As my e-mail inbox keepsreminding me, technology hasdramatically altered the pos-sibilities for meaningful interactionwith those who share an interestin the Silk Road. My cor-respondents range from middleschool students doing History Dayprojects and filmmakers andeditors needing information fordocumentaries or articles toscholars whose expertise on thelanguages and history of the SilkRoad far exceeds anything I woulddare to claim for myself. The merefact that their inquiries come myway and from all over the world isa tribute to the Internet, which hasbecome for many the first choicefor information. Is there anyonetoday with a computer andInternet connection who does notuse Google as a reference tool? Aname on a web page may identifyan “authority” whose brain can bepicked with a few keystrokes. Ofcourse as a teacher, I have to keepreminding my students to becritical in their assessment ofonline sources and about the factinformation produced with old-fashioned technology (e.g., ink onpaper) is far from obsolete.
In previous issues of The SilkRoad, articles have on occasionhighlighted how technology istransforming the study of evidenceregarding the early history ofinteractions across Eurasia. Inparticular we have seen how newtechniques of analyzing archae-ological material have advancedour understanding of materialevidence and how innovativemapping of sites can help us tounderstand their context andrelationship to sites in otherregions. That said, as I learnedfrom my experience in Mongoliathis summer both on the Xiongnu
excavation co-sponsored by theSilkroad Foundation and theMongolian National University andin independent study of petroglyphsites in the Mongolian Altai, theapplication of advanced tech-nologies is uneven. Even wherethey are available, the techniquesmany not be able to answer someof the basic questions we poseabout such key issues aschronology. And in too many casesstill, the lack of access to advancedtechniques for analysis or pre-servation of material may be a realconstraint on the amount ofinformation which can be learnedfrom an excavation.
In any event, the promise oftechnology is great, although Ihesitate to say unlimited, since Iam somewhat pessimistic abouthumans being able to devisetechnological solutions to all theproblems they create. It is alsoundoubtedly the case that formany aspects of the historicalrecord, we will never figure outhow to fill the gaps, however muchthe application of new technologymay provide us with informationand understanding we previouslylacked.
Certainly one of the mostpromising benefits of thetechological revolution is thatdescribed in our lead article bySusan Whitfield, the Director of theInternational Dunhuang Project(IDP) at the British Library. Mostof our readers are undoubtedlyaware of the project and may havevisited its web site. Her articlehighlights the huge accom-plishments to date as well as theambitious plans for its future. Herealready is a superb research toolfor serious scholars around theworld as well as a source of
Next IssueA special focus on Mongolia,
including:
• Nicola di Cosmo on earlynomads
• Esther Jacobson onpetroglyphs
• Guolong Lai on Han mirrors inXiongnu graves
• articles on the summer 2005Arkhangai excavation
plusUlf Jaeger on the Francke-Körber
Collection of Khotan antiquities inMunich,
and more….
• The International DunhuangProject
• Economic and Social Roots
of Buddhism
• Byzantine Solidi in China
• Silk Road or Paper Road?
• East Meets West under the
Mongols
• Two Travelers in Yazd
• Kyrgyz Healing Practices
information for the generallycurious. An example of the use ofthe material may be found in thisissue in Connie Chin’s article onpatronage of Buddhism along theSilk Road: the IDP websiteprovided the images of thedocuments from which she didsome of her translations.
The fact that the IDP is makingavailable resources scattered in themuseums and libraries of severalcountries and doing so in a numberof languages is extremely im-portant. To develop the basis forsuch cooperation and find thefunding is in itself little short ofmiraculous. Those of us who areengaged in more modest Internetprojects generally do not have theresources to provide such accessto audiences whose languages aredifferent from our own; what wecan accomplish is generallyconstricted by our individualschedules and knowledge. The IDPis an undertaking which also isbeginning to contribute in a majorway to the ability of educators totransform their curricula byincorporating meaningful materialon the history and culture ofEurasia. I am particularly struck byits undertaking to providecurriculum materials for Chineseschools in Gansu. If the historic SilkRoad is all about cultural sharingacross human and geographicboundaries, then the IDP is in itselfa kind of modern Silk Road whichtranscends boundaries and in factreaches much farther than thehistoric Silk Road ever did. As Dr.Whitfield’s article reminds readers,the continuing success of IDP iscontingent on its funding. I wouldrecommend to all our readers thatthey consider “sponsoring a sutra”to help support the processing ofthe material.
Among the other contributionsto this issue, Jonathan Bloom’sreminds us of the importance ofthe early technology transfer alongwhat, as he argues, might betterbe called the “Paper Road,” giventhe significance of the use of paperfor human communication down
through the centuries. Prof.Bloom’s article and the comple-mentary one by Prof. Sheila Blairon cultural exchange under theMongols were originally deliveredas lectures in the lecture series co-sponsored by the Center for EastAsian Studies at Stanford and theSilkroad Foundation. ProfessorsBloom and Blair are distinguishedexperts on Islamic art whose booksI highly recommend. The Foun-dation has broadened itssponsorship of public lectures bysuch distinguished scholars toinclude several universities; weplan to publish many of thelectures in future issues of ourjournal.
The other contributions to thisissue are quite varied. Professor LinYing summarizes her earlierpublished work on the veryinteresting phenomenon ofByzantine coins and theirimitations in China and suggestsnew ideas as to how the coins mayhave been understood there. JiparDuyshembiyeva’s account of someof her field work on Kyrgyz healing
practices offers new evidenceabout the intersection betweentraditional practices and Islam. AndFrank Harold’s article on Yazdevokes the culture of one of theimportant cities on the historic SilkRoads in Western Asia. Readerswill recall Frank and Ruth Harold’sphotographs from Palmyra, whichillustrated our article on thatfamous caravan city. The Haroldshave also contributed generouslyfrom their photo archive to SilkRoad Seattle.
Looking ahead, we anticipatethat the June 2006 issue will bedevoted primarily to thearchaeology and culture of earlyeurasian nomads, especially inMongolia. Included will beinformation on the excavations atthe Tamir River site last summer.In anticipation of our spring issue,readers may wish to visit theexcavation website.
Daniel WaughDepartment of HistoryUniversity of Washington (Seattle)[email protected]
A four-week excavation and study program near the Tamir River inArkhangai Province, Mongolia, was co-sponsored by the SilkroadFoundation and the Mongolian National University in July and August2005. The large team included professional archaeologists fromMongolia, China and the United States, Mongolian graduate studentsand undergraduates specializing in archaeology, and volunteers primarilyfrom the U.S., some of whom were acquiring their first experience inarchaeology. The institute was highly successful as a learning experiencefor all involved and for its concrete accomplishments in archaeologicalsurvey and the excavation of a Xiongnu settlement site and graveyard.A web site, elegantly designed by Fredrich Kahrl and Wendy Tao,participants in the excavation, introduces the results of the ArkhangaiProvince excavation The web site includes descriptive essays, maps,photographs, annotated bibliography and much more. Material will beadded to the web site over the coming months as analysis of the resultsof the excavation become available.
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The International DunhuangProject: Chinese Central AsiaOnlineSusan WhitfieldBritish Library,London
Despite the excellent work ofscholars over the past century, thearchaeological legacy of theChinese Silk Road has barely beenexplored. There is so muchmaterial, with more beingdiscovered all the time, and itcovers so many subjects,languages, religions, cultures andgeographical areas, that decadeswill elapse before all itssecrets are uncovered.The International Dun-huang Project (IDP) isnow facilitating accessto and study of thisdispersed material bymaking it freely avail-able on multi-lingualwebsites. IDP hopesthat by encouraging andpromoting internationalcollaborations theimportance of thiswonderful archae-ological legacy willf inally be fully appreciatedworldwide. The Silk Road is partof all our histories. IDP is bringingit online for everyone.
IDP re-launched its web site(http://idp.bl.uk) in December2005 offering more powerful full-text search facilities, greaterfunctionality, educational projectpages and the personalised “MyIDP” project space. The IDP’s website is now hosted by sitesworldwide and in English, Chinese,Russian, Japanese and Germanversions. After just ten years, IDPalready holds information andimages of over 50,000 paintings,artefacts, manuscripts, textiles andhistorical photographs fromDunhuang and other sites inChinese Central Asia. By 2010 over
80% of the material fromDunhuang and a large part of thematerial from other archaeologicalsites will be available, with over200,000 images, scores ofcatalogues, translations, edu-cational pages, photographs, mapsand research. Chinese Central Asiawill be online.
Background
As Buddhism spread along the SilkRoad from India into China at thebeginning of the first millennium,monks and merchants adopted theIndian practice of paying for cavetemples to be dug out from cliffsas an act of merit. These caveswere then painted from floor toceiling with scenes from Buddha’slife and depictions from the sutras,and further adorned with statuegroupings showing Buddha with hisdisciples and guardians kings. TheMogao cave complex at Dunhuangwas begun in CE 366, and by theninth century there were over 500cave temples with many residentialcaves for the scores of artisans,painters and sculptors workingthere [Figs. 1, 6 (p. 7)].
Dunhuang was oneamong many such SilkRoad cave temple sitesbut is unique because ofthe discovery in 1900 ofa library cave which hadbeen sealed and hiddenin about CE 1000 [Fig.2]. Containing tens ofthousands of manu-scripts and the earliestdated printed book, thisis the world’s earliestand largest paperFig. 1. The northern section of the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang.
archive [Fig. 3; for other imagesof some of these treasures, see thearticles below by Connie Chin andJonathan Bloom]. It also containedhundreds of fine paintings on silk,
hemp and paper. Numerous otherancient Silk Road sites in ChineseCentral Asia yielded otherimportant artefacts, paintings,textiles, coins and manuscripts inover twenty languages and scripts,and this and the Dunhuangmaterial was dispersed toinstitutions worldwide, makingaccess difficult. The amount ofmaterial, its age, fragility anduniqueness also created a prob-lem for conservators. Throughoutthe twentieth century muchremained in need of conservationand therefore also uncatalogued,unpublished and inaccessible.
The International Dun-huang Project — the FirstTen Years
The International DunhuangProject (IDP), with its directorateat the British Library, was foundedin 1994 to address these problemsby creating a partnership of all themajor holders of the material towork together on conservation andcataloguing and to increase access.To achieve the first, IDP organisesregular conservation conferencesand has a publications programmeto disseminate conservation,
scientific and scholarly information(for details see IDP News 24,available free from IDP or onlineat http://idp.bl.uk/pages/archives_newsletter.a4d). To
facilitate access IDPdecided to create acomprehensive onlinecatalogue of all thematerial, linked tohigh-quality digitalimages and sup-porting informationwhich would be madefreely available to all.
Starting with agrant from the ChiangChing-Kuo Foundationand a staff of one, thefirst few years of IDPwere spent designingand implementing acataloguing and imagem a n a g e m e n tdatabase. A BritishA c a d e m y - f u n d e d
research assistant started addinginformation about the BritishLibrary manuscripts in 1995. In1997 with a further grant from theHeritage Lottery Memorial Fund,IDP expanded and employed staffto start work on the cataloguingand digitisation of Chinese, Tangutand Tibetan materials from variousSilk Road sites, and in October1998 the web site went online withdetails of over 20,000 manu-scripts.
Other projects followed. Agrant from the Higher EducationFunding Council for England led tothe launch of a map interface tothe database in 2000. In 2001, afour-year grant from the AndrewW. Mellon Foundation enabled IDPto establish a digitisation studiowith the latest large-formatdigitisation equipment. Twoconservators, three photographersand three Photoshop® operatorswere employed to work full-timeon the Dunhuang material.
Collaboration started with theNational Library of China (NLC) inthe same year, funded by the Sino-British Fellowship Trust, and theskills learned in London werepassed on to the IDP photo-
graphers in Beijing. The Chinese-language version of the web siteand online database were launchedon a local server in November 2002(http://idp.nlc.gov.cn). Institutionssuch as the NLC are foundingmembers and full IDP partners.Local staff at the IDP Centre inBeijing add information about theircollections into their local databaseand local photographers digitisethe collections, using mutuallyagreed IDP standards andprocedures (published online onh t t p : / / i d p . b l . u k / p a g e s /technical_resources.a4d). Data aresynchronised between the Chineseand English servers. The NLCimages, apart from the referencethumbnails, are also kept on theNLC server.
IDP acts as a host for someinstitutions’ collections. Forexample, the Chester BeattyLibrary in Dublin and the FreerGallery in Washington DC bothhave three items from Dunhuang.They supplied IDP with large-format photographs of these,which IDP then scanned and addedto its web site with cataloguingdetails. IDP also hosts images ofthe paintings from Dunhuang heldin the British Museum and is juststarting to add images of thetextiles from the Chinese Silk Roadin the Victoria and Albert Museumand other artefacts from the BritishMuseum. In all cases the holdinginstitution retains copyright on theimages and there is a clear link onthe IDP site to the institutions’ ownwebsites. Information on theparticipating institutions and theircollections is on the advancedsearch page.
Other collaborations launchedduring the past two years involvethe Institute of Oriental Studies inSt. Petersburg, Ryukoku Universityin Kyoto, and the Staatsbibliothekand Berlin-Brandenburg Academyof Sciences and Humanities inBerlin. The online Russian,Japanese and German versions ofthe IDP site are hosted by theseinstitutions. IDP hopes to startsimilar collaborations with theDunhuang Academy, the National
Museum, New Delhi [Fig. 4], theMuseum for Indian Art, Berlin [Fig.5], the Musée Guimet and theBibliothèque nationale de France.At present, over 20,000 high-quality images are being addedannually to the database, but thisfigure will be doubled if funds canbe secured to upgrade equipmentand expand existing staffing in theUK, China and Germany. IDP willadd more institutions and includein its database small and privatecollections throughout the world.
Systematic cataloguing of thismaterial is essential if it is to be auseful scholarly and educationalresource. The Chinese Section atthe British Library has beencollaborating with Chinese scholarsfor three decades to make materialmore accessible. As a result, thepreviously unconserved anduncatalogued fragments fromDunhuang (Or.8210/S.6981onwards) were all conserved in the1980s and cataloguing taken on byProfessors Rong Xinjiang (non-Buddhist material) and FangGuangchang (Buddhist frag-ments). The first catalogue wascompleted in 1999 and ProfessorFang’s is nearing completion.Professor Sha Zhi has also recentlycompleted his catalogue of Chinesefragments. Dr. Jake Dalton and Dr.Sam van Schaik’s catalogue of theTibetan tantric material is nowonline and will be published nextyear, Professor Tsuguhito Takeuchihas catalogued other non-BuddhistTibetan material, and ProfessorOktor Skjaervø has catalogued theKhotanese fragments. Work is nowstarting on the Sanskrit material.These are just some of the majorprojects on the British Library
manuscripts.S i m i l a rendeavoursare under-way on allthe collec-tions.
All theses c h o l a r shave agreedthat theircatalogues
be available online, and therelaunched IDP website enablesusers to browse a catalogue andcarry out full-text searches. It isimportant to apply internationally-accepted metadata to the onlinecatalogues, and more will comeonline during 2006 as IDP staffcomplete this (the catalogues areprepared as XML documents). Thecatalogues offered will include“legacy” catalogues — thosepublished from as early as thebeginning of the twentieth century.Although some of the scholarshipin these might now be superseded,they all contain much usefulinformation and are an essentialresource for any scholar. So,for example, by the middleof 2006 Stein’s originalentries on the Dunhuangpaintings will be accessiblealongside Fred Andrews’1933 catalogue and ProfessorRoderick Whitfield’s detailed1982-1985 Kodansha pub-lication. Moreover, anyscholar working on items inthe database is welcome tosubmit his/her research foronline publication, and anXML template and in-structions are available(http://idp.bl.uk/pages/technical_resources.a4d).
Apart from the continuingdigitisation of DunhuangChinese materials incollections worldwide, workhas been completed on theTibetan woodslips from Miranand elsewhere, Chinese Han-dynasty wood shavings fromthe Dunhuang limes,Tocharian tablets, andKharosthi material from Niya
and Loulan in the British Librarycollections. IDP has also starteddigitising Sanskrit, Khotanese andTangut manuscripts and continuesdigitisation of the thousands ofhistorical photographs and maps ofthe Silk Road and its sites madeby Aurel Stein and others. IDP hasachieved far more than it couldpossibly have expected whenfounded a decade ago, but thecollections are so rich that muchremains to be done.
In addition to conservation anddigitisation, IDP continues withscholarly work. In 2005 itcompleted a three-year collab-orative research project tocatalogue and digitise the Tibetantantric manuscripts fromDunhuang. Carried out inconjunction with the School ofOriental and African Studies at theUniversity of London and fundedby the Arts and HumanitiesResearch Council, this project byDalton and van Schaik uncoveredmany surprising results, includingthe possibility that most of thesemanuscripts were transcribed in
the latter half of the tenth centuryby a small group of scribes. Themanuscripts were previouslygenerally assumed to date fromthe period of the Tibetanoccupation of Dunhuang, from themid-eighth to mid-ninth centuries.These results will form the basisof the just-started palaeographicalresearch programme (see below).
Educational Outreach in theYears Ahead
Now the infrastructure and asignificant body of material hasbeen established, IDP is planningto reach out into the widercommunity by creating web-basededucational resources — in locallanguages and with local teachers— and not only for highereducation but also for school-children from Shanghai toSacramento. One of the first IDPeducational resources to go onlinewas a history of Chinese book-binding, illustrated by Silk Roadmanuscripts and written anddesigned by Colin Chinnery. Thiscontinues to prove one of the mostvisited pages of the web site. Webpages on Dash, Stein’s caninetravelling companions, and onBuddhism in Central Asia, havebeen added in the past few yearsand also proved popular. Thesecond of these has now beenadapted by Sam van Schaikfollowing his teaching of thesubject at the School of Orientaland African Studies and will formthe opening project on the “MyIDP” personalised web space inearly 2006. Educational outreachprojects will be started with theDunhuang Academy and theNational Library of China forChinese schoolchildren.
In 2005 IDP collaborated withthe Gansu Basic EducationalProject (GBEP; http://www.gbep.org/en/about.asp) to produce abil ingual booklet and DVDcontaining text, images, music,and video telling the story ofDunhuang. This is now beingdistributed to primary-schoolteachers in the poorest townshipsof Gansu and will give school-
children an opportunity to learnabout their local history. This DVDuses some of the resourcesprepared by 12-18 year-olds aspart of the 2004 Silk Roadexhibition educational project.Next year IDP will collaborate witha European Union-funded projectfor children in schools throughoutthe EU. Also coming online in early2006 will be the “Silk Road Quest,”a web adventure for older childrendevised by Gizella Dewath.
In doing such projects IDPhopes to bring a greater awarenessof this rich cultural legacy to thepeople of the region and othersworldwide. The web database willbe made even more accessiblethrough the addition of thepersonalised web space, aninteractive map interface,photographs, music, video clipsand translations. We are lookingto make new partnerships withorganisations and institutions withexpertise and presence in theregion to maximise access andunderstanding of this material.
Cataloguing will continue, andduring the period 2006-2008 IDPwill also work with scholars anduniversities worldwide to create anew field of palaeographicalstudies for East Asian manuscripts.This will include a database ofmillions of Chinese characters andtens of thousands of Tibetansyllables digitally “cut out” fromthe manuscript images, along withfull details about the physicalaspects of the manuscripts,including laid and chain lines, type,colour and size of papers. Thedataset will be freely available andbe used by IDP used to testhypotheses about the date andprovenance of the manuscripts.The tools prepared on this project,such as the cutting-out software,will also be freely available forothers scholars to use.
Funding
From its inception, IDP hasbeen an externally-funded project.The generosity of our supportershas enabled IDP to accomplish allthat has been achieved to date,
and we would like to take thisopportunity to say again howgrateful we are for this. We areparticularly delighted by thenumber of donors who haverenewed their grants or madeadditional gifts.
