(2014) Peaches To Samarkand. Long Distance-Connectivity, Small Worlds and Socio-Cultural Dynamics Across Eurasia, 300-800 CE

Preiser-Kapeller, Peaches to Samarkand (draft, November 2014)
Peaches to Samarkand. Long distance-connectivity, small worlds and socio-

cultural dynamics across Afro-Eurasia, 300-800 CE
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Division for Byzantine Research, Institute for Medieval
Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences/ Rmisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum,
Mainz (Germany)
Email: Johannes.Preiser-Kapeller@oeaw.ac.at /1
Draft for the workshop: Linking the Mediterranean. Regional and Trans-Regional
Interactions in Times of Fragmentation (300 -800 CE), Vienna, 11th-13th December
2014
0 Peaches to Samarkand
Among the exotic goods brought to the capital of Changan from Southeast Asia,
India and especially the Far West of Central Asia and beyond in order to meet the
cosmopolitan taste of the court and elites of the Tang dynasty (618-907), Chinese
sources mention fancy yellow peaches, large as goose eggs and with a colour like
gold. These were sent in the 7th century by the Kingdom of Samarkand (today
Uzbekistan), 3,700 km as the bird flies to the west of Changan.2
In the Middle Persian text Xusro and the page we are informed about selected fruits
consumed at the 6th/7th century court of the Sasanian Great King in Persia; besides
coconuts from India, dates from Arabia and pistachios from the Caspian Sea (which
later would find their way also to the Chinese court), walnuts and peaches from
Armenia were served.3
Both texts highlight one aspect of long-distance connectivity across ancient and
medieval Afro-Eurasia also to be found in Western texts as well as in modern
scholarship: the transport of small quantities of exotic and luxurious commodities for
the upmost layer of societies, whose socio-economic framework may have been
otherwise little affected by these exchanges. In his recent study on the Roman
economy, Peter Temin for instance stated: The Romans dealt with the Chinese over
the Silk Road, but travel was hard and long to get from one place to the other. Some
goods were exchanged, and some imperfect knowledge of each party about the
other went along the road, but the goods that were transported were hugely
expensive at their destination, and the information was distorted. It is interesting to
know about the Silk Road, but Rome and Han China were not in the same market.4
Yet the example of the peaches from Samarkand equally illustrates more significant
impacts of long-distance connectivity. The demand for these fruits at the courts of the
Chinese Emperors or the Persian kings would have little significance for the general
welfare for their cultivators in Central Asia or in Armenia; but they owed their ability to
raise these plants to earlier connections to the East (the mountainous areas of Tibet
and western China), from where the peach found its way to the west and via Persia
(hence prunus persica) around 300 BCE to Greece. This was the route via which
peaches originally came to Samarkand. The same is true for the apricot, which
originated from eastern Asia and around the 1 st century BCE became known to the
1 Research for this paper was supported with a Fellowship of the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit
Foundation in spring 2014. Some aspects were presented on earlier occasions at the Department of
History, Columbia University (New York; November 25th, 2013) and at the Conference Connecting the
Silk Road. Trade, People & Social Networks (400-1300 AD) at Leiden University and Hermitage
Amsterdam (May 17th-18th 2014).
2 Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand 1-3, 117; Laufer, Sino-Iranica 379.
3 Daryaee, The Persian Gulf Trade 402; Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand 147-148;
Laufer, Sino-Iranica 246-253.

4 Temin, The Roman Market Economy 11.
1
Mediterranean via Armenia (prunus armeniaca).5 Without doubt, the diffusion of

these and other crops (sugar, rice, cotton etc.) across Afro-Eurasia in the centuries
BCE and CE very much affected the socio-economic dynamics of agricultural
communities. These exchange processes did not depend on the existence of a
common market from Rome to China; as the notorious episode of the transfer of silk
production to Byzantium in Procopius illustrates, some worms and (of course) some
individuals with the necessary know-how were sufficient.6 Also Chris Wickham states:
It does not require so very dense a communications network for one region to
influence another in its material culture a single princess can do it (as with
Theophano and the court culture of late 10th-century Germany), or a single artisan or
group of artisans moving to a different region (). It certainly does not require
commercial ex-change for regions to interconnect at the level of their material
culture.7
The Silk Road is a classic example8; it was one of the least travelled routes in
human history and possibly not worth studying if tonnage carries, traffic, or the
number of travellers at any time were the sole measures of a given routes
significance. Yet the Silk Road changed history, largely because the people who
managed to travers part or all of the Silk Road planted their cultures like seeds of
exotic species carried to distant lands [sometimes in the literal meaning, as we have
seen; JPK]. () While not much of a commercial route, the Silk Road was important
historically this network of routes became the planets most famous cultural artery
for the exchange between east and west of religions, art, languages, and new
technologies.9 Long-distance connections across Afro-Eurasia thus are not only
relevant since they may provide some global perspective for the study of Late
Antiquity10; the dynamics and underlying structures of these exchange processes
provide also comparative material for the creation, maintenance or disruption of
socio-economic and cultural ties over various spatial and temporal scales in the
absence of dense networks of commerce or political authority a situation similar to
what we observe in Western Europe and parts of the Mediterranean after the end of
the institutional and infrastructural framework provided by the Roman Empire (see
also below).11 At the same time, for the former Roman sphere, Michael McCormick
has systematically surveyed many aspects of long-distance connectivity maintained
or re-established between the 5th and 9th century in his magisterial Origins of the
European Economy.12 My aim is of course less ambitious; first, I survey some
selected developments and intensities of long-distance connectivity, especially from
the perspective of some important intermediary regions, for the period between 550
and 850 CE. Second, I focus on what C. A. Bayly in his Birth of the Modern World
(2003) has called the lateral and the vertical dimension of phenomena of global
diffusion and exchange: the spatial range of mobility and communication of
individuals and objects which connected localities and clusters of localities along the
Silk routes and the vertical dimension of the impact of the material and immaterial
artefacts of these exchange in the respective local societies. Finally, I link these
5 Cappers, Roman Foodprints at Berenike 60-61 and 122; Laufer, Sino-Iranica 539-541.
6 Watson, Agricultural Innovation; Decker, Plants and Progress. Cf. also Proc. Bell. Pers. 4, 17, 1-8;
Dignas Winter, Rome and Persia 207-208.
7 Wickham, The Mediterranean around 800, 161.
8 For a critical approach towards this term cf. Rezakhani, The Road That Never Was; see also
Christian, Silk Roads or Steppe Roads.

9 Hansen, The Silk Road 235.
10 Cf. also Hodges, Dark Age Economics 117-121.
11 Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome; Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages.
12 McCormick, Origins of the European Economy.
2
observations with some discussions on the character of exchange and socio-

economic integration in the Roman and Post-Roman world as well as with some
general models of connectivity.13
1 Places and dynamics of connectivity across Afro-Eurasia, 500-850 CE

550-630 CE: the rise and clash of empires [see fig. 1]
In some places, India, Persia and Rome would meet only a few days of journey away
from the imperial borders, as Procopius describes for Dvin, then capital of the
Persian-controlled part of Armenia: Now Doubios is a land excellent in every respect
and especially blessed with a healthy climate and abundance of good water; and
from Theodosiupolis [= modern day Erzurum in Turkey, then the most important
Byzantine fortress in the region] it is removed a journey of eight days. In that region
there are plains suitable for riding and many very populous villages are situated in
very close proximity to one another, and numerous merchants conduct their business
in them. For from India and the neighbouring regions of Iberia [= Eastern Georgia]
and from practically all the nations of Persia and some from those under Roman
sway they bring merchandise and carry on their dealings with each other.14
Its capacity as place of exchange between merchants of the competing empires of
the Romans and the Persians, Dvin in the 6th century had taken over from the earlier
capital of Armenia, Artaxata (some 50 km northwest of Dvin). A law of the year
408/409 CE had limited trade at the Roman-Persian border to Artaxata as well as to
the cities of Nisibis and Kallinikon (in Mesopotamia).15 The commercial significance
of these cities in Armenia is also highlighted by the fact that in contrast to the places
in Mesopotamia, which were located either in Roman territory (Kallinikon) or right
behind the border (Nisibis, since 363 under Persian control), they were located deep
in the part of Greater Armenia which since 387 was under Sasanian suzerainty. Even
more, neither in 591 nor in 630, when they had to cede the lions share of Armenia to
Byzantium, the Persians were prepared to give up the control over Dvin [see fig. 2].16
As also Procopius indicates, from Dvin routes both to the north through Georgia and
beyond the Caucasus as well as to the south to Azerbaijan and Media in the interior
of the Sasanian Empire would connect to the Silk roads. The connection to trans-
regional Eurasian mercantile networks is also testified through Sasanian seals for
merchandise found in Dvin and stemming from the city of Ardaxir-Xvarrah (mod.
Firuzbd) in the province of Fars; similar types have been found in Aq Tepe in
modern-day Afghanistan. From Ardaxir-Xvarrah also existed maritime connections
to the Persian Gulf and the routes of the maritime Silk Road to Arabia, India, Sri
Lanka and East Africa, especially via the harbour of Rev Ardaxir (see also below). 17
Yet despite its position as trans-regional hub and the enthusiastic description of
Procopius, Dvin at the same time was located in a highly fragmented political
landscape. Besides its division between Rome and Persia, Armenia was dominated
by several dozens of houses (tun) of magnates (the naarark); sources describe
their constant struggle for power and prestige.18 This political framework did not only
13 In general, Africa, India and Southeast Asia are clearly underrepresented in this paper; the focus is
on Byzantium, Persia resp. the Caliphate, Central Asia and China. But I intend to integrate other
regions to a higher degree in the final version. For Africa cf. also Mitchell, African Connections, for
Southeast Asia cf. Jacq-Hergoualc'h, The Malay Peninsula.
14 Proc. Bell. Pers 2, 25, 1-3; Garsoan, Interregnum 31; Manandian, Trade and Cities.
15 Codex Justinianus 4, 63, 4 (ed. Krueger); Dignas Winter, Rome and Persia 204-207.
16 Dlger, Regesten der Kaiserurkunden nr. 104, 194, 201.
17 Lukonin, Political, Social and Administrative Institutions 681746; Daryaee, The Persian Gulf Trade
1415; Miri, Sasanian Prs 47-50, 103-104, 109.

18 Cf. also Preiser-Kapeller, Aristocrats, Mercenaries, Clergymen and Refugees.
3
restrict the chances of collective action of the Armenian aristocracy, but also the
stability of foreign domination; representatives installed by the imperial overlords
were not able to enforce universal allegiance to the suzerain. This also the Persian
had to learn several times in the 5th and 6th century, once again in the year 570:
Then in the 41st year of the reign of Khosrov, son of Kawat, Vardan [Mamikonean]
rebelled and rejected submission to Persian rule in unison with all the Armenians.
They killed the marzpan [= the Persian governor] Surn, taking him by surprise in the
city of Dvin, seized much booty, and turned their allegiance to the Greeks. () Then
the Greek king [Justin II] made an oath with the Armenians and confirmed the (..)
pact (ut) (). He gave them an imperial army in support. When they had received
the army, they attacked the city of Dvin; after a siege the destroyed it from top to
bottom, and expelled the Persian troops who were stationed in it.19 On two similar
occasions earlier (in 450 and 491), the emperors in Constantinople had declined
requests of Armenian insurgents for help; but Justin II thought he could risk war with
Persia because of his recent alliance with a new power in their back: the Khanate of
the Turks in Central Asia.
This opportunity arose from significant changes of the political landscape in the Far
East of the Silkroad: in 552, an alliance of steppe people known in the Chinese and
Western sources as Turks defeated their former overlords, the Rouran, who had
dominated the steppes to the north of China in the first half of the 6 th cent. Some
elements of this defeated alliance fled westwards and arrived 557/558 north of the
Caucasus, from where they established contact with Emperor Justinian I; this was the
first encounter of the Byzantines with the people they called Avars, who would have
considerable effect on Byzantium and the history of the South-eastern Europe over
the next century.20 At the same time, the Turks under Muqan Qaghan (553-572) and
his uncle Istemi (552-575/576) established their control over the vast areas from the
Caspian Sea to the borders of China. There, the dynasties of the Zhou and the Qi
fought for the control of the north of the then fragmented country. Muqan Qaghan
exploited this situation and had both the Zhou and the Qi pay 100,000 pieces of silk
pear year for his support or at least neutrality; this huge amount of silk extracted by
non-mercantile ways dwarfed all quantities circulating in Central Asia in the pre-
ceding decades through commerce.21 Buyers possibly could be found via the routes
further to the west, which the Turks also now controlled. In 560, Muqans uncle Istemi
had closed an alliance with the Sasanian Great King Xusro I (531-579); they
conquered and divided among them the Empire of the Hephthalites, who had been a
dangerous enemy of Persia in the 100 years before. Thereby, the Turks also
integrated into their realm the city states of Sogdia (among these most prominently
Samarkand) [see fig. 3]. At least since the 3rd century CE, the Iranian-speaking
Sogdians had established a far reaching network of communities and traders from
the borders of Persia to the capitals of China. Lacking a strong central power within
their homeland (similar to Armenia), the communities of Sogdia had established a
symbiosis with the nomadic empires of the Kushan and later on of the Hephthalites
(profiting from the large amount of silver extracted by the later as tribute from
Sasanian Persia, for instance), who claimed sovereignty over their cities and whom
they served as administrators, diplomats and traders. Thereby they achieved a pre-
dominant position in Central Asian trade in the 6 th cent. This ascendance was also
19 Seb os 8: 6768 (Abgaryan; tr. Thomson and Howard-Johnston, Sebeos I, 67); Greatrex and Lieu,
Eastern Frontier 137138 and 149; Dlger, Regesten der Kaiserurkunden n. 17.
20 Pohl, Die Awaren, esp. 18-57; Baumer, The History of Central Asia 175-176.
21 de La Vaissire, Sogdian traders 209-210; Hansen, The Silk Road 75; Baumer, The History of
Central Asia 174-177; Kordoses, Oi Tourkoi 73-77; Lewis, China between Empires 149-150.
4
bolstered by demographic growth and an increase in the irrigated area and the
number of settlements in Sogdia in the 5th and 6th cent.22 On this background, there
emerged what de La Vaissire has called a Turco-Sogdian milieu or fusion (also in
the form of family unions), which would play a significant role in the history of both
Central Asia and the neighbouring empires, especially China, until the mid-8th cent.23
As the Byzantine historian Menander Protector reports, the Sogdians suggested to
the Turkish Khan to send an embassy to the Persians, to request that the Sogdians
be allowed to travel there and sell raw silk, stemming from the latest tributes from
China (respectively from their own production established already a considerable
time before the 6th cent.). Equally, the leader of this Turko-Sogdian embassy,
Maniakh, was a Sogdian. The Sogdians had established commercial connections
with Persia in the centuries ago and served as intermediaries of goods to the east
and also to the north; this becomes evident from an unusually high number of
Sasanian and (to a lesser degree) late Roman silver vessels and coins found in the
Kama-Ural-region near modern-day Perm in Russia; several bear Sogdian
inscriptions. From later trading relations in that region we can assume that these
objects were exchanged for furs. On the basis of dated Sasanian coins, one can
observe a peak in this trade from the later 5th to mid-6th century; but the latest pieces
stem from the 8th century, thereby documenting a continuity of this route up to its
second peak in the 9th/10th century (see below).24 Yet the reaction of the Sasanian
Great King was contrary to the one the Sogdian messengers may have expected on
the basis of earlier relations and the recent alliance against the Hephthalites. When
they asked for the permission to sell the raw silk there without any hindrance, the
Great King declined this request and, following the council of his advisers, bought the
silk the Sogdians had brought with them for a fair price and ordered to burn it in the
fire before the very eyes of the envoys. In this way, the Persians made clear that
they were prepared to accept the Sogdians as intermediaries beyond their borders,
but not to allow for a free or unhindered foreign commerce on their soil (just as little
as in their trade with Rome, see above).25
But Maniakh and the Sogdians developed a plan to circumvent the Persians both in
terms of trade and of diplomacy: Maniakh, the leader of the Sogdians, took this
opportunity and advised Sizabul [= Istemi] that it would be better for the Turks to
cultivate the friendship of the Romans and send their raw silk for sale to them. In a
second embassy, Maniakh travelled along the northern branch of the Silk road to
the Caucasus and the Black Sea and from there to Constantinople, bringing a
valuable gift of raw silk and a letter from Istemi to Emperor Justin II. The Emperor
accepted the Khans proposal and sent back with Maniakh a Byzantine ambassador
(Zemarchos), who not only established diplomatic exchange with the Turks but also
used the northern route for his journey and returned with considerable quantities of
silk. In the following years, several delegations would travel between Constantinople
and the Turkish court respectively Sogdia; from a later passage in Menander
Protector we learn that more one hundred and six Scythians of the people called the
Turks had found their way to the Bosporus and accompanied another Byzantine
delegate on his journey to Central Asia via the Crimea, where even a colony of
22 de La Vaissire, Sogdian traders 103-112; Baumer, The History of Central Asia 224-226; Kordoses,
Oi Tourkoi 83-86.
23 de La Vaissire, Sogdian traders 197; Hansen, The Silk Road 120-122.
24 Frye, Byzantine and Sasanian Trade; de La Vaissire, Sogdian traders 249-253; Sauer et al.,
Persias Imperial Power 602-603; Christian, Silk Roads or Steppe Roads.

