The Lost Dhow: A Discovery from the Maritime Silk Route

Saved from Desert Sands: Re-discovering Objects on the Silk Roads, 2024

Saved from Desert Sands, edited by Kelsey Granger and Imre Galambos, unites historians, codicologists, art historians, archaeologists, and curators in the study of material culture on the Silk Roads. The re-discovery of forgotten manuscript archives and sand-buried cities in the twentieth century has brought to light thousands of manuscripts and artefacts. To date, textual content has largely been prioritised over physical objects and their materiality, but the material aspects of these objects are just as important. Focusing primarily on the material and non-textual, this volume presents studies on silver dishes, sealing systems, manuscripts, Buddhist paintings, and ceramics, all of which demonstrate the centrality of material culture in the study of the Silk Roads.

2020

This dissertation traces the role of Persian travelers and physicians in the maritime exchange of medical goods and knowledge between Iran and China between the ninth through the fourteenth centuries, and the afterlife of that exchange in modern museums. The Maritime Silk Road was a cosmopolitan network of premodern trade arteries linking the Far East and Southeast Asia to the Middle East by sea. The long-standing cultural and economic exchange across these thoroughfares dramatically expanded the pharmaceutical ingredients and medicinal recipes available to physicians practicing across the littorals of the Indian Ocean and South China Sea and facilitated the intellectual engagement of scholars with medical theories from afar. Drawing from an archive of shipwreck artifacts that includes medical goods, herbs, trade wares, and the personal effects of seafarers interpreted alongside written accounts of sea travel, medical and philosophical texts, tomb inscriptions, and architecture in port cities, this dissertation explores how the maritime journey of Persian travelers to China influenced the epistemology and practice of Persian medicine. The first chapter addresses the current state of Southeast Asian shipwreck archaeology and traces the trajectories of medical, scientific, and related shipwreck and navigational artifacts within Western museum collections. Chapter two introduces the historical context in which Persian merchants moved in Middle Period China and initiates a discussion of hybridity and resilience. The burning and reconstruction of the Hangzhou Phoenix mosque provides the narrative frame in xi which repeated outbreaks of violence in Tang and Song port cities are discussed as an analog to theories of the body and disease. Migration, hybridization, and medical collecting are examined as social and medical practices of resilience. The chapter uses archaeological evidence from port cities and the Belitung shipwreck with a narrative account of the massacre of foreign merchants in Guangzhou to situate the early maritime migration of Persian merchants to China within the changing tides of the Tang and Song periods. The third chapter analyzes the maritime trade routes as sites of spiritual and physical risk, humoral vulnerability, and initiation by examining Zoroastrian, Buddhist, and Islamic cosmologies of water and migration evident in religious rituals, medical instructions for seafarers, and the personal effects and crew supplies recovered from the Belitung, Intan, Java Sea, and Pulau Buaya wrecks. These materials are interpreted in light of reflections on the maritime life by travelers who survived the journey to China, leaving behind a ninth-century artistic depiction of a shipwreck, a narrative account, and inscriptions on the tombstones of merchants. Chapter four analyzes the medicines and medical material culture recovered from the Beliting, Java Sea, Intan, Pulau Buaya, and Quanzhou wreck sites within the framework of Persian humoral medicine. The final chapter examines the Tansūqnāma, a fourteenth-century Persian translation of Chinese medical texts, in light of the longue durée of medical exchange between China and Iran and changes to social hierarchies throughout the Mongol Empire that drastically changed the position of Persian merchants in China. xii Preface: Ghost Ships This work traces the experiences and role of Persian travelers and physicians in the premodern maritime exchange of medical materials and knowledge between Iran and China from the ninth through the fourteenth centuries, and the afterlife of that exchange in contemporary museums and scientific discourse. As an intellectual history of the sea, this periodization is meant to foreground the connections between the environmental, material, and cultural experiences of Persianate long-distance ocean trade within the context of major medical and scientific developments in the Persianate world and significant developments in maritime trade in Tang through Yuan Dynasty China. Drawing from an archive of shipwrecks recovered from Southeast Asia and Southern China that includes circulated medical goods, human remains, ceramics, trade wares, and personal effects of sailors interpreted alongside accounts of sea travel, medical and philosophical texts, and surviving graves, tombs, and architecture at port cities, this dissertation explores how the maritime journey of Persian travelers to China influenced the culture of medicine in the medieval period. On the seafloor between Sumatra and Java in 1997, hundreds of blue and green glass eye amulet beads stared upward from the remains of the Intan shipwreck, blinking after a millenium spent underwater. 1 Recovered alongside thousands of broken Chinese ceramics, tin and bronze ingots, thickly blue-glazed shards of Middle Eastern jars and other commercial goods, the tenthcentury cheshm naẓar beads were traded and worn then, as they are today, as talismans against 1 Michael Flecker, "Treasure from the Java Sea," Heritage Asia 2, no.2 (2004):10. xiii misfortune. 2 Manufactured in the Middle East or reworked from Middle Eastern glass in Southeast Asia, 3 4 the protection they offered was meant to be both general and specific: a broad invocation to the watchful eye of God and a defensive counter-gaze against maladies worked by the evil eye of others. 5 Then, as now, suffering could strike a victim from any direction, in a myriad forms, and from multiple causes. The human bones, teeth, and DNA recovered from premodern shipwrecks in Southeast Asia and the Chinese coast bear witness to the suffering and terrifying risks faced by merchantsailors who traveled the monsoon circuit connecting the Persian Gulf with the Java and South China Seas in the Middle Ages. 6 7 Medical manuals instructed travelers by sea of the unique risks of ocean voyages and advised them on techniques they might use to protect themselves. Voyagers carried water and soil from their hometowns or holy sites as talismans against shipwreck and remedies against the dangers of impure, foreign waters. 8 9 But the long-distance journey from Basra, Siraf, and Hormuz along the Indian Ocean littoral and onward to ports in Southeast Asia and China brought such abundant opportunities to seafarers that, despite the risks, the maritime routes latticing the ocean basin were bustling by the medieval period. According to 2

