote fine poetry in Persian but pioneered verse in his native tongue. His Turkic poems were in many ways based on existing Persian forms, but due to language differences it was not possible to apply them to the Turkic, so he created his own. Ali-Shir Nava’i’s poetry and Babur’s memoirs are the cornerstones of 16th-century Turkic literature. The Ottoman Empire The territory of the Timurid Empire lay mainly in Central Asia, while the Ottomans succeeded the Seljuks in West Asia in the mid-13th century. Occupation of Konya by the Mongols seriously affected the rule of the Seljuk Khanate and led to confrontation between many rival states. The Ottomans were originally a small tribe subordinate to the Sultanate of Rûm. After the sultanate splintered, tribal chief Osman in his role as a Gazi (a Turkic honorific title for warriors fighting infidels to extend the Islamic domain) founded the principality of Osman in 1299. The foundation of the Ottoman principality was in northwestern Asia Minor, across the Sea of Marmara from Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. Later, they seized a small portion of the empire’s European territories and moved their capital to Adrianople (Edirne in Turkey), near the border with Greece and Bulgaria. Under the pressure of frequent Ottoman attacks, the Byzantines faltered, but Timur’s invasion of Asia Minor in 1402 slowed Ottoman progress. Nonetheless, in 1453, the seventh-generation Osman ruler, 21-year-old Mehmed II, led the allied forces that finally captured the Byzantine capital and terminated the 1,500-year history of the Roman Empire, i.e., the 1,000-year dynastic rule of the Eastern Roman Empire. Since the 5th century, it had been the Greek-speaking successor to the Western Roman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean. The 195th and last emperor of the Roman Empire died on Constantinople’s ramparts. The first ten sultans were all hard-working, good rulers, excelling at matters cultural and military, so the Ottoman Empire ruled uninterrupted for 250 years, expanding their territory and power and creating a “virtuous” cycle in which they had the resources to amply reward those whose achievements merited it. In 1529, Suleiman the Magnificent led his troops to surround and lay siege to Vienna. They almost occupied the city, a great shock to the Europeans. By the time of Suleiman’s death in 1566, the Ottoman Empire spanned the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa and ruled Medina and Mecca, making it the undisputed leader of the Islamic world and the strongest state in Europe (Map 13.2). Once there was no more ground to conquer and the expansion of the empire had ceased, the size of the “cake” was fixed, but those who claimed a slice of it were not. Relatives of those holding inherited official posts and emerging power centers

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Map 13.2  1355–1680: The expanding Ottoman Empire

often caused internal conflicts and local unrest. The 11th sultan, Selim II, indulged in liquor and became known as “Selim the Drunkard” (Sarhoş Selim). Like other nomadic empires in history, the Ottoman Empire did not have a fixed system of succession. In the early days, princes were often dispatched to serve as governors or lead troops in battle. This afforded them the chance to show their mettle and compete based on their achievements; upon the death of the sultan, it was then up to the most capable among them to accede to the throne. But during the middle period of the dynasty, court politics became terribly complex, partly due to the family and political ties of the empress and the sultan’s favorite consorts. The candidate for such practical training in the world at large was often selected secretly upon the basis of such intrigue, and once the sultan had passed away and the heir apparent was enthroned—fearful that his siblings would not obey him or would even plot against him—the new sultan would eliminate his brothers, one by one, justifying their assassination based upon a distorted interpretation of Islamic law. Eventually, even the imperial family found this slaughter too cruel, so they settled for another method: At an early age, the heir apparent would arrange for his brothers to drink heavily and spend their free time in the harem, or at least ensure they rarely left the palace and were ignorant of how to manage political, military,

Westward Migration of the Turkic Peoples 213 and diplomatic affairs, in order to reduce them as a threat when the time came for him to accede to the throne. From becoming the undisputed leader of the Islamic world and the strongest state in Europe in the mid-16th century, the Ottoman Empire declined to a point where it lost territory in east Mediterranean at the end of the 17th century, and it began to see its territory encroached upon by European powers in the 18th. Nevertheless, as the Chinese proverb puts it: A scrawny dying camel is still larger than a horse. At the beginning of the 20th century, it still nominally governed large swathes of territory within North Africa, Southeast Europe, and West Asia. It was not until the First World War that its collapse became irreversible. In 1923, what was left of the Ottoman Empire was replaced by the Republic of Turkey. The Ottoman Empire started as a principality established by Osman Gazi in northwestern Anatolia. It expanded under his son Orhan Gazi into the Byzantine territory of Thrace across the Bosphorus Strait. While Osman and Orhan were still modest and called themselves Gazi, the third ruler Murad I began to use the title Sultan, and this title lasted for 560 years until 1923. Figure 13.2 features Mehmed the Conqueror, who captured Constantinople. Figure 13.3 portrays Suleiman the Magnificent, the ruler of the Ottoman Empire at its height. It was after his death in 1566 that the decline of the Ottoman Empire commenced. Many of the sultans’ consorts were Europeans, so their lineage grew increasingly distant from the era when they inhabited Mongolia. This can also be seen in the appearance of the faces in these two portrayals, but their language and sense of identity were still firmly Turkic. Strictly speaking, today there remain only Turkophones, not “Turkic” peoples, because both rulers and common folk constantly mixed with other peoples, including Persians, Slavs, Greeks, and North Caucasians. Many of today’s native Turkish-speaking Muslims actually have Arab, North Caucasian, Balkan, Armenian, or Kurdish ancestors. When Selim III became sultan in 1789, Europe was highly developed and flourishing. He realized that there was no way to survive without learning from Europe and thus initiated the concept of “secession from Asia and accession to Europe,” an idea that has been popular in the Republic of Turkey too. The year 1789 coincided with the outbreak of the French Revolution. Nobles expelled by the French Republic arrived in Turkey where they helped the Ottomans establish their first military academy in 1795, the Imperial School of Military Engineering, build a new army, and learn modern science. In fact, Turkey’s modernization began much earlier than China’s. But reformers face danger, and Selim III was assassinated in 1807 by conservative forces. Abdul Hamid II, 34th of the Ottoman Empire’s 36 sultans, abdicated in 1909 after a reign of 33 years. At the end of 1876, the Ottoman parliament promulgated a constitution and Hamid II proclaimed a constitutional monarchy. Before long, however, after the unsuccessful war with Russia, he froze the constitution and dissolved parliament. Although the constitution was later restored, it existed in name only and failed to play its intended role.

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Figure 13.2  Mehmed II (Mehmed the Conqueror)

Had the constitutional monarchy been implemented, the position of the monarch could have been preserved, but as those in power were reluctant to relinquish any power whatsoever, ultimately this resulted in the death knell of the constitutional monarchy. This is similar to what occurred with the declaration of a shortlived constitution in 1908 during the closing years of the Qing Dynasty in China. Hamid II was succeeded by two more sultans, Mehmet V and Mehmet VI, but by that time, real power was already held by the European-educated nationalists, the Young Turks.

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Figure 13.3  Suleiman the Magnificent

It was “the Father of the Turks,” born Mustafa Kemal, who founded the Republic of Turkey in 1923 and thus brought down the curtain on the Ottoman Empire. Like the Arabs, most Turkic peoples did not have a surname, instead customarily referring to one another by combining the person’s personal name with that of their father and grandfather. Other Altaic peoples, such as the Manchu and Mongols, also practiced this custom. In 1928, an iconic law was passed mandating two changes: It abolished the Arabic-based Ottoman script in favor of the Latin alphabet, and it required all citizens to take a surname. Kemal was Turkey’s national hero. At the outset of World War I in 1914, the Ottoman Empire allied itself with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the British and French quickly occupied much of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans were defeated at almost every turn, with the exception of some important

216  Westward Migration of the Turkic Peoples victories obtained by forces led by Kemal. He famously defeated the Allied landing forces at the Dardanelles in the Battle of Gallipoli and defended Istanbul, and in honor of this feat the Grand National Assembly of Turkey conferred him with the title as his surname, “Atatürk.” Atatürk served as president of the Republic of Turkey from 1923 to 1938, and he initiated virtually all the strategic reforms that shaped the very structure of postOttoman Turkish society. The efforts of the citizenry to learn from Europe is evidenced by their dress. From 14th-century Orhan Gazi to late 19th-century Sultan Hamid II, the garb of the Turkic-dominated empire had naturally evolved yet still had a unique Asian flavor, but with the birth of the republic under Atatürk, it transformed totally. As can be seen from Figure 13.4, the president and his entourage dressed in a manner that was indistinguishable from their European contemporaries. Turkey is situated between Europe and Asia, but only about three percent of its territory—East Thrace and a portion of Istanbul—lies within Europe proper. The Turks have long hoped to “secede from Asia and accede to Europe” and worked hard to join the EU, but they have not yet met with success. There are both economic and religious factors at play here. First of all, Turkey has a population of 80 million, more or less the same as that of Germany, itself the largest nation in the EU, so Turkey’s inclusion would have a sizeable economic impact. The EU is overwhelmingly Christian, counting roughly 5 percent Muslims, whereas something like 98 percent of Turks identify as followers of Islam. With the rise of Islamic radicalism, Europeans perceive the religion as a threat, and so the possibility of Turkey’s actually joining the EU is quite low. One of Turkey’s most iconic venues is the Turkish bath. A good Turkish bath employs steam. The visitor lies on a marble slab that is heated from below. Warm

Figure 13.4  Atatürk and his officials

Westward Migration of the Turkic Peoples 217 water is poured from one end of the slightly sloped slab, flowing over the marble beneath the body, while an attendant forcefully scrubs the visitor’s skin. Afterwards, one dons a robe, sips on tea or wine, and nibbles at snacks before departing. In the old days, women and children used to go to the bath with their maids, who brought food. Next to the Suleiman Mosque the public can visit the private bathing facility that Mimar Sinan—architect of several dozen famous mosques—personally designed for Suleiman the Magnificent. Figure 13.5 is a ceramic tile in the Turkish Islamic art style. The tulip is Turkey’s national flower, and the Netherlands is now the undisputed leading cultivator, but tulips actually spread from Iran to Turkey first, and then to Western Europe. At the height of the Ottoman Empire’s glory, members of the social elite refused to be seen in public without a tulip, and that included the sultan himself. The Ottomans also imported much of its porcelain from China, and there were many ateliers in Guangzhou that custom-designed and created porcelain, paintings, and other objets d’art specifically for Islamic monarchs and nobles. Figure 13.6 shows a Chinese-style Turkish porcelain plate in Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace. The cone-capped structure in the distant center of this photo is the Galata Tower, constructed by a Byzantine monarch in the 6th century CE, some 1,300 years ago, on the European side of Istanbul. As noted earlier, the city was originally a city-state of ancient Greece dubbed Byzantium, and renamed Constantinople after Rome’s Emperor Constantine. With the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire in 1453, it became the capital of the Ottoman Empire until the Turkish Republic was founded in 1923. Today, the official capital is Ankara, but Istanbul is undoubtedly the economic and cultural center of Turkey, with a population of over 1,500,000. Figure 13.7 is Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Turkish: Sultan Ahmet Camii). After the Ottomans captured Constantinople, they did two things in terms of the city’s religious architecture. The first was to convert the 6th-century vaulted church, the former Greek Orthodox cathedral Hagia Sophia, into a mosque, adding four minarets to this fine example of Byzantine architecture for Muslim invocation to prayer (“ezan” in Turkish). The next was to construct an even more imposing structure— they sit side-by-side—complete with six minarets. Its interior is dominated by the color blue, hence the Sultan Ahmed Mosque has become known among foreigners as the “Blue Mosque.” Hagia Sophia, built in the 6th century during Emperor Justinian’s reign and probably the greatest example of Byzantine architecture, was designated a public museum in 1934 after the Republic of Turkey was established, with both of its Byzantine iconic arts and the later Islamic decorations on display in the interior. In 2020, the Turkish government redesignated it as a mosque. Edirne (Adrianople), capital of the Ottoman Empire prior to Constantinople, now a Turkish city bordering Bulgaria and Greece, is located on the European continent. The Ottomans had already occupied most of the Balkan Peninsula, including Serbia, before conquering Constantinople. Therefore, although Serbia was a Greek Orthodox state, the Serbians actually joined with the Ottoman army to attack Constantinople. The Selimiye Mosque in Edirne is widely regarded as one of

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Figure 13.5  Turkish porcelain tile

the most outstanding examples of Islamic architecture, and it was built by Mimar Sinan, who was born into a Christian family in central Anatolia. In the Ottoman Empire, a system of tribute called the devshirme was employed to recruit soldiers and bureaucrats loyal to the sultan from among Christian boys in their teens. Selected via physical and intellectual tests, they were given the finest education and then converted to Islam. The lesser ones served as personal servants to the sultan while the best became officials and technicians. Sinan, whose father was a stonemason, was a product of this system and eventually became the greatest architect of the Ottoman Empire. Amazingly, Selimiye

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Figure 13.6 Topkapi Palace relic: Chinese-style porcelain plate custom-made for a Turkish customer

Figure 13.7  The Blue Mosque

220  Westward Migration of the Turkic Peoples Mosque in Edirne was his last project, designed when he was 97 years old. Among his other projects were the Suleimaniye Mosque and the refurbishing of Hagia Sophia, both in Istanbul. In his memoir, Sinan declared that the most glorious and happy moments of his life occurred when the sultan was leading his troops to do battle, and Sinan was able to run alongside the mounted monarch and exchange a few words with His Majesty. Edirne is on the Turkish border, near Greece and Bulgaria, but many of its inhabitants have Asian faces. This is because Mehmed II had a policy of garrisoning troops, many of them Asian, who were charged with protecting the borderlands and opening them up to cultivation. Evidently, their descendants prospered and put down roots there. The Ottomans were a great multiethnic empire, like China’s Tang Dynasty that employed many foreigners such as An Lushan and Gao Xianzhi— both famous generals—who served the empire. Turkey today is a place where Islam is enjoying a revival, but secularism still dominates. The difference is more easily seen among women—those who don a hijab are more traditional, while those who do not are more secular. Both types of people can be found in today’s Turkey. Almost all Turks are Muslim, but not all Muslims advocate a return to their former attire or social system. Istanbul is still home to the Eastern Orthodox patriarch and, of course, the Catholic Church. In the 5th century when Christianity was just beginning to emerge in Greece, there were monks who hid themselves in monasteries deep in the mountains and left many ruins behind. Many are preserved in Turkey today and are now open to visitors (Figure 13.8). During Ottoman rule, many sultans implemented liberal religious policies and were tolerant of Christian and Jewish religious facilities and beliefs; they encouraged conversion to Islam mainly by exacting a head tax on non-Muslims. Turkic-Speaking Peoples Turkic-speaking peoples are currently very widely distributed. The westernmost Turkophones inhabit Bosnia in the Balkan Peninsula. With 60–70 million mothertongue speakers, the Turks in Turkey—excluding those who do not claim Turkic descent, such as the Kurds—represent the main Turkic-speaking ethnic group. The Azeris of Azerbaijan speak a dialect close to modern Turkish, but Azerbaijan was formerly part of the Persian Empire like Iran. Later occupied by Russia and then incorporated into the USSR, Azerbaijan is today an independent state. South of the Republic of Azerbaijan are two Iranian provinces with a majority of Azeris, West Azerbaijan and East Azerbaijan. The latter includes Tabriz, once the capital of the Mongol’s Il-khanate. In the Volga Valley north of Iran, now in Russia, there have been many Turkicspeaking settlements from the 11th century onwards, peopled largely by Bashkirs and Tartars. The Republic of Bashkortostan (Bashkiria) is located mainly on the western side of the southern portion of the Urals, and its capital is Ufa.

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Figure 13.8 5th-century Christian Monastery of Sumela in the mountains near Trabzon, Turkey

The Republic of Tatarstan is situated in the middle reaches of the Volga, and its capital is the city of Kazan. Lenin once studied at Kazan University. Kazan is the third largest city in Russia and, together with Moscow and St. Petersburg, is one of just three Class A historical and cultural cities of Russia. Nearly half of Kazan’s population is Tartar. Pressing eastward from Iran, we enter Central Asia where Turkophones dominate in Turkmenistan and then Uzbekistan. Turkophones in Uzbekistan all selfidentify as Uzbek, but physically they are quite distinct. In fact, this is also the case in China’s Xinjiang, where I found that Uyghurs in Hami, Kashgar, and Hotan look quite different. They are not particularly aware of this, however, as they have been steeped in a shared culture. There are large Russian minorities in Central Asia, and several countries such as Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan have adopted the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. Farther east, we come to China’s Xinjiang, where the main Turkic-speaking peoples are the Uighurs and two peoples, the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz, whose populations are split between China and former Soviet republics to the immediate west. Near the area where Russian, Mongolia, and China meet, there live a smaller group of Turkophones known as the Tuvans. Tuva Republic of the Russian Federation, located near Mongolia, hosts a population of about 130,000. They speak a Turkic tongue, but their daily lives are heavily influenced by Mongolian practices and customs.