25 Men. Prot: Blockley 111-115 (Blockley); de La Vaissire, Sogdian traders 209, 228-232; Ertl,
Silkworms, Capital and Merchant Ships 247-248; Baumer, The History of Central Asia 177.
5
Sogdian traders may have been established.26 Emperor Justin II not only hoped for
commercial benefits, but also for military support of the Turks against the Persians.
On this basis, he accepted the Armenians request for help against their Sasanian
overlords. Of course, the conquest of Dvin would have further strengthened the
alternative Turko-Sogdian-Byzantine silk route via the Caucasus to the
disadvantage of the Persians. This commercial perspective also the Armenian
insurgents around Vardan Mamikonean recognised, since they presented a large
quantity of unwoven silk (cum magno syrici intexti pondere) when they were
received by the emperor in Constantinople.27
The general significance of these far-reaching political and commercial shifts across
Eurasia also becomes evident from Persian measures in the renewed war with
Byzantium; between 570 and 575 (dates in the literature differ), a Sasanian army was
sent to Yemen in order to help to expel the (Christian) Abyssinians (from the
kingdom of Aksum), who, backed by the Byzantines, had invaded the country in
518/519 and 524/525. Here the bone of content was the control over the maritime
routes around the Arab peninsula into the Indian Ocean [see fig. 4], but also access
to mining areas in western Arabia and Yemen; in this trade, since the 3rd cent. CE,
the kingdoms of Aksum (in Ethiopia) and of Himyar (in south-western Arabia) had
emerged as important regional powers. Especially the Aksumites since their
Christianisation in the 4th cent. also had close connections with Egypt and Syria; they
also served as intermediaries to the regions of Southern Arabia, East Africa and the
commerce in the Indian Ocean; via Byzantium, these goods (and most probably,
around 540 the plague from natural sources of infection in East Africa) also found
their way to Western and Central Europe in the 5th and 6th century (see below)28. As
Procopius writes, Emperor Justinian had hoped via these routes to replace the
Persians as intermediaries for the trade of silk from the east with his Aksumite allies,
but it proved impossible for the Ethiopians to buy silk from the Indians, for the
Persian merchants always locate themselves at the very harbours where the Indian
ships first put in (since they inhabit the adjoining country) and are accustomed to buy
the whole cargoes.29 Equally, Kosmas Indikopleustes describes the strong presence
especially of (Nestorian) Christians from the Sasanian Empire in the harbours of
India and Sri Lanka, to which even horses were brought from Persia, besides
Christian communities on the island of Socotra30, in South Arabia and Aksum.31
26 Dlger, Regesten der Kaiserurkunden nr. 13, 41; de La Vaissire, Sogdian traders 235-237, 242-
249; Pohl, Die Awaren 40-43; Baumer, The History of Central Asia 177-180; Kordoses, Oi Tourkoi
104-148; Nechaeva, Embassies 140-145.
27 Gregory of Tours IV, 40: 173 (ed. Krusch Levison); de La Vaissire, Sogdian traders 235-236.
28 Tomber, Indo-Roman Trade 161-174; Fitzpatrick, Provincializing Rome; Lennartz, Die Rolle
gyptens; Sorg, Byzanz als Drehscheibe; Morony, Economic Boundaries; Drauschke, Byzantine and
oriental imports. For Christian merchants in the Western Indian Ocean cf. esp. Seland, Networks and
social cohesion; Seland, Trade and Christianity. On the plague cf. Stathakopoulos, Famine and
Pestilence; Little (ed.), Plague and the End of Antiquity, and McCormick, Rats, Communications, and
Plague. Also the plague pandemic between 541 and 750 deserves a more detailed discussion as
result of long-distance connectivity in the final version of this paper. The same is true for the impact of
climatic and environmental changes, cf. McCormick - Dutton - Mayewski, Volcanoes and the Climate
Forcing, and M. McCormick et al., Climate Change during and after the Roman Empire.
29 Proc. Bell. Pers. I, 20, 9-13. Bowersock, The Throne of Adulis; Power, The Red Sea; Finneran,
Ethiopian Christian material culture. For diplomatic contacts between the regions of the southern Red
Sea and Rome resp. Byzantium cf. also Nechaeva, Embassies 198-202.
30 An impressive evidence for the long-distance connectivity of this (today) remote island is a
sanctuary detected in 2000 in the Hoq cave, containing graffiti in South Arabian, Indian Brahmi,
Ethiopic Geez, Greek and Palmyrene Aramaic script, the later one to be dated to the year 257/258
CE, cf. Seland, Archaeology of Trade 367.
6
These written sources are equally bolstered by archaeological evidence, which

illustrate a continuous transport of pottery from Iran to Sri Lanka between the 3 rd and
9th cent or the export of Indian red polished ware from Gujarat to the cities of Siraf
and Rishar at the Persian Gulf, for instance.32 Recent findings indicate even more
far-reaching relations between the Sasanian sphere and South-East Asia (Thailand,
Oc Eo in the delta of the Mekong); equally we have evidence from the early post-
Sasanian period for the presence of Persian ships in China proper. 33 At least in the
6th and 7th centuries, the position of Persian merchants on the maritime silk routes
seems to have been stronger than of the ones from the Byzantine sphere.
These events highlight both the importance the Romans and the Persians attributed
to the access to or control over these long-distance routes (although full-scale
political actions as the Byzantine mission to the Turks or the Persian expedition to
Yemen were relatively rare events) as well as the range of contacts and interactions
which could emerge from the political and economic entanglements between polities
across Eurasia in Late Antiquity. Although such teleconnections were also traced
for pre-ceding centuries, at least the quantity of source evidence may indicates an
increase of their range and density.34 In contrast to what one may expect (also on the
basis of developments in other parts of the Mediterranean world35), for large areas of
Western Eurasia this did not change during and after the even more turbulent
decades of the 7th century.36
630-700 CE: shifts of powers and the hour of the intermediaries [see fig. 5]
The war which Justin II provoked in 571 brought not the quick victory he may have
hoped for due to the support of Armenians and Turks (who even changed sides in
576), but ended only in 590. In 602, the next war broke out between the empires,
which during its 28 years almost led to the collapse of first Byzantium and then Persia
and devastated vast areas of the Near East. During that war, Emperor Herakleios in
625 re-established the alliance with the (Western) Turkish Khanate, which provided
31 Kosmas 11,14 (ed. Schneider); Kominko, The World of Kosmas; Seland, Networks and social
cohesion 386-388 (with map of the possible Christian network in the western Indian Ocean).
32 Tomber, Indo-Roman Trade 161-174; Seland, Archaeology of Trade; Sidebotham, Berenike;
Hourani, Arab Seafaring 38-46; Daryaee, The Persian Gulf Trade; Potter, The Persian Gulf 61-65;
Ricks, Persian Gulf Seafaring; Whitehouse - Williamson, Sasanian Maritime Trade; Chakravarti, Trade
in early India; Ray, The Beginnings; Connan Carter, A geochemical study; Connan Van de Velde,
An overview of bitumen trade; Stern Connan et al., From Susa to Anuradhapura; Pigulewskaja,
Byzanz auf den Wegen nach Indien; Morony, Economic Boundaries; Lewis, Chinas cosmopolitan
Empire 161. This intensive trade may not have affected all areas around the Persian Gulf to the same
degree: for the Eastern Arab coastal regions, Derek Kennet in contrast to the image created by
scholarship (on the basis of the written sources) due to archaeological evidence states a relative
decline in the demographic and economic prosperity during Sasanian times in comparison with the
earlier period, cf. Kennet, The decline of eastern Arabia.
33 Ritter, Vom Euphrat zum Mekong; Whitehouse - Williamson, Sasanian Maritime Trade.
34 Cf. F. J. Teggart, Rome and China. A Study of Correlations in Historical Events. Berkeley 1939, for
an early example of such scholarship; cf. also Fitzpatrick, Provincializing Rome. On the intensification
of contacts and commerce and demographic growth in the 6th cent. cf. Morony, Economic Boundaries,
esp. 183: The Sasanian period saw an expansion of riverine irrigated agriculture in Sistan, Khuzistan,
and Iraq, and the beginning of a revival of irrigation with underground channels on the coastal plain of
Uman. The irrigation systems in Sistan and Khuzistan go back to the early and middle Sasanian
periods, but the greatest expansion of irrigated agriculture in Sasanian Iraq and its development in
Sasanian Uman belong to the sixth century. Cf. also Christensen, The Decline of Iranshahr.
35 Morony, Economic Boundaries 179-180; Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome 123-132.
36 Morony, Economic Boundaries 180, also on the boundary in the socio-economic trajectories
between Western Europe and Byzantium on the one side and the new Arab-Islamic sphere on the
other side in the 7th/8th cent.
7
him with essential military support in the Trans-Causasian region.37 Main

beneficiaries of the exhaustion of the great powers were the Arabs who between 636
and 642 bereaved the Byzantine Empire of its richest provinces in Syria and Egypt
and conquered the entire Sasanian Empire between 636 and 652 (thereby
integrating the western branches of the trans-Afro-Eurasian routes from Eastern
Persia via the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea into one realm as the Sasanians had
done for a short period between 619 and 628).38 Also Armenia as intermediary region
frequently was theatre of war and suffered from the campaigns of Persians,
Byzantines, Turks and Arabs (and later also Khazars, who became the pre-dominant
power in the steppes north of the Caucasus after the disintegration of the Turkish
Khanate between 630 and 66039). Dvin was conquered and plundered several times.
Still, at least between the end of the Persian-Byzantine war in 630 and until the final
integration of Armenia into the Caliphate after 700, the country, first due to the
weakness of the neighbouring empires and then due to a favourable treaty with the
Caliph, experienced a period of relative prosperity. This became manifest (both
according to written sources and the monumental evidence) in an impressive building
activity (Patrick Donabdian calls it lge dor of Armenian architecture) as well as
rich scholarly production.40 Equally, the long-distance connections of the earlier
period were maintained.
Witness to both phenomena (scholarship and long range-connectivity) is Anania from
the province of irak (northwest of Dvin). In his so-called autobiography, Anania
describes how he as young student in the 630s (after the end of the Byzantine-
Persian war and before the Arab advance), dissatisfied with the quality of education
in his homeland, set out for Byzantium to find an adequate instructor. He first
travelled to Theodosiupolis/Karin (Erzurum) and then to the province of Armenia
quarta (the region around Martyrupolis/today Silvan). There he studied with a scholar
named Kristosatur, who could not satisfy his appetite for knowledge. Therefore,
Anania intended to move to Constantinople, but on the way near Trebizond he
encountered another group of Armenian students coming from the capital, who (after
a maritime voyage to Sinop) where on their way home. They recommend to him a
professor of mathematics named Tychikos, who lived in Trebizond. Tychikos had
served in the Byzantine Army in Armenia, where he had learned the Armenian
language, before his studies had led him to Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome and
Constantinople. With him, Anania now studied for several years before returning to
Armenia, where he became the most distinguished scholar of his time with a
continuing interest into the wider world.41
In another short text, Ananias describes the journey of a noble kinsman to Bal
(today in Afghanistan), where he purchased a very valuable pearl, which he then
profitably sold piece for piece to several business partners on his route home to irak
in the cities of Ganjak (nowadays in North-western Iran), Naavan (today in
Azerbaijan) and Dvin (Anania uses this story as mathematical exercise). 42 Bal as
place of mercantile activity of Armenians again connects them to the networks of the
37 Baumer, The History of Central Asia 180-181; Kordoses, Oi Tourkoi 197-220; Dlger, Regesten der
Kaiserurkunden n. 183.
38 Morony, Economic Boundaries.
39 Cf. Golden Ben-Shammai Rna-Tas (eds.), The World of the Khazars.
40 Garsoan, Interregnum 30-50; Donabdian, Lge dor.
41 Greenwood, A Reassessment 131186, also with English translations of all relevant texts
42 Greenwood, A Reassessment. Cf. also Pourshariati, Decline and Fall 136-140, and Preiser-
Kapeller, Aristocrats, Mercenaries, Clergymen and Refugees, on the military presence of Armenian
nobility and troops in that region (in the service of the Sasanian Great King in early 7 th cent.), which
may have also fostered mercantile activity.
8
Silk road and to the trading diaspora of the Sogdians (as well as to the Buddhist
world, since according to the famous Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, in the 630s around
100 Buddhist monasteries could be found in and around the city43). The Sogdians are
equally mentioned in the so-called Armenian Geography from the second half of the
7th century, attributed to Anania of irak44. In its core, the text is a translation of the
Geography of Ptolemy, but complemented with many contemporary information,
which provide an impression of the geographical horizon of Armenian scholarship,
but also mercantile interests in this period. Bal and the regions of Central Asia are
described in greater detail (V, 34); the Sogdians are described as rich and
industrious traders on the routes between Iran and China, which is a source of silk,
saffron and various spices.
In the second half of the 7th century, similarly to the Armenians, the Sogdians profited
from large scale political changes in their neighbourhood: the collapse of the
Sasanian Empire removed a sometimes unpleasant competitor to the south, while
mercantile links to Iran were maintained (as is illustrated by the continuous flow of
late Sasanian and Arab-Sasanian coins before and after the Arab conquest to places
such as Turfan45). Again similar to Armenia, only from the early 8 th century onwards,
the Caliphate started in earnest to integrate the Sogdian cities into its empire. On the
other side, the re-unified Chinese Empire of the Tang Dynasty between 640 and 692
destroyed the Eastern Turkish Khanate and integrated all important cities of the
eastern branches of Silk Road into its realm, including numerous Sogdian
communities in these places, but not Sogdia proper, whose cities nevertheless
recognized nominally Chinese sovereignty. As in the empire of the Hephthalites and
the Turks (and already in pre-ceding Chinese polities), Sogdians used the
opportunities of this enormous unified empire and established themselves in many
cities from Central Asia deep into the northern provinces of China. Again, they served
as administrators, merchants, but also as craftsmen, who provided the
cosmopolitan Tang elite both with exotic goods from the West (the peaches from
Samarkand), but also more essential commodities such as ten thousands of horses
from the steppe for the armies of the emperor. The silk, which under the Turks had
been extracted from China as tribute, now found its way in even bigger numbers to
Central Asia as pay for the thousands of soldiers in the Tang garrisons in that areas.
Sogdian merchants met their daily requirements and made additional profits by
selling the silk at high prices to places further to west. In general, the Sogdian
communities equally experienced an ge dor during that period.46
This may also be true for a third intermediary region within the long-distance
networks of Afro-Eurasia, the Persian Gulf. Already in the 640s, Arab troops used the
harbours of the area for sea raids from the Gulf to the mouth of Indus.47 But
archaeological evidence illustrates especially the continuity of maritime trade
connections, with findings of Sasanian-Islamic ceramics and other objects in East
Africa down to South Africa and Madagascar, in India (on the site of Mndvi in
43 Xuanzang I: 34 (tr. Li); Foltz, Buddhism in the Iranian World 207-208.