The European Conference on Arts & Humanities 2021: Official Conference Proceedings, 2021

The trade networks of the Silk Roads offered an impressive array of intellectual and cultural influences, which, through the exchange of knowledge and ideas, both verbal and written, still reverberate throughout our societal framework today. Science, arts and literature, textiles and technologies were shared and disseminated into societies along the lengths of these routes, and, through this exchange, languages, religions, and cultures developed and influenced one another. Our collaborative exhibition at the University of Southern California (USC) draws upon artifacts in our collections and those of partner institutions. This initiative includes two phases: First, working with faculty, staff, and students across USC departments, as well as external collaborators, we are focusing on written artifacts-the books, manuscripts, and other vehicles for nonverbal communication-that connected different Silk Roads communities and created entirely new cultures. Rather than impose chronological or historical divisions, the organization of our exhibition is based on geography. Visitors will walk through and view objects as they would travel along the Silk Roads. The aim is both to introduce visitors to specific peoples and places that mark the Eurasian land mass while at the same time preserving the sense of bewilderment that so many interlinked empires and ideas can cause for modern travelers. Secondly, a companion one-day event, Borrowed Recipes: Migrant Food Worlds of the Silk Roads, traces the hidden cultural exchanges underlying the foods originating along the Silk Roads and widely available to us in Los Angeles today.

Current World Archaeology, 2011

Popular article describing the recent special exhibition at the British Museum, 'Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World' (2011), and in particular highlighting the conservation and scientific research conducted at the British Museum on an important group of first century Indian ivory and bone furniture ornaments excavated at Begram and stolen from the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul during the civil war. They were identified and acquired by a private individual on behalf of Kabul and temporarily exhibited at the British Museum prior to return in 2012.

Lotus Leaves, 2019

Egitto e vicino oriente

Over the last few years the Chinese porcelain found in ports and urban centres involved in inter-Asian trade along the Indian Ocean routes, together with material from the wrecks of merchant ships and collections, has offered ample evidence for the study of the cultural, economic and social relations between the various entities involved in this network of commercial and diplomatic exchanges. This is particularly true for the period preceding the advent of the European powers along these routes and their subsequent predominance as from the 16th century. It is a period that is increasingly being studied to re-evaluate the globalization processes in the ancient world. Here, Chinese porcelain represents material evidence that we can, without the least exaggeration, define as incomparable. In fact, the origins of and trade in raw materials and technologies, the hybridization of decorative motives and forms, and the wide-ranging diffusion and re-elaboration of practices and meanings associated with Chinese porcelain and stoneware, attest to intercultural dynamics and a global or, better, glocal utilization of these materials. In the broader context of relations between China and the Arabian Peninsula, few sites offer such remarkable leads for analysis of the connections between the production, reception, and use of Chinese porcelain during the Islamic period. This article focuses mainly on the period between 1279 and 1435, which saw the trade between China and Arabia, together with the consumption and impact of Chinese porcelain on the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, at its most flourishing.