In 2005 three major grantscame to an end, and IDP has beenactively fundraising to enable it toachieve its programme for the nextfive years. It has grants promisedfrom the Leverhulme Trust (for thepalaeographical project), the FordFoundation (for promotingscholarly interaction betweenIndia, China and Russia), thePidem Fund (for general IDP work)and from several other foundationsfor smaller amounts. In additionto grants from organisations,individual donations remain a vitalelement of IDP’s funding (for a listsee http://idp.bl.uk/pages/supporterslist.html). For example,these donations have given us theflexibility to enhance the cataloguein response to new technologiesand requests from our users — asil lustrated by “My IDP,” thepersonalised IDP web space.Similarly, “Sponsor a Sutra” (http:/ / i d p . b l . u k / f o r m s /s p o n s o r S u t r a C h o i c e . a 4 d )donations have enabled us toconserve and digitise a number ofunique and fragile manuscripts,ensuring they can be accessed byscholars and the wider public nowand in the future.
IDP now has a skilled andcommitted staff working worldwideand is within sight of its primaryobjective of finally making theDunhuang and other Silk Roadmanuscripts, paintings, textilesand artefacts readily available toall. However, IDP urgently needsto secure further funding to realisethis. IDP can celebrate itsachievements of its first ten years.It is hoped that funds are soonforthcoming to ensure that the fullpotential of these is realised overthe next five.
About the Author
Susan Whitfield is Director of theIDP and author of several books,
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including Life along the Silk Road(1999), Aurel Stein on the SilkRoad (2004) and a forthcomingHistorical Dictionary of Explorationof the Silk Road. She edited thecatalogue for the British Library’sSilk Road exhibition which shehelped organize in 2004, The SilkRoad: Trade, Travel, War andFaith, a volume which contains anumber of stimulating essayspresenting the results of newresearch in the material IDP ismaking accessible.
References
Fred H. Andrews. Catalogue ofwall-paintings from ancient shrinesin Central Asia and Sistanrecovered by Sir Aurel Stein. Delhi,1933.
Jacob Dalton and Sam van Schaik.Catalogue of the Tibetan TantricManuscripts from Dunhuang in theStein Collection. First electronicedition. [London:] IDP, 2005,online at <http://idp. bl.uk/d a t a b a s e /oo_cat.a4d?shortref=Dalton_vanSchaik_2005>.
Fang Guangchang. Ying guo tu shuguan cang dun hang yi shu mu lu.(S.6981-S.8400) (Catalogue ofBuddhist manuscripts in theDunhuang collection of the BritishLibrary not included in Lionel Giles’catalogue. First volume [Or.8210/S.6981-8400]). Beijing: Zongjiaowenhua chubanshe, 2000.
Rong Xinjiang. Yingguo Tushuguancang Dunhuang Hanwen fei fojiaowenxian canjuan mulu (S.6981-13624) (Catalogue of the ChineseNon-Buddhist Fragments [S.6981-13624] from Dunhuang in theBritish Library). Hong Kong StudiesCenter for Dunhuang and Turfan:4. Taipei: Shin Wen Feng Print Co.,1995.
Prods Oktor Skjaervø, withcontributions by Ursula Sims-Williams. Khotanese manuscriptsfrom Chinese Turkestanin theBritish Library: a completecatalogue with texts andtranslations. London: The BritishLibrary, 2002.
M. Aurel Stein. Serindia: Detailedreport of explorations in Central
Asia and westernmost Chinacarried out and described underthe orders of H.M. Indiangovernment by Aurel Stein. 5 vols.Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921.
Tsugohito Takeuchi. Old TibetanManuscripts from East Turkestanin the Stein Collection of the BritishLibrary. 3 vols. The Centre for EastAsian Cultural Studies for Unesco,The Toyo Bunko & The BritishLibrary Board, 1997-.
Roderick Whitfield. The Art ofCentral Asia: the Stein Collectionin the British Museum. 3 vols.Tokyo: Kodansha, 1982-1985.
Fig. 6. Façade of Mogao Caves, including Cave 96, photographed in 1908 byCharles Nouette. Source: Mission Pelliot en Asie Centrale. Les Grottes de Touen-Houang (Paris: Geuthner, 1914; facsimile ed. 1997).
How you may supportIDP
Details of IDP’s funding appealcan be found on http://idp.bl.uk/pages/about_funding.a4d. Alldonations are greatly appreciatedand put directly to the work ofIDP. It is possible to make adonation to cover a specific areaof IDP’s work, such as sponsoringa digitisation team, sponsoring anew camera for China, orsponsoring conservation anddigitisation of a specific group ofitems, such as Khotanesemanuscripts, textiles, Chinesesutras, Kizil murals, Tibetan pothior Tangut fragments. Pleasecontact Susan Whitfield at theaddress below if you would liketo discuss these or other areas ofsponsorship. We need yoursupport.
IDP, The British Library,96 Euston Road,London NW1 2DB, UKtel: +44 (0)20 7412 7319,fax: +44 (0)20 7412 7858,email: [email protected]://idp.bl.uk
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Monuments in the Desert: ANote on Economic and SocialRoots of the Development ofBuddhism along the Silk Road
Connie ChinStanford University
To develop into a social institution,a religion must have economic aswell as religious roots. This paperwill discuss material, much of itfound at Dunhuang, whichdemonstrates the economic baseon which the Buddhist religiongrew and became an integral partof life along the Silk Road. Alongthe way it was flavored by diverseethnic groups, languages, andgender relations, as is revealed inthe archaeological, art, anddocumentary evidence.
Beginning as a reaction againstHinduism and rejecting attachmentto all things, Buddhism, paradox-ically, spread along the routes ofcommerce and began to developinto a facet of urban, commercialculture in the Kushan empire, thatcovered a territory which is nownorthern India, western Pakistan,and Afghanistan. During thetransition to Mahayana Buddhismin the Kushan area, the Buddhabegan to take on supernaturalpower; thus worshipping relics ofthe Buddha could bring blessingsto the faithful. Stupas built tocontain the Buddha’s relics spreadacross northern India. Though themonks in these days wereforbidden to worship relics, thelaity was encouraged to pay for theconstruction of stupas and theirdecoration, as well as for thefundamental requirement toprovide food and housing for themonks.
Some Mahayana scriptures,such as the Mahavastu, claimedthat worship of and donations to aBuddha offered tangible benefits.For example, a king who built a
palace full of precious things forthe Buddha could claimBuddhahood from this act of merit.In this text, the main items usedin honoring a Buddha consisted ofthe exotic merchandise latertraded extensively along the SilkRoad: pearls, coral, lapis lazuli,and other precious substanceswere used as religious gifts [Liu1988, p. 93]. The decoration ofBuddhist monuments with silk wasencouraged by the Mahavastu aswell, leading believers to decoratestupas with thousands of silkbanners. The items most valuedin society changed to include theseven treasures needed forBuddhist worship. The worship ofbodhisattvas, future buddhas whocould use their accumulated meritto help the faithful, by extensionimplied that merit, like goods,could be transferred to others orexchanged for good deeds ordonations.
Buddhism had spread rapidlyacross the trade routes all the wayto China by the Han Dynasty. Inthe first century, however,Buddhist communities seem tohave been mostly foreign familiesdwelling in urban centers. By thesecond century CE, missionarieswere translating the sutras inLuoyang. The noted translator-monk Dharmaraksha’s ancestorswere Yuezhi people who hadimmigrated to Dunhuang a fewgenerations before. The Parthianmerchant An Xuan joined AnShigao, a monk, in translating thesutras, a reminder of the com-mercial nature of the foreigncommunity and the closerelationship between Buddhist
missionaries and merchants [Liu1988, p. 140]. The Parthians,Yuezhi and Indians mentioned fromthis time probably all came fromKushana and followed thecommercial routes through CentralAsia into China.
Construction of Buddhist cavesand statues increased during thethird and fourth centuries, reachingits peak during the Northerndynasties. There is a historicalrecord of cave cutting in 397 CE inLiangzhou, and the Dunhuangcaves were started in the fourthor fifth century. The first caveswere sponsored by the FormerLiang, a dynasty that administereda vast territory from the Hexicorridor, beyond Dunhuang,stretching into Gaochang (Turfan).In this area resided diversepeoples, including Han, the TurkicXiongnu and Xianbei, Jie (whowere perhaps Indoscythians), Qingand Di, who were related toTibetans and Tanguts [Howard2000, p. 242]. As stations alongthe Silk Road, the Former Liangcities were places where differingcultures interacted.
There are fourteen votivepillars dating to the Liang periodwhich portray the synthesis of
Daoism, Confucianism, andBuddhism that developed in thethird century. For example, oneartifact [analogous to that in Fig.1 (p. 8) but not shown here], wasdonated by a patron named GaoShanmu and dated 428 CE. It hasseveral sections, with a bottomfrieze showing four males and fourfemales; incised above each is atrigram from the Yijing, aConfucian text. The writing abovethat is an early Buddhist text, theEkottaragma sutra. Above that isa band of Buddhas, and it is toppedby the constellation of the Dipper(a Daoist symbol) on its roundedsummit [Howard 2000, p. 255;Juliano and Lerner 2001, pp. 152-155].
This cultural melding isreflected in some of the earliestcaves. Wenshushan [Fig. 2] inHexi and later, Cave 285 atDunhuang, include cells on thesides, which were likely used asmeditation enclosures similar tothe Indian site at Ajanta. SyncreticDaoist, Indian, and Buddhistthemes crowd Western Wei Cave285, which is dated 538 and 539CE. On the ceiling, a central jewelis flanked by serpentine beings,one holding a builder’s square(Fuxi) and the other a compass(Nuwa), early Chinese deities [Fig.3]. Thunder gods, birds andphoenixes, some with Daoistimmortals riding them, sweepacross the ceiling. Indian deities,
including Siva, Vishnu and Ganesa,flank the main Buddha niche on thewest wall. The dated inscriptionson the wall are flanked on the rightby male donors in Tuoba Xianbei-style clothing, and on the left, bywomen in long, striped skirts, withlarger figures of monks [Whitfield1995, p. 42].
As time went on, Buddhismbecame more and more integratedinto Chinese society. Althoughthere was a brief period ofpersecution, in the Northern Wei
Fig. 3. East slope of ceiling of Mogao Cave 285, photographed in 1908 byCharles Nouette. Source: Mission Pelliot en Asie Centrale. Les Grottes deTouen-Houang (Paris: Geuthner, 1914; facsimile ed. 1997).
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“sangha households.” Each ofthese households paid “sanghagrain” to the local office of monks.Tan Yao also asked to convert somecriminals and slaves to “Buddhahouseholds,” whose memberscleaned or cultivated land for themonasteries [Wei Shou, tr. Hurvitz1956, p. 73].
Emperors and empress-dowagers patronized Buddhism bybuilding monasteries andconducting ceremonies. The firstmonastery built by the NorthernWei rulers was the Yungningsi inPingcheng in 476 CE, a landmarkof the capital city with its seven-story stupa. Princes of the royalfamily contributed the largestamount of money for monasteryconstruction. In the Northern Weicapital of Luoyang, someresidences were changedposthumously into monasteries.The many royal widows andconcubines were sequestered innunneries when the princes orrulers died, a frequent occurrencedue to the constant warfare of thetime. Government ministers,eunuchs, and even the imperialguards built monasteries. Of sixmonasteries built by eunuchs inLuoyang, five were nunneries[Yang, tr. Jenner 1981, p. 231].
The adoption of Buddhism inChina opened up new roles forwomen. Traditionally confined tothe roles of daughter, wife, mother,and mother-in-law, women wereoffered in Buddhist institutionsnew alternatives outside familylife. In Buddhist nunneries womencould be educated to read and copysutras, to manage businesses andkeep accounts, as well as fulfilltheir primary duty of worship andmeditation. As Yang Hsuan-chihdescribes the Hu-tung Nunnery(Nunnery of the Chief of TuobaMonks) founded by the aunt of theNorthern Wei empress dowagerWenming, “The nuns here wereamong the most renowned andaccomplished in the imperial city,skillful at preaching and discussingBuddhist principles. They oftencame to the palace to lecture onDharma for the empress dowager,
whose patronage of Buddhists andlaymen was without equal” [Yang,tr. Wang 1984, p. 56].
The de facto ruler of theNorthern Wei dynasty at the timeBuddhism became a state religionwas Empress Dowager Wenming,who was Chinese. EmpressDowager Wenming was the drivingforce behind the imperial chapelsat Yungang. A later EmpressDowager, Lady Ling, was a centralfigure in Northern Wei courtpolitics, from making policies toappointing officials. She also wasa lavish benefactor of Buddhismbefore a coup resulted in her beingthrown into the Yellow River anddrowned. Of course, the greatestwoman ruler in China was EmpressWu Zetian. During her rule in theTang dynasty, the largest Buddhastatue in Dunhuang, which facesthe visitor upon approaching theMogao caves, was constructed[Fig. 4]. This 99-foot high imageof the future Buddha Maitreya
reveals a woman’s bodily form andclothing [Fig. 5; Ning 2004, p.115]. Ning Qiang has arguedthat Cave 96, containing thehuge sculpture, is a localconfirmation about thelegitimacy of the rule of WuZitian and an example of howsocial and political issues wereaddressed through religious art.
Basing their activities on theIndian models of the Kushanstate, the monks of theNorthern Wei dynasty spenttheir time encouragingdonations and conductingrituals. Faxian and other Chinese
pilgrims witnessed Buddhistceremonies in India, visitedmonumental buildings dating backto the Kushan king Kanishka, andcarried Buddhist writings back toChina. The information theybrought back encouraged ChineseBuddhists to finance rituals, cavetemples, and statues.
The Buddhist monasterieslaunched a large-scale votarymovement. The Northern Weidonors expected to receivebenefits for their future lives andfor their deceased relatives inreturn for their donations. One ofthe favorite subjects of murals wasthe Tushita heaven, or the WesternLand of Bliss of Amitabha, themesthat are common subjects in caveart of the time. From a study ofdated inscriptions of the Northerndynasties, we find the mostcommon expected beneficiarieswere the donor’s direct relatives,especially parents. The secondgroup of primary beneficiaries wasemperors, and other statues werededicated to empress-dowagers,court officials, local administrators,religious teachers, and layassociations. While the royal familyand ministers and officialspatronized the large-scaleconstruction, in one study itappears that common peopledonated 48% of the statues,followed by monks and nuns(19.7%) and donors’ collectives(18.9%) [Sato Chisui, “Study ofVotive Inscriptions on BuddhistStatues in the Northern Dynasties,”cited in Liu 1988, p. 163].TheBuddhist associations were
organized to collect donations.Some associations had strongfamily and territorial ties, whilesome appeared to be urban-basedgroups, but they seem to haveincorporated several social stratain their ranks.
Buddhist institutions played arole in social activities, such asfestivals, and were widelysupported by the society. Adescription of a Buddha’s Birthdaycelebration in Northern Wei depictsa thousand images from variousmonasteries paraded through thestreets of Luoyang, attracting largecrowds as they competed insplendor with each other [Yang, tr.Wang 1984, p. 46]. The goldencarriage of Jingxing nunnery wascovered by a canopy hung withgolden bells and beads of theseven treasures, so valuable thatthe imperial guards were calledupon to carry it. As the parade ofimages stopped at the gate of thepalace, the emperor bestowedflowers upon them. Acrobats anddancers accompanied the images,as the people emptied out themarketplaces in order to see theparade.
Monasteries had received landfrom donors as early as 420 CE,when an official named Fan Tai builtthe Qihuan Monastery and donatedsixty mou (about .14 acre) of fruitand bamboo groves for its upkeep[Gaosengzhuan 7, T 50.368c, inCh’en 1973, p. 126]. The SuiEmperor Wen donated 100 qing(one qing equals 100 mou, orabout 14 acres) of land to theShaolin Monastery at the foot ofsacred Mt. Song [Chin-shih ts’ui-pien, 77.16b, in Ch’en 1973, p.126]. The monks themselves wereforbidden to till the land [Pai-changch’ing-kuei, Record Sayings, inCh’en 1973, p. 148].1 The BuddhistVinaya, Rules of Discipline,prohibits farming by monks, on thegrounds that farming harms livingthings in the earth, and evenwatering plants harms lifecontained in the water. This meantthat in most cases cultivation wasdone by tenant farmers or templeslaves, sometimes called qing ren,
or “pure people” because theyspared the monks the impure tasksof farming, handling gold andsilver, and trading in goods.
In the early part of theNorthern Wei dynasty, the localmonasteries at Dunhuang musthave been modest and ratherinconspicuous [Soper 1958, p.157]. Dunhuang was not yet agreat pilgrimage center, and themonks must have toiled away attheir tasks in relative isolation, afew miles south of the great east-west trade route of the Silk Road.However, by the mid-Tang dynasty,as elsewhere in China whereBuddhist institutions controlled somuch land that they were regularlyattacked in memorials to thethrone as parasites on society, theDunhuang monasteries hadbecome an important part of thelocal economy, owning land,lending money, and operating grainmills and oil presses.
Documents from the famousLibrary Cave of Dunhuang, carriedoff by Marc Aurel Stein and PaulPelliot to Europe, demonstrate therole that Buddhist institutionsplayed in the Dunhuang economy.For example, there is evidence thatmonks and nuns owned andbought property, including slaves.A contract from the Library Cave[Pelliot 1297, in Wang 1983, p. 59,tr. Ernest and Connie Chin] reads,
Year of the sheep, spring,Shang Liesang and Shang[il legible] at GeneralHeadquarters. Bhiksu (monk)Zhang Benjia from Caiduotribe… purchased a horse. It isa young horse, with a whiteforelock and color pattern likeleaves and spots on a domino.Should any dispute regardingthe horse arise, Jiazala Zan willbe the responsible party. Inorder to forestall disagree-ments we make this contract.If the horse’s body has nodisfigurement or damage, it willbe immediately handed over tothe monk Zhang Benjia. If thehorse changes hair color orpattern in the summer, one of
the witnesses will immediatelybe found to modify the contract.This transaction is acknowl-edged by both parties. Silver ofrecognized purity, five ounces,is to be paid to the seller. Incase Zan is dispatched on stateduties or is not at home, awitness can act on his behalf.The old contract will be kept byMonk Benjia.
Witnesses from Jiaza tribe
Mazhu (owner of thehorse)thumb print
Ying nuo ren (purchaser)thumb print
Yadengsu Zanofficial seal
A legal dispute about a youngslave named Li Yang Bei showedthat he was also purchased for fiveounces of silver [Pelliot 1081, inWang 1983, p. 48]. While lengthsof cloth, grain, and oil were thecurrency used for lesser purchases,apparently horses and people werebought with silver.
Another legal documentdepicts a lawsuit against a nun, inwhich intergenerational tensionsare revealed as much as a propertyrights dispute [Pelliot 1080, inWang 1983, p. 48, tr. Ernest andConnie Chin]:
The case of nun’s adopteddaughter
“In the past, in the Year of theRabbit, near two tribes,Yufanbo and Tuihun, manypeople suffered from cold andhunger, waiting to die. When itwas snowing in the city ofShazhou, a poor personcarrying a bundled up one yearold baby came to my door andsaid, ‘The baby’s mother hasdied and I have no strength toraise her. She will die in a fewmore days. You can take her asyour adopted daughter or takeher as a female slave, either isall right.’ Out of pity I adoptedher. Like a twinkling of an eye,twenty years have passed. Thegirl is now twenty-one. Now,because of [?], the Kung family
11
has instigated the girl ’schanging her mind and she hasthreatened me, saying, ‘Mymaternal uncle is Ni Baitso.’ Awoman came from the TongjiaYamen [office concerned withmatters between Han and tribalpeoples], and the girl claimedit was her mother. They talkedlike people insane. The girl alsowas not keen on working ashard as before. Because of thisI appeal to you to renderjudgment that the girl belongsto me as designated by theagreement. No one will be ableto ask for her, and no oneshould do harm. I earnestly askyou to issue an order with theofficial seal.”
Instruction: “According to theadoption agreement, she is notfree to select a master. Shemust follow the originalagreement.”
Because of the availability ofscribes and the moral authoritylent to contracts signed there,temples in the ancient world werea main site for writing contracts,exchanging money, and lendingmoney. This was true in Greektemples, the temple in Jerusalem,and in Buddhist monasteries. TheMahasanghikavinaya sutra justifiesthis kind of commercial activity,saying that if goods donated to thesangha were not consumed by themonks and nuns, the surplus couldbe sold or loaned out to earn aprofit, to be used to support thesangha and Buddhist facilities.