222  Westward Migration of the Turkic Peoples Further east are the Yugurs who inhabit the Hexi Corridor. They are one of the few non-Islamic peoples among major speakers of a Turkic language worldwide, and they practice Tibetan Buddhism. The easternmost Turkophones of whom I am aware are the Salar, who live on the border of Qinghai and Gansu Provinces, not far from the source of the Yellow River. They number 120,000–130,000, as detailed in Chapter 11. This is the general distribution of Turkophones today. If we distinguish between the different Turkic languages in the world, they can be roughly divided into three sub-branches. One is Western Oghuz, which includes the speeches of today’s Turkmen, Turks, and Azeris; the latter two are so similar that they can converse without previous study. The second is Eastern Uzbek and Uyghur. During the Yuan and Ming dynasties, these two peoples lived under the rule of the Chaghatai Khanate. They frequently interacted and shared virtually the same spoken language as well as the Chagatai script. The third sub-branch is the Kipchak language spoken by Turkic-speaking tribes of the northern Kipchak Steppe (Polovcian Plain) and Volga Valley. Kazakh and Karakalpak belong to this branch. Tartar also falls into this category, as does Kyrgyz. The previous does not constitute a strict linguistic classification, but it is a practical and simple identification method.

14 Eurasia Under Mongol Rule

There is a saying in academic circles today that real “world history” only began with the Mongol Empire (1206–1368). We have amply explored economic and cultural exchange between the eastern and western wings of Eurasia, as well as the migration of peoples, but these links and influences were indirect and often interrupted. Even the Battle of Talas, in which the Arab army ended the Tang Dynasty’s dominance and profoundly influenced the history of Central Asia, was essentially a random military encounter. It was the establishment of the Mongol Empire that initiated the establishment of concrete, practical ties— on the political level—between the two extremes of the Eurasian continent, and led to smooth and prosperous interactions. I have discussed the Ottoman Empire previously and will detail the Timurid Empire later. If we add the Ming, then we have identified the three great empires that costarred during the 14th century—and all were closely associated with the Mongols. The Ming overthrew the Mongols and founded their own dynasty, while Timur was a Turkic-speaking emir of the Mongol ruling group. He emerged victorious from political infighting inside the Chagatai Khanate, and frequently interacted with the White Horde that was born of the division of the Kipchak Khanate of the Mongol group. During one of their Western Expeditions, the Mongols crushed the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm, and this led to the division of its territory into many small states including the Ottoman principality. Meanwhile, the Russians in Eastern Europe were ruled by the Mongols for two centuries, and historically they perceived Ivan III’s victory in 1480 over the Mongol-Tatar forces as marking their liberation from the Mongol yoke. Therefore, even without querying whether globalization was initiated by the Mongols, the historical role of the Mongol Empire is a topic worthy of serious study.

The Western Expeditions The Mongols originally inhabited the northern portion of the Mongolian Plateau, a subset of the Central Asian Plateau. The word “Mongol” existed before Genghis Khan, but it was not used to denote a people until after his lifetime. He came from a minor nomadic tribe near the banks of the Onon River, and he exploited his military DOI: 10.4324/9781003369899-14

224  Eurasia Under Mongol Rule skills and charisma to make war and form a network of alliances. The confederation held a Kurultai, a gathering of political and military leaders, and elected him as Genghis Khan. “Genghis” is Mongolian for “sea,” a reference to his vast realm. Nowadays, the most authoritative documents for Mongol history are the Secret History of the Mongols (menggu mishi) and The Secret History of the Yuan Dynasty (yuanchao mishi). The former was written in Mongolian, but the only extant versions are transcriptions of the original Mongolian text using Chinese characters phonetically. The latter was compiled early in the Ming and features a full translation into Chinese that is also based solely on transliterated text. Secret History has been translated into many languages, and all Mongolists pore over this work carefully. In addition, there are two other very important Mongol-focused materials available in Persian: The History of the World-Conqueror, written by Persia’s Ata-Malik Juvayni, who served the Mongols and spent time in their capital, Karakorum, and the Compendium of Chronicles in the early 14th century by a group of scholars under the editorship of Rashīd al-Dīn Ṭabīb, who rose to become the grand vizier of the Il-khanate. The Western Expeditions were arguably an “accident” of history, in that the steppe nomads had a natural tendency to expand outward in the process of their inexorable search for greener pastures and fresh water for their sheep and cow herds. At the same time, they also recognized that southern climes were home to warmer weather and more abundant wares and that farming folk were refined craftsmen who could provide the Mongols with many necessities. Thus, the southward migration of these nomads was somewhat inevitable, but expansion westward was not a given. In fact, prior to Genghis Khan’s westward military campaigns, the Jin Dynasty (1115–1234) was the Mongol’s long-standing arch enemy, while the Western Regions were controlled by the Western Liao. I did not previously detail the Western Liao, so I will add a few words about it here. After the Jurchen’s Jin Dynasty replaced the Khitan State, some of the Khitans fled west and established a new regime, the Western Liao, that controlled a large swathe of what are now Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and China’s Xinjiang. Dominated by Buddhist Khitans, its western border was close to the Caspian Sea and it was also known as Kara Khitai, or Black Khitai. Once Genghis Khan unified the Mongolian Plateau, some rival tribes fled westward to Western Liao and later even deposed their khan. Genghis Khan dispatched his general Jebe to vanquish these tribes, and henceforth the Mongol realm bordered upon Khwarazm. The people there spoke a Turkic tongue, and the region was located east of the Caspian Sea, on the southern shore of the Aral Sea, and downstream of the Amu Darya. Their earliest capital was Urgench on the banks of the Amu Darya, and later Samarkand when it became a center of power in Central Asia. Khwarazm featured a flourishing culture. One outstanding figure is that of alKhwarizmi (“native of Khwarizmi” in Arabic). In the 9th century, he invented a method of calculation that has become an important element in present-day

Eurasia Under Mongol Rule 225

Figure 14.1  Genghis Khan

advanced algebra. You may recognize a popular English term inspired by his name— algorithm—often applied to 21st-century computer programming. After the Mongols vanquished Western Liao, they commenced trade with Khwarazm. In 1219 Genghis Khan dispatched a huge delegation of more than 400 merchants, mostly Muslims, and 500 camels to his neighbor. At the time, the governor of Otrar, a bordering city, was an uncle of Khwarazm’s shah, Ala ad-Din

226  Eurasia Under Mongol Rule Muhammad II. Keen to get his hands on the goods in the caravan, and because some members of the khan’s mission whom he had known in the past were insufficiently respectful to him, the uncle claimed that there were Mongol spies among them, and with the shah’s permission, executed the entire delegation. A lone camel keeper managed to escape and return to Mongolia. Upon hearing the evil tidings, Genghis Khan was furious and sent an emissary, who was originally from Khwarazm, and two lesser diplomats to demand that the killers be handed over. The shah not only refused, but also he had the ambassador executed, the beards of the surviving diplomats shaved and sent back to their khan. This was the catalyst for the first of the Mongol Western Expeditions. The first campaign went very smoothly. The Mongols sacked cities along their way, such as Otrar, Bukhara, Samarkand, and Urgench (by then the largest city in Khwarazm). Ala ad-Din Muhammad II fled to a small island in the Caspian Sea where he died in sorrow and gloom. His son Jalal ad-Din continued to resist, however, and recruited an army to fight a battle in Ghazni, present-day Afghanistan. When the Mongols chased him to the banks of the Indus, Jalal ud-Din bravely spurred his horse into the river and made his escape. “What father would not be proud to have such a son!” lauded Genghis Khan, and ordered his troops to cease their pursuit. Jalal ad-Din became a well-known hero in Central Asia and West Asia, and stories of his deeds have passed down to the present. The second Mongol military campaign, dubbed “Expedition of the Eldest Sons” by Chinese historians, was undertaken at the order of Ögedei and lasted seven years (1237–1244). The first-born of each of the Great Khan’s four sons, as well as the eldest sons of his sons-in-law, princes, and mingghan and tumen (commanders of 1,000 and 10,000 household units, respectively) were all drafted. Batu, son of Genghis Khan’s eldest son Jochi, was designated commander-in-chief. The Mongol army first attacked the Volga River Basin, and then continued deep into Russia, crushing an alliance of principalities and destroying the early Slavic heartland, Kiev. It then successfully fought its way through Poland and Hungary and reached the Danube. Learning that the Great Khan had just passed away, Batu hastily decided to return to the Mongolian heartland and compete for his throne at the Kuriltai, but when he reached Saray on the west bank of lower Volga, he was saddened to hear that Gükyü, Ögedei’s son, had already been designated Great Khan. So Batu elected to remain in the west, where he founded the Kipchak Khanate (Golden Horde) with Saray as its capital and governed the western steppes of Asia, Volga Valley, the Caucasus, and a large part of Eastern Europe, including Moscow and Kiev. The third expedition was led by Hulagu, son of Genghis Khan’s fourth son, Tolui. His army first pacified the various strongholds of the Ismaili “Assassins” in Persia before he destroyed the Arab’s Abbasid Dynasty, executed the caliph, and battled all the way to Damascus. But just as he lay siege to the city, he learned that the Great Khan had passed. Determined to take part in the Kuriltai that would anoint the Mongol’s new “Great Khan,” he led the lion’s share of his forces back eastward, leaving behind only a small number of troops in the hands of a loyal

Eurasia Under Mongol Rule 227 general. In the end, this general was outnumbered and defeated by the Egyptian Mamluk army—the biggest setback of the three Mongol expeditions. The Mongol army was demoralized and the expeditions were halted. Overall, from 1219 when Genghis Khan attacked Khwarazm until 1259 when Möngke died in battle while fighting the Southern Song forces and Hulagu abandoned his planned siege of Damascus to return eastward to the Mongol homeland, the Mongols brought great turmoil to the Eurasian continent. Aside from the fierce fighting spirit of this nomadic people, the army’s invincibility was also due to several unique factors. The speed of the Mongols on the ground was so astonishing that it often caught its opponents by surprise. Prior to the advent of the motorized vehicle, according to military scientists, no army ever moved with such rapidity. Firstly, it was due to their fine horses; secondly, the obedience of the warriors; and lastly, their unique techniques of waging war. Since each Mongolian soldier was provided with seven or eight horses that transported their supplies, they did not require a separate logistics “supply line,” and they simply rotated their mounts to ensure each was regularly rested. This method was also used by those who transported mail and goods between the yizhans— postal relay stations that doubled as a rest stop during military campaigns. When soldiers became very hungry and there was no food, they would feed on horse meat and drink horse blood. The Mongols were also masters of equestrian ruses. They might tie a branch to their horse’s tail, and one hundred such horses at full gallop could raise enough dust to suggest the passage of 20,000-strong troops. Or they would make a false retreat to lure the enemy into an ambush where they were outnumbered. The Mongols also excelled at applied psychology. Before attacking a city, they would send messengers offering to show leniency to foes who surrendered without resistance, while threatening to sack the city and slaughter the local populace if refused. Surviving enemies fled and spread word of the looming Mongol terror, which in turn motivated further voluntary surrender. This tried-and-true method of accumulating new land came at relatively low cost for the invaders. Before his death, Genghis Khan allotted the territories he had conquered among his four sons according to the Mongolian custom of dividing one’s pastureland. These swathes were later to become the four Mongol khanates. His eldest son Jochi’s accomplishments during the first Western Expedition were exemplary, and he was allotted the northern portion of the Eurasian Steppe in return, but he died in 1225. His son Batu ruled this Kipchak Khanate, which comprised mainly the Kipchak or Cuman grasslands located north of the Aral and Caspian Seas, and basins of the Volga and Don Rivers. Most Slavic tribes and many Turkic ones were ruled by the Kipchak Khanate. Chagatai, Genghis Khan’s second son, founded the Chagatai Khanate, which was later divided in two. The western portion was more or less equivalent to today’s Uzbekistan, while the eastern portion was almost identical to present-day Xinjiang of China, stretching from the Hexi Corridor to Kashgar. The fourth and youngest son, Tolui, was gifted with Genghis Khan’s old base on the Mongolian Plateau, but he died young and his son, Hulagu, established the

228  Eurasia Under Mongol Rule Il-khanate in Persia in the wake of the third and unsuccessful Western Expedition. When Genghis Khan died during the invasion of Western Xia (Tangut Empire), the Mongol nobles convened another Kuriltai. Disputes arose, and it was eventually agreed to designate Genghis Khan’s third son, Ögedei, as Genghis Khan’s successor. Because Ögedei was now the Great Khan of all the Mongols, his inheritance was the smallest, i.e., covering roughly the basins of the Irtysh and Ob Rivers, with the capital within present-day China’s Xinjiang. But after he died and his son Güyük reigned briefly and also passed away, the prized position of the Great Khan fell into the hands of Tolui’s descendants, and Ögedei’s territory was quickly divvied up between the Chagatai and Kipchak Khanates. Land and Sea Transport Under the Mongols Prior to modern times, the 13th–14th centuries featured the most convenient transport throughout Eurasia. This was not simply because the Mongols vanquished the regimes along these routes and thus east-west arteries came under the control of a single political polity; it was also because the Mongols purposely supported craftsmanship and commerce and promoted trade. Of course, like other nomads, the Mongols started out by grabbing the spoils of war, but later they learned how to deploy troops and levy taxes, and eventually to value culture.

Map 14.1  Yuan Dynasty marine routes

Eurasia Under Mongol Rule 229 At that time, east-west land travel was already convenient, but here I would like to focus on marine transport. In fact, by the Tang Dynasty shipping was already very well developed. In the Southern Song (1127–1279), Guangzhou, Quanzhou, and Ningbo were all important seaports, and these cities, as well as Yangzhou later, hosted many Persian and Arab fanke or resident merchants. This is why many of China’s Hui—descendants of Muslim immigrants—are concentrated in these southern cities. When Zheng He and his fleet of treasure ships first set off on their expedition to the Indian Ocean, many of his deputies were Muslims from Ningbo, and some spoke Arabic. They passed through the Malacca Strait and Calicut (Kozhikode). At the entrance of the Persian Gulf was Hormuz, a Persian trading port with a long history. In that era, crossing the Arabian Sea was difficult due to a lack of navigation expertise, so ships bound for southwestern Arabia and eastern Africa tended to sail close to the coast. This made the port an important stopover and transshipment center for onward-bound vessels. Guangzhou, Quanzhou, and Ningbo were home to a large number of Arab and Persian merchants, who were very wealthy and actively involved in the politics of the time. In the late Southern Song, the position of the Quanzhou maritime commissioner was taken up by Pu Shougeng, a man of Arab descent. He and his brother submitted themselves to the Mongols when Southern Song was defeated and subsequently were appointed to the same positions they held in Guangzhou and Quanzhou. During the Middle Ages, the Arabs were quite advanced in navigation. The Spaniards and Portuguese derived much of their navigation knowledge from the Arabs. Although the latter did not use the compass, they were sharp observers of the heavens and invented the sextant. One of the reasons for the Arab’s excellent grasp of astronomy was that their ancestors lived in the desert and they could only guesstimate their location by looking at the sky and observing the stars. It is also possible that Muslims, being monotheists, wished to avoid using the sun to determine the exact time for salat (five daily prayers), since the pagan Egyptians were sun worshippers. Instead, Arabs used the position of the moon and the stars to do so, and this knowledge was beneficial for development of navigational skills. The Arabian Nights includes the tale of Sinbad the Sailor, who journeyed to places such as Java and Sumatra (modern-day Indonesia). To a certain extent, his exotic adventures reflect sophisticated Arabian maritime know-how of the time. Where can we find evidence of the advanced state of the transport infrastructure under the Mongols? It might be worthwhile to review the biographies of four historical personages and the travels they enjoyed as a result. The first would be Qiu Chuji. He is widely known among Chinese readers of wuxia author Jin Yong (Louis Cha), because he appeared in several of the renowned writer’s novels including Legend of the Condor Heroes, but Qiu was indeed a real historical person. A native of Shandong, Qiu was a Daoist known as “Master Changchun.” Before he undertook the first Western Expedition, Genghis

230  Eurasia Under Mongol Rule Khan lamented the evanescence of human life and formally invited Qiu to come to Mongolia and propagate the Dao. He was aware that the Mongols had already conquered a large area of land and hoped to obtain safety from persecution, so even though he was already in his seventies, he set out to meet the khan in the north. By the time Master Changchun arrived in the Mongol realm, Genghis Khan had already launched his campaign against Khwarazm, so the Daoist continued his journey westward through the desert lands of the Western Regions until reaching Samarkand, where he finally had an audience with the khan. The Mongol leader greatly revered Master Changchun, so the latter took advantage of his Daoist learning to advise the khan against further slaughter. As a result, Genghis Khan exempted all members of the Quanzhen School of Daoism from taxes and military service. After Qiu Chuji returned to Shandong, his disciples did their best to put a positive spin on the master’s influence on the khan, and compiled Travels to the West of Master Changchun to record what he encountered during his voyage through Central Asia on his way to present himself before Genghis Khan. My second example of an extensive Yuan-era traveler who documented his adventures was Yelü Chucai, a Khitan. After the Jin Dynasty overthrew the Khitan, his father became a minister to the Jin, and Yelü Chucai himself served loyally at the court of Genghis Khan. He participated in the Western Expedition of 1218 and compiled A Journey to the West that recounts the campaign. An accomplished poet in the Chinese language, he was also proficient in Mongolian and Khitan. Yelü Chucai and Qiu Chuji were both housed in the headquarter tents. Yelü was in his fifties and Qiu in his seventies. One was a devout Buddhist and the other a Daoist master. Therefore, they often argued over the long and short of Buddhism and Daoism in the presence of Genghis Khan, who listened but rarely interceded. Yelü Chucai served as a minister when Ögedei was the Great Khan and advocated the importance of appointing learned people, the prohibition of wanton slaughtering, and the establishment of rites and protocols. My other two examples are foreigners. The first was Marco Polo (1254–1324), a Catholic and son of a rich Venetian merchant. There were many wealthy traders in Venice at the time because the Mongol expeditions pioneered east-west communications and stimulated commerce, and wares from both directions flowed through Constantinople. Had Constantinople been simply the capital of the Byzantine Empire—without connections to the Far East—city-states such as Venice and Genoa might not have thrived. Marco Polo’s family prospered from this trade, and the young Marco Polo accompanied his father and uncle on business trips to Central Asia. He later lived some 17 years in China. According to accounts attributed to Marco Polo and others, more than 50 languages were regularly spoken in the Mongol capital Karakorum, now central Mongolia. In the wake of each new conquest, the Mongols dispatched craftsmen back to Karakorum who proceeded to construct buildings or manufacture jewelry. History records that even a Parisian goldsmith captured in Budapest ended up in Karakorum. The capital housed peoples of many religions; Catholics preached Catholicism, and Nestorians and Muslims did the same for their respective faiths. The Mongol