Historians tend to become anxious over the issue of transliteration. In a book such as this one that draws on primary sources written in different languages, it is not possible to have a consistent rule on proper names. Names like João and Ivan are left in their original forms, while Fernando and Nikolai are not and become Ferdinand and Nicholas. As a matter of personal preference, I use Genghis Khan, Trotsky, Gaddafi and Teheran even though other renditions might be more accurate; on the other hand, I avoid western alternatives for Beijing and Guangzhou. Places whose names change are particularly difficult. I refer to the great city on the Bosporus as Constantinople up to the end of the First World War, at which point I switch to Istanbul; I refer to Persia until the country's formal change of name to Iran in 1935. I ask for forbearance from the reader who demands consistency. Other great centres of civilisation such as Babylon, Nineveh, Uruk and Akkad in Mesopotamia were famed for their grandeur and architectural innovation. One Chinese geographer, meanwhile, writing more than two millennia ago, noted that the inhabitants of Bactria, centred on the Oxus river and now located in northern Afghanistan, were legendary negotiators and traders; its capital city was home to a market where a huge range of products were bought and sold, carried from far and wide. 7 This region is where the world's great religions burst into life, where Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism jostled with each other. It is the cauldron where language groups competed, where Indo-European, Semitic and Sino-Tibetan tongues wagged alongside those speaking Altaic, Turkic and Caucasian. This is where great empires rose and fell, where the after-effects of clashes between cultures and rivals were felt thousands of miles away. Standing here opened up new ways to view the past and showed a world that was profoundly interconnected, where what happened on one continent had an impact on another, where the after-shocks of what happened on the steppes of Central Asia could be felt in North Africa, where events in Baghdad resonated in Scandinavia, where discoveries in the Americas altered the prices of goods in China and led to a surge in demand in the horse markets of northern India. These tremors were carried along a network that fans out in every direction, master calligraphic specimens that have been observed have all been on tinted paper'. 11 Places whose names are all but forgotten once dominated, such as Merv, described by one tenth-century geographer as a 'delightful, fine, elegant, brilliant, extensive and pleasant city', and 'the mother of the world'; or Rayy, not far from modern Teheran, which to another writer around the same time was so glorious as to be considered 'the bridegroom of the earth' and the world's 'most beautiful creation'. 12 Dotted across the spine of Asia, these cities were strung like pearls, linking the Pacific to the Mediterranean. Urban centres spurred each other on, with rivalry between rulers and elites prompting ever more ambitious architecture and spectacular monuments. Libraries, places of worship, churches and observatories of immense scale and cultural influence dotted the region, connecting Constantinople to Damascus, Isfahan, Samarkand, Kabul and Kashgar. Cities such as these became home to brilliant scholars who advanced the frontiers of their subjects. The names of only a small handful are familiar today-men like Ibn Sīnā, better known as Avicenna, al-Bīrūnī and al-Khwārizmi-giants in the fields of astronomy and medicine; but there were many more besides. For centuries before the early modern era, the intellectual centres of excellence of the world, the Oxfords and Cambridges, the Harvards and Yales, were not located in Europe or the west, but in Baghdad and Balkh, Bukhara and Samarkand. There was good reason why the cultures, cities and peoples who lived along the Silk Roads developed and advanced: as they traded and exchanged ideas, they learnt and borrowed from each other, stimulating further advances in philosophy, the sciences, language and religion. Progress was essential, as one of the rulers of the kingdom of Zhao in northeastern China at one extremity of Asia more than 2,000 years ago knew all too well. 'A talent for following the ways of yesterday', declared King Wu-ling in 307 BC, 'is not sufficient to improve the world of today.' 13 Leaders in the past understood how important it was to keep up with the times. The mantle of progress shifted, however, in the early modern period as a result of two great maritime expeditions that took place at the end of the fifteenth century. In the course of six years in the 1490s, the foundations were laid for a major disruption to the rhythm of long-established systems of exchange. First Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic, paving the way for two great land masses that were hitherto untouched to connect to Europe and beyond; then, just a few years later, Vasco da Gama successfully navigated the southern tip of Africa, sailing on to India, opening new sea routes in the process. The Worcester College, Oxford April 2015 in the supply of animals, and especially fine horses. But the nomads could be the cause of disaster, such as when Cyrus the Great, the architect of the Persian Empire in the 6th century BC, was killed trying to subjugate the Scythians; his head was then carried around in a skin filled with blood, said one writer, so that the thirst for power that had inspired him could now be quenched. 