This was the scriptural basis ofthe wu-jin-tsang, or “InexhaustibleTreasury,” a kind of Buddhistsavings bank of donations by thefaithful which became a flourishingcommercial institution in the Tangdynasty. The revenues of theInexhaustible Treasury were usedto repair Buddhist temples andmonasteries, to relieve thesufferings of the poor, and forofferings to the Buddha [Taipingkuang-chi, 493.4047 (Peking1959), in Ch’en, 1973, p. 163].
Many documents from theLibrary Cave at Dunhuang givedetails about commercial
transactions at the monasteries.Examples are a contract for theloan of beans, with an interest rateof 50%, and a contract for a loanof silk, with a default penalty,which was double the amountborrowed [Stein 1475 and Pelliot3004 and 3472, cited in Ch’en1973, pp. 165-167]. Perhaps, asin central China, the Dunhuangmonasteries served aspawnbrokers, or repositorieswhere local patrons could keeptheir wealth. One document fromthe British Library DunhuangArchives website is an inventoryof cloth and grain, perhaps ofdonations. Part of it says [Fig. 6;IDP, BL Or. 8210/S.5691/R.1, tr.Ernest and Connie Chin]:
Zhang Yangdepresentsdiagonal weave coarse woolcloth, 2 zhang 2 chi
Zhang Ande
total presentsdiagonal weave coarse woolcloth, 2 zhang 5 chidiagonal weave coarse woolcloth, 1 zhang 2 chi
Monk Dingxing total presentsGaocheng coarse wool, 2zhang 7 chi.2
Early industrial projects werecarried out either by rich andpowerful families or by monas-teries, which had access to thelarge amounts of capital whichwere required. One of the mostprofitable and widespreadenterprises was the water-powered mill, or nien wei, whichground grain to produce flour.
Several Dunhuang documentsare accountants’ reports on incomederived from mills owned by localmonasteries.3 For a ten-yearperiod between 924 and 945 CE,Pelliot manuscripts 2032, 2040,2049 and 3234 show rent earnedby Qingtu Monastery from itsmilling installations yielded morethan 60 shih of flour annually[Gernet 1995, p.146].4 In addition,it received 18 shih of bran used asfeed for horses and 5-18 shih ofcoarse flour (tsu mien) that thegauze sieves had not allowed topass, which was used to feed thefemale workforce at the monastery[Gernet 1995, p. 355].5 Gernetestimates that half of this amountwould have provided the needs ofthe religious community at Qingtuwith its population of fifty toseventy monks at that time.
The flour was also used as amedium of exchange and sold tothe laity. The monasteries had to
pay artisans, hold banquets forofficials and lay associations, andprovide for monks travelingthrough the region. There weremany feast days on the Buddhistcalendar, which involved not atrivial amount of expense.
The mills were owned by themonasteries, but maintained byprofessional millwrights. Ban-quets, to which the millwrightswere invited, celebrated the endof repair work and opening of thesluice gates. A document fromAnguo nunnery shows the accountsof the abbess for the year 886,including expenditures of .3 shihof millet, .5 sheng of oil, and .1shih of wheat for a banquet on theoccasion of the opening of thesluice gates [Pelliot 3107, inGernet 1995, p.147].
Oil presses at Dunhuang wereanother source of income for thereligious communities. Oil was oneof the most precious commodities,
much in demand for lamps burningin the Buddha Hall, illuminationsthat frequently took place at themonasteries, and for cooking. Inaddition, oil served as currency.According to documents fromDunhuang, one Chinese liter of oilwas worth 30 chi (feet) of cloth. Afoot of cloth was worth six liters ofcereals, so the value of a liter ofoil was approximately 180 liters ofmillet or wheat [Gernet 1995, p.355]. The oil presses wereoperated by specialized house-holds, which paid the monasteriesrent spelled out in contracts [Pelliot2032, 2040, 2049, 3234, in Gernet1995, p. 355]. An example ofexpenditures denominated in oilcomes from Pelliot 3234: .0015shih for a quilted gown and a meal;.05 shih of oil for the sculptor-artisan Ling Hu and workers whocoated the walls [Gernet 1995, p.151].
Cave 317 at Dunhuang (MiddleTang, 825-830 CE)has a lovely wallmural showing thesecommodities as usedin daily life in thecourtyard of am o n a s t e r y[Whitfield 1995: Vol.1, p. 214]. At theback of the court-yard is a Buddhafigure with bodhi-sattvas on eitherside. Two monks sitin the corners, onereading from asutra. In the middleof the courtyard along silk banner fliesfrom a pole, and amonk standsbeneath the bannerreaching up to placean oil lamp on a five-wheeled candelabra,preparing for anillumination. A hugeamount of food,including noodlesand flat cakes, ispiled on a large tableto one side,attended by laymen
carrying bowls. The people in themural are probably preparing fora vegetarian feast, one of theactivities sponsored several timesa month by lay organizations.
The Buddhist lay associationswere attached to monasteries andassisted in various programs tospread the religion among thepopulace. They helped organizeand fund the numerous festivals,often centered around popularsutra lectures by eloquent monks.The Dunhuang manuscripts arereplete with papers and fragmentswhich contain information on thelay societies and their activities. Awhole category of manuscripts onthe British Museum’s DunhuangArchives website is devoted to thistype of material, which they label“club circulars.” A typical one reads[Fig. 7; IDP, BL Or. 8210/S.6066/R.1, tr. Ernest and Connie Chin]:
You gentlemen are invited onthe 24th of this month in theearly morning (6-8 AM) to meetat the door of Yaming Templeto present contributions. Iflate, the fine will be one beakerof wine. If no show, the finewill be one half container ofwine. This notice must bepassed on quickly with theaccompanying document. Iflate, you will be fined.
Ren Zhen Year, 4th month, 23rd
dayClerk KungNotice copied to 13 nameslisted.
Another such notice was sentto the membership of a layassociation on the occasion ofBuddha’s Birthday [IDP, BLOr.8210/S.5813/R.1, tr. Ernest andConnie Chin]:
CircularSecond month. Buddha’sBirthday Celebration.From officer in charge of theassociation, Kung Zi Sheng:
On the 20th day of this monthbefore evening, deliver one douand five sheng of wheat andtwo sheng of millet. This noticemust be immediately circulated
Both Song and Zhang have ini-tialed it with the word zhi“acknowledged.”
Most lay supporters, of course,were ordinary people. Onedocument in the British Librarydescribes a society of fifteenBuddhist women founded by a nunfor the promotion of friendshipamong women [Stein 527, in Ch’en1973, p. 288]. Dated 959, thedocument opens with a statementthat
our parents give birth to thisbody but friends increase itsvalue; in times of danger wesupport each other; in times ofmisfortune we rescue eachother. In dealing with friends,our words are to be trust-worthy. Older members are toact as older sisters; young onesas younger sisters, payingdeference to the older ones.The regulations are establishedwith the mountains and riversas witnesses.
On feast days, members wererequired to contribute oil, wine,and flour.
In the first moon the societydevotes a day for ensuringhappiness. On this day, eachmember is bound to give abundle of millet and to fill anoil lamp. The group thenproceeds to produce stupas bymolding and to place images ofBuddha on the sand in orderboth to render a great homageto the ruler and to accumulateblessings for parents [HouChing-lang, 1984, p. 46, inWhitfield 1995, p. 282].
The document adds that, havingjoined the group, a member wouldbe bambooed three times if shewished to leave, and forced to givea feast for the others.
Indeed, it is striking how manywomen donors appear in wallmurals in the caves. Often thereare as many women donorsdepicted as there are men.Women appear in nomad dress inthe earlier caves, and in Chinesedress in some later caves. They areboth lay and monastic, wealthyand ordinary people.
The Buddhist peoples of InnerAsia and China, like the Greeks andRomans, early Christians and manyothers, apparently also felt theneed for a female deity or deities.The most important feminine icon,the boddhisattva Avalokitesvara,or Guanyin, was transformed froma male to a female on the long tripalong the Silk Road and over thecenturies. Two Tang Caves atDunhuang, 45 and 194, show theBoddhisattva’s different genders.In Cave 45 [Fig. 8, p. 15]Avalokitesvara is male, protectinga merchant caravan “carryingvaluable treasures by a precipitousroad in an infinity of lands full ofbandits” [Cartouche quoting theLotus Sutra in the wall painting inCave 45, tr. Whitfield 1995: Vol.II, p. 316]. In Cave 194 Avalo-kitesvara is depicted as theepitome of plump female beauty,arrayed in the most elegant of HighTang feminine apparel, with onlya faint green moustache showingthe transition from the othergender. Thus the bodhisattva ofmercy not only appealed towomen, but became a woman.
This is just one of manyaspects of a changing societydepicted in the thousand-yearhistory of Buddhist grottoes alongthe Silk Road. In the material fromDunhuang we can trace thesymbiotic development of theBuddhist religion and economicand political changes that occurredalong the nearby trade routes overthe centuries. Buddhist teachingsaffected what was carried alongthe Silk Road. These trade goodsinclude precious stones and silkbanners used in worship, andminerals used in Buddhist art.Rulers used Buddhist tenets toacquire legitimacy for themselves,
and Buddhist institutions flourishedunder their patronage, becomingan integral part of society andeconomy. People from all walks oflife were involved in Buddhistinstitutions, participating in rituals,donating goods and time, andenjoying feast days. Many womentook part, and developed in rolesoutside the family as Buddhistinstitutions granted new spaces forthem in society. Acts of Buddhistdevotion, patronage, and politicscaused works of great art to becreated and sustained, finally to beleft buried in desert sand, apanoramic fusion of the cultures ofmany peoples who lived andtraveled along the Silk Road.
About the Author
Connie Chin works at the Centerfor East Asian Studies at StanfordUniversity. A graduate of OberlinCollege, she studied Chinese atChinese University of Hong Kongwhile writing for the South ChinaMorning Post. She also taughtEnglish at Tunghai University inTaiwan, where she began to studyclassical Chinese. She is intriguedby Silk Road cultures and loves toread early Chinese history. E-mail:<[email protected]>.
References
Ch’en 1973
Kenneth K.S. Ch’en. The ChineseTransformation of Buddhism.Princeton, N.J.: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1973.
Gernet 1995
Jacques Gernet. Buddhism inChinese Society: An EconomicHistory from the Fifth to the TenthCenturies. Tr. Franciscus Verellen.New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1995.
Howard 2000
Angela Howard. “Liang Patronageof Buddhist Art in the GansuCorridor.” In Wu Hung, ed.Between Han and Tang: ReligiousArt and Archaeology in aTransformative Period. Beijing:
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Cultural Relics Publishing House,2000, pp. 239-242.
International Dunhuang Project
International Dunhuang Project,British Library. http://idp.bl.uk.
Juliano and Lerner 2001
Annette L. Juliano and Judith A.Lerner, eds. Monks and Merchants:Silk Road Treasures fromNorthwest China. Gansu andNingxia, 4th-7th Century. New York:Abrams; Asia Society, 2001.
Liu 1988
Xinru Liu. Ancient India andAncient China: Trade and ReligiousExchanges A.D. 1-600. Delhi:Oxford University Press, 1988.
Ning 2004
Qiang Ning. Art, Religion, andPolitics in Medieval China.Honolulu: University of Hawai’iPress, 2004.
Soper 1958
Alexander Soper. “Northern Liangand Northern Wei in Kansu.”Artibus Asiae, 21 (1958): 131-164.
Wang 1983
Wang Yaoqian. Dunhuang TufanWenxian Xuan Chengdu: Sichuan MinzuPublishing House, 1983.
Wei Shou, trans. Hurvitz 1956
Wei Shou. 506-572. Treatise onBuddhism and Taoism. Englishtranslation by Leon Hurvitz,Appendix II to an Englishtranslation of the original Chinesetext of Wei Shu CXIV and theJapanese annotation of TsukamotoZenryu (repr. from Yun-Kang, TheBuddhist Cave Temples of the FiftyCentury A.D. in North China, vol.xvi, supplement). Kyoto, 1956.
Whitfield 1995
Roderick Whitfield and SeigoOtsuka. Caves of the SingingSands: Dunhuang: Buddhist Artfrom the Silk Road. 2 vols.London: Textile and ArtPublications, 1995.
Yang, trans. Jenner 1981
W.F.J. Jenner, trans. Memories ofLoyang: Yang Hsuan-chih and theLost Capital (493-534). Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1981.
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Yang, trans. Wang 1984
Yang Hsuan-chih. 547. Translatedby Wang, Yi-t’ung. A Record ofBuddhist Monasteries in Lo-Yang.Princeton, N.J.: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1984.
Notes1. An exception to this was theChan school, whose leader, HuaiHai, had a slogan, “One day nowork, one day no food.”
2. One chi is about 30 cm. Onezhang is 10 chi, or 3 meters.
3. Such reports were presented atthe end of each year to theassembly of monks at the relevantmonastery. The famous Japanesepilgrim monk Ennin described sucha session at the ZushengMonastery in Chang-an in 840.
4. A shih (or dan) is about a bushel,the amount a person could carryon his back.
5. Pell iot 2049 contains theamount of tsu mien in the year 930which was expended on womenwho were employed to sewcanopies and make a bonnet forthe head of a bodhisattva in QingtuMonastery.
Fig. 8. Avalokitesvara with scenes of the bodhisattva’s miraculous intervention, illustrating the LotusSutra. Dunhuang Mogao Cave 45, photographed in 1908 by Charles Nouette. Source: Mission Pellioten Asie Centrale. Les Grottes de Touen-Houang (Paris: Geuthner, 1914; facsimile ed. 1997).
Solidi in China and MonetaryCulture along the Silk RoadLin YingZhongshan University,Guangzhou, China
In the summer of 1953, a groupof archaeologists from the ShanxiInstitute of Historical Relics andArchaeology arrived at Dizangwan,a small village near Xianyang city,where they excavated the tomb ofDugu Luo (534-599), a high officialin the Sui period (581-618). Theyellow soil yielded a small gold coin[Fig. 1], quite different in
appearance from ancient Chinesecoins [Fig. 2]. When it was sent toBeijing the following year to displayin a national exhibition of newlydiscovered artifacts, the notedarchaeologist and historian Xia Naiidentified it as a solidus ofByzantine emperor Justin II (565-578). Although some evidence ofByzantine coins and theirimitations had been unearthed inXinjiang in the late nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries [Thierryand Morrisson 1994, pp. 110-111],the discovery in 1953 was the firstsuch in central China. Since thediscovery of that solidus of JustinII nearly fifty Byzantine gold coinsand their imitations have beenrecovered or collected in China.They are distributed from Liaoning,across Inner Mongolia, Shanxi,Gansu, Henan and Hebeiprovinces, to Xinjiang, roughlyforming a crescent in north China[Fig. 3]. Except for one gold coin
from a seventh-century hoard, theothers are all from tombs. Thetomb occupants who once ownedthese gold coins were of varioussocial classes, ranging from aprincess of the Rouran (Juan-Juan)qaghanate and leader of theCentral Asian immigrant com-munity to a small landlord orwealthy citizen. Their chronology
concentrates in the period ofNorthern Dynasties, the Sui andearly Tang, i.e. from the late sixthcentury to the first half of theeighth century. These Byzantinegold coins have already raised aseries of questions deservingfurther exploration. Under what
circumstances were they sent fromConstantinople? Who carried themto the Far East and for whatpurpose? How did the con-temporary Chinese treat theseexotics?
From 1959 to 1977 Xia Naipublished on these finds threearticles in which he examined thechronology and epigraphy of thesecoins and discussed theirsignificance for studying Byzantinerelations with China in the earlymiddle ages [Xia Nai 1959; 1961;1977]. In 1988, the Japanesescholar Otani Nakao examined forCentral Asia and China the burialcustom of the obolus, that is, thecoin in the mouth of the deceased[Otani Nakao 1990]. Whereas Xia
Nai had concluded that the burialcustom of the obolus, whichprevailed from the Han to the Tangperiods in Turfan, Xinjiang, hadoriginated in inner China, Otaniargued that it came from CentralAsia. The discussion of these coinscontinued in the 1990s when
Fig. 1. Solidus of Justin II unearthed at Dizhangwan.Fig. 2. Kaiyuan tongbao, Chinese coppercoin of the Tang period.
François Thierry and CecileMorrisson published a detailedcatalogue of 27 specimens of solidiand their imitations so farunearthed in China [Thierry andMorrisson 1994]. In contrast to thethousands of Sasanian silver coinsexcavated in China, the finds ofByzantine gold coins are limited.Given this fact, they concluded thatthe presence of the solidus in Chinamight not indicate a direct andfrequent connection between theByzantine Empire and China, butinstead an uncertain relationship.Since their article of 1994,additional Byzantine coins andstudies of them have beenpublished in Chinese, among themthe monograph by the presentauthor [Lin Ying 2004].
In general, before the 1980s,most scholars considered thesefinds as evidence for the frequentconnection between Byzantiumand China, which could further beassociated with the seven visits ofFulin (Rum) emissaries recorded inTang literature. After the 1980s,more and more researchers tendedto connect these gold coins notwith official embassies but ratherwith the prosperous internationaltrade along Silk Road. In theiropinion, it was possibly Sogdians,rather than Byzantines, whocarried these coins to China inexchange for silk. Clearly the findsin China are not isolated and canbe connected with the events along
the Silk Road in early medievaltimes. The route by which theytraveled to China began in theByzantine Empire. However, it isonly by examining the various
intermediate l inks betweenConstantinople and Chang’an thatone can sort out the channels forthe eastward flow of solidi and thusunderstand the role of solidi andtheir imitations in China.
According to the scholarship sofar published, the Byzantine goldcoins and their imitations in Chinafall roughly into three categories:
(1) official solidi struck inConstantinople, bearing clearimages and legends andweighing 4.5 grams;(2) imitations of solidiresembling the real ones inweight and image, whoseprototypes thus can be estab-lished;(3) goldb r a c t e a t e s ,struck on a verythin flan( u n s t a m p e dmetal disk) orwith only onedie, weighingless than 2grams, andunlikely to havehad a monetaryfunction.
The first group of coins, i.e.official solidi, were all buried ingraves from 575 CE (the seventhyear of the Wuping period,Northern Qi Dynasty) to 621 CE(the fourth year of the Wudeperiod, Tang Dynasty). Each grave
contains more thanone solidus, thegreatest number sofar recovered beingthe five specimensfound in the tomb ofTian Hong [Fig. 4;see also Juliano andLerner 2001, pp.282-285]. Theowners of these coinswere either theemperor’s trustedofficials or relatives
of the royal family. Furthermore,the fact that most of the finds arein tombs located in thecontemporary political centerindicates that Byzantine gold coins
had entered the heartland of Chinafrom the mid-sixth century to theearly seventh century. It is possiblethat the qaghans of the Rouran andTurks obtained these solidi asdiplomatic gifts from Romancaesars and then sent them toChinese emperors to show thehegemony of steppe people inEurasia.
The imitations of solidi in thesecond group embrace a variety ofspecimens. The initial discoveriesof such were by Sven Hedin inKhotan in 1896 [Montell 1938, pp.94-95] and by Aurel Stein in theAstana Cemetary in the Turfanregion in 1915, where the two
examples were used as oboli in themouths of the deceased [Stein1916, p. 205; Thierry andMorrission 1994, p. 111; Wang2002, pp. 72, 339; Wang 2004, p.29, fig. 7]. The imitations rangefrom the barbarized roughimitations that follow the officialsolidi in weight and size tocounterfeits that look quite “real”but can be easily recognized bytheir reduced weight and diameter[Fig. 5]. These finds have raisedmost interesting questions aboutthe craftsmanship and usage. Inorder to answer these questions,they need to be compared withsimilar finds along the entire SilkRoad, from Central Asia, thewestern steppe, and the easternMediterranean.
The bracteates of the thirdgroup date from the mid-sixthcentury to the mid-eighth century(from late Northern Qi to the mid-
Fig. 5. Imitation of a solidus of Leo I,found in Huangzhou.