Eurasia Under Mongol Rule 231 rulers attended religious debates and might select a trustworthy personality to act as a referee. The Mongols were originally Shamanic, but they were liberal in religious matters; Kublai Khan’s khatun—his “empress”—was a Nestorian. The Mongol elite in Central and West Asia converted to Islam in the mid-14th century, while those who remained in the original Mongol homelands of East Asia gradually became followers of Tibetan Buddhism in the 15th. Marco Polo returned home and was caught up in war between Venice and Genoa and imprisoned by the latter. While in jail he dictated his experiences in Cathay to an inmate who specialized in popular romances, and thus was born The Travels of Marco Polo. According to the book, he was appointed by the Great Khan to administer Yangzhou. But this may not have been the case; the government handled the registration of names and domiciles of locals, while those of migrants and foreigners were handled by someone else, possibly Marco Polo. There are people who doubt that Marco Polo actually went to China, because many of the characteristics we associate with the Chinese are not noted in his account, such as the use of chopsticks and female foot-binding. But in reality, this may be due to his interactions having been limited to those of “outsiders,” i.e., Mongols and semu—migrants from Central and West Asia who came to work for them. Unlike the Chinese, these peoples didn’t bother with chopsticks or intentionally hobble their women, so it’s hardly surprising that he skipped over these easily noticeable traits. It is also possible that Marco Polo was behind bars when he dictated his travelogue and his memories had begun to fade, or that Rustichello da Pisa—the romance writer believed to have taken it down—couldn’t fathom such exotica and thus failed to record them. In my opinion, many details of his account of China under Yuan rule are too specific to have been fabricated out of thin air, and recent research indicates that they were not unfounded. Marco Polo traveled extensively. He arrived in China via present-day Afghanistan and then went on to Kashgar, from Lanzhou to Karakorum, and finally eastward to the Yuan capital, Dadu (Beijing). He eventually also visited Chengdu and even Myanmar’s ancient capital, Pagan, and resided for a time in Hangzhou. Kublai Khan, founder of the Yuan Dynasty (reigned 1260–1294), granted a request in 1290 by Ilkhan Arkhun, whose consort had recently died, to select a young noble lady, Kököchin, to be his wife; at the time, the Mongol Empire’s Il-khanate governed modern-day Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Iran, and Turkmenistan, as well as western Afghanistan and Pakistan. Since the land route was not safe, Kublai Khan dispatched a retinue of several hundred persons, including Marco Polo, to escort her by sea first to the Persian Gulf, and then to Tabriz, the capital of the Il-khanate. But by the time they arrived some two years later, the khan had already passed away. Arkhun had been succeeded by his brother Gaykhatu who decided not to marry the young Mongol princess sent by Kublai Khan. After traveling to Afghanistan to find her next eligible groom and noting the ascension of two new khans in the meanwhile, in 1295 Kököchin finally married the newest khan, Ghazan, the eldest son of the deceased Arkhun Khan. An archaeological team in Iran specializes in the study of Marco Polo’s movements in Persia and has identified many of the places he visited. After leaving the

232  Eurasia Under Mongol Rule Il-khanate, Marco Polo returned to Venice via Trebizond on the Black Sea coast and Constantinople. The last of the peripatetic Yuan-era personalities I would like to highlight is Ibn Battuta (1304–1369). A native of Tangier in the Maghreb, he was a wealthy Muslim Sufi who began traveling in his early teenage years. Ostensibly to participate in the holy hajj, in 1325 he set out from Fez, the Moroccan capital, on the pilgrimage. He traveled to Tunis and Cairo and crossed the Red Sea to reach Mecca. During his journey through today’s Libya, he met a Tunisian merchant so fond of him that he gave the young man his daughter’s hand in marriage, but Battuta and his fatherin-law quarreled at the wedding banquet, so he divorced his bride and instead married the offspring of a Tunisian scholar. Over a period of 28 years, he went on to travel amazingly widely, covering North Africa, Eastern Europe, West Asia, Central Asia, India, Southeast Asia, and China. There is a witty anecdote about Battuta. It is important to note that an expert in Islamic jurisprudence must master Arabic and be thoroughly versed in the Qur’an. He once encountered a Turkish Sharia scholar and spoke to him in Arabic. “You are speaking ancient Arabic from the Meccan era,” replied the scholar in Turkish. “I can barely understand one or two words.” Battuta did not know the local language, but he did not forget the scholar’s words. Later he repeated this sentence to others and recognized the Turkic scholar’s attempt to cover up his inability to understand spoken Arabic. Ibn Battuta was a thoughtful person and did not wish to expose the man. When bidding goodbye, he uttered the words “Thank you” in ancient Arabic to this scholar. One wonders whether this Sharia “expert” understood even this simple Arabic phrase. Battuta later went to the Delhi Sultanate where most inhabitants were Muslim. Because of his knowledge of Islamic law, the sultan appointed him as a qadi or judge, with an annual salary of 5,000 dinars, a tremendous amount given that the average family back then spent just five dinar or so a month. But after eight years, he yearned to see China. At this time, a Yuan Dynasty delegation arrived in Delhi with gifts and asked to build a Buddhist temple at the Indian-Chinese border. In return for this goodwill, the sultan sent Ibn Battuta as an emissary to present a bevy of gifts to the Yuan emperor. They comprised 200 slaves, talented dancers and singers; 15 boys good for unskilled work; 100 horses, and various wares such as bolts of cloth, tableware, and swords, along with 1,000 soldiers to protect the massive retinue. Unfortunately, along the west coast of India Battuta’s entourage first encountered a local Hindu rebellion and then a storm, and the gifts were lost and members scattered. Battuta hesitated to return and report the failure of his mission to the sultan, and instead took temporary refuge with a local ruler. Soon after, his patron in Delhi was toppled, making it inopportune for him to return there. So Ibn Battuta continued on to China via the Maldives and Sri Lanka. Eventually he landed in Quanzhou and proceeded to Hangzhou, Beijing, and Guangzhou. After a two-year stay in China, he began his return to the Maghreb by sea, and along the way he witnessed outbreaks of the bubonic plague. Finally in 1354—after an absence of 29 years— he arrived back home at Fez, but shortly thereafter set out again for sites in West Africa and the Iberian Peninsula.

Eurasia Under Mongol Rule 233 Historical Impact of the Mongols Within several decades, the Mongols migrated from the Mongolian Plateau in eastern Eurasia to Europe and the Mediterranean. In this, they differed markedly from the Tujue—the Chinese term for various allied Turkic tribes—who left the Mongolian Plateau in the 6th century and arrived in the Hexi Corridor and the area near the Pamirs in the 7th. The Tujue settled there and intermarried with the locals, and then some of them continued to push westward to Anatolia and Constantinople over a period of seven centuries. The Mongol’s passage across Eurasia established the largest empire in Eurasian history, one that was unprecedented in both speed and scale. The Mongol invasions deeply disrupted social order in many places, especially Muslim societies. Hulagu’s campaign, the third Western Expedition, destroyed the Abbasid Caliphate. The khan sent a messenger to the caliph in Baghdad demanding the city’s voluntary surrender. When refused, the Mongols sacked the Abbasid capital in 1258 and slaughtered its inhabitants. In accordance with Mongol’s custom that royal blood should not be spilled on earth, and in keep with Hulagu’s warning that the caliph should either surrender or die, Caliph al-Musta’sim was wrapped in a blanket and then trampled to death by horses. Since then, Muslims have been without a sole spiritual leader accepted as legitimate by the global ummah (Islamic community), which has psychological ramifications too. In the early days of the Il-khanate, either out of their pride as conquerors or due to ignorance of Sharia, the Mongols forbade the halal practice of slaughtering cattle and sheep, i.e., by slitting their throats and bleeding them. Within four generations or a century or so, however, most of the Mongol rulers in Central and Western Asia had converted to Islam. Those in Persia spoke Persian, while the others adopted the Turkic dialect of the inhabitants they ruled. The foundations of Eastern Orthodox Catholicism in Eastern Europe were also badly damaged. The Russians and Ukrainians only became Christian in the 10th century, and they were still relatively unsophisticated, culturally speaking, even in the 11th. Originally inhabitants of the forest, the Slavs found themselves governed by the Mongols who were natives of the steppes. The Mongols occupied Moscow and fought westward to the Danube River and the eastern shore of the Adriatic, just across the sea from Italy. They established the Golden Horde (and later the Blue Horde) that ruled the Slavs for 200 years, but never adopted the Eastern Orthodox faith. The Slavs broke away from the Mongol Tartars, whom they despised, after the mid-15th century. Nonetheless, there were many cases of intermarriage between Mongols and Slavs among the elite and many political alliances between them. Such devastating damage aside, the establishment of the Mongol Empire also brought opportunities for cultural exchange and progress. Many inventions of East Asia, such as movable type and gunpowder, were introduced to Europe through the Mongols. In addition, their siege techniques were later considered as a model by European military experts; paper money was also introduced in Europe during the Mongol period. Although the Mongols were a steppe people, the policies of Genghis Khan and his successors showed that they were inclusive on a large scale. Most were tolerant

234  Eurasia Under Mongol Rule in terms of ethnicity, language, religion, and so forth, and this was reflected in the measures they employed to govern. This tolerance was a key factor in their ability to rule such a vast territory, given that they themselves numbered less one million. It should also be noted that the Mongols had a strong lasting influence on the make-up of China’s population. Aside from the Uyghurs and Kazakhs concentrated in Xinjiang, most Muslims are descendants of Central and West Asian migrants who entered China during the Yuan Dynasty. This is because the Mongols actively recruited immigrants known as semu. During the Yuan, the social hierarchy consisted of four castes: Mongols, semu, Han, and southerners. Semu (色目) did not refer literally to their “eye color”; it was a reference to people of various appellations and origins (各色名目的人). Practically speaking, this meant Muslims who came from the remote Western Regions, i.e., Central and West Asia. “Han” were inhabitants north of the Huai River once ruled by the Jin, as well as dwellers of Sichuan and Yunnan conquered by the Mongols. “Southerners” referred mainly to people originally governed by the Southern Song (1127–1279), who were also mainly of Han ethnicity. The Mongol expeditions of the 13th century and later invasions by the Timurids caused serious damage to the economy, culture, and religion of Europe and inflicted enormous psychological trauma, too. The racist term “Yellow Peril” was born, and a brutal image of the Mongols was hugely important in creating the antiAsian mindset that prevailed among Europeans. In addition, the “Black Death” pandemic during the 14th century, i.e., bubonic plague, was most likely imported into Europe via the invading Mongols. The plague killed many millions of people in North Africa, West Asia, and Europe. Ironically, it was due to the plague that the Florentine Giovanni Boccaccio penned the literary classic, The Decameron (aka The Human Comedy), which helped kickstart the Renaissance. This work, comprising one hundred tales of young women and men sheltering outside Florence to escape the Black Death, was a rare bright spot to emerge from the disaster. The plague was also very serious in North Africa, but it inspired a different direction for Ibn Khaldun, a historian who had studied in Egypt for many years. It led him to conduct research on demographic change and ultimately created two new disciplines: sociology and statistics. The long-term, global impact of the Mongols has indeed been multifaceted. Even one of their most negative aspects—the likelihood that they were the source of the Black Death in Europe—inspired great works of literature and the birth of sociology and statistics. The development and interaction of cultures are long-term and abiding, not simply a matter of location or short-lived impact. I would argue that the overall influence of the Mongol Expeditions on history were not felt until 700 years later, in the latter half of the 20th century, when certain European and Japanese scholars boldly reassessed them, catching the attention of observers such as myself.

15 The Timurid Empire and the Ming Treasure Voyages

After the collapse of the Mongol Empire, the main forces on the Asian continent were China’s Ming Dynasty and the Timurid Empire founded in Central and West Asia by Turko-Mongol tribes. The latter revived the Persian-Islamic culture crushed by the Mongols. Perhaps due to their inland origins, although the Timurids held the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf, they never attempted to cross it and conquer additional territory. Eastern China borders on the Pacific Ocean and early on had contacts with Japan, Koryo, and numerous states in the South China Sea and Indian Ocean. In early Ming, Zheng He undertook his fabled seven “Voyages to the Western Ocean” (1405–1433), but his discoveries and diplomacy were undervalued because the Ming emphasized land power over preeminence at sea. By the end of the 15th century, the traditional land-based Silk Road had declined due to widespread war. In the 16th century, the Europeans’ aggressive engagement in global maritime activities marked the dawn of a new era of history.

Rise and Fall of the Timurid Empire During the Mongol Western Expedition, Balas, a confederation of Turkic-speaking tribes, settled near Samarkand. By the latter half of the 14th century, it ruled the area, and among its members was a junior military officer named Timur. The young Timur took part in a rebellion against the Western Chaghatai Khanate, yet later served the same khanate. He married a Chagatai princess and took the title of prince consort, but in 1369 he murdered the khan with whom he had been quite close, proclaimed himself successor, and established his own administration. Crippled in battle, he was nicknamed “Timur the Lame” (Tamerlane) by his detractors, but as he gradually overcame his foes, he referred to himself as “Sword of Islam.” Ironically, many of the objects of his attacks were devoted Muslims. Timur vanquished many a country, and occupied and slaughtered the residents of many cities, including Delhi, Khwarazm’s Urgench, Nishapur (Persia), Baghdad, Tbilisi, and Ankara. By the time of Timur’s death in 1405, he had occupied the entire Iranian Plateau and made his capital at Samarkand. His realm DOI: 10.4324/9781003369899-15

236  The Timurid Empire and the Ming Treasure Voyages

Map 15.1  Timurid Empire ca. 1405 (pseudoconic projection is used in this map)

(Map 15.1) extended east from Delhi to Mesopotamia in the west, south to the Persian Gulf, and north to the Caucasus, the Aral Sea, and Syr Darya. The Timurid Empire endured more than a century. Despite Timur’s martial prowess, in Central and West Asia and the Kipchak (Cuman) Steppe it was still held that only Genghis Khan’s descendants possessed the right to rule. So Timur dared not proclaim himself Khan; instead, he installed a descendant of the khan as a puppet while styling himself as an “emir.” This is an ancient Arabic term for “commander,” and many local leaders in the Muslim world adopted it. Timur inherited the territory of the Western Chaghatai Khanate, i.e., land west of the Pamirs, while the Eastern Chaghatai Khanate controlled land to the east, from Kashgar to Hami. Figure 15.1 is a bust of Timur now in Uzbekistan’s State Museum of History. The Timurid Empire located its capital in Samarkand, and—like Genghis Khan, regarded as a national hero by Mongolia—Uzbeks consider Timur as their primordial forefather.

The Timurid Empire and the Ming Treasure Voyages 237

Figure 15.1  Timur, Turko-Mongol emperor

Rejuvenation of Persianate Culture Timur was Muslim and his mother tongue was the Turkic language of Transoxiana, and he also spoke Persian. He did not know Mongolian but claimed Mongol heritage, primarily to legitimize his future rule, since it was politically advantageous for him to claim connections with the Golden Clan especially.

238  The Timurid Empire and the Ming Treasure Voyages He was born and raised in a region where Persian culture flourished, and he may well have had a preference for it. Even today, each city in Uzbekistan still hosts many Tajiks, and they are very influential, speaking Uzbek in public and Farsi at home. The Tajiks are basically descendants of the Sogdians, but the dialect of East Iranian they spoke before the Samanid Dynasty (9th–11th centuries) was eventually replaced by Western Persia’s Farsi. Farsi is now the official language of Iran. After the Mongol Empire demolished Arabo-Islamic culture in Central Asia, the Timurids revived it, while concurrently establishing a Persian-flavored form of Turko-Mongolian culture within the Timurid Empire. Timur and his descendants established a number of madrassa (Islamic schools) in Samarkand, and the city gradually replaced Baghdad as the center of Islamic culture. Stimulated by their admiration for Persian culture, the Turko-Mongols revived Perso-Islamic civilization within two or three generations. This is yet another example of the interaction and fusion of civilizations. Here is another concrete example of such fusion: Timur first took his nine-yearold grandson Ulugh Beg with him on his military campaigns and assigned many tutors to guide his studies when they were in camp away from battle. The emir later enfeoffed Ulugh Beg with the territory of Transoxiana. He not only constructed many madrassas there, but also commissioned the Ulugh Beg Observatory in Samarkand that included the world’s largest quadrant principle device of its era. Shah Rukh (reigned 1405–1447), son of Timur and father of Ulugh Beg, relocated the Timurid capital from Samarkand to present-day Herat in Afghanistan. Formerly part of Khorasan Province in Persia, Herat became increasingly important within the Timurid Empire. The court’s Persification contributed directly and indirectly to the revival of Persianate culture in the 15th–16th centuries, and Persian-language literature (mainly poetry) and Persian art (miniatures and handicrafts) flourished throughout the Timurid realm. Contemporary Persian poetry was shaped at that time, and miniature painting techniques also progressed greatly during the Timurid Empire. The remains of the observatory built by Ulugh Beg are still extant, and he compiled an astronomical table and star catalogue (Ziji-i Sultani) that recorded the location of 1,000-plus stars, as well as the orbits of the sun and planets. Ulugh Beg was an expert in mathematics and poetry as well as Islamic law. The madrassas he built offered courses in mathematics, physics, and liberal studies, and he occasionally taught in person. Ali-Shir Nava’i was a famous bard, born in Herat and educated in Samarkand during Timurid rule. Nava’i wrote fine poetry in Persian, but pioneered verse in his native Turkic tongue. His Turkic poems were in many ways based on existing Persian forms, but due to language differences it was not possible to apply them to the Turkic, so he created his own. He has been described as “Chaucer of the Turks,” since Chaucer was the first English writer of the 14th century to choose English over Latin. The 15th-century mystical poet Jami (1414–1492) is widely recognized as a master of Persian poetry and for his role in laying the foundation for modern Persian verse. He grew up in Herat, capital of the Timurid Khanate, and also lived in Samarkand, where his works were highly prized by the Timurids.