9 Nevertheless, this was a rare setback that did not stall Persia's expansion. Greek commanders looked east with a combination of fear and respect, seeking to learn from the Persians' tactics on the battlefield and to adopt their technology. Authors like Aeschylus used successes against the Persians as a way of celebrating military prowess and of demonstrating the favour of the gods, commemorating heroic resistance to the attempted invasions of Greece in epic plays and literature. 10 'I have come to Greece,' says Dionysus in the opening lines of the Bacchae, from the 'fabulously wealthy East', a place where Persia's plains are bathed in sunshine, where Bactria's towns are protected by walls, and where beautifully constructed towers look out over coastal regions. Asia and the East were the lands that Dionysus 'set dancing' with the divine mysteries long before those of the Greeks. 11 None was a keener student of such works than Alexander of Macedon. When he took the throne in 336 BC following the assassination of his father, the brilliant King Philip, there was no question about which direction the young general would head in his search for glory. Not for a moment did he look to Europe, which offered nothing at all: no cities, no culture, no prestige, no reward. For Alexander, as for all ancient Greeks, culture, ideas and opportunities-as well as threats-came from the east. It was no surprise that his gaze fell on the greatest power of antiquity: Persia. After dislodging the Persian governors of Egypt in a lightning strike in 331 BC, Alexander set off for an all-out assault on the empire's heartlands. The decisive confrontation took place later in 331 on the dusty plains of Gaugamela, near the modern town of Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, where he inflicted a spectacular defeat on the vastly superior Persian army under the command of Darius III-perhaps because he was fully refreshed after a good night's sleep: according to Plutarch, Alexander insisted on resting before engaging the enemy, sleeping so deeply that his concerned commanders had to shake him awake. Dressing in his favoured outfit, he put on a fine helmet, so polished that 'it was as bright as the most refined silver', grasped a trusted sword in his right hand and led his troops to a crushing victory that opened the gates of an empire. 12 the impressions of the cultural superiority brought from the Mediterranean. The Greeks in Asia were widely credited in India, for example, for their skill in the sciences: 'they are barbarians', says the text known as the Gārgī Samhitā, 'yet the science of astronomy originated with them and for this they must be reverenced like gods'. 29 According to Plutarch, Alexander made sure that Greek theology was taught as far away as India, with the result that the gods of Olympus were revered across Asia. Young men in Persia and beyond were brought up reading Homer and 'chanting the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides', while the Greek language was studied in the Indus valley. 30 This may be why it is possible that borrowings can be detected across great works of literature. It has been suggested, for instance, that the Mahābhārata, the great early Sanskrit epic, owes a debt to the Iliad and to the Odyssey, with the theme of the abduction of Lady Sita by Rāva a a direct echo of the elopement of Helen with Paris of Troy. Influences and inspiration flowed in the other direction too, with some scholars arguing that the Aeneid was in turn influenced by Indian texts. 31 Ideas, themes and stories coursed through the highways, spread by travellers, merchants and pilgrims: Alexander's conquests paved the way for the broadening of the minds of the populations of the lands he captured, as well as those on the periphery and beyond who came into contact with new ideas, new images and new concepts. Even cultures on the wild steppes were influenced, as is clear from the exquisite funerary objects buried alongside high-ranking figures found in the Tilya Tepe graves in northern Afghanistan which show artistic influences being drawn from Greece-as well as from Siberia, India and beyond. Luxury objects were traded into the nomad world, in return for livestock and horses, and on occasion as tribute paid in return for peace. 32 The linking up of the steppes into an interlocking and interconnecting world was accelerated by the growing ambitions of China. Under the Han dynasty (206...

Routledge, 2024

This book brings together scholars from many disciplines to shed light on the long history of the silk roads, to redefine it, and to demonstrate its vitality and importance. "Reimagining the Silk Roads" illuminates economic, spiritual, and political networks, bridging different chronologies and geographies. Richly illustrated, it explores fascinating topics, including archaeological discoveries, oceanic explorations, the movement and impact of ideas, and the ways in which the silk roads, broadly defined, contributed to processes of globalisation. Reconciling the study of land and sea routes, and paying attention to themes such as material culture, environment, trade, and the role of religious faiths, the authors offer complex yet accessible studies of the history of interactions and perceptions across Eurasia over the last 3,000 years. The editors critically respond to the recent politicisation of the silk roads and reflect on their polycentric character. The book challenges and revives silk roads studies, and it will be relevant not only to researchers in archaeology, history, heritage, and related fields, but also to the general reader.

2015

Asian Perspectives, 2003