44 Armenian Geography (Hewsen). Cf. also Marquart, rnahr.
45 Skaff, Sasanian and Arab-Sasanian Silver Coins; Hansen, The Silk Road 94-96; de La Vaissire,
Sogdian traders 173.

46 de La Vaissire, Sogdian traders 119-210; de La Vaissire Trombert, Des Chinois et des Hu;
Hansen, The Silk Road 82, 143-157; Skaff, The Sogdian Trade Diaspora; Baumer, The History of
Central Asia 227-243; Twitchett, Sui and Tang China 220-230; Lewis, China between Empires 165-
167; Lewis, Chinas cosmopolitan Empire 147-153, 157-172; Kordoses, Tang China 200-204; Wang,
Tang China 30-45; Rossabi, A History of China 138-144; Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand
58-70, and Skaff, Sui-Tang China 241-271 (on horse trade).
47 Hourani, Arab Seafaring 53-55; Ray, The Beginnings.
9
Gujarat, for instance) and Southeast Asia.48 Even more, recent archaeological
excavations, combined with a re-dating of ceramics and of an important hagiographic
text of the (Nestorian) Church of East (the History of Mar Yonan) indicate an
expansion of monastic institutions between the middle of the seventh and the end of
the eighth century in the region (especially for two sites, Kharg Island in Iran and the
island of Sir Bani Yas in the UAE). Both these sites and the textual evidence testify
to a substantial investment of economic and cultural capital in monastic institutions in
the early Islamic period by the Christian elites of the Persian Gulf; the History of Mar
Yonan in turn suggests that this surplus wealth derived principally from trade.
These mercantile activities included several spatial and quantitative scales, from the
transport of bulk goods such as wine or grain from nearby Iranian regions to the trade
of luxury objects (such as pearls as in the story of Anania of irak, see above, or
spices) with India or even China (where pearls from that region were famous).
According to the History of Mar Yonan, the profit from one cargo of a ship which
had traded with China was used to buy landed property sufficient for the provision of
a monastery. In addition, the monasteries themselves were entangled in such
networks of exchange, as ceramic evidence of Indian origin for instance indicates.49
The monastic community on the island of Kharg was in a distance of only 45 km to
Rev Ardaxir, which also in the Armenian Geography of Anania (V, 31) is still listed
as important port at the Persian Gulf (but also as source of pearls, which were
distinguished according to their quality and value). The city was also seat of a
metropolitan of the Eastern Church with a far reaching network of bishoprics,
including the ecclesiastical provinces of Bet Mazunaye (the Oman peninsula) and Bet
Qatraye (the north-eastern shores of the Gulf). A temporary schism from 647 to 676
between the ecclesiastical centre in Seleukia-Ktesiphon and the see of Bet Qatraye
hints at the self-confidence of the bishops in that area in that period. In general, the
8th and 9th century have been identified as Golden age of the Church of the East
and this was equally true for the Christian diaspora in the intermediary region
between Mesopotamia, Persia and the wider world of the Indian Ocean, which would
become even more important from the mid-8th century onwards, when the capital of
the Islamic world was relocated to Baghdad.50
Before the building of Baghdad, the Red Sea could claim such a position as maritime
intermediary between the centres of the new Caliphate in the Hijaz (Mecca and
Madina) and traditional long-distance routes. The re-orientation of networks of
distribution towards the holy sites of Islam was set into motion by Arab commanders
right after the conquest of Egypt with their excavation of the Canal of Trajan, which
linked the Nile with the Red Sea. Thereby, the grain from Egypt, which had fed Rome
and then Constantinople in earlier times, could be transported to the Hijaz via the
harbour of al-Qulzum (Roman Clysma). This supply lines were also maintained after
the re-location of the residence of the Caliph to Damascus in 661, with a temporary
interruption during a rebellion in Madina against the Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur (754-
775). Yet while the quantity of maritime transport across medium range distances on
the Red Sea within the Arab sphere increased (one has also to take into account the
new scale of mobility towards the holy sites of pilgrimage in the Hijaz), in contrast to
the Persian Gulf, traditional connections further south and onwards into the Indian
48 Ritter, Vom Euphrat zum Mekong; LaViolette Fleisher, The Urban History of a Rural Place; Ray,
The Beginnings 44-45.
49 Payne, Monks, dinars and date palms; Carter, Christianity in the Gulf; Kennet, The decline of
eastern Arabia 89-94; Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand 242-245; Daryaee, The Persian
Gulf Trade 3.
50 Carter, Christianity in the Gulf, esp. 106; Payne, Monks, dinars and date palms.
10
Ocean seem to have weakened. The Roman port of Berenike had been given up
already in the later 6th century; after 630 Aksum was abandoned as capital, equally
the port of Qana in the former territory of the Himyarites in Yemen. In general and in
contrast to the earlier period and to the Persian Gulf at the same time (see above),
we also hear nothing anymore about a specific share of Christian communities in
commercial activities in the Red Sea. Only from the late 9th century onwards, we
learn more again on trade between the harbours of Egypt, for instance, and the
Indian Ocean signalising a further shift in the focuses of long-distance commerce
(see below).51
In total, the decades 630-700 are characterised by a remarkable continuity of long-
distance connectivity, in some intermediary regions even contributing to a socio-
economic heyday despite dramatic political and military changes which clearly
affected other regions (such as the remaining provinces of the Byzantine Empire) in a
significantly different way. For this period, we also possess another text sometimes
attributed to Ananias of irak, the Armenian Itinerary (Monaapk)52, which can be
dated in the years between 638 and 762; it contains descriptions and distances for
six long distance routes from Dvin in different parts of the world, from the Persian
Gulf to the Caucasus, from Eastern Iran to Rome and the Atlantic Ocean. The
terminus ante quem for its dating is provided by the fact that it does not mention the
city of Baghdad; the relocation of the centre of the Caliphate to Mesopotamia would
constitute one of the several significant changes of the 8th century.
700-850: different imperial dynamics and the re-location of main axes of

commerce
The relatively beneficial conditions for Armenia as de facto autonomous part of the
Caliphate came to an end in the early 8th century, when Damascus reacted to
Armenian attempts to exchange Arab suzerainty with the Byzantine one with the
establishment of a more strict regime in the country (also concurrent with a general
centralising tendency in the Caliphate). This included the installation of garrisons in
the important fortresses near the Byzantine frontier and in the capital of Dvin. It
became seat of an Arab governor (ostikan) for the entire southern Caucasian region
(the new province of Arminiya), who also enforced regular tax payments. As in most
cases, different factions of the Armenia nobility reacted differently: while a group
around the until then leading house of Mamikonean tried several times to remove
Arab rule with violence, especially the increasingly important family of the Bagratuni
followed a policy of collaboration with the Arab authorities.53 These put down all
rebellions by force and executed or deported unruly individuals, often into far away
regions of the Caliphate: (The Caliph) ordered them to be taken to a desert place
called Eman [= Yemen] and to be kept there in prison for the rest of their lives.54
While the ge dor of the 7th century thus came to an end (as also a dramatic
decline in the building activity indicates), Dvin itself remained a place of commerce
and craftsmenship. Arab sources mention it especially as place of origin of textiles,
which were transported also to the capital of Baghdad, which became the new focus
51 Cappers, Roman Foodprints at Berenike 15; Sidebotham, Berenike; Cooper, The Medieval Nile 230-
251; Hourani, Arab Seafaring 139; . Seland, Archaeology of Trade; Seland, Networks and social
cohesion 389.
52 Edited and translated in Armenian Geography (Hewsen).
53 Cf. also Garsoan, Interregnum.
54 ewond c. 21: 112 (Ezean; tr. Arzoumanian, 113). The removal or extinction of several noble
families created also opportunities for immigrating (or also converted) Muslim elites to create regional
power bases within historical Armenia.
11
of commerce. The main axis of commerce through the Caucacus region now had a
north-south orientation, connecting the central province of the Caliphate with the
areas further north under control of the Khazars (see below). The Arab control over
Dvin was maintained also after the establishment of a new Armenian kingdom by the
Bagratunis in the 880s, who never managed to conquer the Emirate emerging in the
city when political power in the Caliphate became more and more fragmented. In that
period, the Bagratuni monarchy presented itself as commercial intermediary between
the Byzantine Empire and the its neighbouring Islamic polities to the East thus in a
similar position as in pre-ceding centuries, albeit on a less far-reaching scale then in
the period of Procopius or Anania.55
Around the same time as in Armenia, the Arabs established their firm control over the
cities of Sogdia between 705 and 715; in 712, Samarkand fell and became residence
of an Arab governor and his troops. Similarly to Armenia, the new rulers had an
interest in the maintenance of trade; on several occasions, merchants were spared
during the conquest of cities. Some groups were also prepared to accommodate with
the new regime and to exploit the potential for mercantile expansion due to the
integration within the Arab-Islamic Empire, which had also eliminated barriers for
Sogdian commerce towards the earlier Sasanian sphere. In the 8th and 9th century,
Sogdian traders are documented in Iraq, the former heartland of the Sasanians and
with the foundation of Baghdad also of the Abbasid Caliphate, and even in Oman at
the Persian Gulf, thus connecting the terrestrial and maritime routes of long-distance
commerce. But in general, they found themselves at best in the second position after
Persian merchants; the Caliphate did not provide similar opportunities for a spread of
the Sogdian trading diaspora as the empire of the Tang had done in the century
before. Under the Tang, the Sogdians were also able to maintain their various
religious affiliations (Zoroastrian, Manichaean, Christian, Buddhist), while a full
integration into the elites of the Caliphate demanded (at least, outward) conversion to
Islam. Several factions of the Sogdian aristocracy before and after victory of the
Arabs over Chinese forces in the battle of Talas 751 tried to shake off Arab rule, but
without success; again similar to Armenia, the violent reactions of the Arab regime
led to an removal or extinction of parts of the old elite. This fostered processes of
Iranisation and Islamisation, leading to a disappearance of Sogdian language and
other specific cultural features in the 10th/11th cent.56
Declining was also the share of Sogdian merchants, at least in the evidence, in the
routes leading from the Iranian world to the north, although trade intensified along
this axis with the end of hostilities between Arabs and Khazars and the foundation of
Baghdad from the 770s onwards. Instead, merchants from the region of Khorezm to
the northwest of Sogdia, who are already mentioned in the 6 th century and also in the
Armenian Geography of Anania as traders in that area (then still in cooperation with
the Sogdians), became the most important intermediaries for the trade between the
Islamic-Iranian world and the north. This was even more the case when due to the
weakening of the Abbasid centre and rise of powerful dynasties in the Iranian east
the main axis of commerce moved from the Caucasus-Baghdad route (dominant
between 800 and 870) to an eastern route from Khorezm to the upper Volga, where
the Volga-Bulgarians tried to free themselves from their Khazar overlords. From there
Scandinavian merchants provided connections to the Baltic Sea, Scandinavia and
55 Garsoan, Interregnum 32-33. For the intermediary role of the Bagratuni cf. Yovh. Dras. 31, 12
(transl. Maksoudian 138); Preiser-Kapeller, erdumn, ucht, carayutiwn 189.
56 de La Vaissire, Sogdian traders 265-290; Hansen, The Silk Road 129-138; Baumer, The History of
Central Asia 244-254.

12
Western Europe.57 The volume of this trade (providing among other things furs and
slaves58 for the centres of the Islamic world) as documented in 10,000s of silver coins
found in hoards in Eastern Europe in Scandinavia must have been very significant
(125 million dirhams according to one estimate). The lions share of these coins from
the late 9th century onwards (with a peak in 940-950) came from the realm of the
Samanids, which centred on Sogdia and constituted one of the most prosperous
regions of the Islamic world at that time, again with far-reaching connections to the
north and to the south. But others (the Khorezmians) now acted as agents of this
exchange, while the traditional Sogdian trading diaspora disappeared from the
sources. This break was also symbolised with the relocation of the residence of the
Samanids from the traditional centre Samarkand to the city of Bukhara in 892. As de
La Vaissire sums up: Between the first third of the 9th century, the time of the last
period of Sogdian commerce in the northwest, and the end of the 9th century, the
Khorezmians had substituted themselves for the Sogdians and had taken control of
this commercial route, doubtlessly owing to its decline in the middle of the 9th
century, which left a clear space for the people in the most advantageous
geographical position. 59
For some time after the Arab conquest of Sogdia, also the connections to the
Sogdian communities further east could be maintained; Sogdians are equally
mentioned as members of Arab diplomatic missions to the Tang court in 744, 745
and 747.60 Yet it was the Turko-Sogdian milieu itself which contributed to a dramatic
change both for the position of the Chinese Empire in Central Asia and of the
Sogdians within its society. A considerable number of individuals of this background
had made career not only in the administration and economy of the Tang, but also in
their army. One from its ranks, An Lushan (born from a Sogdian father and a Turkish
mother), became the most powerful commander on the north-eastern frontier. When
there occurred a conflict between him and the Tang regime in Changan, he started a
devastating rebellion in 755, which culminated in his conquest of the capital in 756.
Although An Lushan was murdered in 757, it took another six years until the rebellion
was defeated by Tang troops in 763. The dynasty was strongly weakened und never
again able to establish a degree of control over the country as in the previous 150
years. Chinas position in Central Asia, already shattered due to the defeat against
the Arabs at Talas in 751, collapsed. Tibet and the Uighur Khanate now fought for
control over these territories. In the core provinces of China, the war against the
followers of An Lushan was accompanied by assaults on members of the Sogdian
diaspora in various places not the less since the military Turko-Sogdian milieu was
in contact with that of the Sogdian merchants throughout North China and made
use of the Sogdian merchant networks to prepare the rebellion. Still, a considerable
number of Sogdian communities survived but many now tried to mask their non-
Chinese origins; processes of Sinicization were accelerated. 61 The loss of Chinese
57 Cf. also Noonan, Some Observations; Curta, Markets in Tenth-Century.

58 Also slave trade in general as a most relevant phenomenon of (forced) long distance mobility is
under-represented in my paper and will receive more room in the final version. Thomas MacMaster will
discuss this aspect during the workhop. Cf. esp. also McCormick, Origins of the European Economy
244-254; McCormick, New Light on the 'Dark Ages'; Rotman, Byzantine Slavery 57-81 (with map on p.
60-61); Popovic, The Revolt of African Slaves.
59 de La Vaissire, Sogdian traders 253-258, 292-299; McCormick, Origins of the European Economy
562-564; Curta, Markets in Tenth-Century.