The Timurid Empire and the Ming Treasure Voyages 239 Bihzad (Kamal ud-Din Behzad), a renowned 15th- and 16th-century master painter of Persian miniatures, studied and attained fame in Herat, but later moved to Tabriz where he attracted disciples and laid the foundations for the development of this art form under Persia’s Safavid Dynasty. Miniatures gradually spread to the Ottoman Empire, and even today they are a much-admired medium in Turkey. Miniatures can be broken down into three broad geographical categories. The first is Persian. After the Mongol invasion, the native Persian style adopted certain characteristics of Chinese painting, such as roiling clouds, gnarly tree roots, and deft employ of blank space. Miniatures painted in the Timurid era were based upon this style. The second category refers to miniatures as executed within the Ottoman Empire, while the last refers to Indian miniatures, for the subcontinent was governed for more than 300 years by the Mughal Dynasty (1526–1857), descendants of Turkic-speaking Mongols. “Mughal” is the Persian and Indian pronunciation of “Mongol” and refers to the dynasty that ruled the lion’s share of the future India and Pakistan for centuries. Babur, who founded the Mughal Empire and was a descendant of Timur, was chased out of Central Asia by Uzbeks sweeping south from the Kipchak Steppe, and he brought the art of miniature painting along with him. This is yet another example of how Persian and Turko-Mongolian cultures intermingled. In miniature painting, ancient cultural preferences often show up. For example, in an unusual miniature, the symbolic meaning of a dragon reared its head when it depicts a knight battling a dragon. Dragons represented good in China, but in the Christian and Muslim worlds, they incarnated evil, and dragon slaying was a heroic feat. St. George, for example, tamed and slew a dragon that demanded human sacrifices. For their part, the Chinese perceive the dragon as auspicious and grandly regard themselves as “Heirs of the Dragon.” Indeed, Chinese and Western cultures have rather distinct characteristics: The Chinese dragon is the Master of Rainfall, and its form combines the features of different animals such as a bull’s nose, an eagle claws, and fish scales. But in the West the dragon often sports a pair of wings and breathes fire. Curiously, the image of the dragon in the tableau I alluded to is subtly similar to a Chinese version, and the rocks and trees also reflect the style of certain Chinese paintings. One could say that this miniature highlights a Persian cultural motif, but that it does so in a style that was influenced by its East Asian neighbor. The main source of inspiration for Persian miniatures was the Shahnamah (Book of Kings), authored by the poet Ferdowsi in the 10th century during the late Samanid and early Ghaznavid dynasties. Penned in Persian couplets, this epic poem recounting the history of Persia was widely distributed thanks to the abundant production of verse, miniatures, and handicrafts during Timurid times. Ferdowsi’s hometown was Nishapur (present-day eastern Iran), where a statue and memorial to him have been erected. Teachers no doubt often take pupils from nearby elementary schools on field trips to visit this monument to Persian civilization. Although Timur’s troops committed mass slaughter at Nishapur, within a

240  The Timurid Empire and the Ming Treasure Voyages century after the establishment of the Timurid Khanate, it nourished and developed the Persian culture that was disastrously damaged during Mongol times. Maritime Policy During the Early Ming During the Timurid Khanate, the Mongol forces were expelled from northern China proper by the Ming Dynasty, but they were not completely defeated and controlled a large swathe of territory north of the Great Wall. To the north of the Ming, there were Tartars in the east and Oirat Mongols in the west; the actual khanate’s actual sphere of influence lay to the west of the Oirats. After the founding of the Ming, the Timurid Khanate sent a mission to Nanking in a roundabout way via Tibet, and when the Yongle emperor (Zhu Di) moved the capital to Beijing in 1370, the khanate also sent a delegation to pay its respects. So we can see that during Timur’s time, the vast area of Central Asia was already in contact with China’s Ming Dynasty. Timur was initially on friendly terms with the Ming court, but in his old age he suddenly decided to attack it. He fell ill and died at Otrar (modern-day Kazakhstan), however, while leading his troops in this campaign targeting China. Shah Rukh, his son, had more amical relations with the Ming and they exchanged missions. Three Ming envoys visited the Timurid Khanate several times, including the diplomat Chen Cheng who went there five times, as well as Herat and Samarkand, and wrote A Record of the Countries in the Western Region (xiyu fan guozhi) and Record of the Journey to the Western Regions (xiyu xingcheng ji). As detailed in Chapters 11 and 14, during the Song and Yuan maritime transport between China and West Asia was already well developed, and these routes continued to be utilized under the Ming. The status and development of international relations during the Ming, however, depended upon many external factors, since after the collapse of the Mongol Empire the new rulers of China were faced with great upheavals and reorganization abroad, and trade throughout the Eurasian continent urgently required reconstruction. There were issues of historical continuity, the succession of institutions, and choices made by the people themselves, all of which were to have great influence on future generations. The reign of the Hongwu emperor (Zhu Yuanzhang, 1368–1398) was the founding period of Ming diplomacy. Early in the dynasty, people naturally possessed a limited understanding of both China and the world outside, and this myopic view was to impact Ming foreign relations as a whole. For example, Zhu Yuanzhang’s Record of the Ancestor’s Instructions (zu xun lu): As guidance for those who shall come after me, I also composed the “Record of Ancestor’s Instructions” and declare it the Law of Domestic Discipline. I drafted it in large characters and placed it in the West Veranda, perusing it day and night, seeking to perfect it. I spent six years from start to finish, and finalized it only on the seventh draft. How exhausting! . . . Now I have ordered the Ministry of Rites to publish it in book form, so that it may be passed on forever. All of my offspring must duly obey my orders and, in no

The Timurid Empire and the Ming Treasure Voyages 241 circumstances should they seek to cleverly tamper with the contents of this law that I have laid down. Not even one word herein may be altered. As for external relations, there were the following specific provisions in Zhu Yuanzhang’s Law of Domestic Discipline: As for overseas alien states such as Annam, Champa, Goryeo, Siam and Ryukyu, as well as the small island countries to the east and west, and the Nanman tribes to the south, they are separated from us by mountains and seas and are as remote as the corners of the earth. Their lands would not provide us with sufficient resources even if occupied, and their people would not provide us with sufficient labor even if governed by us. If they misjudge their power and disturb our borders, this would be inauspicious; since they are no threat to the Middle Kingdom, it would be equally inauspicious to bother raising an army to put them in their place. I worry that based upon our financial and military strength, my posterity shall covet short-lived military achievements, wage war for no reason, and cause loss of life. Never forget my warning. But the Hu-Rong press us on our northern borders and have been a threat for generations. We must designate generals and train our soldiers to maintain constant battle-readiness. Zhu Yuanzhang’s admonitions are clearly those of a conservative agricultural society. They reflect the existential concern that China should remain fully on guard against encroachment by northern nomads who invaded its heartland—the Central Plains, i.e., the lower reaches of the Yellow River that formed the cradle of Chinese civilization—countless times throughout history. Zheng He’s Seven Voyages to the West The Hongwu emperor probably never dreamt that soon after his passing, the Yongle emperor (Zhu Di) would command Zheng He and his fleet of treasure ships to repeatedly set sail for the Indian Ocean. Zheng He took part in the Jingnan Rebellion, a civil war in the early years of the Ming Dynasty between the Jianwen emperor and his uncle Zhu Di, then the prince of Yan. In reality, it was a coup intended to overthrow the former. Zheng He performed admirably as a commander under Zhu Di, and the campaign resulted in the accession of the Jianwen emperor’s uncle to the throne. After the coup, the new emperor set in motion a number of bold initiatives, military and administrative: He ordered the compilation of the Yongle Encyclopedia (yongle dadian); personally led five military campaigns against the Mongols in the northern regions of the Gobi Desert; sent Zheng He on his voyages to the Indian Ocean; relocated the Ming capital to Beijing; built Beijing’s imperial palaces within the “Forbidden City,” and founded the Nurgan Regional Military Commission in Manchuria. Zheng He’s fleet alone comprised 200–300 ships of various sizes, with a crew of up to 28,000 sailors!

242  The Timurid Empire and the Ming Treasure Voyages Zheng He commenced his “Voyages to the West” in 1405—the year Timur died— and undertook seven in all, the last in 1433. This period was roughly contemporaneous with Ming envoy Chen Cheng’s five visits over land to the Timurid Khanate. Zheng He’s family history is well known. His father was Ma Haji. “Haji” is the title for a Muslim who has completed the holy pilgrimage to Mecca. Many Muslims from Central Asia were recruited by Kublai Khan to aid in his invasion of Hubei, Sichuan, and Yunnan, and some chose to remain there and help govern the territory. Zheng He’s family was among those that settled in Yunnan. The interpreters and fellow sailors in Zheng He’s fleet were principally Hui, the Chinese-speaking Muslim minority (see Chapter 11), and many members of the Hui group excelled at the skills required for trade and navigation. Their prevalence was probably also due to their talent for communication, as the Hui were largely patrilineal descendants from Muslims originating in Central Asia. Many knew Arabic or Persian, especially those who were religiously educated and had studied briefly at a madrassa. Intriguingly, Zheng He became a eunuch at an early age and was once ordained as a Buddhist at a rite within the Ming palace. During his voyages, he frequently chose to visit places where Buddhism flourished, and he was welcomed, perhaps due to his Buddhist faith. As illustrated in Map 15.2, on each of his voyages Admiral Zheng He set out almost exclusively from Liujiagang, a port near Nanjing (Nanking); passed through

Map 15.2  Zheng He’s seven westward voyages (1405–1433)

The Timurid Empire and the Ming Treasure Voyages 243 the Strait of Malacca; and proceeded to Calicut in southern India and onward to the Strait of Hormuz, before going on to other destinations. A good amount of controversy continues to surround the actual purposes of Zheng He’s voyages. Establishing national prestige was certainly among them. By dispatching Zheng He’s massive fleet of treasure ships to the Indian Ocean, Zhu Di intended to alert the world to the existence of the Ming Dynasty, declare that its emperor was a personage of grand accomplishments, and attract foreign delegations to present themselves at his court and engage in tributary trade. Some scholars also believe that one motivation for the voyages may have been Zhu Di’s obsession to learn the whereabouts of the nephew he overthrew, the Jianwen emperor. After the Jingnan Rebellion, it was rumored among the common people that the deposed monarch had not self-immolated, but instead fled abroad. So, Zhu Di may have tasked Zheng He with searching for him. However, I think that there must be other reasons apart from the two mainstream theories mentioned previously. It is true that the Ming Dynasty was a great power on the Eurasian continent, and the court needed to understand the specific status of things in other important regions. To bypass the Northern Yuan (1368–1402, remnants of the Yuan Dynasty), it chose to send a mission—via a difficult detour through Tibet—and establish relations with the Timurid Khanate. This demonstrates that maintaining diplomatic relations with other great powers was Ming foreign policy; Zhu Yuanzhang’s Record of the Ancestor’s Instructions explicitly stated so. Since Persia was already accessible by sea and the Timurid Empire included Persia in its territory, didn’t reaching the khanate by sea represent a practical solution? As evidenced by the Composite Map of the Ming Empire (da ming hun yi tu), a map drawn during the Hongwu era, the Ming knew the way from Nanjing to Persia, so Zheng He did not go to Persia to discover a new shipping route. There is a theory that the Ming wished to surpass the Yuan Dynasty’s management of sea routes, and in effect do what the Spanish court had encouraged Columbus to do—discover new lands and passageways. My own speculation, however, is perhaps more closely in line with historical developments. Zhang Qian’s explorations (2nd century BCE) that opened the “Western Regions” were undertaken in order to outflank the Xiongnu. Before the Yongle emperor ascended the throne, it was his brief to defend against attacks originating to the north. This is why he relocated the capital from Nanjing to Beijing. Like his father, Zhu Di never ceased worrying about the potential threat from the north. He may have sent emissaries to the Timurid Khanate in the west in order to assess the Timurid Empire to see if China could count on it to outflank the Oirat Mongol forces. In fact, his father, the Hongwu emperor, had sent several ambassadors to the Timurids via land route and gathered some intelligence. I am not speculating based on thin air. First of all, before Zheng He set out, in his Imperial Order Zhu Di specifically stated: I have presently dispatched Zheng He the Eunuch to Ormus and other countries in the Western Regions on official business.

244  The Timurid Empire and the Ming Treasure Voyages Ormus (now Hormuz) refers to the port at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. The emperor did not mention places such as East Africa, India, or Sumatra, and each of Zheng He’s seven voyages did go to Hormuz. Secondly, Ma Huan, a Muslim from Ningbo who served under Zheng He, wrote a book entitled Yingya Shenglan when he returned to China, including these lines of verse: Ormos is in close proximity to the ocean, From where the merchants travel to Dayuan and Misr. We have heard of Bowang’s mission to remote climes, Yet the present envoy’s glory shall be greater many times over. Hormuz is the first port as one passes from the Arabian Sea into the Persian Gulf, so he described it as “in close proximity to the ocean.” Ferghana Basin is not far west of Xinjiang’s Kashgar. Known to the Chinese as “Dayuan” during the Han, “blood-sweating” horses of Zhang Qian’s era—coveted by Emperor Wu of Han—were bred in the valley. The basin covers parts of modern Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. In the early Ming, it was the heart of the Timurid Empire and very close to China’s Xinjiang where the Mongols were still entrenched. “Misr” is derived from the Arab for Egypt. In the early Ming, it was governed by the Mamluks and served as an important transport hub for the Mediterranean world and Asian countries. The first two lines of Ma Huan’s verse suggest “Ormus” offered a convenient commercial route to Ferghana in the east and Egypt in the west. The third and fourth lines compare Zheng He (“present envoy”) to Zhang Qian, who was designated the Marquis of Bowang upon returning from his explorations of the Western Regions. In Ma Huan’s opinion, Zheng He’s achievements would be recognized as far more glorious than those of Zhang Qian. After all, the latter was tasked with forging alliances with statelets in the Western Regions that would facilitate joint attacks on the Mongols, but Zhang Qian’s mission was not successful in this regard. Isn’t Ma Huan hinting that Zheng He trumped Zhang Qian by better completing his mission, i.e., liaising with the Timurid Khanate? Some years ago, there was a book about Zheng He’s voyages that made some far-fetched claims. Entitled 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, it briefly enjoyed great popularity in China. Author Gaven Menzies, a former British submarine captain, cited many “possibilities” without stating exactly what happened, only speculating if such and such were the case, then what might have occurred as a result. According to the book, when Zheng He’s fleet arrived in Indonesia, it was supposed to proceed westward, but a detachment turned eastward, reached New Zealand, and eventually sailed onto South America, effectively “discovering” the continent. Menzies surmised that according to the knowledge he had acquired in the navy, if one took account of the temperature and direction of the sea currents, and so forth, this might actually have occurred.