17
Tang). Hedin found two in Khotanand Stein one at Astana [BritishMuseum n.d.], which is also thelocation of several other such finds.Indeed, most of the bracteateshave been discovered in Turfantombs in Xinjiang and in thegraveyard of the Shi family inGuyuan, Ningxia province [Fig. 6;see also Juliano and Lerner, 2001,pp. 287-288]. They are similar tothe bracteates from Sogdiana inweight, size and type [Naymark,2001, pp. 99-120; Lin Ying,2003b]. Moreover, most of thetomb occupants in China properseem to have had a closerelationship with Sogdians. Somecoins are directly from the tombsof Sogdian descendants, whileothers were unearthed in the areaswhere there were flourishingSogdian communities in the Tangperiod. Possibly the Sogdians intheir mercantile context treatedcoins in a way different from theChinese. As a result, Sogdiandescendants in China, thoughhaving lived for generations in anagricultural society, still demandedwestern gold coins to express theirown concept of a prosperous life.The seventh century witnessed thezenith of Sogdian culture in itshomeland and was a time ofincreasing knowledge andadmiration of Byzantium inSogdiana. This could have causedthe Sogdians to imitate the solidusfor decorative purposes and funeralofferings. It is interesting to notethat Sogdians may have basedtheir imaginative depictions of aRoman Caesar on the repre-sentation of the Byzantine emperoron the solidus. This Sogdian
version of aByzantine ruler’sportrait also leftits traces inChinese sources ofthe Tang period.
If the officialsolidi were carriedinto China asd i p l o m a t i cpresents and theb r a c t e a t e simitating solidi
were used for burial offerings bySogdians, how then did people inthe Far East respond to these small“gold pieces” over a thousandyears ago? What idea did theyconvey to the Chinese people atthat time?
It is notable that most of thegold coins are pierced once ortwice, indicating that they wereonce used as pendants of anecklace or sewn onto clothing[Fig.4 above]. The locations of thesmall holes indicate that owners ofthese coins wanted to show theviewer the obverse, i.e. the frontalside depicting the Byzantineemperor .
The portrait of the ruler onwestern coins had already beennoticed by Chinese as early as theFormer Han period. Shiji, the firststandard history written ca. 100BCE by Sima Qian, records:
An-xi [the Parthian Empire] isthousands of li to the west ofDa-rou-zhi [the Great Yuezhi—Bactria]…Silver coins are usedin this country andbear the portraitof the ruling king.After the death ofking, the coins arere-minted in orderto depict theportrait of the newking [Fig. 7][author ’s tr.,modified with ref.to Watson 1993,Vol. II, p. 235].
The images onthe coins from Xiyu
(the Western Region, a termgenerally denoting countries westof Ancient China) continued toarouse interest in China insucceeding periods. For example,the Jiu Tangshu, the standardhistory of Tang written in the tenthcentury, describes coin fromNepala (today, Nepal):
The state of Nepala is in thewest of Tibet…They use coppercoins. The frontal image of thecoin is a human figure, whilethe image on the back sidedepicts a horse or cattle. Thecoin is not pierced [on thecentral field like Chinese coin].
Down to the eleventh century,the account of western coins canalso be seen in the official history:
The coin of Fulin [possiblyreferring to the ByzantineEmpire or the principalityestablished by the Seljuk Turks]is made of gold and silver. Thecoin is not pierced [on thecentral field]. On the frontalside is carved the image of MileBuddha [possibly a misun-derstanding for a picture ofJesus]. On the back side iscarved the name of the king.The common people are strictlyprohibited by law to producecoins.
Thus many Chinese notesabout the image of western coinsremind us of the story which waswidely known along the Silk Roadconcerning four heavenly sons,understood to be the emperorswho ruled the world together. TheEast was ruled by the emperor of
China, the country of humanbeings; the South was ruled byemperor of India, the country ofelephants; the North was ruled byemperor of steppe empires, thecountry of horses; finally, the Westwas ruled by Roman or Persianemperors, whose dominions werethe country of treasures. Theearliest Chinese version is foundin Kang Tai’s Waiguo zhuan(accounts of foreign countries,written in the third century CE).Down to the seventh century, thestory was repeated in the travelnotes of Buddhist monks, such asXuanzang’s Datang xiyu ji (anaccount of the Western Region ofgreat Tang, written in 646 CE) andDaoxuan’s Shijia fangzhi (aBuddhist gazetteer, written in 658CE). According to Tang Chinesesources, the images of the fourheavenly sons were also depictedon the palace mural of Kushania,a kingdom in Sogdiana. Later, theArab geographers of the ninth andtenth centuries re-told the story ina way that reflected the politicaland cultural realities of their times.
It is interesting to note that theimages of four heavenly sons canalso be connected with the coinsrecovered along the Silk Road.During the first century CE whenthe Kushans extended their controlto the Ganges River and cameunder the influence of Indianculture, Kushan gold coinsrepresented the king sitting on anelephant [see for exampleFitzwilliam Museum n.d.]. Both inKushan times and later, when theTurks established their hegemonyover the Eurasian steppe andCentral Asia in the seventhcentury, the image of a horseappeared on Central Asian coins,in the latter examples beingfeatured on the obverse [Coins ofCentral Asia n.d., “South Sogdiana”SS5-SS7]. Therefore, it seemslikely that Byzantine coins in earlymedieval China, with their imageof the Roman caesar, conveyed toChinese people the image of theemperor of the treasure countryin the West.
Clearly, coins along Silk Roadwere not only currency for long-distance trade but also instrumentsfor political propaganda when theybore the image of a ruler. Theythus became an expression ofdifferent cultures. From Con-stantinople to Chang’an, people ofdifferent ethnic groups once readthese coins in their own manner,adding new content to them, andthen transferred the coins and newexplanations to the next locationalong the Silk Road. In this sense,solidi, the gold coins fromByzantium, connect a cluster ofstories set in the Eurasian steppeand oasis caravan cities in CentralAsia. A thousand years later, it isthrough these coins that we havean opportunity to relive the pastprosperity along Silk Road andunderstand patterns of culturalexchange.
About the Author
Lin Ying is Associate Professor inthe Department of History,Zhongshan (Sun Yat-sen) Uni-versity, at Guangzhou, China. Herdissertation, “Fulin, the Ruler ofTreasure Country: Byzantium andChina in the Tang Period (618-907),” examines how Byzantineculture flowed into the Tang Empirethrough nomadic people andCentral Asian merchants along theSilk Road. She is interested in theeastward spread of Roman andByzantine cultures through landand maritime routes in the pre-Islamic period. She may becontacted at <[email protected]>.
Reference
Alram 2001
Michael Alram. “Coins and the SilkRoad.” In Juliano and Lerner 2001,pp. 271-291. Includes descriptivecatalogue of coins.
British Museum n.d.
“Gold imitation of a Byzantine coinfound in China” [=CM BM Stein,IA.XII.c.1]. Locate by entering“Byzantine Coins” into the
Cai Hongsheng. Tangdai jiuxinghuyu tujue wenhua [Sogdians andTurks in the Tang period]. Beijing,1998.
Coins of Central Asia n.d.
“Coins of Central Asia” <http://www.sogdcoins.narod.ru/english/index1.html>
Fitzwilliam Museum n.d.
“Between East and West:Influence and Change in Coinage.”Image of gold stater of Kushanruler Huvishka riding an elephant< h t t p : / / w w w - c m .fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/coins/east-west/images/Alex_23_obv.gif>.
Jiang Boqin 1996
Jiang Boqin. Dunhuang Tulufanwenshu yu Sichouzhilu [The SilkRoad and Documents fromDunhuang and Turfan]. Beijing,1994.
Juliano and Lerner 2001
Annette L. Juliano and Judith A.Lerner, eds. Monks and Merchants:Silk Road Treasures fromNorthwest China. Gansu andNingxia, 4th-7th Century. New York:Abrams; Asia Society, 2001.
Lin Ying 2003a
Lin Ying. “Western Turks andByzantine gold coins found inChina.” Transoxiana, 6 (Junio2003), online at <http://www.transoxiana.com.ar/0106/lin-ying_turks_solidus.html>.
Lin Ying 2003b
Lin Ying, “Sogdians and theImitation of Byzantine Coins fromthe Heartland of China,” Eran udAneran: Studies presented to BorisIlich Marshak on the Occasion ofHis 70th Birthday. MatteoCompareti, Paola Raffetta,Gianroberto Scarcia, eds. Online at<http://www.transoxiana.org/Eran/Articles/lin_ying.html>.
19
Lin Ying 2004
Lin Ying. Jinqian zhi lü: CongJunshitandingbao dao Chang’an[Journey of solidi: fromConstantinople to Chang’an].Beijing, 2004.
Luo Feng 2004
Luo Feng. “Zhongguo jingnei faxiande Dongluoma jinbi [Byzantinegold coins found in China].” InHanhan zhijian: sichouzhilu yuxibei lishi kaog [Between Hu andHan: Silk Road and the History andArchaeology in Northwest China].Beijing, 2004, pp. 113-155.
Montell 1938
Gösta Montell. “Sven Hedin’sArchaeological Collections fromKhotan, II.” Bulletin of the Museumof Far Eastern Antiquities(Ostasiatiska Samlingarna)Stockholm. No. 10 (1938): 83-113and 10 plates.
Naymark 2001
Aleksandr Naymark. “Sogdiana, ItsChristians and Byzantium: A Studyof Artistic and Cultural Connectionsin Late Antiquity and Early MiddleAges.” Unpublished Ph.D. dis-sertation, Indiana University,2001.
Otani Nakao 1990
Otani Nakao. “Guangyu sizhekouzhong hanbi de xisu [The burialcustom of placing coin in the mouthof the deceased].” Renwen zazhi,73 (1991): 80-86; 81(1993): 81-87 (translation from articlepublished in Japanese in ToyamaDaigaku jinbu gakubu kiyô 13.1).
Pelliot 1923
Paul Pelliot. “La théorie des quatrefils du Ciel.” Toung Pao, 22 (1923):97-125.
Stein 1916
Aurel Stein. “A Third Journey ofExploration in Central Asia, 1913-1916.” The Geographical Journal,48/3 (1916): 193-229.
Thierry and Morrisson 1994
François Thierry and CecileMorrisson. “Sur les monnaies
Byzantines trouvées en Chine.”Revue numismatique, 36 (1994):109-145 and Pl. XVI. Note:Thierry and Morrisson mis-date theHedin finds at Khotan to 1905; cf.Montell 1938: 94.
Wang 2002
Helen Kay Wang. “Money on theSilk Road: the evidence fromEastern Central Asia to c. AD 800.”Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,University College, University ofLondon, 2002. [also, publishedunder the same title, London:British Museum Press, 2004].
Wang 2004
Helen Wang. “How Much for aCamel? A New Understanding ofMoney on the Silk Road before AD800.” In Susan Whitfield, ed. TheSilk Road: Trade, Travel, War andFaith. Chicago: Serindia, 2004, pp.24-33.
Watson 1993
Burton Watson, tr. Records of theGrand Historian, by Sima Qian. 2vols., rev. ed. New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1993.
Xia Nai 1959
Xia Nai. “Xianyang DizhangwanSuimu chutu de Dongluoma jinbi[The Byzantine Solidus Found inthe Sui Tomb at Dizhangwan,Xianyang].” Kaogu xuebao, 25(1959): 67-73.
Xia Nai 1961
Xia Nai. “Xi’an tumencun chutu deBaizhanting jinbi” [The ByzantineSolidus Found in Tumen Village,Xi’an].” Kaogu, 56 (1961): 446-447.
Xia Nai 1977
Xia Nai. “Zanhuang Li Xizong muchutu de Baizhanting jinbi.” [TheByzantine Gold Coins Found in theTomb of Li Xizong].” Kaogu, 153(1977): 403-406.
Zhang Zhongshan 1999
Zhang Zhongshan et al. eds.Zhongguo sichouzhilu huobi [Coinsand the Silk Road in China].Lanzhou, 1999.
20
The Cathedral of Hagia Sophia, Constantinople, built under Justinian I.
Silk Road or Paper Road?Jonathan M. BloomBoston College
Well over a century ago, theAustrian geologist and explorerFerdinand von Richthofen (1833-1905) coined the term Seiden-strasse, “Silk Road (or Route)” torefer to the network of land routesthat linked China and Europe fromthe 3rd century BCE to the 15thcentury CE. Silk, which was tradedwith the West from the later partof the Zhou period (ca. 1050-256BCE) was only one of the manycommodities traded along theseroutes, for jade had been broughtto China from Central Asia as earlyas the Shang period (ca. 1600 toca. 1050 BCE), and Mediterraneanglassware reached China duringthe Qin period (221-206 BCE)[Sørensen and Marshak 1996].Traders brought exquisite Chineseceramics to Iraq in the ninthcentury, when it was ruled by theAbbasid dynasty (749-1258), andIslamic underglaze-painted waresas well as Iranian cobalt weretaken to China, where theyinspired the development of thatquintessentially Chinese ceramictechnique of blue-and-whiteporcelain [Carswell 1985]. Perhapsthe most important product carriedalong this trade network, however,was paper, a now-ubiquitousmaterial which has had a fargreater impact on the course ofhuman civilization than silk, jadeor glass ever had.
Paper, which is a mat ofcellulose fibers that have beenbeaten in water and collected ona screen and dried, was inventedin southeastern China in thecenturies before Christ [Tsien1985; Bloom 2001]. Originallyused as a wrapping material, paperbegan to be used as a writingmaterial around the time of Christ,when it was discovered that thisrelatively inexpensive, strong andflexible material provided an idealreplacement for the narrow
bamboo strips ortablets that hadbeen used for writing[Figs. 1, 2] and thesilk textiles that hadbeen used for largerimages, such as maps anddrawings. Although the Chineseinitially made paper from refusefibers, they soon found that they
could also make it from the innerbark of several woody shrubs, suchas bamboo, paper-mulberry, andrattan that grew well in moist andhumid southeastern China, andfrom then on waste fibers were notnormally used in China forpapermaking.
Buddhist monks and mis-sionaries, who began to use thismedium for copying sutras andother Buddhist writings, carriedpaper and papermaking from theland of its origin to Korea, Japanand Central Asia, where theystopped on the way to India, theland of Buddhism’s birth. The aridCentral Asian climate was quitedifferent from that of subtropicalsoutheastern China, andpapermakers were forced to finddifferent materials with which tomake their product. It seems likelythat Central Asian papermakers
were the first to discover (orrediscover) that waste fromtextiles that were themselvesmade from plant fibers, including
linen and cotton but excluding wooland silk (which were animal fibersimpossible to use in papermaking),could also make good paper[Hoernle 1903]. Indeed, it wasoften easier to make paper frompreviously processed fibersbecause the fibers required lessbeating. It is likely that at arelatively early date Buddisttravelers also brought paper andknowledge of papermaking toIndia, but unlike elsewhere,papermaking did not take hold inIndia for another millennium[Soteriou 1999].
Paper was unknown in WesternAsia and the Mediterranean worldbefore the coming of Islam, whenthe media traditionally used forwriting there were papyrus andparchment. Papyrus, which hadbeen used in Egypt from at least3000 BCE, is made from a plant
that flourishes along the banks ofthe Nile. The stalks of the plantwere cut into lengths, the lengthswere cut into strips, and the stripslaid side-by-side in twoperpendicular layers, held togetherby the gummy sap exuded by theplant [Fig. 3]. Individual sheetswere joined together in rolls, whichthe Egyptians used right to left andthe Greeks, who imported thematerial, used from left to right.The Greeks called papyrus khartes,a word that has been transformedto paper-related terms in manymodern languages, including carta(Italian for paper) and our owncard and chart. The Romans calledthe plant by the Latin termpapyrus, which has also beentransformed into many otherpaper-related terms, such as paper(English), papier (French andGerman), and papel (Spanish).The Greek word for a papyrus roll,biblios, has given rise to wordsfrom Bible to bibliography, whilethe Latin term for this same thing,
volumen, has evolved into wordssuch as volume and volute (onaccount of its shape). Pagina,the Latin term for a column oftext on a papyrus roll, hasevolved into our word “page,”and liber, originally the Latinword for bark, became thegeneric Latin word for book.Although the most common formof the book was the papyrus roll,sometime in the centuries after
Christ a new form of book, withseparate folded leaves sewntogether on one side, emerged.This was known as a codex, fromthe Latin term for a block of wood.
Parchment, which takes itname from the city of Pergamonin western Anatolia, was the otherwriting support used widely inAntiquity [Fig. 4]. Made from theskin of an animal which had beensoaked in lime, scraped of its fleshand hair, stretched on a frame anddried, parchment had long beenused by the ancient Hebrews forcopying their scriptures, the Torah.The sheets, made from ritually-slaughtered animals, were sewntogether to form long rolls on whichthe text was written. Since ananimal had to be killed to make asheet of parchment, it was alwaysmuch more expensive thanpapyrus, but it could be madeanywhere (papyrus could only beproduced in Egypt). Furthermore,parchment was more durable than
papyrus in a wider variety ofenvironments; it was especiallystrong when used in the codexformat, for the repeated foldingand exposed edges it demandedweakened papyrus sheets.
The origins of the codex aremuch debated, and it remainsunclear whether the triumph of thecodex format in the Mediterraneanworld was directly related to thespread of Christianity [Roberts andSkeat 1983]. For about athousand years writing-tablets ofwood with a thin overlay of waxhad been used for note-taking,composition, and temporarywritings, and these tablets wereoften made in hinged pairs or sets,essentially precursors to theparchment codex. Parchmentcodices allowed both sides of thewriting surface to be used(impossible on a scroll) and madeit much easier to refer to aparticular passage in the text,because the reader did not haveto “scroll through” the entire workto find what he or she was lookingfor. By the time of the revelationof Islam, the codex format wasfirmly established in western Asiaand the Mediterranean world asthe preferred format for books,particularly the Christian Bible,with the notable exception of theHebrew scriptures, whichcontinued to be copied onparchment rolls, and diplomatic
documents, which continued to becopied on vertical-format papyrusscrolls.
The first copies of the entiretext of the Quran, which Muslimsbelieve is God’s revelation toMuhammad, were transcribed onparchment codices, althoughpapyrus, which was still producedin Egypt (conquered by Muslimarmies in 641), continued to beused for bills, letters and records[Khan 1993]. Muslims visuallydifferentiated copies of theirscriptures from the Christian Bibleby generally using a horizontal(“landscape”) format [Fig. 5].When Muslim armies conqueredCentral Asia in the late seventh andearly eighth centuries, theyencountered paper for the firsttime. It is often said that Muslimarmies captured Chinesepapermakers following the battleof Talas in 751, but this anecdoteis without factual basis and paperhad been known—and made—inCentral Asia for centuries. Forexample, archaeologists dis-covered a mailbag containingletters written on paper andaddressed to a merchant inSamarqand in the fourth century[Fig. 6] [Sims-Williams 1987].Devastich, lord of Panjikent inSogdia (now Tajikistan) until hiscapture by the Arabs in 722, leftan archive of 76 writings inSogdian, Arabic and Chinese on
leather, wood and paper, whichSoviet scholars discovered at theremote site of Kala-i Mug [Zeymal’1996]. A few decades later in 762the new Abbasid dynastytransferred the capital of theIslamic empire from Damascus inSyria to Baghdad in Iraq; this neweastern focus, combined with thegovernment bureaucracy’s soaringdemand for records, led to theintroduction and quick diffusion ofpaper in the Islamic lands.
Papermaking was begun inBaghdad itself by the late 8thcentury. The city boasted a Suqal-warraqin (Stationers’ Market), astreet whose two sides were linedwith more than one hundred shopsfor paper- and booksellers. FromIraq, papermaking was carried toSyria, then Egypt, across NorthAfrica to Morocco and eventuallyto Spain, where its use there is firstrecorded by a tenth-centurytraveler. The first sheets of “Arab”paper appear in Spanish Christianmanuscripts of the late tenthcentury, where the sheets weresubstituted for the typical, butmore expensive, parchment.Eventually other Europeanslearned of papermaking from theMuslims of Spain, particularly asChristians began to occupy largerportions of the Iberian peninsulaand needed materials on which torecord deeds and titles. Similarlyin Sicily and Italy, merchants and
notaries began to use paper fromthe late eleventh and twelfthcenturies, although papermakingwas not introduced, perhaps fromSpain or from somewhere in theArab world, until the thirteenth.Once the Italians learned the artof papermaking, they quicklysuperseded their masters,producing large quantities of finepaper more cheaply than anyoneelse, and they began exporting itto North African and West Asianmarkets.
