Skip to content
RichseenAtlas← AtlasSign in

Horses

node

The commodity that moved east, and the reason the Han state opened the western routes at all. Zhang Qian's reports described the tall horses of Ferghana, called tianma or heavenly horses in Chinese sources and known as blood-sweating horses, a description now generally attributed to a parasitic infection. Chinese cavalry needed mounts that steppe and Central Asian breeders could supply and Chinese pasture could not, and Emperor Wu fought a war against Dayuan in Ferghana from 104 to 101 BCE to secure them. Later dynasties institutionalised the exchange, trading silk to the Uyghurs and tea to Tibet for horses. A traded commodity, not a place.

A node is not a place. Drawing it on a map would assert something about the world that no stored fact supports.

Read in · 1

Evidence · 1
Timeline

No dated observations are stored for this object. Atlas shows what was observed and when — it does not infer a history.

Connections · 0
    Assembled narrative · 1

    Assembled from 10 blocks · 1 evidence · 4 related

    1. Story
    2. The commodity that moved east, and the reason the Han state opened the western routes at all. Zhang Qian's reports described the tall horses of Ferghana, called tianma or heavenly horses in Chinese sources and known as blood-sweating horses, a description now generally attributed to a parasitic infection. Chinese cavalry needed mounts that steppe and Central Asian breeders could supply and Chinese pasture could not, and Emperor Wu fought a war against Dayuan in Ferghana from 104 to 101 BCE to secure them. Later dynasties institutionalised the exchange, trading silk to the Uyghurs and tea to Tibet for horses. A traded commodity, not a place.
    3. Knowledge
    4. Horses
    5. Connections
    6. Zhang Qian
    7. Zhang Qian returns to Chang'an
    8. Han campaigns against Dayuan for the Ferghana horses
    9. Evidence
    10. The earliest and closest account of Zhang Qian's missions, the peoples and kingdoms he reported from Ferghana, Bactria and Parthia, and the Ferghana horses that prompted the Han campaigns of 104 to 101 BCE. Sima Qian was writing within living memory of the events.
    Close the narrative
    Observed changes · 0

    No public Signals are attached to this object. Signals show what changed and when it was observed — never a direction or a rank.

    Actions

    Read the assembled narrativeContinue in StudioOpen TwinTwin does not start a decision from this kind of object.ShareSaveSaved objects are part of the authenticated projection, which is declared and not yet built.

    /atlas?object=TRADE_HORSES&experience=TRADE_HORSES