Sogdian merchant networks

Assembled from 49 blocks · 2 evidence · 38 related

1. Story
2. Iranian-speaking people of the Zarafshan valley, centred on Samarkand, Bukhara and Panjikent, who dominated the overland trade of the eastern routes from roughly the fourth to the eighth centuries. They are the answer to how goods crossed a distance almost nobody travelled: rather than single long journeys, Sogdians established resident family colonies in a chain of cities from Sogdiana through the Tarim oases to the Hexi Corridor and Chang'an, and moved goods between them in relays on credit and correspondence. Sogdian became a lingua franca of the eastern routes. They also carried Buddhism, Manichaeism and Christianity as a by-product of that network. An ethnolinguistic community, not a place.
3. Knowledge
4. Samarkand
5. Sogdian merchant networks
6. Silk
7. Paper
8. Buddhism
9. Connections
10. Samarkand
11. Silk
12. Buddhism
13. Paper
14. The Sogdian Ancient Letters are abandoned west of Dunhuang
15. Arab conquest of Transoxiana
16. The Dunhuang manuscripts are dispersed
17. Pamir Mountains
18. Bukhara
19. Sogdian merchant networks
20. Papermaking
21. Arab conquest of Transoxiana
22. Battle of Talas
23. Han Empire
24. Sogdian merchant networks
25. Han establishes the Protectorate of the Western Regions
26. Silkworm cultivation reaches Byzantium
27. Sogdian merchant networks
28. Silk Road religious corridor
29. Xuanzang
30. Mogao Caves
31. First cave cut at Mogao (traditional date)
32. Xuanzang travels to India and back
33. The Dunhuang Diamond Sutra is printed
34. Gandhara
35. Ashoka (Ashoka Maurya)
36. Ashoka's bilingual Greek-Aramaic inscription at Kandahar
37. Council at Pataliputra and the despatch of Buddhist missions (traditional account)
38. Buddhism attested in Han China
39. Anthropomorphic Buddha images appear in Gandhara and Mathura
40. Traditional founding of the first cave at Mogao
41. Xuanzang's overland journey to India and return
42. Construction of Borobudur under Shailendra patronage
43. Sogdian merchant networks
44. Papermaking
45. The Sogdian Ancient Letters are abandoned west of Dunhuang
46. The Dunhuang Diamond Sutra is printed
47. Evidence
48. Five substantially surviving letters of Sogdian merchants, undelivered, showing how the eastern routes actually operated: resident family colonies in a chain of cities from Sogdiana to the Hexi Corridor, goods moved between them in relays, business conducted by correspondence and credit rather than by single long journeys. Letter 2 reports the sack of Luoyang, which anchors the conventional dating to around 313 CE. The letters are written on paper, establishing that the material had reached the far western Chinese frontier by that date.
49. Argues from excavated documents at seven Tarim and Central Asian sites that most recorded traffic was local and small-scale rather than long-distance luxury trade, and that Chinese government military expenditure was the dominant economic driver in the Tarim oases. A necessary corrective to the popular image of continuous caravans crossing the whole length.