Few, if any, early Islamicwritings on paper survive in theiroriginal format, although many ofthe texts written on them wererecopied and preserved over thecenturies. Excavations in Egyptshow that paper increasinglyreplaced papyrus over the courseof the ninth and tenth centuries;by the middle of the tenth centurypapyrus was hardly used at all.Meanwhile, paper spurred a burst
of extraordinary literary creativitythroughout the Muslim lands. Theincreased numbers of texts knownfrom the late eighth and ninthcenturies in Iraq testifies to avibrant literary culture in the majorcities of the Abbasid realm. As isto be expected, most of thepreserved writings from this periodconcern the religious sciences andauxiliary disciplines such as thehistory of the Prophet and earlyIslam, the grammar and vocab-ulary of the Arabic language, andpre-Islamic Arabic poetry, whichhelped scholars understand thecontext for the revelation of theQuran. But new “secular” subjectsincreasingly find place in Arabicliterature of the ninth century,including works on geography,astronomy, medicine, mathe-matics, and literature. Indeed, theearliest known manuscript versionof the popular tales we now knowas the Arabian Nights was copiedin ninth-century Egypt or Syria, atime when other, new types ofreally popular literature were alsoinexpensively copied on paper[Abbott 1938; Rice 1959].
Such texts indicate howwidespread paper became in thisperiod. It was used not only byMuslims but also by Christians andJews. For example, the oldestmanuscript on “Arab” paper isbelieved to be a copy of theDoctrina Patrum, produced atDamascus ca. 800 [Perria 1983-1984]. Hundreds of thousands ofdocuments dating from the ninthto the thirteenth century that werediscovered in the nineteenthcentury in the geniza or storeroomof the Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairodocument the growing use ofpaper among the merchantcommunities of the Mediterraneanlands for letters, contracts,inventories, and deeds [Goitein1967-1994].
The Cordoban library of theneo-Umayyad caliph al-Hakam IIwas reputed to contain some400,000 volumes, many of whichmust have been copied on paper.Similar libraries are reported inmedieval Cairo and Shiraz [Eche
1967]. The extraordinary numbersof volumes in them, even ifexaggerated by a factor of ten ormore, testify to the flowering ofwritten culture in the Islamic landsduring the medieval period thatwas made possible by the spreadof paper and papermaking. InChristian Europe, by contrast,manuscript books were rare andcostly. The library of a monasteryin eleventh-century Constan-tinople, for example, had onlytwelve books, of which eight werecopied on paper, while the libraryof the Sorbonne in 1338, said tobe the finest l ibrary inChristendom, had only 338 booksfor consultation chained to readingdesks and another 1728 booksavailable for loan, although 300 ofthem were listed as lost [Bloom2001, p. 117].
The oldest known completeArabic book copied on paper,dating from 848, was recentlydiscovered in a l ibrary inAlexandria, Egypt; the second-oldest fragment is a well-knownmanuscript dating from 866 inLeiden University Library aboutunusual terms in the traditions ofthe Prophet. These twomanuscripts are valued for theirprecise dates, but thousands ofsimilar manuscripts must havebeen produced. NeverthelessMuslims must have initially viewed
paper with some suspicion,because manuscripts of the Qurancontinued to be copied onparchment well into the tenthcentury. The oldest dated copy ofthe Quran transcribed on paperwas produced, presumably in Iran,in 971-72 by the calligrapher Aliibn Shadhan al-Razi, whose nameindicates that he came from Rayy,a city located near modern Tehran.These first Quran manuscripts onpaper were copied in scripts unlikethe stately “kufic” scriptstraditionally used for copying theQuran on parchment and more likethe cursive scripts used bycontemporary scribes for copyingliterary works on paper. In time itbecame common to copy theQuran on paper, except in Moroccoand Spain, where parchmentcontinued to be used for severalmore centuries. Over the followingcenturies, calligraphers continuedto develop new and more fluidscripts to copy the Quran and othertexts on paper, therebytransforming the art of writing inthe Islamic lands [Fig. 7] [Blair2006].
In the thirteenth century theMongol conquests in Central andWestern Asia once againencouraged trade and com-munication along the routes linkingChina to the West, and during theensuing Pax Mongolica men,
materials, and ideas moved backand forth with relative freedom. Atthis time papermakers in theIslamic lands, particularly in Iranand Iraq developed techniques formaking larger and finer sheets ofpaper which were used not onlyas supports for magnificentmanuscripts but also as fordrawings that served as inter-mediaries between designers andcraftsmen. It is tempting indeedto think that the increased east-west communication, documentedin a wide range of media andtechniques, led to these technicaland conceptual developments inthe Islamic lands, but the questionis not yet settled [Bloom, in press].Certain techniques, such as the useof pricked drawings and of griddedplans and drawings, can be shown
to have traveled across Eurasiafrom east to west, but the evidenceis moot for perhaps the mostimportant technique in this regard:printing, particularly withmoveable type. This techniqueemerged in fifteenth-centuryEurope seemingly from nowhere,although printing had been usedin China since the 8th century [Fig.8], and printing with moveabletype had been used there since theeleventh. As the use of printing inthe Islamic lands before thesixteenth century was restricted toa very few situations, none of theminvolving the production of books,it is virtually impossible to hypo-thesize any connection—astempting as it might be—betweenthe development of printing inChina and in Europe.
W h e nE u r o p e a n seventually beganto investigate thehistory of paper,they were initiallyconfused becauseall the wordsdealing withpaper came fromGreek and Latinwords for papy-rus, and theythought thatpaper mustsomehow havebeen derivedfrom papyrus.The first Euro-peans to en-counter Chineseand Japanesepapers in thesixteenth centuryimagined thatEast Asians hadsomehow learnedto make paperfrom the ancientE g y p t i a n s .Eventually thematter wascleared up, butthe pivotal role ofthe Islamic landsin the trans-mission of paper-making from Asia
to Europe was forgotten. VonRichthofen was surely correct thatthe trade routes linking China toWest Asia and the Mediterraneanworld played a crucial role inhuman history, but he was wrongto think that silk was the mostimportant good traded along thoseroutes. This brief investigation intothe history of one of the mostimportant, but least appreciated,materials carried across Eurasiasuggests that it might be time tomodify his original idea to reflectthe relative importance of thegoods and ideas exchanged alonethese routes. In that case, thenetwork would be more accuratelyknown as the Paper Route.
About the Author
Jonathan Bloom shares theNorma Jean CalderwoodProfessorship of Islamic and AsianArt at Boston College with his wifeSheila Blair. His many publicationsinclude Paper before Print (2001),Early Islamic Art and Architecture(2002) and the forthcoming Artsof the City Victorious: The Art andArchitecture of the Fatimids.Among the books he has co-authored with Professor Blair areIslam: A Thousand Years of Faithand Power (2000) and The Art andArchitecture of Islam: 1250-1800,a volume in the Pelican History ofArt which appeared to rave reviewsin 1994. He may be reached at<[email protected]>.
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Tsien Tsuen-hsuin. Paper andPrinting. Science and Civilisation inChina. Ed. Joseph Needham. Vol.5, pt. 1. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1985.
Zeymal’ 1996
T. I. Zeymal’. “Kala-i Mug.” TheDictionary of Art. Ed. Jane Turner.Vol. 17. New York: Grove, 1996,p. 735.
Northwestern and Central Iran
East Meets Westunder the MongolsSheila S. BlairBoston College
Most people think of the Mongolsonly as destroyers, ruthlessmarauders who slaughtered theinhabitants of cities resisting theirmilitary advances, barbaricconquerors who magnified thescale of violence with deadlymangonels and ratcheted up thevolume of terror banging on drumsas part of their psychologicalwarfare. The Mongols, followers ofthe warlord Chingis [Genghis] whoamassed the largest contiguousland empire ever known, wereundisputedly deadly and terrifying.But the Mongol conquests in thefirst part of the thirteenth centuryalso opened up a commercialnexus across Eurasia, and thecentury 1250-1350 when theMongols controlled most of Eurasiais often known as the PaxMongolica. In the words of thehistorian Janet Abu-Lughod, it wasthe age “before Europeanhegemony,” a period when tradeand communication encouragedthe sharing of ideas and visualculture across much of the knownworld.
Following the death of ChingisKhan in 1227, his empire wasdivided among his family accordingto the principle of ultimogeniture,succession through the last-bornchild. Four major empires werecreated. The Great Khans, Möngke(r. 1251-60) and Qubilai (r. 1260-94), descendants of Chingis’syoungest son Tolui, ruled Mongoliaand northern China as the Yuandynasty from their capitals, first atKarakorum on the upper OrkhonRiver in Mongolia and later atKhanbalik, now Beijing. They weresupported by three collateralbranches. The Golden Horde,descended from Chingis’s eldestson Jochi, ruled southern Russiafrom two capitals on the Akhtuba,
the eastern tributary of the lowerVolga, first at Old Saray, on theleft bank about seventy-five milesnorth of Astrakhan and then fromthe 1340s from New Saray (Sarayal-Jadid, modern Tsarev), a furtherseventy-five miles upstream. TheChaghatayids, descended fromChingis’s second son Chaghatai,ruled Central Asia from variouscapitals in Semirechye andTransoxania including the sitefounded by Kebek (r. 1309-26,with interruption) near Nakhshabknown as Karshi (from the Mongolword for palace). The Ilkhanids,descended from Hülegü, brother ofthe two Great Khans, ruledwestern Asia from winter andsummer capitals in Azerbaijan andIraq.
The transcontinental trade thattook place under these variousbranches of Mongols is readilyevident from reports by the spateof travelers who crisscrossedEurasia during this period. Themost famous, at least to Westerneyes, is Marco Polo, the Venetianmerchant who joined his father anduncle on a trip to China in 1271and spent the next two decadestraveling around the provinces ofChina in the service of QubilaiKhan. Marco Polo’s travelogue,written after he had returned homeand was imprisoned in Genoa withRustichello of Pisa, tells of theamazing empire of the Great Khan,an urban civilization of dazzlingriches and prosperity. Thispicaresque travelogue offered animmense body of new geographicalknowledge to the West andbecame one of most influentialbooks of the Middle Ages, theforemost work in creating anintellectual climate in whichEuropeans set out to explore thenon-European world.
Marco Polo’s account is also arecord of an amazing shoppingspree. His description of Tabriz, atthat time capital of the Ilkhaniddomains, sums up his perspective.He begins with the industriousnessof the inhabitants and their majorhandicrafts: many kinds of beau-tiful and valuable cloths of silk andgold. The city’s choice location, henotes, makes it a commercial hubfor merchants from Mesopotamia,the Gulf, India, and Europe,especially as it has a great marketfor precious stones. It is, hespecifies, a city where merchantsmake large profits. The locals,however, are good-for-nothing, amixture of classes, ethnicities, andreligions, including the nativeMuslims who are evil. He ends hisdescription with the note that thecity is surrounded by charmingorchards, full of large and excellentfruits. His record of the city is thusa brief commercial prospectus.
Trade was not the onlyincentive to travel during thisperiod. So was religion. If MarcoPolo epitomizes the mercantiletraveler, then the Moroccanglobetrotter Ibn Battuta representsthe religious one. In 1325, at age21, he set off from his nativeTangier (hence he is sometimesreferred to as a “tangerine”) on thehajj to Mecca. He returned homeonly in 1349, meanwhile visitingEgypt, Syria, Persia, Iraq, EastAfrica, the Yemen, Anatolia, thesteppes of southern Russia,Constantinople, India, theMaldives, Sumatra, and China.Whereas Marco Polo enumeratesthe goods available in localmarkets, Ibn Batutta sets out thediverse (and to his eyes,sometimes slightly scandalous)religious activities he encounteredwhile lodging at local shrines.
In Delhi, for example, IbnBattuta describes the great tankknown as Hawz Khass, a reservoirused to collect rainwater fordrinking. It served as a gatheringplace for musicians. Known asTarab-abad (the city of music), thearea included an extensive bazaar,a congregational mosque, and
many smaller mosques as well asforty pavilions that served ashousing not only for the musiciansthemselves, but also for singinggirls who even, to Ibn Batutta’samazement, took part in prayersduring Ramadan. The site stillexists [Fig. 1], and during the nextgeneration under the Tughlughidruler Firuz Shah (r. 1351-77), itwas incorporated into a largemadrasa, or theological school. Thecomplex comprises two long blocksof rooms perched along the eastand south sides of the tank, rivetedtogether by the founder’s tomb, adomed square. The two storiescontain interlocking blocks of long,narrow pillared halls and domechambers, with cells on the lowerstory for residence and more openrooms on the upper story forassembly and teaching. Thereservoir has now dried up, but thearea lives on as one of Delhi’s chicquarters, dotted with boutiquesand secluded residences.
As Ibn Battuta’s long chronicleshows, such shrine centers werecommon throughout the Islamiclands. Many were centered on thetomb of a local sufi (mystic) saint.A prime example of the “little citiesof God” constructed at the time ofIbn Battuta’s travels is the shrineat Natanz, twenty miles north ofIsfahan on the slopes of the KarkazMountains in central Iran, built by
an Ilkhanid vizier to commemoratethe tomb of the Suhrawardi shaykh`Abd al-Samad [Map, p. 26; Fig.2]. The complex incorporates acongregational mosque with thetypical Iranian plan of four iwansand a domed chamber around acentral courtyard, the mystic’stomb sur-mounted by apyramidal roof, ahospice for Sufiswith a splendidtiled façade, anda soaring min-aret. The some-what higgledy-p i g g l e d yarrangement ofthe buildingssuggests thatthey had to bejammed intowhatever landwas availablewithin the town.
Yet the inventiveness of thevaulting shows how sophisticatedthe builders of these local shrineswere. During this period in Iran,builders shifted their attentionfrom structure to space,developing new and ingeniousmethods of breaking up a long anddark tunnel vault by using a seriesof cross arches that are joined bytransverse filler vaults. In earlierexamples, the crown of the
transverse vault was horizontalalong its entire length, but duringthis period builders played withmore complex methods. The southiwan in the mosque at Natanz, forexample, has a ramping transversevault in which the springing linesof the vault are not flat but curveupward and parallel the profile ofthe cross arches. Built in the firstdecade of the fourteenth century,the mosque presents the earliestextant example of the break-up ofthe barrel vault in the Mongolperiod, but contemporary buildingsdisplay similar, and soon moreelaborate, methods. Suchinventiveness was probablydeveloped at constructions nolonger extant in the Ilkhanidcapitals in northwestern Iran andthen spread southeast to centralIran and thence to Central Asia,where, under the Timurids in thelate fourteenth and fifteenthcenturies, builders developed thedecorative possibil it ies oftransverse vaulting by reducing theload-bearing elements and
opening the room to increased lightand applied decoration.
Like the vaulting, the luxury ofthe furnishings at Natanz bespeaksthe wealth available to decoratethese local shrines. The shaykh’stomb, for example, was crownedon the interior by a stunningmuqarnas, or stalactite, vault [Fig.3, next page]. Ten tiers ofmuqarnas rise from the piers of the
cruciform room. The first eight arecomposed exclusively of 45° and90° pieces, incorporating an eight-pointed star over each window. Inorder to culminate in a twelve-pointed star at the apex, thebuilders ingeniously altered thesystem at tier nine by addingpentagonal elements on thediagonal. As light filters throughthe stucco grilles and flickersacross the vault, it seems torevolve like the dome of heaven.
The lower surfaces of theshaykh’s tomb were once ablazewith glazed tiles, many removedby later travelers and nowscattered in museums around theworld. The mihrab, or niche in thewall indicating the direction ofprayer toward Mecca, was adornedwith a multi-piece luster ensemble,including a hood now in the Victoriaand Albert Museum in London (71-1885) whose large size (82 cm)and unusual three-dimensionalform make it a masterpiece ofpotting. The lower walls werecovered with a revetment of starand cross tiles, in which mono-chrome turquoise crosses alter-nated with luster-glazed stars. Thisdado, in turn, was crowned by afrieze of rectangular luster tiles,decorated with texts from theKoran emboldened in bright blueon a ground of birds perchingamidst foliage. At least twenty
such tiles are now in museumcollections, many identifiable bythe headless birds, defaced by alater iconoclast [e.g. MetropolitanMuseum 12.44 and British MuseumOA 1122; Komaroff and Carboni2002, p. 127, figs. 149, 150].
Commerce and religion werenot the only cause for travel in thisperiod. So was politics, as shownby the many envoys or officialstraveling on government business.To insure their safety, theseofficials carried a passport orconduct of safe passage known as
paiza, a badgethat was worns u s p e n d e dfrom belt [Fig.4]. Accordingto contemp-orary descrip-tions and de-pictions, thesepasses weremade of wood,silver, or goldand embel-lished with agerfalcon ortiger at thetop, depend-ing on the rankand impor-tance of the
holder. The Mongols had long beeninsistent on the sacrosanct statusof their ambassadors. TheKhwarazmshah’s murder of anofficial envoy, for example, helpedprecipitate Chingis’s invasion ofTransoxania. In order to facilitatecommunication through the vastempire, in 1234, during the reignof Ögödei, the Mongols set up anofficial communication systemknown as the yam.
Marco Polo was particularlyimpressed with the Mongol systemof communication and left a longdescription of it. A system ofhighways radiated to all provincesfrom the capital at Khanbalik.Posting stations were spacedtwenty-five miles apart to providea ready supply of horses. Whenneeded, riders, often in teams,were dispatched, each equippedwith a paiza. Tightening their beltsand swathing their heads, theriders set off post-haste. As theyapproached the next station, theysounded a horn so that freshhorses were readied and riders hadonly to remount and continue. Inthis way the envoys could coveras much as two hundred or eventwo hundred fifty miles per day.
Such passports had alreadybeen used under the Liao dynastyin North China (907-1125). Oneexample made of gold inscribed inKhitan “By imperial command,expedite” was found near Chengdein Hebei province [Komaroff andCarboni 2002, p. 69, Fig. 70]. Itsoblong form remained typicalunder the Mongols, who inscribedtheir paizas using a variety oflanguages that reflect the polyglotnature of society at this time. Anearly Mongol example made forthe Yuan of cast iron inlaid withsilver and now in the MetropolitanMuseum of Art [1993.256;Komaroff and Carboni 2002, p. 69,Fig. 69] is inscribed in Phagspa—the square-boxlike script devisedby the Tibetan monk Phagspa forwriting Mongolian and adoptedunder Qubilai in the 1260s. A silverexample excavated near theDnieper in the lands of the GoldenHorde, and now in the Hermitage
Museum in St. Petersburg [ZO-295], is rectangular with roundedends and a hole for a cord two-thirds of the way up [Fig. 5;Komaroff and Carboni 2002, p. 38,Fig. 34]. The top part is fashionedwith the stylized face of a dragonso that the hole falls between thecreature’s yawning jaws. The lowerpart is inscribed vertically in thetraditional Uighur script.
Similar passports wereadopted under the Ilkhanids inIran. One in Tehran [Fig. 6] is asilver-plated copper rectangle witha scalloped end near an attachedring. One side is decorated with awalking figure carrying a three-pronged stick in his left hand anda roll in his right, perhapsindicating a written decree. Theplaque is inscribed in Uighur withnames of the Ilkhanid sultan AbuSa‘id (r. 1316-35) and thepetitioner, the vizier Tudagha. Thepassport is also stamped with theseal of a certain individual namedQutlugh Tegin.
