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Chapter 14 - Something about the history of trade and the Silk Road

Trade, attracts merchants, they come from all over the world. This is the road! Ways, directions. They need to be monitored, repaired, laid. Ensure the safety of the path, feed people and animals ...

Appear and their trade - transit - centers. Countries get richer. Naturally, someone wants to control everything, control, enrich themselves, give some countries technologies, but not others.

Thus, determining the development of some regions and the lag of others. This is already a policy.

Where trade, there is money, and therefore the development of medicine, science, culture, art, crafts.

In addition to trade roads, military roads are also developing. To make it easier to deploy troops to protect their territory, and the seizure of new lands.

For example, the Mongols in the 13th century, built one of these roads, it passed through a mountain gorge in Tien Shan, south of Sairam Lake. All along it had about 50 bridges, two carriages wide.

During the decline of the Tang empire, but already at the time when the empire lost its influence on the kingdom of Cao, in Davan, merchants came from Basra, Himyarita (Yemen), Sarandib (Ceylon). Chinese influence has weakened, the Arab has intensified. Everyone wanted to control the Silk Road.

In the city of Keder in the 10th century there were 10,000 caravanserais, this suggests that trade flourished. There were merchants from India, China, the Arab Caliphate, Byzantium, Persia, and sometimes even representatives from the countries of Oceania.

The mountain fortress of Esh in Afghanistan is one of the hundreds of key strongholds of control on the Silk Road. The second point is the fortress Gardez in Afghanistan, it controlled passes and bridges.

The city of Keder, he is Farab, existed from the first century BC to the 16th century of our era.

In the 5th - 15th centuries, the strategic trade route from Persia, through Central Asia to Mongolia and China, passed through Keder.

The busiest fair in Bolshoi An began from the beginning of January and lasted until the end of May. Where did merchants come from China, India, Persia, Afghanistan, Tibet.

In Maloy An, there was a large Sephardic quarter and they had great home libraries with the latest editions from Vienna and London, but this is already the 18th and 19th centuries.

The average weight of silver tenga was from 3 to 4 grams, the earlier years from 3 to 3.2 grams. Chemical analysis gave a sample of silver in 80 to 90 percent.

Since ancient times, caravan routes connecting the countries of the Far East with the West have crossed the territory of Central Asia. Transit trade was carried out along the Silk Road.

Communication (of the West and the East) went through Central Asia, which, due to its geographical position, simply could not be bypassed.

Contacts could not affect the nature of the culture of the peoples through whose lands they were carried out. Experiencing the proximity of powerful and highly developed states of the ancient world, Central Asia created a number of cultures in which Chinese, Iranian, Indian and ancient elements, later Arabic, mixed in the most odd way.

The constant influx of Turkic and Mongol nomadic tribes gave these cultures even greater uniqueness. It affected everything: in the economic, semi-settled - semi-nomadic structure of the Central Asian states, in painting, sculpture, architecture.

It was through Central Asia to the Middle East, and from there paper, ink, and xylographic typography came to Europe. Trade developed cultural and economic relations with various regions and continents. Central Asia was the transmission link for acquiring Chinese, Persian knowledge to Europe.

Refinements on Silk:

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Silk was paid taxes and tribute, it acts as the equivalent of money in settlements in trade operations. In the 6th - 5th centuries BC silk paid for military services and horse supplies. According to Sogdian sources, one piece of silk was worth 28 dirham, while a pair of working oxen was worth only 12 dirham. Even at the beginning of the 7th century AD one horse cost 4.5 cuts of silk.

In the Chinese, the Kingdom of Central Asia adopted the methods of silkworm breeding and the technology of making silk fabrics and paper, and the Chinese borrowed from the peoples of Central Asia the technology of making glass, glaze, fine cloth and cultivating garden and melon crops: grapes, pomegranates, beans, alfalfa. That is, the Silk Road, allowed to engage in the transfer of knowledge, skills, techniques and technologies.

Around the 3rd century AD The ancient Sogdian merchants opened a trade route to Semirechye, through the Dzungarian Gate. As it is known at that time the Sogdian merchants held the silk trade in their hands.

Dyeing fabric or thread, or rather fixing colors. Having mastered the first two technologies (growing a silk worm, getting a cocoon and unwinding a cocoon, that is, actually extracting a silk thread), the Sogdians began to make silk fabrics. However, their color faded faster than the Tang (ie Chinese) samples.

Numerous rock inscriptions and drawings found in the headwaters of the Indus in the Gilgit area by an expedition led by K. Jettmar can deliver valuable information on bilateral traffic along the southern segment of the Great Silk Road. (From Vakhan through the Karakorum Range to Swat) These inscriptions are dated 1-8 centuries AD. and most of them belong to the Kushan time (2-3 centuries). They are made by various Indian scripts, Bactrian, Parthian, Kushan, Sogdian, Chinese.

Silk was transported in pieces. The length and width of the pieces was regulated by law. So, for the Han time, the width of silk fabrics was about 0.5 m, and it was 9 m long. Such a piece was enough for making clothes.

After China established contacts with Central Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean, a wide variety of wool products began to flow into the country along the Great Silk Road, the names of which used Iranian and Arabic names. These are the taden carpets, bedspreads and curtains-tsuisou, tapestry chi fabrics and palazy pan. These imported products made a great impression on the ancient Chinese, unfamiliar with the technique of processing wool, flax, carpet production and tapestry weaving.

In the 3-5th century, Sogdians established constant contact with China.