60 Baumer, The History of Central Asia 253.
61 de La Vaissire, Sogdian traders 215-220; de La Vaissire Trombert, Des Chinois et des Hu;
Hansen, The Silk Road 107-111, 157-160; Twitchett, Sui and Tang China 474-486, 561-571; Lewis,
13
control over Central Asia also reduced the commercial space of the mercantile layer
of the Sogdian diaspora. New opportunities arose from cooperation with the Uighurs,
who emerged as most important power in the steppes to the north of China after the
An Lushan rebellion and provided both important military support and horses for the
weakened Tang regime. In return, they extracted a considerable amount of silk and
other goods as tribute or gifts from China. Sogdians again served as agents and
middlemen for a Steppe polity; the Khan and the elite of the Uighurs converted to
Manichaeism, which had been spread to the region also with the help of the
Sogdians. Yet since the Uighurs were never able to maintain a similar degree of
control over the routes in the area (also challenged by the Empire of Tibet),
connections between the Sogdians in China and the Sogdian heartland became
more loose even more so after the collapse of the Uighur Khanate in 840.
Characteristically, in contrast to the 10,000s silver dirhams retrieved from Eastern
Europe and Scandinavia, no Samanid coins were found on the territory of China so
far.62
While overland connectivity through Central Asia from the 750s onwards weakened,
maritime routes from China to Southeast Asia and from there to India and further
west gained importance. This process was fostered by the rise of economic and
demographic significance of the southern provinces of China respectively by the
growth of Iraq as new centre of the Caliphate on the two terminal points of these
networks. In China, since the first half of the 7th century, the massive building activity
of the Sui and Tang emperors had connected the river systems of the north and the
south of the country via the Grand Canal, also for the provision of the imperial
capitals Changan and Luoyang.63 Already for the second half of the seventh century,
the description of the journey of the Buddhist monk Yijing from China to India and
back (between 671 and 695) documents the existence of regular maritime traffic
between India and Sumatra (port of Palembang) and between Sumatra and
Guangzhou (maybe better known as Canton) in China. For his travels, Yijing used
Persian ships, indicating the continuities of long-distance mobility of seafarers from
the Persian Gulf in the Indian Ocean and beyond. The increasing maritime trade
changed both quantity and quality of commodities: from the 9 th century onwards
porcelain (relatively heavy and fragile) replaced silk as most important Chinese
commodity transported on long-distance routes to the west, in return instead of only
gemstones and exotics also larger quantities of spices, medicines, timber, also
horses, sulphur or ivory were imported.64 But of course also the trading area for
exotics transported to China increased; in 813-818 three embassies from the
kingdom of Kalinga on Java brought some slave boys and girls from East Africa
(Zng) to the Tang court.65
Chinas cosmopolitan Empire 157-158; Rossabi, A History of China 157-160; Clark, Frontier Discourse
27.
62 de La Vaissire, Sogdian traders 223-225, 261, 306-322; Skaff, Sasanian and Arab-Sasanian Silver
Coins; Wang, Tang China 45-54, 138-190 (on the relation between China and Tibet). On the role of
Sogdians in Tibet cf. Akasoy Burnett Yoeli-Tlalim, Islam and Tibet; Carter, Three Silver Vessels;
Hansen, The Silk Road 185-187; de La Vaissire, Sogdian traders 303.
63 Kennedy, The Feeding of the five Hundred Thousand; Lombard, Bltezeit des Islam;
Schottenhammer, Das songzeitliche Quanzhou; So, Prosperity, Region, and Institutions 11-26; Thilo,
Changan I, 8-9, 31-39, 307-308, and II, 195-200.
64 Hourani, Arab Seafaring 62-82; Whitehouse - Williamson, Sasanian Maritime Trade 46-47; Hansen,
The Silk Road 160-166, 237; Baumer, The History of Central Asia 193-197; Schafer, The Golden
Peaches of Samarkand 11-13; Lewis, Chinas cosmopolitan Empire 161-163; Clark, Frontier
Discourse; Schottenhammer, Das songzeitliche Quanzhou 35-44.
65 Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand 47.
14
As already mentioned, on the other terminal point of the Indian Ocean maritime
networks, the foundation of Baghdad in 762 initiated a re-orientation of the axes of
connectivity both on the regional and the over-regional level. It was accompanied by
the rise of the port of Basra, whose ceramics are found in the entire Gulf region.66
Equally, route systems in Southern Iran were modified with the foundation of Siraz in
684, while Siraf emerged as the most important port on the Persian coasts, with
connections to China, India and East Africa (see also below). Both Persian and Arab
merchants (Muslims, Jews, Christian) travelled now in significant numbers from the
Gulf to India, Southeast Asia and Guangzhou, were a considerable colony of
foreigners emerged.67 When Chinese rebels under the leadership of Huang Chao
conquered the city in 878/879, they reportedly massacred 120,000 Muslims,
Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians.68 This event also marked the beginning of the
definite collapse of the Tang dynasty. At the same time, the central power of the
Abbasid Caliphate dwindled way, especially after the murder of al-Mutawakkil by
Turkish guard officers in 861. Both phenomena brought temporary disturbances to
the long-distance networks between the two empires, but they were maintained and
continued in the 10th and 11th centuries, albeit in modified form. Three trading zones
emerged in the Indian Ocean, one of Chinese vessels sailing from Southern China to
Southeast Asia, one of Indian merchants travelling from India to Southeast Asia and
a third of Arab traders sailing to India.69 While the weakening of Abbasid Iraq resulted
in the re-location of terrestrial routes towards the Iranian East, the focus of maritime
trade shifted to the Red Sea, where new powerful dynasties emerged in Egypt,
culminating in the competing Caliphate of the Fatimids from 969 onwards. Already
since the end of the 9th century, the port of al-Qulzum did not only serve transports of
grain transports to Hijaz and Yemen, but also for the import of luxury items from the
Indian Ocean.70
This multitude of long-distance connections across Afro-Eurasia at the end of the
period under consideration in this paper is summed up around the year 830 by the
Arab author Ibn Khurraddhbih in his description of the routes used by a group of
Jewish merchants called al-Rdhnya (the origins of this are name still under
discussion; a later Arab author connects it with the city of Rayy in Iran) [see fig. 6]:
These merchants speak Arabic, Persian, Greek, Latin, Frankish, Andalusian and
Slavic. They journey from west to east, from east to west, travelling by land and by
sea. From the west the export eunuchs, young girls and boys, brocade, beaver pelts,
marten and other furs and swords. The set sail from the Mediterranean coast of the
land of Franks and head for Faram [ancient Pelusium] in Egypt. There they transfer
their merchandise to the backs of camels and travel to Qulzum on the Red Sea, a
distance of 25 farsakhs. They sail down the Red Sea to al-Jr, the port of Medina,
and to Jiddah, the port of Mecca. Then they continue on to Sind, India and China.
They return from China with musk, aloe wood, camphor, cinnamon and other eastern
products, docking at Qulzum, then proceed to Faram, whence they once more set
66 Potter (ed.), The Persian Gulf 73-75; Ricks, Persian Gulf Seafaring.
67 Potter (ed.), The Persian Gulf 76-78; Ricks, Persian Gulf Seafaring; Whitehouse - Williamson,
Sasanian Maritime Trade 49; Daryaee, The Persian Gulf Trade 7; Silverstein, From markets to
marvels.
68 Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand 16; Hourani, Arab Seafaring 76-77; Hansen, The Silk
Road 166; Rossabi, A History of China 164-165; Clark, Frontier Discourse 28. On the presence of all
these religions in the capital of Changan cf. Thilo, Changan II, 305-363.
69 Beaujard, From Three Possible Iron-Age World-Systems; Beaujard, The Indian Ocean in Eurasian
and African World-Systems; Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean; Ptak, Die maritime
Seidenstrae; Lewis, Chinas cosmopolitan Empire 163; Christian, Silk Roads or Steppe Roads.
70 Cooper, The Medieval Nile 234-236, 246-251.
15
sail on the Mediterranean Sea. Some head for Constantinople to sell their goods to
the Byzantines. Others go to the palace of the king of the Franks. Sometimes these
Jewish merchants set sail on the Mediterranean from the land of the Franks to
Antioch. They then proceed overland to al-Jbiya on the Euphrates, a journey of
three days. They sail down the Euphrates to Baghdad, then down the Tigris to al-
Ubulla, whence they sail down the Arabian Gulf to Oman, Sind, India and China. ()
The Jewish merchants also follow a land route. Merchants departing from Spain or
France sail to southern Morocco and then to Tangier, from where they set off for
Ifriqiyya and then the Egyptian capital. From there they head towards Ramla, visit
Damascus, Kufa, Baghdad and Basra, then cross the Ahwaz, Persia, Kirman, Sind
and India, and finally arrive in China. Sometimes they take a route north of Rome,
heading for Khamlj via the lands of the Saqliba [= the Slavs]. Khamlj is the Khazar
capital. They sail the Caspian Sea, make their way to Balkh, from there to
Transoxiana, then to the yurt of the Toghuzghuz, and from there to China.71
This passage suggests that at the end of the period under consideration, a truly
global system of routes and trade had emerged which allowed for uninhibited travel
from one end of Afro-Eurasia to the other; this was of course not the case. While
individual merchants actually may have undertaken such intercontinental journeys,
they depended on a more complex interplay of connections on the local, regional and
over-regional level for their mobility; these spatial levels also very much differed in
the frequency and intensity of internal exchange of objects and individuals. Long-
distance connectivity remained a relatively thin (yet highly relevant) upmost layer
upon these interlocking networks, as we will discuss in the next section.72
2 Lateral and vertical dimensions: motives, range, density and impacts of

connectivity
Diplomacy and elites cultures
Many of the long distance-movements of people and objects (in their lateral/spatial
extension) we have encountered on the previous pages the sending of the golden
peaches from Samarkand to Changan (3,700 km as the bird flies), the mission of
Maniakh from the Turkish court to Constantinople and of Zemarchos the other way
round (3,700 km), or the embassies from Kalinga on Java to the Chinese court (4,700
km) had a diplomatic background. Without doubt, many of such missions, such as
the one of Maniakh, had significant commercial and material aspects and were
accompanied by traders; yet, they were mainly sponsored and organised by states. 73
At the same time, such spectacular long-distance exchanges of embassies were not
everyday business; the relatively well documented negotiations between the Turks in
Central Asia and Constantinople in the 570s are they only one we hear about in
Byzantine sources during our period. For the century between 643 and 747, Michael
Kordoses and other scholars have claimed that there is evidence in Chinese sources
for eight Byzantine embassies all the way to the Tang court in Changan (6,700 km)
in the years 643, 667, 701, 712, 719 (twice), 742 and 747. According to Kordoses,
these missions could be interpreted as continuation of the earlier attempts to come to
terms with the dominating power of Central Asia (then the Turks, now China) against
a common foe (the Persians then, now the Arabs) which stopped with the end of
Tang dominance after the battle of Talas 751; already in the 570s, Byzantine
71 Transl. in: Ibn Fadln (tr. Lunde Stone) 111-112; cf. also McCormick, Origins of the European
Economy 688-693 and in general also 582-604; Rotman, Byzantine Slavery 66-68.
72 Cf. also McCormick, Origins of the European Economy 784.
73 On the significance of diplomatic gift exchange cf. Cutler, Gifts and Gift Exchange; Nechaeva,
Embassies; Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand; Bielenstein, Diplomacy and Trade
16
diplomats had crossed more than 2/3rds of the distance to Chinese capital Chang-
an. Yet the Chinese sources are not very clear in their location of the polity called by
them Fu-lin, which could mean the Empire of the Romans, but also Syria or other
western regions and de facto be used for different polities at different times. Their
focus is also on the exotic gifts presented by these embassies (which are of course
interpreted as tribute) and say nothing on the content of possible negotiations.
Equally, there is not a single hint to such undertakings in Byzantine sources
(although of course source evidence is scarce for this period) and in contrast to the
alliance with the Turks no actual impact of such an (attempted) alliance is registered
(if not the temporary preferential treatment of (Nestorian) Christianity in China, which
Kordoses connects with these Byzantine embassies).74
On firm ground on the contrast we are with regard to the diplomatic exchanges
between Sasanian Persia and China; from the mid-5th to the mid-6th cent., 14
missions are recorded to various courts in China. After the unification of China under
the Sui and Tang and especially in the face of the Arab advance, the number of
embassies increased, also asking for military help (which was not granted).
Nevertheless, after the death of the last Great King Yazdgard III in Merv in 651, the
scions of the house of Sasan fled to China. The Tang used them as pieces in the
game of dominance in Central Asia until early 8 th century and awarded them with
commands and high honours. In the same year 651 of the end of Sasanian rule, the
Arabs sent their first embassy to the Chinese court and did so frequently (in total, 30
times, with a peak before and after the Battle of Talas 751) over the next 150 years
until a last delegation during the Tang period is recorded for 798 (embassies are
recorded again in relatively high number from 924 onwards); several of these
missions were not send all the way from Damascus or Baghdad, but from
representatives of the Caliph in Central Asia, where the spheres of interest of the two
empires directly collided.75
These different intensities of connectivity between Byzantium, Persia and China are
equally illustrated by the fact that more than 1,300 Sasanian silver coins have been
found so far within the borders of the Peoples Republic of China, while only 48
Byzantine gold coins (solidi) respectively their imitations were retrieved, minted
between the reign of Theodosius II (409-450) and of Constantine V (741-775). But
these different quantities mattered with regard to the re-use of these artefacts of long-
distance connectivity within the receiving society; whereas the Persian coins were
used a medium of exchange (especially in cities of East Turkestan along the Silk
routes), the few golden Byzantine coins were used for ceremonial purposes and did
not circulate as a genuine currency. Several of these are also imitations of Byzantine
samples produced obviously only to be used as piece of grave furniture. The special
position awarded to the rare and exotic in Tang China as prestige goods becomes
visible once more.76
74 Kordoses, Tang China, esp. 335 (for the citation); Chen, The sources of Roman-Greek world 325,
334-335, 340, 344-345, 354-355 (for English translations of the relevant Chinese sources); Kordoses,
Oi Tourkoi 221, 229-230, 251; Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand 5, 184, 198. For a
different interpretation of Fu-lin see also Laufer, Sino-Iranica 435-437; Bielenstein, Diplomacy and
Trade 366-368; Rezakhani, The Road That Never Was 429-430.
75 Bielenstein, Diplomacy and Trade 353-359; Kordoses, Tang China 204-209, 233-235, 257;
Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand 26; Laufer, Sino-Iranica 530-534; Schottenhammer, Das
songzeitliche Quanzhou 38; Thilo, Changan II, 74.
76 Hansen, The Silk Road 152-156; Hansen, The Hejia Village Hoard; Ying, Sogdians and Imitations of
Byzantine Gold Coins. Cf. also Chen, The Importation of Byzantine and Sasanian Glass; Schafer, The
Golden Peaches of Samarkand 235-237. For the significance of exotic objects for the display of elite
17
This cosmopolitan taste also contributed to the emergence of an aristocratic koine,