The Timurid Empire and the Ming Treasure Voyages 245 I am not sure whether it was out of national pride or vanity, but some Chinese people were willing to believe what he wrote. Menzies delivered speeches widely in China and talked about Zheng He in a very complimentary light; I can only say that, for me, it sounded too good to be true. At that time in history, Columbus had not yet happened upon Central America while searching for a new route to Asia, nor had the Portuguese accidentally landed at the northeast tip of South America while attempting to take a detour around Africa. The Chinese had never debated whether the earth was round or flat, nor were they aware of Australia and New Zealand. Why would Zheng He have committed a portion of his precious treasure ships to a mission to discover lands to the east? Basically speaking, the early 15th-century Ming Dynasty would not have explored the “New World” and established colonies, as the Europeans were to do a century later. For thousands of years China had been an agricultural power, almost self-sufficient; it was also a land-based power, with the exception of a handful of islands off its eastern and southeastern coasts. It wasn’t that China’s rulers did not wish to pioneer new territory, but the idea of crossing the sea to do so would not have occurred to them. A line from Du Fu’s Ode on an Army Procession illustrates this: By force of arms the emperor still yearns to open up new territory. The term employed in Chinese, kai bian, is a reference to pioneering new terrestrial dominions, not setting sail on the sea. When it came to colonizing overseas, the Ming simply did not have a political or cultural tradition upon which to call. Here is a vivid example that offers insight into the great explorer’s mindset: When Zheng He arrived at Sumatra on the first of his voyages, he found that Chen Zuyi, a native of Chaozhou—and a fugitive from Chinese justice—had established himself as the ruler of Palembang (southeastern Sumatra) with the help of his “militia.” They often preyed on foreign merchants in the Strait of Malacca. Zheng He ordered Chen to surrender, which he pretended to do, while secretly scheming to attack the admiral. When he learned of the plot, Zheng He killed several thousands of Chen’s band of pirates, captured him alive, and sent him back to Nanjing for public execution. How different was Chen’s fate from those intrepid adventurers—be they Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, or British—who grabbed land overseas, only to be rewarded by their monarchs with a title of nobility! In early Ming, a map entitled Composite Map of the Ming Empire was produced. Based upon the place names that are visible, scholars speculate it was drawn during Zhu Yuanzhang’s reign (1368–1398). From this map, we can see the world through Chinese eyes when Zheng He began his voyages. It differs sharply from the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu (Complete Map of the Myriad Countries) illustrated by the Italian missionary Matteo Ricci 200 years later; the former did not include the Americas. If the Da ming version had

246  The Timurid Empire and the Ming Treasure Voyages depicted the Americas, it would be a forgery, since during early Ming there was no knowledge of North and South America. It is also notable that in Ricci’s version, the Korean Peninsula has been enlarged several times over and showed that the Arabian Sea could be reached by passing around the Indian peninsula. 15th–16th Centuries Apart from analyzing the impact of Zheng He’s voyages on China’s historical development, we should also place Zheng He’s voyages in the context of world history. In particular, in the wake of the Mongol Empire’s demise. What was the world like when the admiral set out for the Indian Ocean? At the time, Korea was ruled by the Joseon Dynasty. In order to promote culture and scholarship, the court built the Hall of Worthies, staffed by scholars engaging in research, and the Hall of Sungkyunkwan, where Confucianism was taught. In 1443, Sejong the Great invented hangul, the phonetic alphabet that became the prototype of contemporary Korean script. Chinese hanzi were still dominant, so this alphabet was initially not popular. Confucianism and Confucius are still highly respected in South Korea. I went to Sungkyunkwan University and its president invited me to worship Confucius with him at the campus temple devoted to Confucius. Even today, rites are held twice a year, during which the president reports to Confucius the number of students attending Sungkyunkwan University. Annam—“Pacified South”—China’s ancient name for Vietnam, was a vassal state of the Ming. Local scholars participated in the Imperial Examination, Confucius’ Analects was recited, and Mahayana Buddhism dominated. During the Yongle emperor’s reign, Annam was temporarily occupied and a provincial administration established, but it could not be maintained over the long term, and so it was recalled. Meanwhile, the Muromachi Shogunate ruled Japan. Japan and China had long had trade issues, and during the Ming and then the Qing, foreign traders were condescendingly perceived as bearers of gifts to the exalted emperor of the Middle Kingdom. Treating the visiting party’s wares as tribute, and reciprocating with goods of greater value, was known as “tribute trade.” This led to a tragicomedy that played out during the reign of Emperor Qianlong of Qing. When the British mission arrived in China in 1792, the Qing court still insisted on treating the exchange as tribute trade and even expected the diplomatic envoy Lord Macartney to kowtow to the emperor. One form of the so-called tribute trade was known as “tally trade” (kango boeki in Japanese). Qualified Japanese merchants were issued with a certificate (a tally) complete with details such as the vessel name and its date of arrival in China. The tally permitted a given merchant to return and conduct trade at a later date. The voucher was split in two, one half for the Chinese authority, and one for his Japanese counterpart. In practice, when the Japanese had such a voucher, they employed it; if they didn’t, they would go direct to the coast and harass local businesses, or even rob them. Those who engaged in the latter were known as wokou, or Japanese pirates.

The Timurid Empire and the Ming Treasure Voyages 247 In the 15th century, the Philippine archipelago was inhabited mainly by itinerant farmers, hunters, and fishermen who practiced barangay, a network of extensive kinship relationships that functioned to link villages. This network was disrupted by the arrival of Islam, and new social and political concepts emerged. Sultan Paduka Pahala of Sulu, a string of islands in southwestern Philippines, led a tribute-bearing mission to China during the reign of the Yongle emperor, but passed away in Dezhou Shandong, where he was buried. By the time Zheng He set out with his massive fleet, Malacca had established a Muslim sultanate. In 1408, the Ming formally recognized the sultan and granted him a royal title. Henceforth, waves of migrants from Guangdong and Fujian arrived in Malacca, which became a major trade hub. Over time, the Chinese learned Malay and wore local dress, yet when the Portuguese, Dutch, and British arrived, they noted the Chinese were distinct, primarily because they had not adopted Islam. In Southeast Asia, the descendants of these Chinese settlers—largely centered in Malacca, Penang, Singapore, and Indonesia’s Medan—commonly refer to themselves as Baba-Nyonya, or “Peranakan” in English. Beginning in 1350, Siam (central and southern Thailand) was ruled by the Ayutthaya Dynasty and practiced Theravada Buddhism. Its capital Ayutthaya was a city of great wealth and offered access to all corners of the kingdom. Via its neighbor Kampuchea (modern Cambodia), Siam was strongly influenced by Indian culture. By the 14th century, the Islamization of northern Sumatra had commenced, and many ports in other parts of the island country formed sultanates. In tandem with booming trade, Islam spread even more widely. Merchants and pilgrims from Arabia, India, Europe, China, and other parts of the world flocked to Indonesia’s coastal areas, transforming them into dynamic trading hubs. Sri Lanka is located off the southeast corner of the Indian peninsula. Today, the northern part of the island is populated by Tamils, mainly from southern India. They are Hindu, while the southern part of the island is inhabited by Sinhalese Buddhists. Kandy, a city in central Sri Lanka, is home to Sri Dalada Maligawa (Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic), believed to house Buddha’s tooth. In English, the island’s inhabitants are referred to as Sinhalese. “Sinha” means “lion” in Sanskrit, and the ancient Chinese referred to the island as the “Lion Country” (Shizi guo). Singapore’s “singa” shares a similar derivation. Contemporaneously with Zheng He’s voyages, the Delhi Sultanate was ruled by the Sayyids, a Persianate Dynasty headed by a series of Turkified governors designated by Timur after he vanquished northern India. It was also strongly influenced by Shah Rukh, Timur’s son who governed the Timurid Empire during 1405–1447. The Sayyids were probably of both Tajik and Turkic origin and spoke a Persian language distinct from “standard” Persian. As Sunnis, they were keen to promote Persian culture. The Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526) died at the hands of Babur, Timur’s direct descendant six generations later and the founder of the Mughal Empire. In the 15th century, the Kingdom of Vijayanagar ruled southern India. It promoted the revival of Brahmanism—which European scholars prefer to call Hinduism in its new form, encouraged the usage of Sanskrit, and became a center of Brahmin and Dravidian cultures. Southwestern India’s Kozhikode (Calicut), a port

248  The Timurid Empire and the Ming Treasure Voyages city situated on a key maritime route in the Indian Ocean, was administered by the kingdom. In 1405, Zheng He erected a stele there that reads: Although more than ten thousand li distant from China, As in our country resources here are abundant, And the people robust and content. I hereby erect this monument To announce this to the world. To sum up, the 13th-century Mongol expeditions destroyed many achievements of Islamic civilization, but also brought many achievements of Chinese culture— painting with ink and colored pigments, blue-and-white porcelain, gunpowder, paper currency—to the West. Turkic and Turko-Mongol peoples possessed a mighty presence along the east-west routes of Eurasia. Initially, they often took power via their military, but eventually replaced it with an administration that governed through political means. Today’s Afghanistan and Iran were both part of the Timurid Empire, but culturally they were never Turkified; Persian culture always dominated. Even Turkophone rulers had a great affection for Persian culture. In fact, the Turkic language of China’s Xinjiang-based Uyghurs has also been strongly influenced by Persian. After the Timurid Khanate moved its capital to Herat (modern-day Afghanistan) in 1449, Persian was granted equal status along with Turkic languages. In fact, it was Jami, a scholar in Timurid Empire times, who took Persian poetry to its heights, and not the Persians themselves, forerunners of today’s Iranians. And it was in Herat that the art of finely detailed miniature painting was nurtured and later spread to Shiraz, Isfahan, Tabriz, and eventually Turkey. There was also an important religious development during this period, the birth of the Order of Naqshbandi (1314–1389). Born in Central Asia’s Bukhara, its eponymous founder was himself a Persian speaker, but the body—that would become the most important Sufi order in the region—was initially dominated by Turkophones. Later, this order spread widely, influencing China’s Hexi Corridor to the east and Romania to the west, and won strong support from rulers of both the Timurid Khanate and Uzbek Khanate (founded by Muhammad Shaybani). Zheng He’s voyages demonstrated the strength of the Ming Dynasty in the early years of the dynasty, but they were soon hampered by financial problems and disputes within the court. The period of Zheng He’s voyages was roughly concurrent with European expansion overseas, but the process and end results differed radically. One by one, bands of Europeans from various countries spread out, establishing outposts in the Americas, Africa, and Asia that were eagerly recognized as colonies by the rulers of the countries they had left behind. Objectively speaking, Zheng He’s voyages to the Indian Sea were an act of state when imperial power was concentrated in the hands of the Ming, its operations and supply lines representing genuinely remarkable achievements in terms of marine navigation history. But this did not greatly impact the direction of world history. Perhaps because the voyages occurred too early, and entirely due to the

The Timurid Empire and the Ming Treasure Voyages 249 determination and financial support of the Ming court, neither China nor the world were prepared to fully recognize or exploit the possibilities for trade or migration that they generated. This book begins with Alexander’s eastward military campaign, that is, around 300 BCE, and ends around 1500 CE. What is the significance of the year 1500? It can be seen as the year when Europe’s rapid rise occurred and it began to expand overseas. In 1501, Muhammad Shaybani (a patrilineal relative of Genghis Khan’s eldest son, Jochi) led the Uzbek nomads to expel Babur—himself related to the khan via his parents—and occupied Samarkand. In the same year, Shah Ismail, who was of Turkic descent, unified Persia with the support of Shi’ites and Turkoman tribes. He established the Safavid Dynasty, which embraced Shia Islam. As a result of their religious differences, the Safavids and the Sunni Uzbek Khanate fought one another for regional hegemony. At the same time, Selim I of the Ottoman Empire also launched a war against the Safavids. As a result, land transport via the Silk Road was no longer safe and its importance decreased as sea transport prospered simultaneously. This marked an interruption in the smooth east-west communications established by the Mongols. Two lines from a Tang Dynasty Du Fu poem tellingly presaged the eventual decline of the land-based Silk Road several centuries later: War-steed neighs, cold wind moans Sun sets on the once glorious banner. Therefore, the year 1500 was the starting point for modern times, when Europeans began to play an increasingly important role in the world, as the West flourished and the East declined. The Europeans mentioned here are “European” in the broadest sense of the word, including Americans and Australians. The year 1500 also marks the beginning of the stagnation of China’s Zhonghua culture, a Chinese term that emphasizes the civilization’s multiethnic roots. While China was still vibrant in the 11th century, it had been even more so during the 8th–9th. As I have said, one of the basic reasons that the Tang Dynasty was particularly dynamic was that it did not reject external influences in terms of dress, food, social behavior, and so on. Women in the court were even known to engage in polo! Ironically, in the latter days women were not only banned from playing polo; thanks to their bound “lotus feet,” just walking a few steps became a chore. Whether a society progresses or stagnates is very much related to broadmindedness and a willingness to accept goods and practices from abroad. Of course, external influences must undergo a process of “screening,” and not everything need be adopted simply because it is “foreign.” However, if we insist on protecting our own traditions, and this results in an unwillingness to accept fresh input from outside our borders, we will certainly lag behind the times and find our fates decided by others. In the past, many peoples have wisely learned from the example of those who preceded them. And since 1500, the direction of global development bears witness to this.

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Index Key Terms

1421: The Year China Discovered the World (Zheng He) 244 Abahai, diacritical marks (addition) 156 Abbasid Caliphate: destruction 233; Mongol overthrow 171 Achaemenid Empire, territory possession 28 “Age of Obscurantism” 169 Agricultural Bureau seal, Han Dynasty (Niya) 58 agricultural revolution 23 Akkadians, cuneiform script (usage) 151 Alawais/Alevis 174 Alawites: emergence (Syria) 174; Mamluk/ Ottoman discrimination 174 Al-Azhar Mosque, founding 174 “Alliance of the Wei River” 197 – 198 alphabets, East migration 147 Altaic (language) 116, 125, 153, 192 Analects of Confucius 68 – 69, 134, 136, 175, 189 ancient civilizations 5 – 6 ancient letter (Sogdian language) 100 Angkor Wat relief (Cambodia) 15 Anjia Tomb 103 – 104; fire altar relief 104; Sogdian tomb, relief 124 Annales school 14 An-Shi Rebellion 99, 125, 141 Anxi Grand Protectorate 140 – 141 Apollo (statue) 42 Arab Empire: expansion 183; Umayyads foundation 140 Arabian Nights, The 229 Arabic (Semitic tongue) 126 – 127; official national language 158 Arabo-Islamic forces, rise 198

Aramaic (Semitic language) 16; lingua franca 158; spelling 152 Aryans: labor division, complexity (increase) 71 – 72; Vedas textualization 71 Athene (statue) 43, 44 Avars 192 Avesta, usage 166 Ayutthaya Dynasty, Siam rule 247 Azure Sky, death 70 Baba-Nyonya (“Peranakan”) 247 Baburnama, The 210 – 211 Babylonians, cuneiform script (usage) 151 Bactrian camel/passenger (Tang sancai) 127 bamboo slips (Shanghai Museum) 135 barangay, practice 247 Battle of Fei River 83 Battle of Gallipoli 216 Battle of Karbala 174 Battle of Marathon 27, 33, 162 Battle of Talas 139 – 142 Berbers, presence 145 Big Good Pagoda, Xuan Zang construction 88 bilingual plaque (“Palace of Heavenly Purity”) 159 Black Death (Europe) 234 Black Khitai (Kara Khitai) 224 Black Pottery Culture 3 “Black-robed Tashi” (Abbasid Dynasty) 171 “Blue Horde” 96, 209 Blue Mosque 219; see also Sultan Ahmed Mosque Book of Former Han (Ban Gu) 55 Book of the Tao (Lao Zi) 134 Book of the Tao (Xuan Zang translation) 87 Book of Songs (Airs of the State of Wei), verse 13

254 Index British Raj 91 “Burning of Books and Burying of Scholars” 134, 136 Byzantine Empire, life (prolongation) 208 Canon of Medicine (Ibn Sina) 190 Cefu Yuangui 119 celestial phenomena, observation 7 Chagatai Khanate 222 Chagatai language, usage 210 – 211 Chagatai script, usage 210 – 211 chana, derivation 92 – 93 “Chaucer of the Turks” (Ali-Shir Nava’i) 238 Chinese hanzi (Niya) 59 Chinese rule (foundation), Ban Chao (impact) 55 – 59 Chinese-style porcelain plate 219 Chola Dynasty, establishment 89 Christian Monastery (Sumela, Trabzon) 211 Ci’en Temple, Xuan Zang work 88 civilization: ancient civilizations 5 – 6; continuity 1, 19 – 22; diversity 1, 14 – 16; evolution (measurement), fluid dynamics (usage) 23 – 24; family tree 25 – 27; features 14 – 22; genealogy 26; genesis 1 – 5; history, research 12 – 13; interaction 16 – 19; Islamic civilization, origins/ spread 161; meaning 3; origins 1; plants/ animals, exploitation 30, 32 Classical Greek period 30, 32 Code of Hammurabi (stele relief) 8 colored clay pots, discovery 26 Compendium of Chronicles 224 Compendium of the Languages of the Turks (Diwan Lughat al-Turk) 184 Composite Map of the Ming Empire (Da ming hun yi tu) 243 “Country of Kang” (Kang guo) 119 cross-lotus 111; Ordos, examples 112 cultural icons, emergence 189 – 190 culture/commerce, expansion 117 – 119 cuneiform-inscribed tablet 6 cuneiform script, spread 151 cuneiform writing, technique (spread) 152 Cyrillic alphabet: adoption 221; impact 157 Daesh 176 Da-qin 56, 144, 146 Dashi 144; characteristics 143; Islamic law (Sharia) 145 Delhi Sultanate 90, 247; Battuta visit 232 Delian League 30 demos (districts) 30 Demotic script 10

devshirme (Ottoman tribute system) 220 diacritical marks, addition 156 diphthongs, ignorance 152 “Discobolus of Myron” sculpture 31 divination oracle bone 12, 132; script 151 Di Zi Gui (Standards for Being a Good Pupil and Child) 107 Dome of the Rock 167 donkeys/mules, domestication 5 dromedary, domestication 5 early China, religion/philosophy 68 – 70 early Indian religions 71 – 77 Eastern Han, East-West maritime/landbased trade routes 60 East Roman Empire 137 Eastern Tujue, assimilation 196 Eastern Turkic Khaganate 196, 197; attack 198; Tang Khaganate, conflict 86 East-West communications, geography 116 – 117 East-West conflict 27 – 29 East-West maritime/land-based trade routes (Eastern Han) 60 Egyptology 10 Encyclopedic History of Institutions (Tongdian) 142 “Expedition of the Eldest Sons” 209, 226 farming lifestyle, requirements 4 Farsi (language), usage 98 Fatimid Caliphate, establishment 174 fire altar relief (Anjia Tomb) 104 First Persian Empire: Cyrus establishment 18; rule 106 First Turkic Khaganate: establishment 195; Taspar Khagan (ruler) 196 Five Dynasties 99, 106 Fu-lin Kingdom, people (characteristics) 144 Five Elements (Wuxing) 30, 70 fixed inheritance system, advantage 195 fluid dynamics, usage 23 – 24 Former Qin (northern China force) 83 “Four Great Inventions” 136 French rationalism 29 French Revolution, outbreak 213 fresco: Crete Island 31; “School of Athens, The” (Raphael) 34 Gandharan art 25, 40 – 44 Ganzhou Huihu 178, 200 Gaochang Huihu 200 Gaochang Kingdom 111, 113 Ghaznavid Dynasty 202 – 203