This paiza probablyrepresents the type ofpersonal patent that waswidely used under theIlkhanids and deploredby their chief vizierRashid al-Din. Helamented that by thelate thirteenth century inIran, the communicationsystem had becomecorrupted and was ripefor reform. According toRashid al-Din, everyone—from wives, princes,and camp officers toleopard keepers andequerries—thought itessential to use anenvoy. The roadsbecame clogged, theenvoys rapacious, andthe people resentful.Furthermore, manybandits masqueraded asenvoys. As a result, realenvoys were oftenprevented from doingtheir business. All theseproblems, says Rashid
al-Din as the official spokesmanwho formulated the party line forthe Mongols, led Sultan Ghazan (r.1295-1304) to lay down reformsto curtail such abuses.
Such communication andtravel, together with commonroots of authority and prestigederived from descent from Chingis,encouraged a shared visualculture, particularly among Mongolrulers in the various empires. Oneexample is the royal drinking cupsmade of gold and silver. Such cupsare depicted in paintings from theJami‘ al-tawarikh, or Compendiumof Chronicles, the history of theMongols and other rulers of theworld compiled by Rashid al-Din.Large double-page scenes thatonce illustrated the reign of eachruler show the Mongol sovereignseated beside his consort on athrone and drinking from such acup. No examples survive fromIran; they were probably all melteddown in times of need. Excavationsat New Saray, the capital of GoldenHorde on the Volga, however, haveuncovered numerous examples inboth silver and gold. Some of theseshallow cups have scallopedhandles decorated with vegetalmotifs. Others have dragonhandles that allowed the vessel tobe suspended by the loop in thedragon’s mouth [Hermitage SAR-1625; Komaroff and Carboni 2002,p. 170, Fig. 197; see also p. 18,Figs. 11, 13].
Such shared culture alsoextended to more quotidianobjects. The typical bowlassociated with the Mongols in Iranis the type known as Sultanabadware, after the city in western Iranon the road from Hamadan toIsfahan where many pieces werefound, though no examples havebeen excavated there. Made of anartificial body known as frit orstonepaste, these deep conicalbowls have a wide rim thatoverhangs both interior andexterior and are underglaze-painted with birds or animals on aground of thick foliage. Theirhemispheric shape, outsidedecoration with a design of
Fig. 5. Paiza in Hermitage Museum collection, St.Petersburg, ZO-295. Drawing originally publishedin the Trudy Vostochnogo otdeleniiaImperatorskogo arkheologicheskogo obshchestva,Vol. 5.
Fig. 6. Ilkhanid paiza of the vizierTudagha. National Museum of Iran.Published by Abdallah Quchani,“Pa’iza,” Mirath-i farhangi 17 (Summer1997).
30
radiating petals, and muted grey-green color scheme connects themto Chinese ceramics, both Cizhouand Jizhou wares. Their interiordecoration, such as phoenixestypically arranged in groups ofthree or four with long curving tailfeathers that emphasize therevolving design, also reflectsChinese models, transferredthrough textiles and other media.Ceramics made for the Ilkhanids’rivals in southern Russia, theGolden Horde, and excavated atNew Saray show similar designs,but with stiffer drawing and asmoother shape.
Of all the works of art sharedbetween the various branches ofMongols in this period, the mostimportant were textiles, notablythose woven with gold-wrappedthread. Known as nasij and nakhin Arabic and Persian and pannitartarici in medieval inventories,these cloths were praised andcollected as far away as England:Chaucer mentions “cloth ofTartary” in his “Knight’s Tale.” Fromthe beginning of the thirteenthcentury the Mongols deliberatelyencouraged the production of suchtextiles. Chingis ordered craftsmencaptured in Central and West Asiasent to Karakorum, and by thetime of his son Ögödei, threethousand households of weaversfrom Samarqand were churningout cloth of gold in Xunmalin. Threehundred households were at workin Hongzhou, west of Beijing.
Virtually all surviving examplesof such cloth of gold (and there arenot that many) combine Chineseand Persian motifs, but based ontechnical and stylistic grounds,scholars are beginning to dividethem into regional groups fromNorth China, Central Asia, andIran. Silks woven in China underthe Mongols continue manyfeatures of ones woven thereearlier under the Jin. All arebrocaded tabbies, or plain weaves,with designs set in widely spacedand staggered rows. In the Jinsilks, the brocaded design showsan individual, asymmetrical motifthat is flipped from left to right in
alternate rows. Many motifsdisplay distinctly Chinese themeslike swan hunts, coiled dragons,and phoenixes soaring amongclouds. Other Jin silks incorporateforeign motifs but put them in aChinese setting. A stunning red silkin Cleveland [1991.4; Watt andWardwell 1997, pp. 114-115;Komaroff and Carboni 2002, p. 68,Fig. 66], for example, is decoratedwith the djeiran, a Central Asianantelope, in a Chinese setting offoliage crowned by a sun or moonsupported by clouds. When theMongols transported weaverscaptured from Central Asia toChina, they introduced newtechnical features typical of CentralAsia, notably paired warps. Inaddition, the new weaversreplaced the single asymmetricalmotifs typical of Jin silks withsymmetrical motifs. A brightorange-red silk in Cleveland(1994.293; Watt and Wardwell1997, pp. 122-123), for example,contains brocadedteardrops in theshape of lotus bulbs.These symmetricaldesigns are some-times framed, as ina silk in Paris thatdisplays confrontedbirds set within aframe. Except forthe contrasting colorof the selvagewarps, these silkswoven in Chinaunder the Mongolsdisplay technical andstylistic featurestypical of CentralAsia.
A second groupof brocaded silksseems distinct toCentral Asia oreastern Iran. Thesecomplex lampasweaves were wovenon drawlooms withtwo sets of warpsand wefts for groundand pattern, some-times with cotton forthe ground weft.
They have denser all-over designs,with a patterned ground that fillsthe space between roundels ormedallions. Motifs are setsymmetrically and include typicalChinese dragons and phoenixes,but they are given twisted orwrithing bodies and imbued witha vitality not seen in the Chinesemodels. Often these silks have aband near one end with a pseudo-inscription in Arabic written in adistinctive plaited script,sometimes with animal heads onthe letters.
Perhaps the most spectacularof these Central Asia silks is a setof large tent panels, each of whichmeasures more than two metershigh. Ten are now in the Museumof Qatar and the eleventh is in theDavid Collection in Copenhagen[Fig. 7; Komaroff and Carboni2002, p. 45, Fig. 42]. Lampasweaves combining tabby and twill,the textiles are remarkable for
their lavish use of gold threads,both silk threads spun with gildedpaper strips and flat threads of agilded animal substrate. Eachpanel contains a long arched nicheenclosing vertical rows of largemedallions, each enclosingconfronted roosters or ducksseparated by a stylized tree of life,alternating with rows of smallerlobed medallions, each enclosinga coiled dragon. The backgroundis filled with vegetal scrolls andstylized peonies and lotus flowers.At the top is a pseudo inscriptionin the stylized kufic script, one ofthe features that distinguishes thisgroup from the Chinese examplesand suggests an attribution to anIslamic land. Similarly, the coileddragons in the lobed roundels andthe birds in frames are hybrids ofeastern and western models.
A third group of silks can beattributed to Iran during theMongol period. The lynchpin forlocalizing this group is a silk nowin the Dom- und Diocezan Museumin Vienna that is inscribed with thename and titles that the Ilkhanidsultan Abu Sa‘id assumed after1319 [Blair and Bloom 1994, p. 21,Fig. 23]. It is a complex lampaswith areas of compound weave intan and red silk with gold weftsmade of strips of gilded silverwound around a yellow silk core.The pattern is even denser thanthose found on Central Asianexamples, with four distinctstripes. The first is a wide bandfilled with staggered rows ofpolylobed medallions andornamental diamonds withpeacocks in the interstices. Nextcomes a narrower band of runninganimals, then a wider one withwriting, followed by a repeat of thenarrow band with running animals.The inscription shows that thissumptuous textile belongs to thetype known as tiraz, official textileswoven in state factories andinscribed with the ruler’s name.This system had been in operationsince early Islamic times, fortextiles were often presented tomembers of courts.
There are good reasons thatso few of these sumptuous textilessurvive from the Mongol period.There are no burial goods in theIslamic lands where bodies aresupposed to be wrapped in plainwhite shrouds and interredbeneath the ground within twenty-four hours of death. The fewtextiles that do survive attest tothe broad network of Eurasiantrade during this period. Many ofthe large and fine examples thathave come on the art market inrecent years were taken fromChina and Central Asia to Tibet,where they were preserved untilthe dissolution of monasteries afterthe Communist occupation in1959. Similarly, the one inscribedwith the name of Abu Sa‘id musthave been discarded after thesultan’s death in 1335. He diedleaving no heir or even a closerelation, and the subsequent twodecades were filled with chaos andsquabbling as a series ofephemeral khans were raised tothe throne by competing amirs.Considered worthless in its originalcontext, the textile was probablyacquired on the cheap by an Italianmerchant who brought it back toMilan where he sold it to RudolfIV, Duke of Austria and founder ofthe Austrian branch of theHapsburg line who turned Viennainto the cultural and intellectualcenter of the Hapsburg Empire.Rudolf died suddenly from aninfection in Milan in 1365, and thissumptuous silk, presumably thefinest that could be acquired bythis enterprising monarch whowent so far as to forge documentsand invent fictitious titles andprivileges to enhance his personalstatus and the position of hisfamily, was then sewn up into hisburial garment.
This network of trans-continental communication cameto an end in the middle of thefourteenth century. By 1353squabbling and chaos hadeliminated all peripheral heirs tothe Ilkhanid line, and Iran wascarved up among several localdynasties. In 1368 the Ming
replace the Great Khans in China.Plague struck as well, for the nexusof trade and communication wasalso an axis of evil in the form ofrats and disease. The Black Death,as it became known in Europeanhistory, had begun during the earlyfourteenth century on the steppes,where a permanent reservoir ofplague infection existed among thewild rodents of the region. Thepandemic spread south and west,fostered by the easy com-munication of the Pax Mongolica.It first descended on China andIndia, then moved westward toTransoxania, Iran and finally theCrimean peninsula on the northshore of the Black Sea. FromCrimean ports, merchant shipsbrought plague to Constantinoplein mid-1347 and then to otherharbors around the Mediterraneanbasin. Egypt was infected by thefall of 1347 and Syria by the springof 1348. But surviving works ofart bear witness to the remarkablecentury of global trade andcommunication that followed theMongol invasions.
About the Author
Sheila Blair is the Norma JeanCalderwood University Professor ofIslamic and Asian Art at BostonCollege, a position she shares withher husband and colleagueJonathan Bloom. She has alsotaught at many universities, bothin the United States and abroad,most recently as a visitingprofessor at the École des HautesÉtudes en Sciences Sociales inParis during May, 2005. Herspecial interests are the uses ofwriting and the arts of the Mongolperiod. Her tenth book, IslamicCalligraphy, is due out this winterfrom Edinburgh University Press.She may be reached at<[email protected]>.
Annotated Bibliography
Abu-Lughod 1989
Janet L. Abu-Lughod. BeforeEuropean Hegemony: The WorldSystem A.D. 1250-1350. New
32
York: Oxford University Press,1989. A highly readable andstimulating interpretation of theglobal economic system prior tothe European “Age of Discovery.”
Allsen 1997
Thomas T. Allsen. Commodity andExchange in the Mongol Empire: aCultural History of Islamic Textiles.Cambridge; New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1997. A carefulcompendium of textual informationon the spread of gold-embroideredtextiles across Asia under theMongols. The companion volumeon other aspects of culturalexchange is his Culture andConquest in Mongol Eurasia(Cambridge; New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2001).
Blair 1986
Sheila S. Blair. The Ilkhanid ShrineComplex at Natanz, Iran.Cambridge, Mass.: Center forMiddle Eastern Studies, HarvardUniversity, 1986. Publication ofthe author’s 1980 Harvard Ph.D.dissertation.
Blair 2005
Sheila S. Blair. “A Mongol Envoy.”In The Iconography of Islamic Art:Studies in Honour of RobertHillenbrand. Ed. Bernard O’Kane.Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversityPress, 2005, pp. 45-60. Includesa discussion of the Mongol paiza.
Blair and Bloom 1994
Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M.Bloom. The Art and Architectureof Islam 1250-1800. New Havenand London: Yale University Press,1994. An elegantly producedsurvey in the Pelican History of Artseries.
Dunn 1986/2005
Ross Dunn. The Adventures of IbnBattuta: A Muslim Traveler of the14th Century. Berkeley etc.:University of California Press,1986; rev. ed. 2005. Retells theglobetrotter’s remarkable story toa general audience.
Ibn Battuta 1958-2000
The Travels of Ibn Battuta, A.D.1325-1354. Tr. with revisions andnotes from the Arabic text editedby C. Defrémery and B. R.Sanguinetti by H.A.R. Gibb. 5 vols.Works issued by the HakluytSociety, 2nd ser., nos. 110, 117,141, 178, 190. Cambridge, for theHakluyt Society, 1958-2000. Thecomplete text with extensiveindexes and notes. Excerpts,including his observations on Tabrizand his travel in the lands of theGolden Horde, are available online“Ibn Battuta: Travels in Asia andAfrica 1325-1354” <http://www.fordham.edu/ halsall/source/1354-ibnbattuta.html>, takenfrom Gibb’s condensed translationfirst published in 1929.
Komaroff and Carboni 2002
Linda Komaroff and StefanoCarboni, eds. The Legacy ofGenghis Khan: Courtly Art andCulture in West Asia, 1256-1353.New Haven and London: YaleUniversity Press, 2002. A splendidcatalogue of an even moresplendid exhibition held at theMetropolitan Museum of Art andthe Los Angeles Country Museumof Art in 2002-3, this is the bestsurvey of objects from this periodin West Asia. Many of the objectsdescribed above are illustratedhere in glorious color. A beautifullydesigned introduction to theexhibit may be viewed via theInternet at <http://www.lacma.org/khan/index_flash.htm>.
Larner 2001
John Larner. Marco Polo and theDiscovery of the World. NewHaven: Yale University Press,2001; first published 1999. Putsthe traveler’s work in globalperspective and provides avaluable discussion of its impact onEuropean thinking about Asia inthe Renaissance.
Polo 1903/1993
Marco Polo. The Book of Ser MarcoPolo, the Venetian: Concerning theKingdoms and Marvels of the East.Tr. and ed., with notes, by Colonel
Sir Henry Yule. 2 vols. 3rd ed., rev.by Henri Cordier. London: J.Murray, 1903; reprinted by Dover,1993. The most famous of thetranslations into English. See theadditional volume of notes byCordier, Ser Marco Polo; Notes andAddenda to Sir Henry Yule’sEdition, Containing the Results ofRecent Research and Discovery(London: J. Murray, 1920).
Polo 1958
The Travels of Marco Polo. Tr.Ronald Latham. Harmondsworth:Penguin, 1958.
Mackintosh-Smith 2001
Tim Mackintosh-Smith. Travelswith a Tangerine: A Journey in theFootnotes of Ibn Battutah. London:J. Murray, 2001. An entertainingaccount by a modern travelerrevisiting the opening stages of thejourney.
Watt and Wardwell 1998
James C.Y. Watt and Anne E.Wardwell. When Silk was Gold:Central Asian and Chinese Textiles.New York: Metropolitan Museum ofArt, 1997. Another gloriouscatalogue from an exhibition heldthe Cleveland Museum of Art andthe Metropolitan in 1997-98. Agreat many examples are from theCleveland Museum’s outstandingtextile collection and are publishedhere for the first time. Themuseum’s website displays imagesof many items, including the twodiscussed above:
1991.4 Brocade with DjeiranGazing at the Moon <http://www.clevelandart.org/oci/magnify/1991/1991.4.jpg>.
TWO TRAVELERS IN YAZDFrank HaroldUniversity of Washington, SeattlePhotographs byRuth L. Harold
A branch of the Silk Road skirtsthe western and southern edgesof Iran’s forbidding central desert,passing through a string of smallcities — Kashan, Nain, Yazd,Kerman — on the way to India [seemap p. 26]. Of these, Yazd is thelargest and the most remarkable,a port of the desert from whichtracks led to Mashad and on toMerv, north to Rayy and south tothe Persian Gulf. Always aprovincial city dependent on trade,Yazd lacks the royal monumentsthat lure visitors to Isfahan andShiraz, but camels stil l plodthrough its streets. Yazd remainsone of the few strongholds of theZoroastrian faith, as well as acenter of Islamic art and learning.Few Iranian cities retain so well theflavor of a civilization that hasflourished for millennia in thenarrow strips of irrigable landbetween the mountains and thedesert.
Yazd is today well off thetourist track, but as a halt on whatwas once the main road, earliertravelers knew it well. In the tenthcentury, Istakhri found it aprosperous and well-fortified town.It was spared the attentions of theMongols, and so Marco Polo, whostopped there about 1272 CE,lauded Yazd as a “good and noblecity”, noted for its fine silks. TheFranciscan friar Odoric, on his wayhome from the Mongol court in themiddle of the fourteenth century,commented on the abundance offruit in this parched place.Tavernier, a French jeweller whowandered all over the Safavidrealm in the middle of theseventeenth century, also enjoyedthe fruit but reserved his highestpraise for the ladies, whom heconsidered the most handsome inall of Persia (a contemporary visitormust wonder how he made this
judgement, but the beauty ofYazd’s women was proverbial). AndRobert Byron, who passed throughYazd in 1934, was bowled over bythe buildings, which no oneseemed to have noticed before:“Do people travel blind?” Our ownaccount is drawn in the first placefrom notes on a visit in 1970,updated by a return in 2000.
At first sight, Yazd is notprepossessing. Like other towns ofthe Persian plateau, it is a mazeof narrow alleys [Fig. 1] and builtwholly of mud brick. As aconcession to the automobile age,the medieval fortifications weredemolished and a few wide streetspunched across the old city, leavingsevered walls standing likesurvivors of an earthquake.Nevertheless, as soon as one stepsoff those new streets one istransported into an earlier era. Thealleys wind tortuously betweenblank adobe walls, picturesquelybridged by arches designed tobuttresss the walls againstcollapse. The occasional doorways,studded with great copper bosses,
are always shut. They concealcourtyards and tiny gardens, butof these the passerby has never aglimpse for the Persian home turnsinward, away from the street. Fewhouses boast more than twostoreys, but all have flat roofswhere great coils of dyed yarn dryin the sun and children peer downat the rare foreigner. It is startlingto see a man in suit and tie emergefrom one of those doorways. Morein keeping with the atmosphereare the occasional women,wrapped in the all-enveloping blackchador, and the men whose greenturbans proclaim descent from theprophet Muhammad himself.
The flat skyline is broken byhundreds of graceful turrets withnarrow vertical slits. No, notchimneys; these are the famousbadgir, windcatchers, an ancientform of air conditioning [Fig. 2,previous page]. Their purpose isto capture every breath of windand lead it into the inner rooms,often below ground, where thefamily takes refuge from the fiercesummer heat. Some are quitestylish, statements of individualtaste that relieve the blanduniformity of adobe architecture.
Along any street one maycome across a broad flight of stepsdescending intothe ground, ahundred feet andmore. At thebottom is a watertap, and thisprosaic objectholds the key tothe very exist-ence of a sub-stantial city (pop.70, 000 in 1970)surrounded bydesert: theqanat. Visitors toIran will likelyfirst spot qanatfrom the air, longlines of molehillsconverging upontown or village.In fact, eachmolehill marksthe opening of a shaft that leadsto an aqueduct deep underground.This taps water-bearing strata atthe foot of mountains that, to thecasual observer, look utterlydessiccated. The tunnels slopegently and may extend for miles;some of those that supply Yazdcome from the Shir Kuh range, 30miles to the southwest. The waterflows into underground storagetanks, recognizable by their mud-brick domes and badgir, and thendistributed through the city. Thesiting, excavation and main-tenance of qanat are highlyspecialized occupations; they arealso quite hazardous, for the loosesoil and gravel is forever poised to
cave in. Yazdis are famous for theirskills, and in demand all over Iran.