a common communicative ground of warrior elites across early medieval Eurasia
from Persia to China, in the 5th-8th cent. CE. Especially the Iranian tradition became a
model for noble lifestyle beyond the borders of Persia; as Joel Thomas Walker
states: From northern Arabia to the Caucasus, from Mesopotamia to Afghanistan,
regional elites of the Sasanian Empire and its frontiers became familiar with epic
traditions celebrating the kings and heroes of ancient Iran. By adopting Sasanian
cultural and artistic models, provincial elites claimed these epic traditions as their
own. Stories about Iranian kings on the hunt, on the polo field, and in battle provided
a heroic ideal that could be translated into a wide range of narrative media. 77 While
fighting, hunting and feasting were of course not peculiar elements of noble identity
only in Iran, the specific combination of activities as well as their interpretation and
iconography merged into an aristocratic koine of narratives, activities and objects
attractive for elites far beyond the borders of Persia. Recently, this has been
highlighted also by Matthew Canepa in his article on the distant displays of Power
among the Elites of Rome, Sasanian Iran, and SuiTang China. Canepa focuses on
the communication of claims of supremacy between the rulers of these empires via
the usage of a commonly understandable language of images and rituals. But this
aristocratic koine also had the potential to serve as lubricant for the mobility of
members of these elites across frontiers. 78
One highly mobile case in support is the aristocratic and mercantile elite of the
Sogdians; here, the Iranian model found strong appeal and Sogdian craftsmen
acquired as well as produced pieces in this iconographic tradition (integrating also
Chinese motives, which in turn travelled west until the territory of the Avars).79 Via the
intermediation of Sogdian objects, deeds of horsemanship and horses became a
most popular topic of visual culture in Tang China itself. The import of elements of
mounted aristocratic life style also included the game of polo (also exported to
Byzantium in the 5th cent.), which in turn became a popular motif in the visual art of
the period. 80 Massive manifestations of royal horsemanship as well as occasions of
interaction between patron and clients were royal hunts. Under the Tang, also the
Feng and Shang-rites were augmented with a royal hunt: these ancient rituals, rare
manifestation of prosperity and peace throughout the realm, were performed at the
sacred Mount Tai in Shandong. For these events, also representatives of foreign
status in the Roman Empire cf. Bang, The Roman Bazaar 298-303; Pollard, Indian Spices, and in
early medieval Western Europe cf. Hodges, Dark Age Economics 127-129. For a theoretical
discussion see also esp. Latour, Reassembling the Social; Flood, Objects of Translation, and on the
general significance of human-object interactions: Hodder, Entangled; Knappett, An Archaeology of
Interaction.
77 Walker, The Legend of Mar Qardagh, esp. 122 for the citation.
78 Canepa, Distant Displays of Power; Canepa, Theorizing Cross-Cultural Interaction; Canepa, Two
Eyes of the Earth; Jacoby, Silk Economics and Cross-Cultural Artistic Interaction. Cf. also J. Preiser-
Kapeller, Heroes, traitors and horses. Mobile elite warriors in Byzantium and beyond, 500-1100 AD
(forthcoming, draft online:
http://www.academia.edu/6436110/Heroes_traitors_and_horses._Mobile_elite_warriors_in_Byzantium
_and_beyond_500-1100_AD).
79 Hansen, The Silk Road 125-128; Baumer, The History of Central Asia 242-243; Daim,
Byzantinische Grtelgarnituren 130-136. Cf. also Walker, The Emperor and the World.
80 Gray, Persian Influence; Feltham, Lions, Silks and Silver; Whitehouse - Williamson, Sasanian
Maritime Trade; Hermitage Amsterdam, Expedition Silkroad 62-65; Chen, The Importation of
Byzantine and Sasanian Glass; Rossabi, A History of China 152; Canepa, Distant Displays of Power;
Laufer, Sino-Iranica; Daim, Byzantinische Grtelgarnituren; Kuhn, Chinas Goldenes Zeitalter 81-106
(with visual evidence); Thilo, Changan II, 555-557 (on polo). For the further spread of such objects
and iconographie to neighbouring regions such as Tibet and Korea, cf. Carter, Three Silver Vessels;
Lee Patry Leidy, Silla.
18
powers were invited: under Emperor Gozng in 666, these not only included
immediate neighbours and vassals of China, but also the last members of the
Sasanian dynasty, who, as mentioned above, had found refuge in China after the
Arab conquest of Persia. Under Emperor Hsuan-tsung in 725 in turn, an ambassador
of the Umayyad Caliph took part in the rites and in the hunt. Thus, as Jonathan
Karam Skaff masterfully describes, these royal hunts became truly global
manifestations of mounted elite culture across early medieval Eurasia. 81
We also have cues that the Christian nobility in the Caucasus region, for instance,
considered itself to be part of a more far reaching noble tradition: in his history of the
Armenians, Movs s Xorenaci (who claims to be an author of the 5 th century, but
most probably his work can be dated to the 8 th cent.) reports the stories of origin of
50 of the most important noble houses, which I systematically surveyed [see fig. 7].
More than 50 % related themselves (or were related by Xorenaci) to the eponymous
forefather of the Armenians Hayk respectively to other autochthonous ancestors.
But a large number of families traced themselves back to royal or significant noble
houses of neighbouring countries such as Georgia, Caucasian Albania, Mesopotamia
or most prominently Persia. Connections to more remote regions were created
with ancient Israel respectively Canaan, Bulgaria or even the royal house of China;
the most important noble clan of that period, the Mamikonean, claimed origin from a
scion of the imperial family of China who had to flee to Persia and later Armenia, thus
emphasising their equal rank with royal houses in Armenia and beyond. 82 This has
an interesting parallel in the claims of Sogdian families in Tang China for parentage
from members of Chinese royal houses exiled to the west, bolstering their attempts
for integration into the elite of the country.83
Events such as the Feng and Shang-rites were also used to stage the investiture of
clients by the emperor; this included the handover of precious gifts as well as the
endowment of insignia of power again recognizable for elites across borders, such as
saddles, belts, swords and banners. Together with bows and splendid riding coats or
caftans, they composed a typical assemblage of elite clothing and accessories. 84 The
widespread production and diffusion of such pieces, especially of textiles, is
documented on an impressive scale in the burial ground of Moevaja Balka in the
north-western Caucasus (today Russia), dated to the 8 th cent. [see fig. 8]. In a burial
of a member of the local elite, there was found a magnificent kaftan made of silk. This
piece was created after Central Asian models, but (as more recent analysis has
shown) obviously produced locally as a patchwork of pieces of silk from Byzantine,
Syrian, Sogdian and Chinese production. The elite of the otherwise very peripheral
area around Moevaja Balka demonstrates an exquisite taste, sharing a mutually
understandable visual language with the nobility in the centres of powers across
Eurasia. They may have acquired these pieces of silk as collateral beneficiaries of
nearby trade routes across the Caucasus, which connected northern branches of the
Silk roads with the Black Sea and Byzantium, as also documents belonging to a
(Chinese?) merchant (see below) indicate.85 Moevaja Balka equally highlights the
capillary lateral diffusion of these objects and motives beyond the centres and
central axes of long-distance exchange into more peripheral regions.
81 Skaff, Sui-Tang China 144-148; Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand 10.
82 Movs. Xor. (Abeean and Yarutiwnean; tr. Thomson). Cf. also Settipani, Continuit des lites.
84 Skaff, Sui-Tang China 158-168; Nechaeva, Embassies 219-220; Daim, Byzantine belts and Avar
birds; Daim, Byzantinische Grtelgarnituren.

85 Hermitage Amsterdam, Expedition Silkroad 240-247; Knauer, A Man's Caftan; Daim,
Byzantinische Grtelgarnituren 188. On these routes cf. also Alemany, Sixth Century Alania.
19
Religions, mobility and demands

While in its relations with Persia, the Caliphate or Fu-lin, the Tang were the receivers
of embassies, a considerable number of missions was sent from China to India in the
7th and 8th centuries. Some of these had also a military background the search for
allies against the more and more dangerous neighbouring Empire of Tibet , but it
was the special place of India as Holy Land of Buddhism within the imagination of
China at that period which attracted so much attention. Some of these missions had
the purpose to arrange for the acquisition and transfer of Buddhist relics from India to
China; in 661 Emperor Gaozong sent Wang Xuance with 4,000 bolts of silk to acquire
a sacred bone from Kapisa (north-western India).86
Religion thus proved of at least equal force for the establishment of long-distance
connections as diplomacy; these phenomena have been studied intensively for our
period for many regions and various aspects the establishment of wide-reaching
ecclesiastical organisations (in the case of the Nestorian Church of the East from
Mesopotamia to China), the mobilisation of people through pilgrimage to the holy
sites of Christianity, Islam or Buddhism or the mobility of religious experts, but also
craftsmen, sacral architectural types, material (as in the case of the Aksumite harbour
of Adulis, where marbles coming from Proconnesus island in the Sea of Marmara as
well as from the French Pyrenees were used in significant quantities for church
building and maybe even Byzantine architects were employed), and of the religious
rites and dogmas as such (universal, portable religions in contrast to the ones
connected to specific places or groups as many cults of antiquity).87 Therefore, I will
not discuss this at length; but it should be emphasised that the diffusion of these
religious ideas often depended on pre-existing connections of commerce. Neelis has
highlighted this for the spread of Buddhism from India via Central Asia to China from
the 1st cent. CE onwards: Patterns of movement by monks and nuns who were the
primary religious agents of long distance transmission overlapped considerably with
the itineraries and commercial interests of commercial agents who generated the
surplus wealth which was necessary to establish shrines and to sustain residential
monasteries. The epithet of the Buddha as a Great Caravan Leader
(Mahasarthavaha) very much illustrates this symbiotic processes (similar to the
emergence of Christian monasteries in the Persian Gulf based on mercantile surplus
wealth we have observed above).88 Equally, Eivind Heldaas Seland states that
missionaries travelling in the Indian Ocean had to rely on commercial shipping. 89
Spiritual links as well as spatial imaginations and organisations thereby created
resulted in a higher density of interactions and mobility (through pilgrimage, the
transfer of relics etc.), which also often proved more resilient than political and
86 Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy and Trade; Lewis, Chinas cosmopolitan Empire 157; Bielenstein,
Diplomacy and Trade 72-76; Lewis, China between Empires 161-163, Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road
53-57, Rossabi, A History of China 144-151; Xinru, Silks and Religions.
87 Dark, Globalizing Late Antiquity 8-9; Bangert, Menas ampullae; Finneran, Ethiopian Christian
material culture, esp. 76-87; Seland, Archaeology of Trade 381; Lewis, China between Empires 161-
163, Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road 53-57, Rossabi, A History of China 144-151 and Xinru, Silks and
Religions (on the transfer of Buddhist relics from India to China in the 6th-9th cent. and in general on
Chinese pilgrimage there) as well as Thilo, Changan II, 87-88 (on the presence of Indian Buddhist
masters in Changan). On the Nestorian Church organisation see Fiey, Pour un Oriens Christianus
Novus; Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road 62-70; Kordoses, Tang China. On portable religions cf.
Seland, Networks and social cohesion 384-385. On pilgrimage from Western Europe to Jerusalem in
the 8th cent. cf. McCormick, Origins of the European Economy 129-138, 151-173, on the transfer of
relics ibid. 283-318.
88 Neelis, Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks, esp. 39 for the citation.
89 Seland, Networks and social cohesion 385-386.
20
diplomatic connections. When faced with the disturbances of overland routes due to
the decline of Chinese and Uighur power, the Nestorian Patriarch Theodosius I (853
858) excused the metropolitans of the exterior (church provinces) from coming every
four years to the Catholicos: from that time forward a letter every six years was
considered sufficient. Thus, although in reduced form, links were maintained (as
they did in the Western Church after the collapse of the Roman Empire). 90 But
religions also modified customs, tastes and desires; the diffusion of Buddhism to
China via mercantile routes in turn produced new demand for rare goods needed for
Buddhist rituals (especially the so-called seven treasures gold, silver, lapis lazuli,
crystal or quartz, pearls, red coral, and agate or coral); but also the spread of the
consumption of tea and sugar (the cultivation of the later imported earlier from India)
in that period can be connected with Buddhist influence.91 Even more, religious
institutions such as monasteries could motivate or engage themselves in long-
distance connectivity, both religious and commercial (as in the case of the newly
emerging monasteries in the Persian Gulf in the 7 th cent., see above).92 Thus, we
observe feedback processes: religious diffusion took place along networks of pre-
existing long distance connections, which in turn were intensified and modified (the
quality and quantity of exchanges changed), thus providing a basis for a further
intensification of long distance connectivity. The spread of Buddhism for instance
especially since the 3rd cent. CE increased the interest of Chinese elites in the routes
towards Central Asia and India, via which in turn also other religious believes
(Zoroastrism, Manichaeism, Christianity) were transported to the east.
Scale and range of transport and commerce

Both religious ideas and objects raise also the question of the vertical dimension of
these long-distance connections, that is their actual impact for societies beyond the
upmost layer of courts and elites. The impact of religious beliefs (Buddhism,
Zoroastrism, Judaism, Christianity, Manichaeism, Islam) spreading across enormous
distances in Afro-Eurasia in the first Millennium CE on local communities is without
doubt the most dramatic vertical result of long-distance connectivity in that period.
Regarding objects, on the contrast, long-distance connectivity has been connected
with the exchange of small quantities of luxury goods with a only superficial impact on
regional economies. Chris Wickham for instance made clear: Local exchange,
between peasants in a village or between two villages at a local market, has always
existed in every society. Luxury exchange, too, of scarce goods designed to mark out
a political or economic elite, has always existed, often across very wide geographical
ranges (such as the spice trade from what is now Indonesia into western Europe,
which has not been interrupted in the last two millennia), although its context of
course varies dramatically from period to period and place to place, according to the
tastes of any given elite. Bulk exchange is the main marker of the scale of economic
systems. () Luxury exchange does not tell us about systemic scale, by definition:
only bulk traffic does that.93
90 de La Vaissire, Sogdian traders 315.

91 Lewis, China between Empires 158-160; Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road 49-56; Xinru, Silks and
Religions. Cf. also Pollard, Indian Spices, for the demand for Indian spices and other goods for
magical practices in Imperial Rome.
92 For similar phenomena in Western Europe cf. Hodges, Dark Age Economics 15-18, 67-90. For the
economic significance of Buddhist monasteries in Tang China cf. Gernet, Buddhism in Chinese
Society; Thilo, Changan II, 307-341.
93 Wickham, The Mediterranean around 800, 162-163.
21
Numbers thus matter; in this regard, some of the figures we encounter for the
exchanges across the frontier between China and the steppe are impressive. The
Zhou and the Qi provided the Turkish Khanate with 200,000 pieces of silk per year in
the 560s. The Tang sent even higher quantities as pay for their garrisons into Central
Asia between 640 and 750 (in the 730s and 740s each year 900,000 bolts of silk).
They also traded silk for horses needed for their armies; one transaction in 734/735
included the exchange of 500,000 bolts of silk against 14,000 horses. But this large
scale movements for goods were (as the annona in the Roman Empire) actions of
the state respectively aspects of a tribute trade between the emperor of the Tang
and the Khan of the Turks or Uighurs.94 Yet, at the same time, (Sogdian) merchants
had an important share in these transactions (sometimes in various roles as
negotiators, moneychangers, sub-contractors or administrators), indicating a
somehow symbiotic relationships between state and commercial distribution also
postulated for the Roman Mediterranean, for instance.95
Also private commercial enterprises could cover long distances. The oldest
documents for Sogdian trade, the so-called Ancient Sogdian Letter, include the
communication between a merchant in Dunhuang midway between Sogdia and
China and his partner in Sarmakand. He reports on the activities of their agents in
various Chinese cities and recent political events (the conquest of the Chinese capital
of Luoyang in 311) which were disturbing business.96 And in the above-mentioned
site of Moevaja Balka (8th cent.) in the north-western Caucasus were find papers
and objects possibly belonging to a merchant coming from China or at least using
Chinese language, including a Buddhist text, pieces of a small Buddhist votive
banner and a list of obviously locally made purchases of food.97
Yet these are a relatively singular pieces of evidence; as Valerie Hansen makes clear
(on the basis of more general quantitative evidence provided by documents from the
6th-8th cent.): Few individuals traversed all of Central Asia, covering the distance of
some 2,000 miles (3,600 kilometers) between Samarkand and Changan. () Most
travellers moved on smaller circuits [200 km], [or] travelled a few hundred miles
[around 500-1000 km] between their hometown and the next oasis and no further.
Because goods were traded locally and passed through many hands, much of the
Silk Road trade was a trickle trade. Long distance caravans with hundreds of animals
are rarely mentioned anywhere in the historical record and usually only when states
exchanged emissaries.98 Relatively small was also the scale of these enterprises;
the so-called scale fee tax receipts for a checkpoint near Turfan around the year 600
register 37 transactions over the curse of one year; they illustrate a pre-dominance of
Sogdian traders (41 of 48 names of merchants), the kind of goods transported (brass,
medicine, copper, turmeric and other spices, raw sugar, gold, silver, ammonium
chloride, aromatics, and of course silk) and the quantities traded; but even the
largest quantity mentioned 800 Chinese pounds could have been carried by
94 Skaff, Sui-Tang China 241-271; de La Vaissire, Sogdian traders 210-211; Beckwith, The Impact of
the Horse and Silk Trade; Hansen, The Silk Road 107, 237; Schafer, The Golden Peaches of
Samarkand 58-70.
95 Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome 102-103.
96 de La Vaissire, Sogdian traders 43-50; Hansen, The Silk Road 117-121; Skaff, The Sogdian Trade
Diaspora 508-509; Livshits, The Sogdian "Ancient Letters".