Index  255 Ghaznavid Empire, Sultan Mahmud control 202 Ghaznavids, impact 201 “Golden Age of Jewish Scholarship” 171 – 172 Göktürk (script) 115 “Golden Clan” 208; descendants 96; members, impact 171 Golden Clan, members 209 – 210 Golden Family, connections 237 – 238 Golden Horde 209; split 96 Golden Journey to Samarkand 119 gold mask, ruby inlay (Sogdian transport) 117 “Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement” 171 grassland peoples, lifestyle 53 – 54 Greater Yuezhi, remnants 51 Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (Xuan Zang) 88, 137 Greco-Bactrian Kingdom 39 Greco-Persian Wars 27, 31 – 32 Greek alphabet, impact 157 Guoqing Temple (Mount Tiantai) 84 Gupta Dynasty 87 Gupta Empire, disintegration 9 Gutenberg, Johannes (printing invention) 149 – 150 Hagia Sophia, conversion 217 Hall of Sungkyunkwan 246 halal cuisine 189 Han army, Xiongnu “man of gold” seizure 79 Han Chinese, Confucianism (impact) 169 Han Dynasty 49, 144, 196; brocades 57; explorers 45; Hexi Corridor 64 – 68; influence, growth 52; land control 61; Tarim Basin 64 – 68; transition 50 Han Empire: Roman Empire, interaction 59 – 63; rule, establishment 67 Han forces, Xiongnu forces (combination) 49 – 51 hanzi: engraving 193; letter-based phonetic scripts, incompatibility 151 – 152; usage 103, 109, 111, 118, 149; vertical writing 153; writing process 151 Hanzi brocade (“Five stars rise in the East”) 57 Hazna Palace (Petra) 163 “Heirs of the Dragon” 239 Hellenism 25; East Mediterranean/Central Eurasia 36 – 39 Hellenistic period, Greek domination 36 – 37 Hephthalites: defeat 198; domination 191; presence/movement 61

High Tang period 119 Hindu temple 76 Historical Records (Sima Qian) 48, 51 History of the World Conqueror, The (Ata-Malik Juvayni) 224 Hittite Empire, remains (discovery) 27 Hittite Kingdom, existence 16 – 17 Hittites, cuneiform script (usage) 151 Homo sapiens, Africa departure 1, 3 Hongfu Temple, Xuan Zang work 88 horizontal alliance strategy 195 horse, domestication 4 – 5 Hu, cheetah hunting partners 128 Hu figurine (hunting), cheetah (presence) 108 Huaisheng Mosque (Guangzhou) 184, 185 Huihe (Uighur/Uyghur) 125 Huihe Khaganate, founding 199 Huihu: defeat/migration 126; ministers, Genghis Khan (interaction) 156; script 155; tribal leader, portrayal (Dunhuang Grotto) 112 Huihui 177 Huihui Li (Islamic calendar) 170 Huihu-inspired script (Mongolian letters) 19 Hui, self-identification 183 Hulagu, westbound campaign 18 – 19 humanity-centered domains 119 – 120 Hundred Schools, discarding 70 hunting (Hu figurine) 108 hunting scene (Sogdians) 106 Hu people (Tang Dynasty) 97 – 109 “Hu ren” 95 Hu-Rong, impact 241 Hurrian (language) 16 Hurrians, cuneiform script (usage) 151 Hu-style leggings, usage 46 – 49 “Hu Whirling Dance” 107 Id Kah, construction 183 Il-khanate: governance 231; Mongol founding 179 Imperial Order Zhu Di (Zheng He) 243 – 244 Imperial School of Military Engineering 213 Indian Rebellion of 1857 91 indulgentia, issuance 142 information: flow, cessation 132; staying power 131 – 136 Inscription of Lai Fu, The 184 intellectual property rights (IPR), silk (relationship) 136 – 139 Iranian-style coffin (Loulan/Xinjiang) 47, 56

256 Index Iranian-style martial arts hall (Zurkaneh) 20 ironware, appearance 5 Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) 174, 176 Italian Renaissance 29 Jiming Temple (Nanjing) 81 Jin Dynasty 101, 102, 196; Mongol enemy 224 Jingnan Rebellion 241, 243 Jingxingji (Record of Travels): Du Huan records 145; origins 142 – 143; passages 143 Journey to the West (Wu Cheng’en) 72, 86 “Journey to the West,” Xuan Zang haul 84 – 89 Junggar Khanate (Dzungar), Mongol Oirats founding 201 Kai Yuan Tong Bao coin, minting 118 Kangju Kingdom 51 Karakhanate, formation 204 Karakhan Dynasty 178 Kara-Khanid Khanate 126 Karakhanids 126 Kara Khitai (Black Khitai/West Liao) 224 Karluks: Central Asia presence 204 – 205; troops, rebel/attack 141 Kazakh Khanate, establishment 96 Key Abbasid Dynasty (“Black-robed Tashi”), establishment 140, 171 Khakas 125 – 126; migration 178, 200 Kharosthi script (Gandhari text) 67, 132; decoding 57; wooden slips, usage 132 Khazar Turkic tribes, presence 144 Khitan (script) 115 Khotan Kingdom, Scythian rulers (presence) 59 Kingdom of Dali (Yunnan) 208 Kingdom of Elam, founding 16 Kingdom of Hetian, establishment 66 Kingdom of Khotan (Hetian) 137 Kingdom of Sheba 164 Kingdom of Shule (Kashgar), establishment 66 Kipchak Khanate (Golden Horde) 227; attack 208; Mongol establishment 207, 226 kratos (rule) 30 Kuchean (language), knowledge 82 Kul Tigin stele (Old Turkic script) 193 Kunyu Wanguo Quantu (Complete Map of the Myriad Countries) 245 – 246 Kuriltai (political/military leader gathering) 19, 224, 226 – 228

Kushan Empire: gold coins 41; Kaniska, rule 79 – 80 Kushan Kingdom, founding 42 Kutadgu Bilig (Wisdom Which Brings Good Fortune) 201 – 202 Kyrgyzstan, Cyrillic alphabet adoption 221 Lady Meng Jiang’s Tears Bring Down the Great Wall 48 – 49 “Lao-Zhuang” philosophy 69 laser typesetting, Peking University Founder Group invention 149 Later Qin: Later Liang annex 83; Yao Xing (ruler) 83 – 84 Latin alphabet, evolution 157, 216 Latin letters, popularity 192 Law of Domestic Discipline (Zhu Yuanzhang) 240 – 241 Legend of the Condor Heroes 229 – 230 letter-based phonetic scripts, hanzi (incompatibility) 151 – 152 letter-based scripts, importance 151 letters: eastward relocation 150 – 152; evolution/dissemination 157 liturgical language 16 livestock domestication, timeline 5 Logicians (mingjia) 70 Luxor Temple (Thebes) 38 – 39 Macedonian phalanx 34 “Mahayana Champion” (dacheng tian) 87 Mamluks, impact 19 Manchu (mother tongue/language) 158, 192 manuscript (silk fragments), Mawangdui (Hunan) 133 marble sculpture (Alexander the Great) 35 marijuana, Qu’ran prohibition 175 marriage, equality principle (Qur’an) 169 Master of Rainfall 239 Maurya Dynasty 75 Mawangdui (Hunan), silk manuscript fragments 133 Mediterranean and Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (Braudel) 14 merchant robbery, Dunhuang mural depiction 103 Metaphysics (Aristotle) 33 Middle Kingdom, threat (absence) 241 Ming Dynasty 201, 235, 240; capital, relocation 241; establishment 208; existence, alert 243; maritime policy 240 – 241; power 243; treasure voyages 235 Mitanni Kingdom 16 – 17

Index  257 mingghan (a Mongol social unit of 1000 households) 226 Ming Treasure Voyages 186 Mocha, coffee plant in southwest Yemen 164 – 165 Mogao Cave: mural 78, 79; scrolls, discovery 67 Mo-lin Kingdom (Du Huan mention) 145 Mongol Empire: demise 246; establishment 233 Mongolian letter (Huihu-inspired script) 19 Mongolian script 156 Mongol Oirats 201 Mongols: applied psychology 227; historical impact 233 – 234; invasions, impact 233; land/sea transport 228 – 232; Shamanic origin 231; Western expeditions 223 – 228 Mongol Western Expeditions 207 Monkey King 86 “Monkey King” (Ramayana) 73 “Moon over a Mountain Pass, The” (by Li Bai) 52 Mount Olympus gods, Greek worship 69 movable type: Bi Sheng creation 148 – 149; printing press, Gutenberg invention 150 Mughal Dynasty 91, 239 Mughal Empire: Babur founding 210; Badishah 210; control 172 mural: Dunhuang 103; Manichean mural 110; Mogao Cave mural 79 Muromachi Shogunate (Japan rule) 246 Musaeum (institution of the Muses) 39 Muslim Caliphate 178 Nabataean (Arab ancestor) 158 Nalanda Temple ruins 89 Nanda Mosque (Jinan) 184 New Book of Tang 178 “New Translations” (Yao Xing) 83 “New World” exploration 245 “Nine Surnames of Zhaowu” 99, 139 Niujie Mosque (Beijing) 184 nomadic peoples, primogeniture practice (absence) 53 Northern Dynasty 81, 102, 137; gold mask 117 nudity, Adam/Eve concealing 165 Ode on an Army Procession (Du Fu) 245 Ode to the Grand Wind (Jiangsu poem) 49 Odyssey (Homer) 29 Ogedei Khanate, Mongol establishment 207 Oghuz, Amu Darya crossing 204 – 211

Oghuz Tujue 203 Oghuz Turkic (language) 125 Oghuz Turks, migration 96 – 97 Oirat Mongols, presence 240 Old Book of Tang (Tujue Biographies) 178, 197 Old Turkic script (Kul Tigin stele) 193; example 192 – 193 Oljeitu, letter (passage) 19 On the Soul (Aristotle) 33 opium, Qur’an prohibition 175 Ordos, cross-lotus (example) 112 Ormus, location 244 Ottoman Empire 211, 320; control 172; decline 213; expansion (1355–1680) 212; miniatures, execution 239; Osman Gazi, establishment 213 Ottomans: China porcelain imports 217; principality, foundation 211; sultans, portraits 20 Outlaws of the Marsh 114 “Palace of Heavenly Purity” (bilingual plaque) 158 – 159, 159 Pali, adoption 109 Pamir Plateau, Zhang Qian crossing 51 panji (five) 99 paper: invention 136; “Marquis Cai’s paper” (invention) 139; printing, West migration 147 – 150; rice paper, usage 141 – 142; usage 131 paper books 136 papermaking, intuitiveness 139 papermaking know-how: spread 148; westward spread 141 – 142 Peace pf Westphalia 87, 91 – 92 Peking University Founder Group, laser typesetting invention 149 Peloponnesian League 30 Peloponnesian War 30, 32 People’s Daily (hand-made errors) 149 Pergamon Library, ruins 37 Persianate culture, rejuvenation 237 – 240 Persian coinage 118; discovery 62 Persian (Parthian) Empire 79 – 80 Persianization 36 Persians 123 – 130 Persian-style silver container, Nanyue King tomb (Pearl River delta) 62 Phags-pa (script) 115 philosophy (early China) 68 – 70 Phoenicians, letters (presence/basis) 156 – 157 “Pillar of the Dharma” (Dhamma thambha) 42

258 Index pluralism, shift 13 Politics (Aristotle) 33 poll tax (jizya) 139 polo, depiction (Tang Dynasty) 120 Preface to a Farewell Feast Atop the Prince Teng Pavilion in Autumn (Wang Bo) 33 primogeniture, practice (absence) 53 princes, mourning (depiction) 122 Princes of Various States in Mourning 122 – 123 printing: invention (Gutenberg) 149 – 150; know-how, application 150; technology, spread 148 “Proto-Indo-European language” 28 Ptolemaic Dynasty, reign 10, 38 Ptolemaic Kingdom, wealth 38 qanat (kariz) (aqueducts) 99 Qarakhanate, administration 201 Qarakhanid Dynasty 200 – 202; religion/ jihad reinforcement 201 Qin Dynasty 28; Han Dynasty successor 49; transition 50 Qing Dynasty 107, 156, 188, 214; books (consultation/compilation) 37; rulers, Manchu (mother tongue) 158 “Rebellion of the Seven Princes” 53 Reconquista 172 Record of the Ancestor’s Instructions (zu xun lu) (Zhu Yuanzhang) 240 Record of the Buddhistic Kingdoms, A (Faxian) 82, 88 Record of the Countries in the Western Region, A (xiyu fan guo zhi) 240 Record of the Journey to the Western Regions (xiyu xingcheng ji) 240 Record of Travels (jingxingji) 142 “Reign of Emperors Wen and Jing” 49 – 50 renminbi (paper currency) 160 Republic of Azerbaijan, Iranian provinces (presence) 221 Republic of Bashkortostan (Bashkiria), location 221 Republic of Tatarstan, location 221 Rhetoric (Aristotle) 33 rice paper, usage 141 – 142 Roman Empire, Han Empire (interaction) 59 – 63 Roman-era coins (Central Asia) 63 Rosetta stone (hieroglyphics/Demotic script) 10 Rouran, vassals 192 ruins relief (Persepolis) 17, 29

Sabo (Sogdian community leader) 123 Sack of Rome 161 – 162 Safavid Dynasty 239; establishment 249 Safavid Empire, control 172 “Sai” people 66 Samanid Dynasty 199, 238 sancai (Bactrian camel/passenger) 126, 127 Sanskrit, adoption 109 Sarts (city dwellers) 98 Sassanian Dynasty 196 Sassanian Empire 98, 118 satrap (viceroy), governance 18 “School of Athens, The” (Raphael fresco) 34 Scythians: descendants 66; origin/ movement 66 Second Temple (Beit HaMikdash HaSheni) 167 Second Turkic Khaganate 192 – 193 Secret History of the Mongols (Menggu mishi) 224 Secret History of the Yuan Dynasty (Yuanchao mishi) 224 Selimiye Mosque (Islamic architecture example) 218, 220 Seljuk Dynasty 205 – 207 Seljuk expansion/empire 206 Seljuks 125; dominance/power 205 – 206 Seljuk Sultanate (Mongol vassal state) 206 semu (recruited immigrants) 234 semuren (Mongol traffic) 178 – 179 sense deprivation 188 Shahnamah (Book of Kings) 239 Shahnameh (Book of Kings) 190 Shaju (Yarkand kingdom), Han Dynasty influence (growth) 52 Shanghai Museum, bamboo slips (State of Chu) 135 sheep, domestication 5 Shi’ite Buyid Dynasty, caliphate control 205 Siege of Baideng 49 Siku Quanshu (Complete Library of the Four Treasuries) 37 – 38 silent dikhr (advocates, impact) 187 silk: fabrication, technology 138; manuscript fragments (Mawangdui) 133; usage/innovation 131, 136 – 139; visual classifier/radical 138 – 139 “silk writing” (boshu) 136 silver bowls (Sogdian) 102 Sinicization 101, 123 Sogdians 123 – 130; ancient letter 100; business network, growth 102; culture/ commerce, expansion 117 – 119; cup with Sogdian-style handgrip (Hejia

Index  259 Village, Shaanxi) 107; First Persian Empire rule 106; hunting scene 106; relay commerce 117; religious beliefs, impact 109; script (China) 153 – 160, 154; Silk Road presence 94; Silk Road trade 68; silver bowls 102; term, usage 99; tomb (Chang’an), Anjia Tomb relief 124; Transoxiana origin 97 – 109; Tujue, encounter 129; Zoroastrianism, abandonment 153 “solar periods” (jieqi) 170 Song of the Lute Player (Bai Juyi) 95 Song Dynasty, cultural icons (emergence) 189 – 190 Song Jiang (uprising) 114 Southern Song 70 Southern Dynasty 81, 102, 137; gold mask 117 Southern Song Dynasty 169 Spring and Autumn period 68 steppe people, concept 45 State of Chu, bamboo sips (Shanghai Museum) 135 State of Jin, breakup 47 State of Zhao 48 Story of Hassan of Baghdad and How He Came to Make the Golden Journey to Samarkand (Flecker) 119 Sui Dynasty 86; reunification 196 Suleiman Mosque (Turkish bath) 217 Sultanate of Delhi 203 Sultanate of Rûm (Rome) 205, 211 Sumela (Trabson), Christian Monastery 221 Syriac script text, fragment (Turpan) 114 Syriac text (coarse cloth, reed fiber) 134 Syrians, cuneiform script (usage) 151 Tang Dynasty 220; beauty, depiction 121; borders 139; Chang’an lifestyle 94 – 95; Daoist/Buddhist dispute 78 – 79; dominance 223; Hu people 97 – 109; material exchanges 119; meritocracy 107; overthrow, attempt 103; polo, depiction 120; regions, Western regions (comparison) 119 – 123; sancai (Bactrian camel/passenger) 127; shipping, development 229 Tangut (script) 115 Temple Mount 167 The Decameron (The Human Comedy) 234 “Three Alien Faiths” (Emperor Wuzong) 109, 111 “Three Fundamental Bonds and Five Constant Virtues” (seniority concept) 53 Tianbao Era 141