To feel the pulse of a Persiancity one must explore its bazaar.This, of course, is the shopping andbusiness district, but it is muchmore than that: mosques, baths,caravanserais and schools weretraditionally built right into thebazaar, making it truly the centerof civic life. Conveniently, one ofthe most conspicuous landmarksof Yazd is the monumentalgateway to the bazaar, marked bya pair of tall minarets. But onceagain, appearances mislead: thisbuilding, despite its name, serves
chiefly as agrandstand fromwhich to watchthe processionsand passionplays at Muhar-ram, the seasonof deep mourn-ing that com-memorates thedeath of theImam Hussein atthe battle ofKerbala thirteenhundred yearsago. At the footof the gatewaystands a hugew o o d e nf r a m e w o r kcalled a nakhl(one may comeacross several of
these, tucked away in courtyardsand passageways) [Fig. 3]. DuringMuharram the nakhl is draped withblack banners and pennons, andcarried through the streets on theshoulders of mourners; otherschant and flay their own backs withchains in an ecstasy of grief.
Yazdis have long enjoyed areputation for industry, evenhustle, and the lively bazaar iswhere these are on display. Likemost traditional bazaars it isvaulted with brick, a welcomehaven from desert dust and wind.The whitewashed corridors are cooland airy, lined with shops that offergreat rolls of cotton fabric and
heavy multicolored silk stuffs [Fig.4]. In the fourteenth and fifteenthcenturies, the export of silks andcarpets to India and Central Asiaunderpinned a period of prosperity,and these items are sti l lcelebrated. At one time Yazd wasalso known for decorativemetalwork. That craft seems tohave died out, but a search led tothe street of the copper workers,adjacent to a picturesque sunnysquare loud with the cheerful dinof metal striking metal. Here thebig copper pots and trays arehammered into shape, and thenpassed on to a neighboring artisan
who gives each vessel a final coatof shiny, non-toxic tin. The oldcrafts are endlessly fascinating:the smith at his forge, the furnituremaker turning a lathe with his footwhile his helper decorates woodenchests with red velveteen andbrass nails. A candy boiler laborsover a huge tray of crystallizedsugar, a baker shows off flaps offresh stonebread (sangak), surelythe best bread ever! [Fig. 5,previous page.] Carding, dyeing,spinning and weaving remind onethat the textile industry, whichonce made Yazd famous, is stillvery much alive.
The lanes of the bazaar twistand turn and eventually lead to theFriday Mosque, the pride of Yazd
and one of the finest in Iran [Fig.6]. The tall façade, the shallowdome and the interior of thesanctuary hall all sparkle withglazed tile. Most of the tileworkdates to the fourteenth andf i f t e e n t hcenturies, whenthe art was at itsheight and the cityrich; no cost wasspared in assem-bling thousands ofprecisely cutpieces of coloredtile into largemosaics of geo-metric or floraldesign [Fig. 7]. Inreturn for a smalltip, the custodianunlocks the stepsto the roof, andmay even allowone to climb aminaret. In the olddays, a muezzinwould scale thisfive times a day tocall his communityto prayer; hismodern successorunderstandably prefers to issuethe summons from below, with theaid of records and a loudspeaker.Its a long trudge up a tight spiralstaircase to the narrow balcony,where we hug the wall whileadmiring the view. The city sprawlsbelow, dun-colored like the desertthat gave it birth. A line of smalldomes traces the bazaar by whichwe came; here and there a largerdome, bright with blue tiles, marksa mosque or a tomb.
Tombs of saints and martyrsare prominent in the humanlandscape of Iran. Many are closedto non-Muslims, but we wereadmitted to the Imamzadeh Jaafar,a fine example of the genre. Builtin the 17th century, the shrineconsists of a simple plasteredchamber surmounted by a dome,its floor lined with carpets. Thecarved wooden cenotaph, covered
with green baize, is set apart bybrass railings. We could not learnwho this particular Jaafar was, buthis memory is still green, honoredby women who come to weep andpray at the tomb while a pair of
mullahs chantsfrom the Quran.
The atmo-sphere of Yazdis that of Islam,but the cityh a r b o r sremnants of afar older order.Prior to theArab conquest(642 CE), thed o m i n a n treligion of Iranwas Zoro-astrianism, afaith that seesthe world interms of ac o n t e s tbetween theprinciples ofgood and ofevil. The dutyof man is totake part in the
moral struggle, and to hasten thetriumph of the good by nobledeeds, right thoughts and properworship. The Parsees of Bombaymake up the world’s largestZoroastrian community, but activeones survive in Yazd, Kerman andTehran. Yazd was probably a majorreligious center in antiquity: theFriday Mosque was erected on thesite of a large fire-temple, and thevery name of the city recalls thatof the last Sassanian king,Yezdegird, who was driven from histhrone by the Arab armies. Untilquite recently Zoroastrians wereregarded as idolators andsubjected to various indignities:like the Jews of medieval Europethey were obliged to weardistinctive clothing, forbidden anyshow of prosperity, and their touchwas held to pollute Muslims. Theywere often persecuted and deniedlegal redress. But Zoroastrianssurvived as a community andprospered in business, earning areputation for honesty and hard
work. Under the tolerant regimeof the Pahlavi Shahs, their positionbecame secure. Zoroastriansoccupy a quarter in the south ofYazd. Outwardly, this does notdiffer much from the rest of thecity, but its alleys seem moreanimated. That is due to thepresence of women, cheerfullyattired in colored shawlsand baggy trousers tied atthe ankles, in place of thesomber black of theirMuslim sisters.
T r a d i t i o n a l l y ,Zoroastrians did not burytheir dead but exposedthem to the vultures inwalled enclosures calledtowers of silence. Theseare outside the city, andeven though the custom isfading, they are off-limits.But there was no objectionto our visiting the main fire-temple, a modern building of noarchitectural pretensions set in ashady garden [Fig. 8]. The wallsare hung with oleographs, portraitsof the half-legendary Zoroaster(probably sixth century BCE) andof wealthy Parsee donors. In asmall room to one side stands ahuge brass urn. There smoldersthe eternal fire, guarded by itspriests and perfumed from time totime with sandalwood or aromaticherbs. This is the very focus ofZoroastrian worship. Firerepresents the divine essence, thesource of life, which burns in thebodies of men and beasts, in theair, even in paradise. Fire is thesymbol of the ritual purity to whichZoroastrians aspire, and mustnever be allowed to go out. In Iranit has burned thus for some 2500years, dimly at times but neverextinguished.
Postscript
We returned to Yazd in 2000, tofind that no place is immune tochange. The district is now hometo more than 300,000 persons,and new residential areas linkedby busy roads sprawl across thedesert flats. The qanat, longunequal to the demand for water,
have been supplemented withdeep wells. The old city, however,has been carefully protected; nowdesignated a UNESCO worldheritage site, it is considerablytidier than in was then and lesspicturesque, but probably moresalubrious. Under the IslamicRepublic dusty alleys have been
paved, crumbling shrines restoredand the tilework of the FridayMosque made splendid. The viewfrom the roof is still magnificent,though you may have to put upwith the loudspeaker blaringdevotional music. The Zoroastriancommunity, some 12,000 strong,holds its temple and its place inthe city. The towers of silence aredisused now, and you may lookupon them from the foot. The greatdisappointment, here andelsewhere in Iran, was what hasbefallen the bazaar. The vaultedhalls remain, but the workshopsand their craftsmen are gone; intheir place, indifferent shops sellcheap imports and mass-producedhousewares. Much has been sweptaway, yet much remains: wecannot think of any other city thatpreserves so much of theatmosphere of a caravan depot onthe Silk Road.
About the Authors
Frank and Ruth Harold arescientists by profession andtravelers by avocation. Frank wasborn in Germany, grew up in theMiddle East and studied at the CityCollege, New York, and the
University of California at Berkeley.He is Professor Emeritus ofbiochemistry at Colorado StateUniversity and a member of thevolunteer faculty at the Universityof Washington. Ruth is amicrobiologist, now retired, and anaspiring painter. The Harold familylived in Iran in 1969-1970, while
Frank served as Fulbrightlecturer at the University ofTehran. This experiencekindled a passion for Asiantravel which has since takenthem to Afghanistan andback to Iran, into theHimalayas, up and down theIndian subcontinent andalong the Silk Road betweenChina and Turkey. Theymake their home inEdmonds, Washington, andmay be reached at< f r a n k h a r o l [email protected]>.
Sources:
Earlier travelers to Yazd are citedin Guy Le Strange, The Lands ofthe Eastern Caliphate; Mesopo-tamia, Persia, and Central Asia,from the Moslem Conquest to theTime of Timur (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1905;reprint, Lahore: al-Biruni, 1977),and in Laurence Lockhart, PersianCities (London: Luzac, 1960). Fora detailed account of the historysee A.K.S. Lambton, “Yazd,” in theEncyclopaedia of Islam, New Ed.,Vol. 11 (Brill: Leiden, 2002), pp302-309. The best guidebook toIran known to me is Nagel’sEncyclopedia-Guide Iran (Geneva:Nagel, 1968), but it is now ratherdated. A contemporary one is M.T. Faramarzi, A Travel Guide toIran (Tehran: Yassavoli, 2000).Robert Byron is quoted from TheRoad to Oxiana (London: JonathanCape, 1937), p 202. An earlier andtruncated version of the presentarticle appeared in the travelsection of The New York Times inFebruary 1971.
Kyrgyz Healing Practices:Some Field NotesJipar DuyshembiyevaUniversity of Washington, Seattle
Kyrgyz traditional healing practicesdisplay a mixture of Islamic andpre-Islamic practices of the Turkicpeoples. Like many of the otherpeoples of Central Asia, before thespread of Islam Kyrgyz worshippedspirits of their ancestors, differentanimals, mountains, trees, runningwater, and fire. Along with Islam,especially in its Sufi forms, someof the traces of this ancientpractice still can be found in dailylives of the Kyrgyz. Most of thehealers today associate theirhealing power with Islam;however, the healing practice itselfand tools they use clearly show itsstrong connection with pre-Islamicvalues and practices. What followsis primarily a descriptivepresentation of field workobservations from the summer of2001. Contextualization with acloser examination of the scholarlyliterature is a project for the future.
The main figure in many of thetraditional ritual practices is theshaman. The word “shaman” itselfis a Tungus word, and only theTungus called their shaman by thename “shaman” among all the“shamanist” peoples of the world[Arik 1999, p. 368]. Among Kyr-gyz, shamans are called baqshï, aword whose exact meaning isdisputed. Some sources say thatthe word derives from Sanskritbikshu, which means “Buddhist
monk, shaman, or healer” [Bartol’d1963, p. 454]. Other scholars insiston a Turkic origin of the word. Theyargue that it came from the Turkishword baqmak which means “tolook after, to take care” [Shani-iazov 1974, p. 327]. Whatever itsderivation, among the Kyrgyz theword refers to a person who isbelieved to possess the power toheal, to find lost or stolen thingsand foretell the future.1 Togetherwith the word baqshï, Kyrgyz usesuch terms as tabïp (from Arabic,“healer”) and közü achïk (lit. “theone with opened eyes”). The latterterm generally refers to peoplewho are mostly engaged withfinding lost objects or people andfortune-telling. However, they alsopractice healing.
The role of shamans in CentralAsia was especially importantbefore the spread of Islam. Theyoccupied a special place in society,since people considered that theyhad the ability to communicatewith spirits of their dead ancestors.Many shamans were also spiritualleaders of their tribes. Every triballeader would seek the shaman’sblessing before going to waragainst another tribe. Healing,however, remained the mostimportant part of shaman’sactivities.
Several sources describeshamanic practices and shamans
among the Kyrgyz before the endof the nineteenth century. Two ofthe major ones are the accountsby Wilhelm Radloff and ChokanValikhanov, who traveled to theregion to conduct broad researchon nomadic people of Central Asiaand wrote at length about theshamanic rituals and the role ofshamans among the Kyrgyz andKazakhs. Valikhanov notablytended to downplay the Islamicelements which were alreadyprominent in Central Asian Turkic“shamanism” [Privratsky 2001, p.11]. Perhaps the best modernstudy of shamanism, whichunderscores the idea that it is nota “religion” per se, is CarolineHumphrey’s book using theexample of the Daur Mongols.Additional material may be foundin work by Vladimir Basilov, BrucePrivratsky, and Kagan Arik. Amonograph in French by PatrickGarrone deals specifically with theinstitution of the baqshï and isbased both on written sources andextensive field work, especiallyamong the Kazakhs.
I undertook my field work inthe summer of 2001 as part of myUniversity of Washington M.A.program. The goal was to observesome of the shamanic practicesthat are alive today and tointerview practicing baqshïs. Theobservations were made in theregion of Kochkor, a small town innorthern Kyrgyzstan. My motheris from a nearby village, Kom-somol, where I lived until age offive and have visited every yearsince; my grandmother and mylate grandfather also lived in thatvillage. It is there that I made theacquaintance of the healer Kalïi,[Fig. 1, next page] famous not onlyin Komsomol, but also in most ofthe surrounding region. Peopleeven come from the capital,Bishkek, to be healed by her.
When we arrived to Kalïi apa’s2
house, she was seeing a toddler.His mother had brought him to Kalïiapa, because he had not slept forseveral nights in a row and hadbeen constantly crying. Kalïi apahad painted the child’s face with a
paint used for coloring felt rugs.She told me that the bright colorswould lure the evil spirits out ofthe child’s body; they would lickthe paint and leave the boy alone.This belief also exists among otherCentral Asian people. However,healers may use different tools inorder to achieve the same goal.3
Further, Kalïi apa filled a cup withsome ashes and covered it with apiece of cloth. Then she touchedthe body of the child from head totoe with the cup turned upsidedown. After she was done, Kalïi apauncovered the cup, which was nowonly half full. She poured theremaining ashes onto the toddler’sjacket and left it next to the woodstove where it was supposed to liefor seven days. The boy, who hadbeen crying constantly before thehealing, seemed to quiet downnow. When Kalïi apa handed himover to his mother, I started myconversation with her.
Kalïi apa remembers that shebegan to heal people at the age oftwenty-seven when she came toher husband’s village. She wouldoften get sick for no apparentreason and would not know whatto do about it. She consulted manyhealers, but nothing helped. Sherefused to take up the healingprofession for as long as possible,but finally she had to give in.4 Shestarted with one of the easiestpractices that can in fact be doneby almost anyone, lifting children’shearts, that is, comforting themwhen they had experienced aserious fright. She then began to
visit mazars (shrines), makingsacrifices and staying thereovernight and praying. Althoughshe could not explain to me thesource of her power or the way inwhich it operates, she repeatedlyemphasized that it helps her toheal people and she follows itsdirections.
Kalïi apa states that she canheal liver diseases, help those whohave arthritis, and relieve severelower back pain by drawing blood.She also takes the pulse [lit.”takesvein”5]; that is, by touching theartery she can tell what theperson’s sickness is and the waysshe can help him/her. If, aftertaking the pulse, she knows thatthe person is incurable,6 she nevertries to heal him/her. In that caseKalïi apa admits her inability tocure and she advises the patientto find some other healer or see adoctor. However, if she is sure thatshe can heal the person, she doeseverything in her power to help.Kalïi apa also told us that she has“bio-energy” and uses it in herhealing.
Another story told by Kalïi apais quite interesting. A friend of hersin the village had cancer. She calledin Kalïi apa one day, asking thatshe take her pulse in order to findout how long she would live. ButKalïi apa refused to do so and left.Next morning she asked mygrandmother to come with her andsee her friend, but it turned outthat the latter had died theprevious night after Kalïi apa left.She says that merely by lookingat her friend she knew that “herdays were numbered” (köröörkünü az kaldï).
Kalïi apa also claims that shehas the ability to find lost or stolenthings and has the ability to foretellthe future with the help of forty-one stones.7 When telling fortunes,she never tries to make a personavoid a certain event. She insiststhat everything is controlled byGod, and there is no way to avoidone’s own fate. However, since sheadvises people how to act in acertain situation, they come to herwith their various daily problems.
She relates an incident in the1970s in the same village whichalmost persuaded her to give upfortune telling. My grandmotherand Kalïi apa are very close friends,and their houses are situated notfar from each other. The son oftheir close neighbor went to servein the army. While they werewaiting for his return, with the helpof the stones, my grandma andKalïi apa tried to predict the exacttime of his arrival. When spreadout, the stones would always showa coffin, a prediction which theydid not dare tell the boy’s mother.Yet he returned home safe andsound to much rejoicing, only todie two months later. After that mygrandmother swore never to touchthe stones again. For a time Kalïiapa refused to tell fortunes, butfinally she again gave in to thoseasked for her help.
In addition to her pulse taking,predicting the future, and healinglittle children using traditionalways, Kalïi apa also draws blood.My grandmother still remembershow it all started. Kalïi apa cameto their village in 1964 when stillvery young, some twenty-two ortwenty-three years old. Nobodyknew that she had the ability toheal illnesses or relive somebody’spain. When children took ill, peoplewould not know what to do. Tovisit to a good doctor was costlyand the distance too far; so peoplelooked for more immediate help.There were some elderly people inthe village who could help, but notmuch. Whenever Kalïi apa came tovisit my grandmother’s house andwould touch a sick child’s head thechild would feel better. As herreputation for healing grew, peoplestarted taking their ill children toKalïi apa. From just touching aperson she slowly switched tohealing with the help of the ashes,knives, paper, etc.
My grandmother remembersthat at that time she startedhaving constant headaches. Shetried taking some pil ls butdeveloped allergies to them whichcaused her face to swell. Her visitto a doctor in Karakol (a town at
the east end of Lake Ïsïk Köl) didnot help. On the way home, shethought of asking Kalïi apa to drawher blood. Kalïi apa, who had neverperformed the procedure before,was terrified and refused mygrandmother’s request. She saidthat she had seen her grandfatherdo it but was afraid to try herself.Finally she gave in. My grand-mother shaved a small area on herhead, and Kalïi apa made severalcuts on her head through which the“bad blood” came out. Mygrandmother says that since thenher head never was cold, and theconstant headaches stopped.
Nowadays, due to my grand-mother’s advanced age, Kalïi apadoes not make cuts on her head.Instead, twice a year, Kalïi apamakes small cuts on her back.Another thing that my grand-mother remembered was that awhile ago doctors told Kalïi apa’sdaughter she had a high bloodpressure and wanted to put her ina hospital. Unwilling to trust thedoctors, Kalïi apa said she wouldcure her daughter herself; shecombined all the leeches8 that mygrandmother and she herself hadand put all of them on herdaughter’s back. According to mygrandmother, “they sucked off allthe blood that was causing pain.”The next day the girl went to thehospital where doctors found outthat she did not have any highblood pressure and was fine. Whenthe daughter started havingconstant headaches, medicine didnot help. Again her motherconvinced her to have her blooddrawn, which relieved the pain.Since then, she said, she comestwice a year to get rid of her“spoiled blood.”
I witnessed the blood drawingon one of these visits. Theprocedure involved the use ofglasses, buttons, a piece of cloth,matches, a little bucket, and arazor. Having prepared everythingKalïi apa took a blade and madethree one-inch cuts on both sidesof her daughter’s back. Then shewrapped the buttons in two small
pieces of cloth, placed them closeto the cuts, and lit them with thematches. After that she quickly putglasses on top of the flamingbuttons. Once the buttons werecovered, blood started coming outof incisions.9 After 1-3 minutes shetook the glasses off and wiped theblood from her back. She repeatedthis procedure several timesmaking cuts in different places.After a considerable amount ofblood had been drawn, shestopped the procedure and wipedher back with a piece of clothsoaked in alcohol.
It is not easy to watch theprocedure of blood drawingespecially if seeing it for the firsttime. Furthermore, for a personused to ideas about the importanceof a sterile environment, theprocedure would be disturbing. Thetools she was using were verybasic, the piece of cloth she usedfor wiping the cuts was quite dirty;she did not seem to bother aboutthe cleanliness of her tools anddisinfecting them and herdaughter’s back before making anycuts on it. Only at the end of thewhole procedure did she use somealcohol to wipe her daughter’s backwith the cloth soaked in it.