97 Ierusalimskaja, Die Grber der Moevaja Balka; Hermitage Amsterdam, Expedition Silkroad 240-
247; Knauer, A Man's Caftan.

98 Hansen, The Silk Road 10 (with modifications); cf. also Skaff, The Sogdian Trade Diaspora; de La
Vaissire, Sogdian traders 165-167; Kuhn, Chinas Goldenes Zeitalter 62-78 (with impressive visual
evidence).
22
several pack animals.99 Furthermore, we have evidence for the size of 13 caravans
registered in documents from the city of Kucha (now Xinjiang, China) in the years
641-644, which fluctuate between two and 40 men with two to 17 animals. We also
possess information on larger caravans, so for one from the dynastic history of the
Zhou dynasty (557-581) consisting of 240 merchants with 600 camels, carrying
10,000 bolts of silk, or for the 670s and 680s. But these were periods of (temporary)
political or military instability; when travel was difficult; merchants formed large
groups, often hiring guards, to ensure their own safety. Otherwise, as the documents
from Kucha and other evidence indicate, merchants moved in smaller groups. 100 This
again indicates interdependence between political conditions and the character of
commerce but with the maybe surprising result that the existence of a larger
imperial sphere in Central Asia would allow both for large-scale state sponsored
movements for goods and a fragmentation of private commercial activity. Even more,
again feedbacks can be observed: earlier mercantile activity had intensified the
interests of the Chinese elite in the connections to Central Asia; the expansion of the
Tang to the west followed these routes and this phenomenon in turn increased
opportunities and spaces of actions for the Sogdian traders and craftsmen.
One may also ask what share and impact objects traded across Afro-Eurasia could
have in Western Europe.101 For some goods, this is very difficult to trace in the
archaeological evidence even for the period before the collapse of the Western
Roman Empire: while recent excavations in the harbour of Berenike at the Red Sea
have yielded more than 7,5 kg of peppers, the largest find from the rest of the Roman
world comes from Straubing at the Danube limes in Bavaria with 52 peppercorns. At
the same time, we learn from written evidence (Zosimus 5,41), that Alaric in 408
received 5,000 pounds of gold, 30,000 pounds of silver, 3,000 silk robes and 3,000
pounds of pepper as tribute to stop the siege of Rome.102
For the later period, we can still obverse a relatively widespread diffusion of Oriental
objects in the Merovingian Empire between the 5thand 8th cent., mostly coming via
the intermediation of Byzantium. New archaeometric analyses confirm the exotic
origin of some of the material used, such as ivory from African elephants or cowrie
shells coming from the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, found in graves of the 6 th and
7th cent (with shells found in Alamania stemming exclusively from the Red Sea, for
instance). Also garnet for gemstones in the 5th and 6th century came from deposits in
India and Sri Lanka [see fig. 9], before in the 7th and 8th century it was replaced with
material of lesser quality from Bohemian sources. One could of course connect this
change with an interruption of routes between Byzantium and the Red Sea after the
Sasanian and later Arab conquest of Egypt. Yet, other material (ivory, amethyst)
coming from the Indian Ocean found its way to the north of the Alps still until around
700 [see fig. 10 and 11]. Other scholars assume an impact of political conflicts within
India specifically on the regions of origin of garnet. But Jrg Drauschke in his
groundbreaking monograph also considers changes of taste of customers in the
Merovingian areas as cause for the change in the usage and trade of this gemstone.
99 Hansen, The Silk Road 98-103 (with citation); Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand 218.
100 Hansen, The Silk Road 77-79; de La Vaissire, Sogdian traders 186-190; Skaff, The Sogdian
Trade Diaspora 509.
101 On the relatively marginal position of Europe as actually one of the poorest regions in the world,
left well out of the global economy and a general criticism of Eurocentric approaches toward trans-
Eurasian exchange, cf. Rezakhani, The Road That Never Was, esp. 426. See also Hodges, Dark Age
Economics 119-120.
102 Cappers, Roman Foodprints at Berenike 111-119; Nechaeva, Embassies 190, 247; Pollard, Indian
Spices 9.
23
Among the possible modes of distribution for these materials (exchange, diplomatic
gifts, booty), Drauschke advocates a primarily commercial distribution from the
Eastern Mediterranean to urban centres in Italy and Southern France (Marseilles),
from where subsequent re-distribution (via various modes) took place to further
sites along the river routes and beyond a lateral capillary diffusion of objects of
long-distance commerce as in the case of Moevaja Balka (see above).103 As for
other regions of the late and post-Roman West, this commerce has been attributed to
transmarini negotiantes identified as Syri in the written sources; these groups will
be discussed in the contribution of Norman Wetzig to this workshop.104 Therefore, I
will limit myself to the observation that this is only one among several commercially
active groups in that period to which as specific ethnic or regional origin was
attributed.
Trade diasporas across Afro-Eurasia

The mercantile activity and mobility of Sogdian merchants across various spatial
scales depended on the existence of communities of compatriots along these routes
as Jonathan Karam Skaff in his magisterial article states: Sogdian settlements in
East Turkestan oasis cities were important hubs in a larger Eurasian trade network.
They served as home bases and way stations for merchants and even supplied new
generations of traders. For example, at Anle Village in Turfan about half of all
Sogdian boys left home before the age of fifteen and presumably many joined the
ranks of itinerant merchants. Even while retaining this kind of traditional practice,
Sogdians integrated into local cities and towns, forming what Wink has called an
open diaspora rooted in the broader framework of society rather than
congregating in closed communities. Straddling the two cultures allowed Sogdians to
serve as liaisons between visiting merchants and local society and government.
Many of the traders would have been unable to operate without the services of
Sogdian translators and guarantors who were born or had settled in East
Turkestan.105
Skaff uses the term of trade diaspora as coined by Abner Cohen and Philip D.
Curtin for communities of merchants living among aliens in associated networks;
based on a common social background, such communities maintained long-distance
connections among each other. Thereby, they provided opportunity for itinerant
merchants to find anchor points for mercantile activity as well as to solve the
problems of information gathering and of establishing trust (by social control within
the communities, as Avner Greif for instance has analysed in detail) for their
businesses over large distance and longer time periods. Rogers Brubaker has
criticised the inflationary use of this term (somehow similar to network, I may add)
and defined three criteria for a community to qualify a true diaspora: communities
must first be dispersed, second be oriented towards a real or imagined homeland,
and third preserve a distinctive identity towards host societies. Accordingly, the
Sogdian can indeed by understood as trade diaspora, while others, more
polycentric orientated communities such as the Armenian traders of the early modern
period or the Jewish merchants from the Geniza documents in Cairo (10 th-12th cent.)
103 Drauschke, Zwischen Handel und Geschenk; Drauschke, Byzantine and oriental imports;
Drauschke Hilgner, Karfunkelstein und Elfenbein; Drauschke, Byzantine Jewellery?; Sorg, Byzanz
als Drehscheibe. On the change of tastes and trends in grave goods in early Medieval Western
Europe cf. also Hodges, Dark Age Economics 121-123.
104 Garca Vargas, Oriental Trade, esp. 76-77.
105 Skaff, The Sogdian Trade Diaspora 510, 513 (for the citation).
24
do not. For them, Sebouh David Aslanian in his monograph on the Armenian
merchants has proposed the term circulation society.106
For the Sogdians, the reference point of groupness was common ethnic origin
respectively language or even the origin from the same city (highlighted by the not
fully consistent system of family names attributed to Sogdians in Chinese sources
according to their place of origin; this may also indicate that they were not perceived
or identified themselves as fully homogenous group). In addition, common religious
believes (especially Zoroastrism and Manichaeism) could be of relevance for some
groups within the Sogdian diaspora.107 A combination of ethnicity, language and
religion (in differentiation from the Orthodoxy of Chalcedon) formed also the basis of
communication and cohesion among the Armenian diaspora (as commanders and
warriors, clerics and scholar or traders and craftsmen) across both the Mediterranean
and the Iranian and Islamic world, whose origins can be traced back to the 6th century
(in McCormicks Origins of the European Economy, we find only four reference to
Armenia or Armenians, which does not correspond to the actual significance of
Armenian mobility across the Mediterranean in this period).108 Eivind Heldaas Seland
has analysed the networks and social cohesion among trade diasporas or
circulation societies in the Western Indian Ocean (where, in comparison with the
Mediterranean, distances and travel times dictated by the rhythms of the monsoon,
even more necessitated the long-term presence of members of mercantile
communities in distanced places) since the 1st cent. CE, including the Palmyrenes
(until the 3rd cent. CE) and Christian communities as also described by Kosmas
Indikopleustes.109
As Michael Morony points out, one characteristic of the Late Antique/early medieval
period across Afro-Eurasia in general was the emergence of diasporic trading
networks based on place of origin and/or religion (). Parallel to the network of
"Syrian" merchants in the Mediterranean is that of the Sogdians in western China and
the Persians in the Indian Ocean from the fourth century onwards. By the sixth
century, Christian Persians belonging to the Church of the East should be included,
and this trend continued into the Islamic period with the formation and spread of an
Ibadi Muslim merchant diaspora from al-Basra to Uman and North Africa in the eighth
century, and the Sirafi merchant colonies and Radanite Jewish merchants in the ninth
and tenth centuries.110 In all cases, diffusion and expansion of these communities
were not exclusively dependent on, but again fostered by the existence of large
imperial spheres of Byzantium, Persia, the Caliphate, China or the empires of the
Steppe (whose routes of expansion in turn they sometimes also co-determined to a
certain degree by their earlier activities, as in the case of the Sogdians in Eastern
106 Curtin, Cross-cultural Trade; Greif, Institutions; Seland, Networks and social cohesion, esp. 373-
377 (for a discussion of terminology, citing also: R. Brubaker, The diaspora diaspora. Ethnic and
Racial Studies 28, 1 (2005) 1-19, and S. D. Aslanian, From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean:
the global trade networks of Armenian merchants from New Julfa. Berkeley 2011). Cf. also Temin, The
Roman Market Economy 13-15, for parallel phenomena in Roman economy, and Hodges, Dark Age
Economics 9, on diaspora traders such as the famed Frisians in Western Europe. On the Geniza
merchants and their networks see now the magisterial work of Jessica Goldberg, Trade and
Institutions.
107 Skaff, The Sogdian Trade Diaspora. Cf. also Seland, Networks and social cohesion 379, for the
identification of regional origins in diaspora groups, and Seland, Archaeology of Trade, for the term of
groupness.
108 Preiser-Kapeller, Aristocrats, Mercenaries, Clergymen and Refugees.
109 Seland, Networks and social cohesion; Seland, Trade and Christianity; Seland, Archaeology of
Trade, esp. 387 on the relevance of distances. On the seasonality of travel in the Mediterranean cf.
McCormick, Origins of the European Economy 444-468.
110 Morony, Economic Boundaries 178, 184-185.
25
Central Asia, see above); and similarly to religious organisational networks, they in
turn were able to survive imperial eclipse or fragmentation respectively sometimes
even to profit from it due to their ability to maintain connectivity over longer distances
when state institutions failed.
Different scales of maritime connectivity

The Christian traders in the Persian Gulf and later on the Ibadis spread especially via
maritime routes; the Ibadis combined mercantilism with religious movement and
since the early 8th century developed among the Basra merchant community. With
the expansion of maritime commerce, this actively missionary community relatively
quickly spread from Mesopotamia to the regions around the Gulf (especially Oman),
India and maybe even China.111 As outlined above and well-studied, in the pre-
modern period, maritime trade allowed for faster movement of larger numbers of
people and bigger quantities of goods across longer distances. In the mercantile
world of the Indian Ocean in the 9th century, we finally observe also the transport of
bulk goods (as well as slaves) over thousands of kilometres. We learn that houses in
the port of Siraf were built with teak wood transported all the way from India and
Zanzibar, for instance, while wine and rice came from more nearby areas around the
Gulf. At least for shipbuilding, teak from India had been used already in Berenike in
Egypt in the Roman period; thus, pre-existing patterns of distribution were
intensified.112
In 1998, a 9th century shipwreck (maybe to be dated ca. 830) was discovered
offshore the island of Belitung in Indonesia. This enormous archaeological
assemblage contained more than 60,000 objects, especially ceramics from Tang
China intended for sale in the Arab Caliphate. The ship alone documents the far
reaching entanglements of the of the 9th century Indian Ocean; following the design
of an Arab dhow, it was built with East African timber, but later repaired with South
East Asian lumbers. The lion share of the cargo consisted of 50,000 pieces of
ceramics from the kilns of Changsha in Southern China, where they were produced
in masses for export. These and other ceramics as well as further valuable objects
from various sites of production in China had been assembled as cargo of the ship in
the famous port of Guangzhou (Canton); further objects hint at commerce with
several sites in the Persian Gulf, East Africa and Southeast Asia [see fig. 12].113
Although, maybe with the exemption of the transport of grain from Egypt to Hijaz (see
above), no major state initiatives for the regular transport of larger quantities of goods
over longer distances (as in the case of the Roman grain fleets) in the Indian Ocean
can be observed in the Sasanian empire, the Arab Caliphate or in China in that
period, the intensity of maritime trade fluctuated with socio-economic and political
condition in the empires along the shores of the Indian Ocean, as we have seen
above.114 Yet in any case, long distance connectivity was maintained also in the
absence of the state. Maybe the most spectacular, but often overlooked (and
definitely non-imperial) result of maritime long distance connectivity across the
Indian Ocean in the (most probably early) 1st Millennium CE is the settling of
considerable numbers of seafarers and farmers coming from Indonesia on the island
of Madagascar (an offshoot of the equally impressive Austronesian expansion
towards the Pacific) a distance of more than 6,300 km as the bird flies;
111 Potter (ed.), The Persian Gulf 72, 81.

112 Ricks, Persian Gulf Seafaring 351; LaViolette Fleisher, The Urban History of a Rural Place;
Seland, Archaeology of Trade 382; Popovic, The Revolt of African Slaves.
113 Krahl - Guy - Wilson Raby, Shipwrecked.
114 Daryaee, The Persian Gulf Trade 16.
26
unfortunately, this movement of population can only be reconstructed on the basis of

archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence, therefore routes and modes of
migration remain unclear.115
3 Small worlds, networks and interdependencies

The notion of the small world
Even globally connected centres such as Siraf relied on the import of foodstuffs
from nearby sites for which it in turn was attractive due to the commercial
opportunities and demand created by its trans-regional mercantile community. As
also Barendse has outlined: Thus, even the trade of the most luxurious city of the
Indian Ocean consisted largely of cheap bulk goods and the surroundings dominated
this world-city as much as the world-city dominated them.116 Recently, Thomas
Tartaron has highlighted the significance of short-distance connections often
overlooked in the favour of long-distance networks (in his case, for the Bronze Age
Aegean): More importantly, such long-distance connections were dwarfed in quantity
by dense networks of local and regional maritime connections among ()
communities. The latter routes and relationships have received little attention, but
they must have dominated the use of anchorages, large and small (). There were
many shades of activity in the spectrum between local and international interaction.
Local and microregional maritime networks are best expressed by the concept of the
small world (), composed of communities bound together by intensive, habitual
interactions due to geography, traditional kinship ties, or other factors. There may be
a high level of interdependence and communities may come to think of themselves
as forming a natural entity, defined by the dense web of connections that supports a
combination of political, social, and economic relationships. Small worlds are nested
within larger regional and interregional economic and sometimes political
networks.117 The term small world has also been used for early medieval Western
Europe by Michael McCormick (Europes small worlds came to be linked to the
greater world of the Muslim economies) and Richard Hodges (citing Sren
Sindbk).118
The underlying concept comes from (social) network analysis and was developed
(and popularised) by Steven Strogatz and Duncan J. Watts. Trying to find a relatively
simple model to explain the small world-phenomenon that in social networks on
average most people can be connected to each other via relatively few steps (the
famous six degrees of separation), they arranged nodes on a ring and connected
them only to the immediate neighbouring nodes. The emerging network is
characterised by a high clustering (meaning that there is a high probability that two
nodes connected to a node are also connected with each other) and relatively high
average path length (indicating the number of steps necessary to get from one node
to another one on average). Strogatz and Watts now applied a procedure called
random rewiring: one node is selected at random; one of its connecting edges is
disconnected from its original destination and rewired, again at random, with
115 Mitchell, African Connections 103-106. In general, the deliberate or forced movement of larger
numbers of people needs more discussion in the final version of this paper, cf. also Preiser-Kapeller,
Aristocrats, Mercenaries, Clergymen and Refugees; Ditten, Ethnische Verschiebungen.
116 Barendse, Trade and State. For the dependency of early medieval emporia of Western Europe on
their umland cf. Hodges, Dark Age Economics 107-115.