Timurid Empire: pseudoconic projection 236; rise/fall 235 – 236; territory 211 Timurid Khanate: capital, move 248; descendants, Uzbek expulsion 209; Mongol forces, expulsion 240; relations, establishment 243 Tocharians: Indo-European language 65; Yuezhi tribes, movement 13 Tongdian (Scroll 191, Border Defense 7, Preface to Chapters on People in the West) 142 Tongdian (Scroll 193, Border Defense 9, Chapter 5, People of the West) 143 Tongtai Temple 81 Tongxin Grand Mosque (couplets) 189 Topkapi Palace, relic 219 Toquz Oghuz (Nine Clans) 125 Tōshōdai-ji (Buddhist temple) 123 Travels of Marco Polo, The 231 Travels, The (Polo) 24 Travels to the West of Master Changchun (Qiu Chuji) 230 “Treasure Ship Fleet” 189 Tribhanga (dance), mastery 76 tribute trade 246 Tristes Tropiques (Levi-Strauss) 14 Tsarist Russia, rule 95 – 96 Tujue 123 – 130, 191; chronicles, recording 195 – 196; confederations 204; emergence 123; king of Kuchan, interaction 198; language 192; location 124 – 125; migration 183; Sogdians, encounter 129 Tujue (Turkic tribes) 233 tumen (commanders) 226 Tungusic (language) 116 Türki (spoken language) 210 – 211 Turkic anthropomorphic statue (Zhaosu Prairie) 194 Turkic khaganates 195 – 200; Eastern/ Western Turkic khaganates 197 Turkic Khanates, rise 98 Turkic origins 191 – 195 Turkic peoples, westward migration 204 Turkic-speaking peoples: distribution 220 – 222; rise/westward migration 191 Turkic tongue (lingua franca), adoption 205 Turkification 126, 200 Turkish bath (iconic venue) 217 Turkish porcelain tile 218 Turko-Mongol ethnocultural synthesis 207 – 211 Turko-Mongolian culture, Persian-flavored form (establishment) 238

260 Index Turkophone Khakas, migration 178 Twenty-Four Histories 24 Uighurs, Buddhist conversion 109 Umayyad Dynasty (“White-robed Tashi”), establishment 171 Umayyads (Arab Empire foundations) 140 untouchables 71 Uyghurs, presence 18 “Uzbek,” self-reference 96 Uzbek Khanate 248 vahana (carriage/mount) 75 “Voyages to the West” (Zheng He) 242 “Voyages to the Western Seas” (Ming Treasure Voyages) 186 Warring States period 68, 134; State of Qin, examination 195 water buffalo, domestication 5 waterfowl-decorated ceramic dish (Indus Basin) 11 Wei Dynasty 102 Weiwu’er (Uyghur/Uighur) 125 West Asian design elements, Chinese design elements (fusion) 118 Western Chaghatai Khanate: khan, murder 208; Timur rebellion 235 Western Expeditions 224 Western Han, paper (invention) 136 Western Liao, Mongol conquest 225 – 226 Western Tujue: Khaganate, split 198 – 199; occupation 198 Western Turkic Khaganate 196, 197 Western Turkic Khanate, composition 125 Whirling Dervishes (Sufi controversy) 22 “White Horde,” origins 96, 209 White Horse Temple, construction 80 “White-robed Tashi” (Umayyad Dynasty), establishment 171 woman, statue (Gandharan-style) 43 wooden slips: Chinese hanzi 59; Gandhari text (Kharosthi script) 132 Wusun, equidistant diplomacy 52 – 53

Xi’an Stele 109 Xianbei: cultural system 46; nomadic people 101 Xidaotang (“Study the Han”) (“Hall of the Western Dao”) 187 Xinwang Mosque (Linxia) 189 Xiongnu: ancient non-Chinese (“Wu Hu”) 196; cultural system 46; Dou Xian force pursuit/combination 60; forces, Han forces (combination) 49 – 51; “man of gold,” Han army seizure 79; nomadic leaders 46; outflanking 243; princess, marriage 52; suppression 54; threat 67 Xiongnu Empire: land occupation 47; Northern Grasslands 45 – 46 “Xuanwu Gate Incident” (palace coup) 197 Xue Rengui (Chinese folk stories) 72 “Year of the Elephant” 164 Yellow Scarf Rebellion 79 Yellow Sky, appearance 70 Yingya Shenglan (Ma Huan) 244 yin-yang calendar (date adjustment) 170 Yong Hui Era 178 Young Turks 215 Yuan Dynasty 177, 207; Kublai Khan founding 231; marine routes 228; remnants 253 Yongle Encyclopedia (yongle dadian) 241 Youthful Adventures (Li Bai) 94 Yuan China, currencies (usage) 118 yurt (ger), usage 45 – 46 Zeitgeist 120 Zerafshan Basin 99 Zhaosu Prairie (Turkic anthropomorphic statue) 194 Zhonghua 25; culture, stagnation 249 zhonghua civilization 12; qualification 3 Zhou Dynasty, Empress Wu (reign) 149 Zurkaaneh (Iranian-style martial arts hall) 20 Ziji-i Sultani (astronomical table/star catalogue) 238

Index Historical and Legendary Personalities

Abahi (Huangtaiji) 156 Abbas: descendants 140; Persian Muslims, uniting 171 Abdul Hamid II 21; portrait 20 Abu Bakr (“Rightly Guided” Caliph) 167, 173 ad-Din, Jalal (resistance) 226 ad-Din Muḥammad Balkhi (poet) 206 ad-Din Muhammad II, Ala 225–226 Aga Khan IV (Ismaili sect) 174 Ahura Mazda 81 al-Assad, Bashar 174 al-Assad, Hafez 174 al-Dīn Ṭabīb, Rashīd 224 Alexander the Great 34; demise 40; eastern/ eastward campaigns 25, 33–36, 249; marble sculpture 35; sculpture (Iran) 36 Ali ibn Abi Talib 173 Ali see ibn Abi Talib: assassination 169; power, seizure 171 Ali-Shir Nava’i (Turkic writer) 211, 238 Allah, Predestination 181–182 An Lushan 99, 103, 220; rebellion 127–128 An Shigao (Buddhist missionary) 79–81, 118; Chinese language understanding 83–84 Aquinas, Thomas 172 Ardi (hominid) 1 Arghun, death 19 Aristotle 30, 33 Arkhun, Ilkhan 231 Arkhun, Kököchin 231 Ashoka the Great see King Ashoka the Great Ata-Malik, Juvayni 224 Atatürk (Ali Riza oğlu Mustafa) 21–22; portrait/photo 21, 216 Australopithecus afarensis (“Lucy”) 1, 2 Averroes see Ibn Rushd

Avicenna see Ibn Sina Ayyubid Sultan (ruler) 18 Babur (Badishah of the Mughal Empire) 210; expulsion 249; Mughal Empire founding 209–210; political situation, change 91 Bai Chongxi 185 Bai Juyi 95 Ban Chao: dispatch 56; impact 55–59; Tarim Basim visit 55–56 Ban Gu 55 Batu Khan, descendant 96, 209 Bihzad (Kamal ud-Din Behzad) 239 Bilge Khagan 192–193 Bi Sheng (movable type creation) 148–149 Boccaccio, Giovanni 234 Börte (Genghis Khan wife), abduction 208–209 Buddha: busts 43; deity, perception 64; Gandharan-style statue 42 Caliph Uthman ibn Affan (Osman) 167 Cao Yuanzhong 99; Dunhuang portrait 105 Chandragupta 40 Chanyu Huhanye, marriage 50 Cheng Yi (scholar) 70, 190 Chen Zuyi (Chaozhou native) 245 Claudius Ptolemaeus 38 Cleopatra: likeness 39, 40; suicide 50 Cyrus the Great, impact 18 Dao’an (Buddhist monk) 81 Darius the Great, rule 28 da Vinci, Leonardo 31 Dong Zhongshu: impact 70; proposal 107 Dou Xian, pursuit/force combination 60–61

262 Index Du Fu 50, 245, 249 Du Huan: account, Tongdian (usage) 144; Mediterranean travel 142–146 Emperor Constantine 217 Emperor Gaozu of Tang, reign 196 Emperor Guangwen of Han 196 Emperor Justinian I, monks (mission) 137 Emperor Qin Shi Huang 195; reign 136 Emperor Taizong, official post offerings 88 Emperor Taizong of Tang, army (dispatch) 198 Emperor Wu (of Han): Dong Zhongshu, advice 70; power 50; Xiongnu suppression 54 Emperor Wuzong: Buddhism eradication campaign 113–114; “Three Alien Faiths” 109, 111 Emperor Xuanzong of Tang 94; trust 127–128, 141 Emperor Yang of Sui 196–197 Emperor Yongle of Ming 186 Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang 170 Empress Wu, reign 149 Empress Wu Zetian 149 Fan Zhongyan 190 Fatima, Muhammad (marriage) 166 Faxian 118; Buddhism pilgrimage 81–82; Hexi Corridor passage 81; Kumarajiva, encounter (absence) 78, 83; “Lion Country” exploration 81; Mt. Lao arrival 82 Ferdowsi (poet) 239 Flecker, James Elroy 119 Fu Jian (murder) 83 Ganesha 74; love/reverence 72 Gan Ying 63; dispatch 56 Gao Xianzhi (Tang commander) 141–142, 220 Gaykhatu (replacement), Ghazan (impact) 179 Gazi, Orhan 213, 216 Genghis Khan 18; Batu (grandson) 209; death 207; descendants 171; descendants, ruling right 236; Huihu ministers, interaction 156; military campaigns 224; policies, inclusiveness 233–234; portrait 25 Great Khan, designation 226 Great Khan Kublai, Ilkhan Arghun betrothal 179 Great Khan Möngke, demise 19

Guan Zhong, Confucius praise 46 Gükyü (Elected Great Khan) 226 Hamid II: constitutional monarchy 213; sultan succession 215 Hercules “Twelve Labors” vase (Greece) 31, 32 Huangtaiji (Abahai) 156 Husayn Ibn Ali 173–174 ibn Abd al-Wahhab, Muhammad 175–176 Ibn Battuta: travels 232; visits 24 Ibn Rushd (Averroes), existence 172 ibn Saud, Muhammad 175–176 Ibn Sina (Avicenna) 190 Il-Khan: impact 18–19; marriage 179 Jalal ad-Din Muḥammad Balkhi 206 Jibril (angel, reference) 166 Jin Yong (Louis Cha) 229 Ji Xianlin 101 Johann Adam Schall von Bell 170 Julius Caesar 39 Kaniska (Kushan Empire king) 79–80 Kashgari, Mahmud 202 Kemal, Mustafa (“Father of the Turks”) 215–216; see also Atatürk Khagan, Illig (opponents) 198 khatun (empress, Nestorian role) 231 King Ashoka the Great 40, 42, 75; pillar 90 King Cunzhou 53 King Darius 36 King Eurystheus 31 King Hammurabi, laws (promulgation) 8–9 “King of the East and West” 205 King Philip rule 33 King Richard, Saladin foe 18 King Solomon, Sheba (interaction) 164 King Wuling of Zhao, impact 46–49 Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva 123 Kublai Khan: command 18–19; Muslim recruits 242; Yuan Dynasty founder 231; Yunnan/Myanmar occupation 186 Kumarajiva: Buddhist canon translation 82– 84; Faxian, encounter (absence) 78–83 Lady Zhaojun, contribution 50 Lao Zi 134 Laozi (Daoist) 69 Legge, James 82 Lenin, Vladimir 221 Levi-Strauss, Claude 14 Li Bai 52

Index  263 Li Bai (“poetry immortal”) 94 Li Jing, emperor dispatch 197–198 Lin Yinhuan 72 Liu Zhi 188 Lokaksema (Zhi lou jia chen) 78, 80–81 Lord of Dongping 128 “Lucy” (skeleton) 1, 2 Lü Guang 83 Lu You (poet) 169 Maharaja Hari Singh (Kashmiri ruler) 92 Mahavira (Kshatriya prince) 75 Ma Huan 189, 244 Ma Jian 185; Qur’an translation 179 Ma Qixi 187; couplet 188 Marco Polo 24, 150, 230; China exit 179; imprisonment 231; movements (Persia) 231–232; Pamir arrival 65; Venice return 232 Mark Anthony 39 Marquis of Bowang, designation 244 Martin Luther 142, 150 Mehmed II (Mehmed the Conqueror) 211, 214, 220 Mehmet V 215 Mehmet VI 215 Mencius (Confucian thought) 68 Menzies, Gaven 244–245 Michelangelo 31 Modu Chanyu, power 50 Mouhot, Henri 14–15 Muawiyeh, triumph 171 Muhammad see Prophet Muhammad: death 169, 173 Nanyue King: mausoleum 61, 82; tomb 161; tomb, Persian-style silver container (Pearl River delta) 62 Nanyue King Zhao Tuo, dispatch 49 Nataraja (Shiva) 77 Na Zhong (professor) 185 Octavian 39 Ögedei Khan (death) 209, 227–228 Otto III (king) 190 Ouyang Xiu 190 Palembang, Chen Zuyi (ruler) 245 Pelliot, Paul 109 Philip IV (Philippe le Bel) 19 Plato 30 Pope Gregory XIII, calendar 170 Princess Xijun (Liu Xijun), hardships 53–54

Prophet Muhammad 140; angel, meditation/communication 166–167; birth (“Year of the Elephant”) 164; Fatima, marriage 166; governance 166; lineage 173; relocation 167 Pu Shougeng 178, 229 Qin Shi Huang (emperor) 195 Qiu Chuji (“Master Changchun”) 229–230 Queen Victoria, Empress of India (crowning) 91 Ramayana, “Monkey King” 73 Ricci, Matteo 245–246 [Compare with Marco Polo above!] Richthofen, Ferdinand von 54 “Rightly Guided” Caliph (Abu Bakr) 168 Rumi 206–207; residence 22 Rustichello da Pisa 231 Sabuktigin (governor) 202 Saint Louis (Louis IX), alliance 19 Saladin: King Richard foe 18; replacement 19 Sargon the Great (Akkadian empire ruler) 7 Schafer, Edward H. 119 Selim I 249 Selim II (“Selim the Drunkard”) (Sarhoş Selim) 212 Selim III (sultan) 21, 213; portrait 20 Seljuk Beg 204–205 Shaanxi officials, impact 111 Shah Rukh 247 Shaybani, Muhammad 249 Shigao see An Shigao Shi Siming 99, 103 Shiva (Nataraja) 77 Siddhartha Gautama 72, 75 Sima Guang 190 Sima Qian 48, 51 Sinan, Mimar 217, 220 Socrates 30 Stalin, Josef 97 Stein, Aurel 57, 67, 99, 109 Su Dongpo 190 Suleiman the Magnificent: portrait 20, 213, 215; Vienna siege 211 Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Sultan Ahmet Camii) (Blue Mosque) 217 Sultan Mahmud, control 202 Sun Wukong (“Handsome Monkey King”) 72

264 Index Tamerlane (“Timur the Lame”) 207, 235 Tang Gaozong, throne (assumption) 88 Taspar Khagan (First Turkic Khaganate ruler) 196 Timur (“Tamerlane”) 207; conquests, consequences 208; (Turko-Mongol emperor) 237 “Timur the Lame” (Tamerlane) 235 Tolui, descendants 18 Tughril Beg, Baghdad arrival 205 Ulugh Beg 238 Umar Ibn al-Khattab (Umar I) 173 Uthman ibn Affan (Osman) 173 Vishnu, reincarnation 72 Wang Anshi 190 Wang Bo 33 Wang Changling (frontier poet) 54 Wang Daiyu (“True Old Man of Hui, The”) 188 Wang Wei 28 Wang Yuanlu 67 Wang Zhihuan (frontier poet) 52, 54 Wu Cheng’en 72, 86 Xuan Zang 24, 118, 137, 198; Emperor Taizong official post offerings 88; India

pilgrimage 86; “Journey to the West” haul 84–89; Kucha passage 198; portrait 85 Xuanzang, India arrival 75 Xue Dingshan 72 Xunzi (Confucianist) 68, 175 Yang Guozhong (Prime Minister) 128 Yao Xing (Later Qin ruler) 83–84 Yelü Chucai 230 Yuchi Gong (Jingde) 59 Zhang Qian 24, 136; “blood-sweating” horses discovery 97; explorer 45; mission 52–53; mission (“man of gold” statue capture) 79; Western region exploration 51–56, 62, 78 Zhang Yichao 105–106 Zheng He 24; command 241; seven voyages 186, 241, 242, 346; stele, erection 248; Strait of Malacca passage 242–243; voyages, impact 246 Zhou Enlai 38 Zhuangzi (Daoist) 69 Zhu Di (Yongle emperor) 240–243 Zhu Xi (scholar) 70 Zhu Yuanzhang 240–241; see also Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang; Ming Dynasty establishment 208; Record of the Ancestor’s Instructions (Zu xun lu) 240