Blood drawing was the lastprocedure that Kalïi apa performedthat day. Towards the end she feltquite tired and looked exhausted.She explained to me that duringthe procedure she thinks about thepatient’s illness and takes it ontoherself. She mentioned thatsometimes she gets sick for a whileherself, because she gives all herenergy to the patient. She does nottake anything for her services; “Itake only whatever my patientsbring me, what comes from theirhearts. I never ask for anythingspecifically, I don’t ask for money,and if they brought anything, theyleave it on the table,” she said.Later, I found out that she is thesole supporter of her family. Heryoungest son and his wife andchildren stay with her, but there isno job in the village for them. Theykeep a small number of sheep andhave some cattle. People who visit
her bring tea, bread, candies orcookies; some of them leavemoney.
I next visited the Kochkor Atashrine located in the northwesternpart of Kum Döbö village. It iscalled a mazar, or a shrine, a termused to refer to graves ofvenerated Muslim saints. Theactivities at the shrine pointedclearly to the fusion of Islamicbelief and practice on the one handand traditional, non-Islamicpractice on the other.
The shrine consists of two lowhills which are joined and peoplesay resemble from a distance aresting camel. It is visited by manypeople, often from distant parts ofKyrgyzstan. Some come everyThursday to pray for theirdeceased relatives, others come tomake a sacrifice in their ancestors’honor; a third group comes to findsome cure for their illnesses. Onecan also meet married couples whocannot have children and for whomthis is their only place of hope.Another significant group ofvisitors are baqshï. Experiencedones bring their patients, becauseit is a general belief that there is agreater chance of a cure if theperformance is conducted at theholy places where the spirit of theancestors is strongest. Youngerbaqshï come to Kochkor Ata shrinefor the initiation ceremony, usuallyaccompanied by more experiencedones, and they spend a nightthere.
There is a small three-roombuilding next to the shrine. Peoplewho bring food or slaughter asheep for sacrifice use the buildingas a place to gather other pilgrims,share their food and recite theQuran at the end of the ceremony.A local mullah (Muslim religiousauthority) maintains the place andmakes it his task to take peoplearound the shrine. The major partof the ceremony consists of goingaround the hill, making some stopson the designated areas along theway and reciting the Quran. Thereare several caves in the moundwhere candles are set at nighttime.
40
There are many legends aboutKochkor Ata and why that placebecame sacred. Some people saythat Kochkor Ata was a Muslimsaint and was buried in that placeafter his death. Since then, theplace of his burial became a placeof pilgrimage for many people.Others connect the history ofKochkor Ata shrine with Kyrgyzfolklore. Thus, Kazakh ethno-grapher Chokan Valikhanovmentions that Kazakh sultanBarak, who lived at the end ofeighteenth century, “becamecareless, and showing off hisstrength he invaded the sacredplace of the Kyrgyz, Koshkar Ata.”The Kirghiz became angry,attacked Barak’s camp, andpursued his army as far as the IliRiver. “The Kirghiz,” writesValikhanov, “attributed theirenemies’ escape to the holiness ofKochkor Ata” [Valikhanov 1985, p.375]. There is another legend toldby a man from Cholpon Ata, whosaid that Arslanbab (a mazar inSouthern Kyrgyzstan) had sevenchildren. And the seven mazars,Oisul Ata, Karakol Ata, Shïng Ata,Manzhïl Ata, Cholpon Ata, KochkorAta, Oluia Ata, were built in theirhonor [Abramzon 1975, p. 304].It is worth noting that in the Sovietperiod, as part of the effort todiscourage Islamic practice, theauthorities undertook severemeasures to prevent worship atmazars.
I went to Kochkor Ata with myfamily. We brought some bread,fruits and vegetables, and somesweets to the shrine. Since wewent on Thursday, the local mullahwas expecting a large number ofpeople to come that day. We werethe third group to enter the housenear the shrine. It was full ofvisitors already. A group before ushad slaughtered a sheep not longago and the meat was boilingoutside in a big qazan (cauldron).We were invited to join others forthe meal. After we finished themeal, the mullah recited The Quranand took all of us outside thebuilding. He led us to the hill,where we started our journey.
There was a certain path one hadto follow. The mullah was in frontof us constantly saying La IllahaIl-Allah which means “None butAllah is worthy of worship.” Hemade stops on the way at severalplaces, usually next to the bigrocks, in order to recite The Quran.After the recitation people kissedthe stone and touched it with theirforeheads.10 The whole processtook us forty-five minutes. We sawmany pilgrims who were sittingdown and praying during our walk,and it was quite a busy place.Finally, we reached our startingpoint where our mullah recited TheQuran for the last time. It wasthere that I met my nextinformant, Kümüsh Zhanibek kïzï,another baqshï from the nearbyvillage, who brought her patientsto the shrine to perform herhealing rituals in ways which verymuch resembled shamanicpractices described from earliertimes.
Kümüsh approached the shrinewith five of her patients just whenwe were done with our ceremony.Their behavior was submissive,and they followed her instructionscarefully. They brought somebread, watermelons, pilaf, andsome vegetables to the house nextto the shrine. She was leading hergroup towards the hill when Istarted a conversation with her;she allowed me to videotape herperformance.
Kümüsh led them to a placesurrounded by small rocks close tothe hill. They knelt down, and oneof the men in the group recited TheQuran. After he finished, Kümüshbegan her ritual. She recited TheQuran, and after that she spreadher palms and started sayingrapidly the following:
My kind God, my kind God, mykind God, Bissimilla RahmanRahim,
I devote This Quran to KochkorAta,11 Shaban Shorobek Ata, toall the spirits surroundingKochkor Ata, to all those whohave passed away, to allchildren who died young, to
those who were buried withtheir clothes, to the blind, andto the great khans.
Bissimilla Rahman Rahim,
I devote my prayer to myZhumgal Ata, Tosor Ata, BabaAta, Ïsïk Ata, Ïsïk Köl Ata,Cholpon Ata, and to mygenerous Manas Ata, and hisforty companions, to those holyfathers and mothers whoperished between the East andthe West, to the old people, tothe widows and orphans, to themother lake and father lake, tothe sacred shrines surroundingthe lake,12 to the masters ofthose shrines, to Manzhïl Ata,to his sacred supporters, toKalïghul Ata.
[I devote my prayer] to theseven forefathers of the peoplewho came here to visit [theshrine], to the common spirits,to all those who passed away,to all children who died, to theirseven forefathers and sevenforemothers.
Save from the evil eye and evilword of others your creatureswho came here saying yourname and asking their wishesbe granted. Forgive the onemistake that they made in theirlives unknowingly. Grant theirdreams and wishes. May theirenemies be far from them andtheir friends close to them.Provide a cure for the illness ofthese people. Open the whitepath to those who came askingfor it. If they gave their heartto you, grant their wishes.
Oomiin, Alohu-Akbar.
Upon finishing her prayer, Kümüshbegan her healing. Her patients satdown in a row facing Kochkor Atashrine with their heads down.Kümüsh held a whip in her hands;she started walking back and forthin front of her patients whilesinging aloud the following song:
Dear Allah, blessed Allah,Kochkor Ata, please help, Allah,To a person who came saying“Allah”Open his white road wide.
41
Allah oh, Allah eh…
Provide a cure for your creatureWho came in illness.Give cure for [his] sickness.My first hill, double hill.Kochkor Ata, please help.My second hill, double hill.The one which a horse circled.Allah oh, Allah eh…
I’ll call you, saying “Allah”Kochkor Ata please heal[them?].I’ll call you, saying “Allah”Zhumgal Ata please come.Take my white wishes.Allah oh, Allah eh…
I’ll call you, saying “Allah”Ak Mazar Ata, please come.Give them their white paths.Allah oh, Allah eh…
Creator Allah, [sacrifice], AllahI’ll spread my white beard.Ak Mazar Ata, please comeGive your help.Allah ho, Allah eh…
Manas Ata, please help.I called you, saying “Allah.”Please, you, yourself alwayshelp.Allah eh, Allah oh…
Creator Allah, bless Allah,Ak Mazar Ata did you come?Baba Ata, you yourself purify.Put [them] in the right path.If he sinned without knowing,Tosor Ata, please purify.Allah eh, Allah oh…
CHUPH, CHUPH, CHUPH…
Several times during theceremony Kümüsh hit some of herpatients with the whip she washolding [Fig. 2]. After she wasdone with the song, she started to‘spit’ on her patients and makecircular movements with her handsabove their heads as if she waslifting invisible objects from theirshoulders.13 She ended herceremony with the words, “All ofyou spread your palms, and invokeKochkor Ata. Tell him the wish withwhich you came.” She pronounceda prayer in Arabic and said“Oomiin” [Amen].
After Kümüsh was done withthe healing ceremony, I askedsome questions regarding herperformance. She gave me anexplanation of what she had to gothrough to become a healer andher healing method:
I would get very sick often. In1993 I went to Chaek14 to acertain old woman. She was afamous healer in that village. Ihad not been able to give birthfor sixteen years. Once I hadentered this path [i.e. beganpracticing healing] I helpedpeople who had cancer andepilepsies. I helped the oneswho came out of Chïm-Korgon.15 Here is the boy whocould not get well in that clinic.[She pointed at one of herpatients.] He was released fromthe clinic not so long ago. I alsohelp those who have comeunder the “evil eye” and whohave some minor illnesses. Allmy ability is from God. With hishelp I help other people. It hasbeen eight years [since Istarted healing]. There aresome people who got well.Among the people who came tome there were people withcancer, and after severalséances they got well.
After I started my healingpractice, I was able to give birthto two children. Had it not been
for them, I doubt whether Iwould have started healing. Mypractice is closely connectedwith medicine and also withreligion.16 If people do not getwell we send them to thedoctor. We ask them to havethe laboratory analyses. Thefirst year when I startedexamining17 people, I did notknow how to recite The Quran.After that, in my dream I wastold to recite Quran, and thatis how I started.
As one can see, Kümüsh alsoconnects her healing ability to apower, but unlike Kalïi, she knowsthat it comes from God. She clearlystates that she did not have anyintention to practice healing.However, since she was not gettingwell from her illnesses, the onlyway she could be cured was to takeup healing, a phenomenon typicalfor other practitioners. Almost allof them state that “seeing” peoplebecame a necessity for them:healing provides relief, and theystart feeling better. Kümüsh wasthe most vocal one of all healers Imet. Unlike their predecessors,modern healers prefer not toadvertise their talents. In contrast,Kümüsh was very outspoken, andshe was very animated, expressingher emotions during the ritual.Along with pre-Islamic rituals,Kümüsh also incorporated Quranicverses into her practice. Thesyncretic relationship betweenIslam and pre-Islamic practice wasreinforced by the location of theritual in the open air next to ashrine.
My third informant, Sarïpbekkïzï Saiasat,18 came from Talasregion and now lives in Bishkek.As often seems to be the case withhealers, she notes that the practiceran in the family, where hergrandfathers and grandmotherswere also healers even though herparents were not.19 She stronglybelieves that her ability to heal hadbeen passed down to her from hergrandparents. None of her eightsiblings is a healer.
Of particular interest in myinterview were her observationsabout the relationship betweenIslamic and non-Islamic practice.She helps people by reciting surahsfrom the Quran. Kyrgyz call thepractice dem sal, which, if onetranslates it l iterally, means“putting breath,” or giving to aperson life by helping him breathe.When asked how she learned thispractice, she responded:
In my dream somebody told methat I should heal with “si”. Ididn’t know what it was, butlater one person showed mesurahs from the Quran andthere was a surah, which wouldstart with “si”. My healing isconnected with religion.Shamanism and healing aredifferent. It is not shamanism.I am supposed to use only myprayer beads and prayer rug forhealing. However, I am used tousing other things, or maybethey came from my teacher.
She went on to explain that certainpractices are definitely not Islamic;in fact her preferred instrumentsfor healing are prayer beads.
According to Sharia, one cannotuse stones, and fortune tellingis also wrong. The use of thestones, knives, whip, etc. is notallowed in Islam. When I takethe prayer beads, I can seeeverything as if I am watchinga TV. …With the help of theprayer beads I can tell whatkind of sickness a person hasand where that sickness camefrom. Other than that I alsotake people’s pulse. When Idon’t have my prayer beadswith me I diagnose with thehelp of ashes. It is reallydifficult to explain that. I usethe stones when I am too tired.I use up all my energy when Igive prognoses using prayerbeads, and I get tired and sickafter that. In order not to sendthe next patient back I use thestones.
During the conversationSaiasat also explained the purposeof each tool that she uses for
healing. She uses a whip (qamchï)for very severe sicknesses,psychological sicknesses or whena person is ‘possessed’ by evilspirits. She circles the whip aroundher patient’s head and it bringsthem great relief. She uses thesmall whip for children and peoplewith pain in their lower back.Sometimes it is used for the peoplewho complain about their sleep andanxiety. Her knife is used for liftingone’s heart. She uses prayer beadsfor her daily prayer and for healingpeople as well. She also widelyuses different kinds of herbs inhealing stomach pain and variousskin diseases.
One can find a great numberof healers today in Kyrgyzstan.Their practice surfaced in moreobvious ways after the countrygained its independence. It isapparent that the healing traditionstayed very much alive during theSoviet regime; after all, it hadexisted for many centuriespreceding the Soviet state.However, most of the time it waspracticed in secrecy. Not manybaqshï admitted their engagementwith supernatural, afraid of beingpunished for it. The new eracreated many opportunities fortrue healers and imitators alike.People started frequenting siteslike Kochkor Ata located in differentparts of Kyrgyzstan; they beganto take refuge in alternativemedicine. This demand alsohelped to spawn many charlatans,who saw “healing” as a quick wayto make money. It is clear thoughthat there are many who believesincerely in their art and theirhealing abilities.
During my short trip toKyrgyzstan I was able to meet withonly three practicing baqshï, onlya small portion of the numeroushealers in the country. Each oneof them has her own uniquetechniques, her own tools andmethods. They perceive theirhealing as a gift from above whichthey cannot resist, and each oneof them has her own patients whobelieve in her power. It was notmy goal however to decide which
one of the healers possesses truehealing ability and which does not,or whether they have any suchability at all. My intention was toobserve a complex phenomenonthat is still alive and needs furtherstudy.
About the Author
Jipar Duyshembiyeva receivedher M.A. from the Department ofNear Eastern Languages andCivilization at the University ofWashington in 2002. She currentlyworks in the University ofWashington libraries and plans toreturn to graduate school for Ph.D.work on Central Asian literatureand culture. She may be reachedat <[email protected]>.
References
Abramzon 1975Saul M. Abramzon, Kirgizy i ikhetnogeneticheskie i istoriko-kul’turnye sviazi [The Kyrgyz andTheir Ethno-genetic, Historical, andCultural Relations]. Leningrad:Nauka, 1975.
Arik 1999
Kagan Arik. “Shamanism, Cultureand the Xinjiang Kazak: a NativeNarrative of Identity.” UnpublishedPh.D. dissertation. University ofWashington, 1999.
Bartol’d 1963
Vasilii V. Bartol’d. Sochineniia[Works]. Vol. 1. Moskva:Izdatel’stvo vostochnoi literatury,1963.
Basilov 1992
Vladimir N. Basilov. Shamanstvo unarodov Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana[Shamanism Among the People ofCentral Asia and Kazakhstan].Moskva: Nauka, 1992.
Basilov and Zhukovskaya 1989
Vladimir N. Basilov and Natal’ya L.Zhukovskaya. “Religious Beliefs.”In Nomads of Eurasia. Vladimir N.Basilov, ed. Seattle and London:University of Washington Press,1989, pp. 160-181.
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Garrone 2000
Patrick Garrone. Chamanisme etIslam en Asie Centrale. LaBaksylyk hier et aujourd’hui. Paris:Editions Maisonneuve, 2000.Note: Since I do not read FrenchI have not consulted this but list itbecause of its importance amongmodern studies of shamanism inCentral Asia.
Humphrey 1996
Caroline Humphrey, with UrguneOnon. Shamans and Elders:Experience, Knowledge, and Poweramong the Daur Mongols. Oxford:Oxford University Press 1996.
Privratsky 2001
Bruce Privratsky. MuslimTurkistan: Kazak Religion andCollective Memory. Richmond:Curzon Press, 2001.
Radloff 1989
Wilhelm Radloff. Iz Sibiri [FromSiberia]. Moskva: Nauka, 1989.
Shaniiazov 1974
Karim Shaniiazov. K etnicheskoiistorii uzbekskogo naroda:( i s t o r i ko -e tnog ra f i cheskoeissledovanie na materialakhkipchakskogo komponenta) [Onthe Ethnic Hisotry of the UzbekPeople: Historical andEthnographic Research on theMaterials of the KypchakComponent]. Tashkent: Izda-tel’stvo Fan, 1974.
Sukhareva 1975
O. Sukhareva. “Perezhitkidemonologii i shamanstva uravninnykh Tadzhikov [Remnantsof Demonology and Shamanismamong the Valley Tajiks].” InDomusul’manskie verovaniia iobriady v Srednei Azii [Pre-IslamicBeliefs and Customs in CentralAsia]. Vladimir N. Basilov, ed.Moskva: Nauka, 1975, pp. 5-93.
Valikhanov 1985
Chokan Valikhanov. Sobraniesochinenii [Collection of Works].Almaty: Kazakh Sovet Entsiklo-pediasy, 1985.
Notes
1. For the Kazakhs, BrucePrivratsky distinguishes severalcategories of healers. The baqshïis a shaman in the narrow senseof one who may engage in ecstaticbehavior in invoking spirits. Whatwe describe in this essay for theKyrgyz is more akin to the tawïpor healer, generally a womanconnected with the Islamictradition but not necessarily versedin its textual aspects. The severalcategories of activity observedamong the Kyrgyz baqshïs areshared by the tawïps and also togreater or lesser degrees areobserved among the othercategories of Kazakh healers. SeePrivratsky 2001, p. 194, and moregenerally his chapter 6. While thesemantic distinctions in Kyrgyzseem to parallel those Privratskyhas described, among the Kyrgyzthe term baqshï seems not to bequite so specific.
2. Her first name is Kalïi; the termapa means mother in Kyrgyz andit is usually used as a term ofrespect for older women.
3. For instance, a Tajik healer usedgoat’s blood to help her patientwho was suffering from stomachpain. See Sukhareva 1975, p. 62.
4. It is said that if a chosen personrefuses to be involved with healing,he/she might get sick and even candie later. Manaschis, the singers ofthe traditional epic Manas, similarlyreport experiencing illness whenthey are being “called” or initiatedinto their profession. Anotherbaqshï whom I interviewed,Kümüsh, likewise reported illnessand dreams as part of the initiationprocess.
5. Tamïr karmait in Kirghiz. This isthe common procedure for certainof the Kazakh healers [Privratsky2001, p. 204].
6. Kalïi apa used the word tigindeibolup kete turgan ubak bolso,meaning if the time has come forhim to become like that, insteadof the word to die.
7. In the Kazakh case, often 41sheep pellets are used [Privratsky2001, p. 212].
8. Leeches are also used to draw“spoiled blood.” [Although thisseems bizarre to those whoseperspective is modern Westernmedicine, the use of leeches waswidely practiced in the SovietUnion, not just in Central Asia.During his final illness in 1953,Soviet doctors applied leeches toStalin—ed.]
9. Since the flames consume theoxygen in the air trapped by theglass, suction is created within theglass which pulls the blood out ofthe incision.
10. The mullah could not give anexplicit answer to the question ofwhy one had to kiss the stone.
11. Ata means father in Kyrgyz. Itis more understandable if you readFather Kochkor, Father Zhumgal,etc.
12. By “the lake” she probablymeans Lake Ïsïk Kol.
13. Privratsky notes a similar useof the whip by Kazakh healers andalso the ritual of spitting[Privratsky 2001, pp. 206, 210-211].
14. Another village in northernKyrgyzstan. See map, p. 38.
15. A psychiatric clinic inKyrgyzstan.
16. It is obvious that by the religionshe means Islam.
17. She uses the word “seeing.”
18. Saiasat means “politics” inEnglish.
19. Although, she did not say itopenly, it is obvious that herparents lived during the anti-religious politics of the Sovietregime, and therefore, eventhough they knew how, they werenot able to practice healing.