117 Tartaron, Maritime Networks 6-7, 80, 88.
118 McCormick, Origins of the European Economy 797; Hodges, Dark Age Economics 29, 127. Cf. also
Sindbk, The Small World of the Vikings. Of special interest for the questions discussed in this paper
is also Sren Sindbks project Entrepot. Maritime Network Urbanism in Global Medieval
Archaeology, cf. http://projekter.au.dk/en/entrepot/.
27
another node. Through this process, more and more short cuts are created, which
connect nodes also in more distant parts of the network [see fig. 13]. At the same
time, while clustering (indicating the density of connections) within the immediate
neighbourhood of a node on the ring remains relatively high, even a few long-
distance links result in a significant decline of the average path length (thus, few
degrees of separation and a small world) [see fig. 14].119
Clusters, central places and gateways

If one applies the small world model to real geographical space, with settlements as
nodes and connections (routes, interactions, exchanges) between them as links in a
network, there emerges a multitude of local and regional clusters of densely
connected sites in spatial proximity to each other, while some sites within these
clusters have connections to more distanced places which are in turn embedded in
dense local clusters [see fig. 15]; in Tartarons terminology (see above), these
clusters are the small worlds (somehow modifying the original meaning of Strogatz
and Watts). Furthermore, if we follow the terminology of Mark Granovetter, this dense
small worlds clusters would be characterised by strong ties (with regard to the
frequency and scale of interaction), while the long distance-connections would be
weak ties of more occasional interaction or exchange.120
Spatial proximity thus would be an essential parameter to determine the actual
strength (indicating the frequency or scale of exchange between sites, for instance)
of connections. An advantage of this approach is the potential to integrate at least
some aspects of what Leif Isaksen has called transport friction, meaning the actual
costs of communication and exchange between sites, which would have influenced
the frequency and strength of connections, into the model.121 Yet as analytical results
by Ducruet et al. for maritime traffic in the modern period or for by Sindbk for the
early medieval North Sea indicate, such dense clusters do not necessarily emerge
among nodes spatially near to each other. Especially ties of long distance exchange
could connect ports more densely with other hubs of commerce oversea than with
nearby sites of less mercantile activity. Irad Malkin in his book on the Small World of
the Greek colonisation of the 7th-6th century BCE has equally illustrated how
traditional ties of exchange and identification could connect clusters of colonies with
their mother towns over long distances. Similarly, measures of superior political or
religious authorities or the desire to connect to sacred places etc. could rewire a
considerable amount of the links of localities to more far away sites, etc.122
But in most cases we may assume a considerable amount of impact of the logic of
spatial proximity. As mentioned above, also global cities and ports relied on the
import of foodstuffs from nearby sites, especially if no political authority would provide
for regular provisions from the Black Sea (Athens), Egypt (Rome, Constantinople,
Mecca) or via the Grand Canal from the Yangzi (Changan). Horden and Purcell
equally have highlighted the significance of micro-regions and micro-ecologies for
119 Watts, Small Worlds; Albert - Barabsi, Statistical Mechanics; Brughmans, Thinking through
networks; Ball, Critical Mass 458-463. For more on the network analytical background cf. also
Knappett (ed.), Network-Analysis in Archaeology; Preiser-Kapeller, The Maritime Mobility of
Individuals and Objects.
120 Granovetter, The Strength of Weak Ties.
121 Isaksen, The Application of Network Analysis; Barthlemy, Spatial Networks; Gorenflo Bell,
Network Analysis; for an elaborate modelling of cost factors see also the project of A. W. Mees and G.
Heinz from the RGZM on the routes of distribution of Terra Sigillata:
http://web.rgzm.de/no_cache/forschung/schwerpunkte-und-projekte/a/article/untersuchungen-zum-
absatzmarkt-und-zur-organisation-der-toepfereien-im-suedgallischen-sigillatazentr.html.
122 Ducruet Zaidi, Maritime constellations; Malkin, A Small Greek World.
28
the Mediterranean.123 Spatial proximity has also been identified by Ducruet and Zaidi
as one factor for the emergence of port systems.124 And Valerie Hansen has summed
up the small world phenomenon and the underlying local and regional integration
also for early medieval Central Asia: the communities along the Silk Road were
largely agricultural rather than commercial, meaning that most people worked on the
land and did not engage in trade. People lived and died near where they were born.
The trade that took place was mainly local and often involved exchanges of goods,
rather than the use of coins. Each community, then as now, had a distinctive
identity.125
At the same time, such a model combines two models for urban systems: in the
classic central place theory developed by Walter Christaller in the 1930s, central
places emerge within a hierarchy of lesser central urban sites in their umland, for
which they serve a focal point of exchange and administration.126 In the network
system of Hohenberg and Hollen Lees, sites gain importance as gateways127, as
intermediary points between sites in their hinterland and other more distanced cities
in their wider foreland (for ports, also defined as the area of the overseas world
with which the port is linked through shipping, trade and passenger traffic128). Both
models of urban systems can also be connected with basic concepts of centrality in
terms of quantitative network analysis: the central place system focuses on the
significance of a site due to the number and strength of links with subordinated sites
within its immediate umland, thus its degree centrality. The network system
attributes centrality to the potential of a site to serve as intermediary or gateway
between otherwise unconnected nodes, thus to its betweenness centrality. From a
structural point of view, via a multitude of short distance ties, a central place would be
embedded in a densely connected cluster of sites in its umland; at the same time, it
would be also integrated into a cluster of sites in its wider foreland via its long
distance connections; between these two clusters, the site would serve as gateway
or hub. The other sites in the foreland may also in turn be embedded in dense
clusters of their respective hinterlands [see fig. 16]. These sites are therefore central
both in terms of degree and betweenness, combining local and global network
centrality. This differentiation between sites with regard to their centrality would also
lead to a hierarchisation within the settlement systems both on the local level (as in
the model of central places) and the global level, with cities of different size and
power of attraction for commerce or migration.129.
Even more, such a model would predict the existence of a multitude of clusters of
interconnected nodes on the local as well as the trans-local level across spatial
scales and at different hierarchical levels, nested within each other and contributing
to a self-similar structure of the entire network [see fig. 17].130 The umlands of central
123 Horden Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, esp. 53-88.
124 Ducruet Zaidi, Maritime constellations.
125 Hansen, The Silk Road 4, 237.
126 Cf. also Fujita - Krugman - Venables, The Spatial Economy 26-27.
127 Hohenberg Hollen Lees, The Making of Urban Europe 47-73. Cf. also Horden Purcell, The
Corrupting Sea 392-395.

128 Pearson, The Indian Ocean 31.
129 Cf. also Fujita - Krugman - Venables, The Spatial Economy 227-236, on the emergence of hubs
and ports, and 181-213 on hierarchical urban systems. For early medieval Western Europe, see
Hodges, Dark Age Economics 20-29. Again, this model of course is not valid for all types of places of
exchange: some harbour sites for instance were established as secondary maritime gateways for a
central place further inland (Portus for Rome), others emerged as places of temporary exchange
between maritime communities without being embedded in a wider settlements system in their
umland.
130 Watts, Small Worlds.
29
places can be understood as clusters nested within the foreland network, which in
turn could be connected via the hub to an even wider ranging network of trans-
regional hubs, each in turn embedded in a regional foreland cluster which shelters
several local umland clusters, etc. [see fig. 18].
Small worlds of Central Asia and the Roman Empire

In a further step, I tried to test this model on real world data. I adapted
reconstructions of Old World trade routes done by Dr T. Matthew Ciolek for various
regions and periods and transformed his data for sites and routes within modern-day
Tajikistan and neighbouring countries for the time between 400 and 800 CE 131 into a
network model with nodes and links. I weighted links according to the distance
between nodes (meaning, that the quantity attributed to a link in the model is
indirectly proportional to the number of miles between two nodes), thereby simulating
(in very rough way) the costs of movement and interaction between them due to
geographical space. On this network, I applied one common algorithm for the
detection of clusters of nodes more densely connected among each other than with
the rest of the network, developed by the physicist M. E. J. Newman.132 As a result,
11 interconnected regional clusters of sites were identified, meaning that the use
spatial proximity as single parameter for the strength of connectivity between sites
results in an grouping also of the historical route network in small worlds [see fig.
19].
Furthermore, I created a nearest neighbour network model of urban sites
documented in the Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th century, thus in the period before
the fragmentation of the Roman imperial system. I used the data basis created by the
Ancient World Mapping Center133, with more than 6000 sites serving as nodes within
a network model, in which localities are connected to all neighbouring sites within a
radius of 60 miles, thereby simulating again in a very rough way webs of regional
interaction. Accordingly, the Roman Empire disintegrates in more than 30 larger
clusters [see fig. 20]. Each of these clusters in turn can be fragmented in a number of
regional clusters as I did for the cluster of mainland Greece, with six sub-clusters
[see fig. 21]. Also within these regional clusters, local clusters of interconnected sites
can be identified, as for North-western Greece, for instance, where we find four of
these [see fig. 22].
This network is of course a drastic simplification of connectivity within the Roman
Empire; in using only spatial distance of weighting links I did not take into account the
significantly different costs for transport and mobility on land and on sea. This was
done by Walter Scheidel et al. for their Orbis-model of route networks in Stanford;
with these parameters, the link between Rome and Alexandria for instance, would be
stronger than between the capital and some site inland in northern Italy and
different clusters would be identified (could be an interesting experiment).134 Still, the
models I have created may help us to imagine the Late Roman Empire or early
medieval Eurasia as a (potentially fragmented) agglomeration of nested clusters,
(potentially) connected by medium and longer distance links of exchange, mobility or
control.
The integration and fragmentation of the ancient world
131 http://www.ciolek.com/owtrad.html.
132 Newman, Networks 371-392.
133 Ancient World Mapping Center.
134 http://orbis.stanford.edu/.
30
The next question then would be if and how strong these small world clusters were
actually connected. There is an intense debate about the degree of economic
integration within the Roman Empire. Paul Erdkamp in his study on the Roman grain
market, for instance, has stated: The corn market seems largely to have operated
within restricted, sometimes isolated regions. This is not to deny that some goods
were distributed over long distances, even Empire-wide. On the one hand, the grain
market was larger in volume, on the other, it was more restrained geographically than
the trade in perfumes, papyrus or textiles, and against the assumption that trade
evened out local harvest shocks, I have stressed the constraints on market
integration in the Roman Empire. This is not to deny that markets connected
producers and consumers on a vast scale, but to warn that the degree of connectivity
should not be exaggerated, even along the coasts of the Mediterranean. Connectivity
and isolation were unevenly spread across the Mediterranean world. We may
distinguish a core, consisting of a global network of commercial centres and those
regions that were lucky to be situated along busy shipping lanes, and a periphery that
contained economic zones that were at best regionally integrated, at worst
underdeveloped and isolated.135 The economist Peter Temin draws a different
picture: the theory of comparative advantage () implies that there were
advantages to regional specialization in ancient Rome. The Romans put
considerable effort into unifying the Mediterranean and clearing out pirates that
impeded peaceful shipping. One purpose of that effort was to exploit the comparative
advantage of different parts of the ancient world; he sees the Roman Empire as an
enormous conglomeration of interdependent markets (maybe similar to our small
world clusters), whose degree of economic integration resulted also in the
interdependence of prices in different regions. This in turn was critized by Peter
Fibinger Bang: One might conceivably imagine that some markets had begun to be
linked by middle- and long-distance trade. But to see the entire economy, spanning
several continents, as organized by a set of interlinked markets is quite another
matter. It is doubtful whether the mature eighteenth-century European economy,
outside some restricted pockets, could be described in such terms; and the extent
of regional specialization remained quite limited.136
While there is no consensus on the degree of market integration in the Roman
economy, on the basis of archaeological evidence, it seems clear that one of its most
remarkable features was the widespread diffusion of goods (especially pottery), not
only geographically (sometimes being transported over many hundreds of miles), but
also socially (so that it reached not just the rich, but also the poor). According to
Bryan Ward-Perkins, the end of complexity, on the contrast, was indicated by the
reduction of the lateral as well as vertical range of connectivity, so that even in the
few places, like Rome, were pottery imports and production remained exceptionally
buoyant, the middle and lower markets for good-quality goods () had wholly
disappeared. The dismembering of the Roman state, and the ending of centuries of
security, were the crucial factors in destroying the sophisticated economy of ancient
times.137 Such an interpretation of the end of the system, in turn, would imply a
considerable degree of interdependence in the centuries before, since otherwise its
collapse would not have affected even relatively peripheral regions such as Roman
135 Erdkamp, The Grain Market 204, 329-330.