Index Geographical Concepts and Place Names

Afghanistan, long-term occupation competition 96 Almaty (Kazakhstan) 51, 96 Altai Mountains, Scythian crossing 13 Amu Darya 97 – 99, 197, 224; Oghuz crossing 204 – 211; Sogdians, presence 137 Annam (Vietnam), Ming vassal state 246 Arabian Peninsula: climate, problem 161 – 162; geographic/cultural backstory 161 – 166 Asia Minor, Timur invasion 211 Athens, Sparta invasion 33 Bactria, Alexander the Great conquest 62 Baideng, siege 49 Blue Nile, White Nile (connection) 164 Bosnia, Turkophone inhabitants (presence) 220 Calicut (Kozhikode), passage 229, 247 – 248 Cambodia: Angkor Wat relief 15; Buddha (bust) 43 Canaan (region) 27 Central Asia: geographic regions 95 – 97; Roman-era coins 63 Central Eurasia, Hellenism 36 – 39 Chang’an: khagan troop attack 197 – 198; lifestyle (Tang Dynasty) 94 – 95; Sogdian tomb (Anjia Tomb relief) 124 China: An Shigao (Buddhist missionary) 79 – 81; Buddhism, spread 78; design elements, West Asian design elements (fusion) 118; Du Huan, travels 142 – 146; early China, religion/philosophy 68 – 70; India, interactions (assessment) 92 – 93; Islam entry 178 – 179; Islam, presence 177; multiethnic traditions 3; Muslims, portrait 183 – 187; Nestorian-Christianity,

dissemination 109 – 115; papermaking know-how, spread 148; polo, arrival 120; postal system 68; printing technology, spread 148; Sogdian script 153 – 160 Chu River Basin, Huihu entry 200 – 201 Constantinople (Byzantium/Istanbul) 161; Ottoman capture 217 Crete Island, fresco 31 Damascus, siege 227 Danube River 204 Dayuan (Ferghana Valley) 51 Dead Sea 163 – 164 Dnieper River Basin 116 Dunhuang: mural, merchant robbery (depiction) 103; portrait (Cao Yuanzhong) 105 Dunhuang Grotto 104, 106, 112 East Mediterranean, Hellenism 36 – 39 Edirne (Adrianople), location 218 Egypt: ancient culture, Nile (relationship) 9; Cleopatra, likeness 40; Mesopotamia, Sinai Peninsula link 25; New Kingdom 16 – 17 Eurasia, Mongol rule 223 Eurasian steppe 116; location/extension 61; nomads (blood brothers) 208 Europe, jousting 18 Fei River (battle) 83 Ferghana Basin: “blood-sweating” horses 97; core geographical unit 64 Gallipoli (battle) 216 Gandhara, Xuan Zang arrival 87 Gansu, postal relay stations 101 Gaochang 126; Nestorian-Christian temple (mural restoration) 113

266 Index Gobi Desert, connection 52 Great Britain, industrial revolution 29 Greater Khingan Mountains (Inner Mongolia) 116, 191 Great Wall: collapse 49; Stein exploration 67 Greece: civilization 29 – 33; Hercules “Twelve Labors” vase 31, 32; lifestyle 31; Persia, conflict 27 – 29; topography 30 Guangzhou: Arab/Persian merchant home 229; Huaisheng Mosque 185 Gulf of Aqaba 163 – 164 Hebei 12 – 13, 47 – 48, 127, 186, 189 Hejia Village (Shaanxi), cup with Sogdianstyle handgrip 107 Herat: importance, increase 238; Timurid Khanate capital, move 248 Hetao, Han Dynasty control 61 Hetian (Hotan), discoveries (location) 56 – 57 Hexi Corridor 42, 104; Faxian passage 81; Han Dynasty 64 – 68; prefectures, establishment 52; troop movement 50; Yuezhi, presence 65; Yugur, presence 222 Hindu Kush, Aryan crossing 71 Hotan River: renowned 64 – 65; source, location 67 Iberian Peninsula, Muslim control 171 India: ancient civilization 11 – 12; Buddhism, role (decline) 76; China, interactions (assessment) 92 – 93; country/people/religion 89 – 92; early Indian religions 71 – 77; Indian-European invasion 72; intermarriage, societal discouragement 72; Pakistan, conflicts 91; Xuanzang arrival 75; Xuan Zang pilgrimage 86 Indonesia, Buddha (bust) 43 Indus Basin: agriculture, development 11; waterfowl ceramic dish 11 Indus Valley civilization 10 – 12 Iran, Alexander the Great sculpture 36 Jammu, ceasefire territory 92 Japan, Muromachi Shogunate rule 246 Jerusalem, view 168 Jiayu Pass 67 – 68 Junggar Basin: core geogrpahical unit 64; Dzungarian Basin 198 Kannauj, Xuan Zang arrival 87 Karakhoja (Gaochang), Huihu (presence) 153

Karbala (battle) 174 Kashgar: arrival 98; cultural center 183 – 184 Kashmir, ceasefire territory 92 Kazakhstan, Cyrillic alphabet adoption 221 Khorasan Province 238 Khotan (Hetian) 66; accessibility 56; discoveries, location 56 – 57; kingdom 137; Xuan Zang arrival 88 Khujand, Alexander the Great visitation 97 Khwarazm: culture 224 – 225; Genghis Khan attack 227 Kipchak Steppe 106; Polovcian plain 222 Konya, Mongol occupation 206 Lake Baikal 116, 191 “Lion Country,” Faxian exploration 81 Loulan (Xinjiang): discovery 67; Iranianstyle coffin 47, 56; people, presence 65; strategic location 67 Macedonia, King Philip rule 33 Maghreb (“where the sun sets”) 145 – 146, 232 Malacca, Muslim sultanate establishment 247 Malacca Strait, passage 229 Manzikert (Malazgirt) 205 Marathon (battle) 27, 33 Maritime Silk Road 61, 82, 178 Mecca: Allah revelations, Muhammad acceptance 167; Muhammad attack 168 – 169 Medina: Cyrus control 18; Muhammad, presence 167, 170 Mediterranean, Du Huan travels 142 – 146 Mekong River, rice growth 65 – 66 Mesopotamia: civilization 6 – 9; climate, inhospitability 9 – 10; Egypt, Sinai Peninsula link 25 Mongolian Plateau, Genghis Khan unification 224 Moscow, Mongol occupation 233 mountain trio 64 Mount Jiuhua (Anhui Province) 123 Mt. Lao, Faxian arrival 82 Nalanda, Xuan Zang arrival 87 Nile Valley, civilization 9 – 10 Ningxia, Tongxin Grand Mosque (couplets) 189 Nishapur (Ferdowsi statue/memorial) 239 – 240 Niya: discovery 67; Han Dynasty Agricultural Bureau seal 58; nobility,

Index  267 presence 59; people, presence 65; wooden slips (Chinese hanzi) 59 North Africa: map 162; Muslim control 171 Northern Grasslands, Xiongnu Empire 45 – 46 Onion Peaks (cong ling) 65 Pakistan: Buddha, bust 43; India, conflicts 91 Pamir Mountains, Huihu crossing 200 – 201 Paris, Syriac Catholic Church cathedral plaque 15 Pearl River delta, Persian-style silver container (Nanyue King tomb) 62 Persepolis, ruins (relief) 17, 29 Persia, Greece (conflict) 27 – 29 Petra 61, 163 – 164; Hazna Palace 163 Pontic-Caspian Steppe, horse domestication 4 Pre-Islamic West Asia, map 162 Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County, Manchu script (presence) 159 Qinghai-Tibert Plateau, rice cultivation 12 Qocho (Gaochang) 113, 126, 200 Quanzhou, Arab/Persian merchant home 229 Red Sea Coast, commercial route 165 Rome, Visigoth sack 161 – 162 Samarkand 55, 235 – 236; Arab army occupation 127; golden peaches 116; influence, extension 199; Timur base 208; XuanZang arrival 87 Shanshan (Loulan): accessibility 56; Ban Chao visit 55 Shule (Kashgar): accessibility 56; Han Dynasty influence, growth 52; strategic location 66 – 67 Siberian Steppes 106 Southeast Europe, map 162 Spain/Portugal, maritime routes (discovery) 29 Sri Lanka, location 247 Sulu Archipelago 186 Suyab, Xuan Zang arrival 87

Syr Darya 130, 197, 204; Sogdians, presence 137 Syr River, boundary 199 – 200 Taklamakan Desert, inhabitants 65 Taklamakan Desert 52, 65, 98, 198 Talas (battle) 139 – 141 Tarim Basin 98; Ban Chao visit 55 – 56; core geographical unit 64; Han Dynasty 64 – 68; river water, generation 64 – 65 Transoxiana 96, 201, 209; Arab army, arrival 127; Turkic language 237 Tubo (Tibetans): expulsion 105 – 106; fight, success 141 Turan (Turkic territory) 200 Turkmenistan: populations 96 – 97; Turkophone domination 221 Turpan (oasis city) 111, 113; Syriac script text (fragment) 114 Uzbekistan, Turkophone domination 221 Volga River Basin, Mongol army attack 226 Western regions: mysteries 45; Tang regions, comparison 119 – 123; Zhang Qian exploration 51 – 55 “Western Regions,” term (usage) 98 White Niles, Blue Nile (connection) 164 Xi’an: cultural landmark 88; fire altar, relief 103, 104; westward movement 98; Yuezhi arrival 51 Xinjiang (New Dominion) 64, 126, 176; association 98; Kuche 82; regions, Islamization 201 Yangtze River Basin, rice cultivation 12 Yangzhou, Marco Polo administration 231 Yellow River Basin 196 Yellow River Valley: civilization 12 – 14; society, growth 3 Yemen: Abyssinia occupations 165; myrrh/ frankincense transport 164 Yumen Pass (“Jade Gate”) 52

Index Religious Terminology

“Ahura’s Religion” (fire-worship) 81 “All observant” (Cha hu shangxia) 188 Amitabha Sutra 84 asceticism, practice 199 “Ashura” 173 – 174 Atharva-Veda 71 audible dikhr 187 “Avatamsaka Sect” (faxiang zong) 88 Bible, Gutenberg printing 150 Brahmanism 71 – 77; evolution 75; tenets 75 Brahmin caste (priests) 71 Buddhism 11 – 12, 71 – 77; birthplace, Faxian pilgrimage 81 – 82; Chinese Buddhism, isolation 141; Daoism, dispute 79; eradication, Emperor Wuzong campaign 113 – 114; flourishing 70; founding 44; genesis 64; internalization 92 – 93; introduction 66; origin 40, 75; role, decline 76; spread 78; Tibetan Buddhism, evolution 200 Buddhist canon, Kumarajiva translation 82 – 84 Buraq (mythical creature) 167 “Champion of Deliverance” (jietuo tian) 87 Chinese Buddhism, isolation 141 Chinese Islam 186 – 187 Christianity: flourishing 31; Judaism framework 166; Roman Empire adoption 162 Christos (“anointed”) 166 Confucianism 68 – 70; Daoism, contrast 69 – 70; impact 169; promotion, Dong Zhongshu proposal 107

Dalit (Chandala) (untouchables) 71 dàochǎng (immersive learning/meditation site) 123 Daoism 68 – 70; Buddhism, dispute 79; Confucianism, contrast 69 – 70; dialectic thought 69 – 70 Day of Judgment (Yawm ad-Di) 181 – 182 Dharani Sutra of Spotless Pure Light, discovery 149 Diamond Sutra 84 dikhr (devotional acts) 189 Eastern Orthodox Catholicism, foundations (damage) 233 Eastern Orthodox Church, ritual (emphasis) 16 Ecclesia 30 Eid Ad-Adha (festival) 143 Five Pillars of Islam 169, 182, 187; experience 188; practice 189 Garden of Eden 165 God, devotee contact 206 – 207 Hadith 175, 181 Hajj (Mecca pilgrimage) 169, 182, 183 Heart Sutra 83, 84 Heavens (Tian), reverence 70 Hejira (Muslim migration) 167 Hijri (religious festival dates) 170 Hinayana (“Lesser Vehicle”) 80 “His awe-inspiring presence” (Lin xia qi he) 188 “His ubiquitous presence” (Tian lin zai zi) 188 Holy See, errors 150

Index  269 idol worship 16 Iftar (break the fast) 182 Ihram (entry) 169 Islam: Chinese Islam 186 – 187; Confucianist interpretations 187 – 190; conversion 201; expansion 173; Five Pillars, experience 188; leaders, service (belief) 140; Muhammad establishment 166 – 170; presence 177; split 173; spread 185 – 186; woman, remarriage (acceptance) 170 Islamic civilization 170 – 173; origins/ spread 161 Islamic doctrine 179 – 183 Islamic empires (1500–1800) 172 Islamization 75 – 76, 126, 203; process 173 Jahriyya 187 Jainism 11 – 12, 71 – 77; life, interconnections 75 jihad 126; meanings 201 Judaism, practice 144 Judeo-Christian canons 27 jurisprudence (Wahhabism) 176 jurisprudence (madhhab), Sunni evolution 176 Kaaba: circumambulation (tawaf) 169; demolition 164 Khubrawiyya (meditation for enlightenment) 187 Khufiyya 187 Kshatriya (nobles/warriors) 71, 78 Kurban Bayram (festival) 143 “Latin Church” 27 Lotus Sutra 84 Mahabharata (“great story”) 72 Mahayana (“Greater Vehicle”) 80; scriptures 82 Mahayana Buddhism 87, 200; dominance 246; selection 80 Manichaeism: assertions 109; belief 152 Manichean mural 110 mantras (collections), presence 71 mashiyach (“Messiah”) 166 Masjid (house of worship) 143 Mevlevi Order 22 Mingjiao, transformation 114 misbahah (prayer beads) 189 Mosque (masjid; house of worship) 143 mushaf (codex) 168 Muslims: conversion (mawali) 130; portrait 183 – 187

Naqshbandi Order, Sufi faction distribution 176 Neo-Confucian Thought 188 Nestorian Christian Church 16 Nestorian-Christianity: belief 152; dissemination 109 – 115; temple, mural (restoration) 113 “New Brahmanism” (Hinduism), conversion 87 “Night of the Ascent” (Shab-e-Miraj) 167 Ninety-Five Theses (Luther) 142 Nirvana, attaining 76 – 77 “northern Buddhism” 80 – 81 oracle bone (divination use) 12, 132; script 151 “Order of Naqshbandi, birth 248 Original Sin” 165 “People of the Books” 166 predestination 182 prophets, existence 182 “Protestant Reform” 150 Pure Land Buddhism 84 Pure Land Sect, devotees 84 qadi (judge) 232 Qadi (Islamic judges) basis/methods 175 Qur’an: copying 141 – 142; divisions 179; Ma Jian translation 180; marriage equality principle 169; prohibitions 175; texts, compilation 167; Uthman Qur’an 167 Ramadan 170, 182 Ramayana (“journey of Rāma”) 72 Reformation (Europe) 87 religion (early China) 68 – 70 religion, importance (consideration) 93 religious ritual, Confucius classification 69 Rig-Veda 71 Rites of Islam, The (Tianfang dianli) 188 Salat (prayer) 182 Sama-Veda 71 Sawm (fasting) 182 “Seal of the Prophets” (Khatam an-Nabiyyin) 167 Sema 22, 22 sema (physically active meditation) 206 Shahada (profession of faith) 182 Shakyamuni (Siddhartha Gautama) 72, 75; ideals, advocacy 76 – 77 Shamanism, traces 200 “Shangdi” 166

270 Index Sharia: law 166, 169, 179, 181; significance 187 Shia (Islam faction) 173 Shia-Sunni schism 176 Shudra (laborer/farmer caste) 71 Six Articles of Faith, Muslim belief 181 – 182 Spiritual Couplets, The (Masnaviye-Ma’navi) (Rumi) 206 Stoning of the Devil (ramy al-jamarat) 169 Sufism 176 Sunni: Islam split 173; struggle 174 Syriac Catholic Church cathedral plaque (Paris) 15

“Truth is intangible” (zhen you wuxiang) 188 Twelver Shia Islam, Iranian belief 174

Talmud interpretations 171 – 172 tawaf (Kaaba circumambulation) 169 Ten Commandments 158 Tengri (sky deity) 192 Theravada Buddhism 87; origin 80; practice 247 Theravada scriptures 82 Tibetan Buddhism: evolution 200; followers 201, 231 trailokya (concept) 75 trance dance 192 True Explanation of the Right Religion, A (Zhengjiao zhen quan) 188 “Truth is infinite” (wuji zhi zhen) 188

Xun-xun (Manicheist) law, impact 145

ummah (global community of Muslims) 199, 233 “universal compassion” (pu ci) 188 Uthman Qur’an 167 Vaishya (caste) 71, 78 Vedas (Vedic hymns/texts) 11 – 12 Vedas, Aryan textualization 71 Wahhabism 176 wahy (revelation) 166 “Wailing Wall” 167

Yajur-Veda 71 Yin/Yang dualism 30 Yin-Yang schools 70 Zaidiyyah sect, followers 174 Zakat (almsgiving) 182 Zhenzhu 166 Zoroastrianism 81, 104; abandonment 200; devotees 199; preservation, Avesta (usage) 166; Sassanian belief 162; Sogdian abandonment 153; Sogdian conversion 109