136 Bang, The Roman Bazaar 31 and 73; Temin, The Roman Market Economy, esp. 10-24 and 29-52.
137 Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome 88, 106-107, 133. Cf. also McCormick, Origins of the European
Economy 778 and 782-783. On the distribution patterns of Roman pottery see also Mees, Die
Verbreitung von Terra Sigillata. On the issue of economic complexity cf. also Vaccaro, Sicily in the
Eighth and Ninth Centuries.
31
Britain to such a dramatic degree. Otherwise, after the disappearance of the

overarching imperial framework, whose demands and logistics very much determined
orientation and scale of the axis of over-regional distribution and exchange both for
the public and the private sector138, an agglomeration of isolated, maybe self-
sufficient cluster or small worlds would have re-appeared, whose welfare would
have depended mainly on their internal socio-economic dynamics.
This is somehow the scenario Chris Wickham draws for the Mediterranean around
800: Long-distance trade is, as a general rule, less economically important than
trade inside major economic regions, Egypt, the Aegean, and so on. () For the
great Mediterranean regions, internal exchange was the core commercial activity;
and, indeed, long-distance commerce was itself generated, as a spin-off, by the
structural coherence and intensity of intraregional exchange. This explains, among
other things, the cellular nature of long- distance traffic: moving west from Alexandria,
say, around 1000, one passed from an Egypt- Palestine exchange area through a
Tunisia-Sicily exchange area (with northern links to Genoa and Pisa) to a Spain-
Morocco exchange area. Most really long-distance routes simply linked these smaller
interregional groupings together, and few were the boats which went from one end of
the Mediterranean to the other.139
As we have seen above, also few individuals traversed all the distance of some
2,000 miles (3,600 kilometers) between Samarkand and Changan.140 Equally, the
apex of Sogdian long-distance commerce was pre-ceded by economic and
demographic growth in the 5th-6th century in Sogdia proper; new settlements emerged
primarily through agrarian colonisation, not as trading posts. And the visual images
and objects we have of the elite culture of that period were shape by a milieu of
aristocratic landowners, not merchants.141 Comparably, Sogdia remained one of the
richest regions of the Islamic sphere even after the loosening of long-distance ties to
the east of Central Asia and China after 800 and under the reign of the Samanids.142
Yet, it was a different Sogdia. We have seen, for instance, how specific forms of elite
culture in the cities of the country emerged due to the long-distance connections to
Persia and China. The diffusion and flourishing of the Sogdian diaspora and its
networks had depended on its specific position between and within large and rich
imperial spheres to the east and to the south resp. west, but also on the relatively
loose suzerainty of the empires of the steppe with which it cooperated hence on the
interplay of political and socio-economic factors across Eurasia far beyond the
borders of Sogdia.
While the small worlds of the Sogdians as intermediaries became an intersection
point of developments to the east and to the west, these processes were not linked to
such a degree that they can be interpreted as fully interdependent. Despite
diplomatic missions, gift exchange and temporary alliances, political or economic
dynamics in Byzantium did not depend on decision-making in Changan (to the same
degree as it would on decision-making in Ctesiphon or Baghdad) or vice versa. But
what we can observe, as in the Turkish-Persian-Byzantine triangle of the 570s, for
instance, is a trickling of effects (similar to the most common mode of exchange of
138 But see also Bang, The Roman Bazaar, 68-69, on the very limited capacity or bureaucratic control
of pre-modern states and often their outright impotence and the inadequate and somehow unrealistic
idea that the imperial economy was controlled by a large redistributive system.
139 Wickham, The Mediterranean around 800, 165.
141 de La Vaissire, Sogdian traders 114-117, 161-164.
142 de La Vaissire, Sogdian traders 253-258, 292-299.
32
objects) from one end of the continent to the other (with remains of the Rouran
showing up as Avars at Byzantiums Danube frontier).143 And while hard power and
socio-economic impulses did not make the full distance in an unbroken line, the
interactions and contacts which took place relied to a significant degree on the long
distance routes and networks established by the Sogdians and others (as in the case
of the Byzantine-Turkish negotiations).
A stronger integration of well-connected small worlds or even sites within regional

spheres over larger distances was possible especially on the basis of maritime trade,
which (as is well-studies) allowed for a larger scale of exchange. Also Chris Wickham
has highlighted this, although again with a strong focus on intraregional dynamics:
Conversely, the regional wealth in the Mediterranean areas that did exist in 800,
particularly in Egypt, was not particularly focused on the Mediterranean as a maritime
space. What would be necessary for the expansion of bulk trade with Egypt was less
the increasing density of the luxury network just referred to, and more the internal
development of other regions, so that they became sufficiently complex and open to
the sea for Egyptians to be persuaded that they were worth considering as equal
trade partners. As other regions did become more internally complex, that is to say,
they offered more opportunities for longer-distance bulk trade between them.144 In
Wickhams scenario, relatively independent development of regional small worlds is
the pre-condition for the emergence of links which may lead to inter-dependencies
between regions.
One (partly) supporting case may be the significant intensification of maritime
exchange in the Indian Ocean from the mid-8th century onwards, when both Southern
Iraq (due to the foundation of Baghdad) and Southern China (on the basis of long-
term demographic and economic growth) became the most dynamic regions in their
respective imperial sphere.145 But the intensification of maritime exchange did equally
require the pre-existence of routes of luxury trade (and the orientations of demands
and mental maps created thereby) and even more of traditions of long-distance
maritime mobility and know-how (of shipbuilding, navigation, commercial practices,
etc.). Socio-economic (but, as we have seen, also religious) developments in regions
already (weakly) connected before then may induce an increase in the scale,
frequency and quality of exchange and mobility along these networks (which, of
course, may be augmented with additional routes), thereby eventually resulting in
interdependencies and the integration of regions across distances in world
systems.146 Following Michael McCormick (but equally taking into account
Wickhams illumination of the intraregional dynamics within the small worlds of the
post-Roman world), one can postulate similar mechanisms at work in the early
medieval Euro-Mediterranean sphere.
Stigmergy: the significance of long-distance connectivity
143 Cf. Pollard, Indian Spices 3-4, for similar models regarding the relation between Rome and India.
144 Wickham, The Mediterranean around 800, 173. Cf. also Hodges, Dark Age Economics 7, 11-13,
and Curta, Markets in Tenth-Century 327-328 (on agricultural surplus creation as pre-condition for
commercial growth in 9th/10th cent. al-Andalus). For a further case in the Mediterranean cf. also
Vaccaro, Sicily in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries.
145 Cf. also Schottenhammer, Das songzeitliche Quanzhou, and So, Prosperity, Region, and
Institutions (for China), and Kennedy, The Feeding of the five Hundred Thousand, as well as Lombard,
Bltezeit des Islam (for Baghdad).
146 Cf. also Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony. Cf. also Fitzpatrick, Provincializing Rome 27,
citing Moses Finley (The Ancient Economy, 1985, 177-178): The mere presence of trade over long
distances is of course a necessary condition for interdependence but it is not a sufficient condition.
33
Against this background, we may conclude: both in the (post-)Roman world and in
early-medieval Eurasia, long distance connectivity did not only allow for the exchange
of objects, people, tastes and ideas, thereby contributing to the modification of
material cultures or religious believes, also beyond the elite layer of societies (vertical
dimension). It was equally the pre-condition for the diffusion of and cohesion among
religious communities and institutions respectively diasporas across the
Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean or Eurasia. This lateral dimension at the same time
provided for connecting factors as well as knowledge on routes, vehicles and
organisation of exchange for an eventual intensification of exchange and possible
further (or-renewed) integration of local and regional small-worlds.
These possible feedbacks are inherent to the processes of the emergence, usage or
modification of routes: around 1995, a new park area at Stuttgart University in
Germany was opened for the public. Individuals decided to cut short their way by
selecting paths across grassed areas. Others followed their traces until new trails
emerged in disregard of the previously defined and bituminised ways [see fig. 23].
This particular process attracted the attention of Dirk Helbing, a physicist, who
together with two colleagues developed a mathematical model for the emergence of
such trail patterns.147 Their paper highlights the actual complexity behind the
appearance of seemingly simple patterns of past human activity in space. These
structures can emerge due to the sum of individual agency without (or even in
negligence of) central planning. Helbing and colleagues applied also a further
concept of complexity theory, path dependence; in simple terms, it indicates that the
trajectory of a system does not only depend on current conditions, but also on the
history of the system such as structures established earlier which predetermine
the space of options of future agency. The park area in Stuttgart illustrates the
validity (for the emergence of the new trails) and limits (for the originally planned, but
ignored ways) of this concept. Equally relevant in this regard is the concept of
stigmergy, introduced by Pierre-Paul Grasse in the 1950s to describe the indirect
communication taking place among individuals in social insect societies; it indicates
that a trace left in the environment by an action stimulates the performance of a next
action, by the same or a different agent. In that way, subsequent actions tend to
reinforce and build on each other, leading to the emergence of coherent, apparently
systematic activity.148
The notion of the Silk Road suggests linear routes between two localities, while
scholarship has illuminated the multiplexity of commercial, political or religious ties
among places on the local, regional and trans-regional level, connected through the
mobility of individuals and objects. Jason Neelis for instance states: Rather than
restricting themselves to a single Buddhist superhighway, Buddhist missionaries
followed various itineraries, including major arteries, minor capillary routes, and
middle paths to travel back and forth between destinations. () Interconnected
networks of arteries and capillaries were used for ancient migrations (),
interregional and long-distance trade, and cross-cultural transmission.149 Neelis
maps such a multiplex web of capillary routes for a smaller region between
Karakorum and Hindukush; at different times, these routes were used with different
frequencies [see fig. 24].150 With regard to their selection, similar dynamics of agency
and stigmergy could be assumed yet, such processes did not only leave traces in
the landscape. The usage of routes and the encounter of spatial features (landmarks)
147 Helbing Keltsch - Molnr, Modelling the evolution of human trail systems.
148 Hlldobler Wilson, The Superorganism 479-481.
149 Neelis, Early Buddhist Transmission 1-2.
150 Neelis, Early Buddhist Transmission 259.
34
as well as communities (with their commercial opportunities, for instance) were

combined into mental maps, which were communicated and passed on within
communities of caravan guides, porters and merchants or navigators, seamen and
traders and later maybe also visualised in the form of maps or written down and then
used by others. At the same time, human agency on the individual as well as on the
societal level of course did not take place in a vacuum, but in an equally complex
interplay with the dynamics of the natural environment geological or climatic
dynamics could make earlier routes impassable, for instance. But the determinative
impact of environmental factors, in turn, was also limited due to social complexity.
While landscape and contour lines or wind and waves may have suggested ideal
routes across various regions, factors of socio-economic, political or religious push
and pull, for instance, often proved stronger and incited individuals to put up with
dangerous detours in order to visit a famous shrine.151
But in any case, the routes that thus emerged, the connections that were created
through the mobility of people, objects and ideas conveyed this inherent stigmergic
impulse for others to follow the traces they had left in the landscape as well as in the
imaginations of individuals, communities or empires.152
151See the travels of the 7th cent. Buddhist monk Xuanzang (tr. Li) from China to India, for instance.
152Xuanzang, deliberately following the traces of earlier Buddhist pilgrims, being again a case
example.
35
Figures
Fig. 1: Asia in ca. 610 CE; from: Herrmann, An historical atlas of China.
36
Fig. 2: Armenia and the Roman-Persian frontier in Late Antiquity (from: wikimedia.commons)
Fig. 3: Sogdia and neighbouring regions, 6th-8th cent. CE (from: wikimedia.commons)
37
Fig. 4: Important routes and places in the Indian Ocean, 6th-15th cent. (from:
http://pdjeliclark.wordpress.com)
38
Fig. 5: Asia in ca. 750 CE; from: Herrmann, An historical atlas of China.
39
Fig. 6: Trade routes of the al-Rdhnya-merchants according to Ibn Khurraddhbih, ca. 830
(from: Ibn Fadln, tr. Lunde Stone)
Fig. 7: The origins of 50 noble houses of Armenia as reported in the historical work of
Movs s Xorenaci (8th cent. CE; J. Preiser-Kapeller, 2013)
40
Fig. 8: The site of Moevaja Balka within Western Eurasia (from: Knauer, A Man's Caftan)
Fig. 9: Regions with deposits of garnet used in jewellery found in graves in Merovingian
territories, 5th-6th cent. (from: Drauschke Hilgner, Karfunkelstein und Elfenbein).
41
Fig. 10: Distribution of amethyst beads from the 6th and 7th centuries in southern Germany
and adjacent areas (from: Drauschke, Byzantine Jewellery)
Fig. 11: Chronological development of the number of amethyst beads and the graves that
contained amethyst beads (from: Drauschke, Byzantine Jewellery)
42
Fig. 12: Places of origin of objects, connected through the archaeological assemblage of the
Belitung shipwreck (Indonesia, 9th cent. CE; from: Preiser-Kapeller, The Maritime Mobility of
Individuals and Objects).
Fig. 13: The process of rewiring on an ordered network (from: Ball, Critical Mass)
Fig. 14: The trajectories of path length and of the clustering coefficient with increasing degree
of rewiring on an ordered network towards a small world network (from: Ball, Critical Mass)
43
Fig. 15: Four small world clusters with internal strong ties and with weak ties between
them (from: Ball, Critical Mass)
Fig. 16: A (port) city as central place for its umland cluster (green nodes) and as intermediary
gateway between its umland and the ports in its maritime foreland (blue nodes) which in turn
serve as central places for their umlands (from: Preiser-Kapeller, The Maritime Mobility of
Individuals and Objects)
44
Fig. 17: Clusters at various levels of a network, nested within each other (from:
www.flylib.com)
Fig. 18: A (port) city as central place for its umland cluster (green nodes) and as intermediary
gateway between its umland and the ports in its foreland (blue nodes, which in turn serve as
central places for their umlands) and as hub between its foreland cluster and a wider
foreland (yellow nodes) (from: Preiser-Kapeller, The Maritime Mobility of Individuals and
Objects)
45
Fig. 19: The network of sites and routes within modern-day Tajikistan and neighbouring
countries for the time between 400 and 800 CE and the 11 small world clusters identified
with the Newman-algorithm (J. Preiser-Kapeller, 2014; data from:
http://www.ciolek.com/owtrad.html).
46
Fig. 20: Nearest neighbour network model of urban sites documented in the Roman Empire
in the 4th and 5th century and the 30 small world clusters identified with the Newman-
algorithm (J. Preiser-Kapeller, 2014; data from: Ancient World Mapping Center).
47
in the 4th and 5th century: 6 sub-cluster identified in the small world-cluster of Greece with
the Newman-algorithm (J. Preiser-Kapeller, 2014; data from: Ancient World Mapping
Center).
in the 4th and 5th century: 4 sub-cluster identified in the sub-small world-cluster of North-
western Greece with the Newman-algorithm (J. Preiser-Kapeller, 2014; data from: Ancient
World Mapping Center).
48
Fig. 23: The emergence of trail patterns on an open space at Stuttgart University (from:
Helbing Keltsch - Molnr, Modelling the evolution of human trail systems)
Fig. 24: An ancient capillary route network between Karakorum and Hindukush (from: Neelis,
Early Buddhist Transmission 259)
49
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Preiser-Kapeller, Peaches to Samarkand (draft, November 2014)

Peaches to Samarkand. Long distance-connectivity, small worlds and socio-

Laufer, Sino-Iranica 246-253.

Mediterranean via Armenia (prunus armeniaca).5 Without doubt, the diffusion of

Christian, Silk Roads or Steppe Roads.

observations with some discussions on the character of exchange and socio-

1 Places and dynamics of connectivity across Afro-Eurasia, 500-850 CE

1415; Miri, Sasanian Prs 47-50, 103-104, 109.

Persias Imperial Power 602-603; Christian, Silk Roads or Steppe Roads.

These written sources are equally bolstered by archaeological evidence, which

him with essential military support in the Trans-Causasian region.37 Main

43 Xuanzang I: 34 (tr. Li); Foltz, Buddhism in the Iranian World 207-208.

Sogdian traders 173.

700-850: different imperial dynamics and the re-location of main axes of

Central Asia 244-254.

57 Cf. also Noonan, Some Observations; Curta, Markets in Tenth-Century.

562-564; Curta, Markets in Tenth-Century.

2 Lateral and vertical dimensions: motives, range, density and impacts of

This cosmopolitan taste also contributed to the emergence of an aristocratic koine,

birds; Daim, Byzantinische Grtelgarnituren.

Religions, mobility and demands

Scale and range of transport and commerce

90 de La Vaissire, Sogdian traders 315.

Diaspora 508-509; Livshits, The Sogdian "Ancient Letters".

247; Knauer, A Man's Caftan.

Trade diasporas across Afro-Eurasia

Different scales of maritime connectivity

111 Potter (ed.), The Persian Gulf 72, 81.

unfortunately, this movement of population can only be reconstructed on the basis of

3 Small worlds, networks and interdependencies

their umland cf. Hodges, Dark Age Economics 107-115.

Clusters, central places and gateways

Corrupting Sea 392-395.

Small worlds of Central Asia and the Roman Empire

The integration and fragmentation of the ancient world

135 Erdkamp, The Grain Market 204, 329-330.

Britain to such a dramatic degree. Otherwise, after the disappearance of the

A stronger integration of well-connected small worlds or even sites within regional

Stigmergy: the significance of long-distance connectivity

as well as communities (with their commercial opportunities, for instance) were

Fig. 3: Sogdia and neighbouring regions, 6th-8th cent. CE (from: wikimedia.commons)

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C. Knappett, An Archaeology of Interaction. Network Perspectives on Material Culture and Society.

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B. Latour, Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford 2005.

M. E. Lewis, Chinas cosmopolitan Empire. The Tang Dynasty. Harvard 2009.

X. Liu, The Silk Road in World History. Oxford 2010.

M. McCormick, Origins of the European Economy. Communications and Commerce AD 300-900

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M. McCormick - P. E. Dutton - P. A. Mayewski, Volcanoes and the Climate Forcing of Carolingian

M. E. J. Newman, Networks. An Introduction. Oxford 2010.

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