EUROPEANS ON THE SILK ROAD AND EARLY CONTACTS AND TRADE BETWEEN CHINA AND EUROPE | Facts and Details

ROMANS REACH CHINA?

Marcus Aurelius equine statue
The first foreigners to arrive on the chinese coast were probably Indians and Romans.The earliest recorded official contact between China and ancient Rome was in A.D. 166 when, according to a chinese account, a Roman envoy, possibly sent by Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, arrived in China. This is the only suffer between the big civilizations of Rome and China of which a record survives. The Romans referred to the people of the outside East as the Seres—the Silk People. The term may have referred to tribes in Central Asia not the Chinese. The Romans, by the way, thought silk came from trees .
Romans are believed by some to have made it as far east as the Gobi Desert around 2,000 years ago. The people in Zhelaizhai, a greenwich village in Gansu Province in western China near the Qilain mountains, insist they are descendants of Romans and say the curly hair, straight noes, and light eyes that some of them have proves it .
The Romans that made it to China are said to have been soldiers under Crassus—a Roman leader who formed the inaugural Triumvirate with Julius Caesar and Pompey—who survived a conflict against the Parthians in Syria and Iran and then made their direction east, working as mercenaries for the Huns, until they were captured by chinese troops during a chinese attack on the Hun ruler Zhizhi in contemporary Uzbekistan.

evidence for this claim, first proffered by Oxford historian Homer Dubbs in the 1950s, includes : 1 ) the citation of “ pisces scale formations ” —a formation of overlapping shields ? made only by Roman soldiers ” — by Zhizhi ’ south united states army ; 2 ) Roman-style palisades found in the wall in the township where Zhizhi lived ; and 3 ) a city called Liqian in a historic read dated to A.D. 5. At that meter Liqian was besides the name used by Chinese for Rome. only two early taiwanese cities mentioned had the names of foreign places—Kucha and Wen-suit—and both were given the name of the foreigners that lived there .
Among the biggest promoters of the Roman connection are tourist officials in Zhelaizhai who have erected a statue of Roman future to ones of a Han Chinese and a Muslim Hui Chinese, and built a new museum with a skeleton said to be of a Roman, found in a 2000-year-old grave, and charts that show Roman physiologic features found among the local people. There is even a lavishness hotel for tourists that have even to arrive in great numbers .
See branch Article CONTACTS BETWEEN THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND ROMANS AND CHINA factsanddetails.com

Bactrian Roman-Greco coins
found in China Good Websites and Sources on the Silk Road: Silk Road Seattle washington.edu/silkroad ; Silk Road Foundation silk-road.com ; Wikipedia Wikipedia ; Silk Road Atlas depts.washington.edu ; Old World Trade Routes ciolek.com ; Yo Yo Ma ’ s Silk Road Project silkroadproject.org ; International Dunhuang Project idp.bl.uk ; Marco Polo: Wikipedia Marco Polo Wikipedia ; Works by Marco Polo gutenberg.org ; Marco Polo and his Travels silk-road.com ; Zheng He and Early Chinese Exploration : Wikipedia Chinese Exploration Wikipedia ; Le Monde Diplomatique mondediplo.com ; Zheng He Wikipedia Wikipedia ; Gavin Menzies ’ randomness 1421 1421.tv ; First Europeans in Asia Wikipedia ; Matteo Ricci faculty.fairfield.edu Books: on the Silk Road “ The Silk Road ” ( Odyssey Guides ) ; “ Marco Polo : A Photographer ‘s Journey ” by Mike Yamashita ( White Star, 2002 ) ; “ Life along the Silk Road ” by Whitfield, Susan ( Berkeley : University of California Press, 1999 ) ; “ The Silk Route : Trade, Travel, War and Faith ” by Susan Whitfield, with Ursula Sims-Williams, eds. ( London : british Library, 2004 ) ; “ The Camel and the Wheel ” by Richard Bulliet ( Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1975 ). Television show: “ Silk Road 2005 ”, a 10-episode production by China ‘s CCTV and Japan ‘s NHK, with music by Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. The original series was shown in 1980s .
RELATED ARTICLES IN THIS WEBSITE: SILK ROAD factsanddetails.com ; SILK ROAD EXPLORERS factsanddetails.com ; MARCO POLO factsanddetails.com ; MARCO POLO ‘S JOURNEY TO THE EAST factsanddetails.com ; MARCO POLO ’ S TRAVELS IN CHINA factsanddetails.com ; MARCO POLO ‘S DESCRIPTIONS OF CHINA factsanddetails.com ; MARCO POLO AND KUBLAI KHAN factsanddetails.com ; MARCO POLO ’ s RETURN JOURNEY TO VENICE factsanddetails.com ; IBN BATTUTA, HIS JOURNEY AND HIS TRIP TO CONSTANTINOPLE factsanddetails.com ; IBN BATTUTA IN IRAQ, PERSIA AND ANATOLIA factsanddetails.com ; IBN BATTUTA ON THE SILK ROAD IN RUSSIA AND CENTRAL ASIA WITH THE GOLDEN HORDE AND MONGOLS factsanddetails.com ; IBN BATTUTA IN INDIA factsanddetails.com ; IBN BATTUTA ON THE MARITIME SILK ROAD BETWEEN INDIA AND CHINA factsanddetails.com ; WILLIAM OF RUBRUCK : HIS JOURNEY, MISSION AND REPORTS OF EARLY MONGOLS AND PRESTER JOHN factsanddetails.com ; WILLIAM OF RUBRUCK IN CENTRAL ASIA AND LAND OF THE GOLDEN HORDE factsanddetails.com ; WILLIAM OF RUBRUCK ON MUSLIMS, BUDDHISTS, NESTORIANS AND PEOPLE OF THE EAST factsanddetails.com ; WILLIAM OF RUBRUCK IN THE HOMELAND OF THE MONGOLS factsanddetails.com ; WILLIAM OF RUBRUCK ON MONGKE KHAN factsanddetails.com ; RUBRUCK ‘S RETURN JOURNEY TO EUROPE factsanddetails.com ; CHINESE EXPLORATION factsanddetails.com ; ZHENG HE : THE GREAT CHINESE EUNUCH EXPLORER factsanddetails.com

Friar John of Pian de Carpine

The beginning known european to travel from Europe to China on the Silk Road was John of Pian de Carpine ( 1180 ? -1252 ), a Franciscan friar and early companion of Saint Francis of Assisi, who was dispatched by Pope Innocent IV in 1245 to go to Mongolia with the mission of setting up diplomatic ties with the Mongols and converting the Great Guyuk Khan to Christianity. Carpine traveled to Asia 28 years before Marco Polo. Their mission at the time was comparable to sending a homo to the moon and bringing him back active .
Friar John attended Guyuk ‘s coronation and was granted an audience with the Great Khan. He delivered a message from the Pope in which the pope expressed his wish for Christians and Mongols to be friends but insisted that the Mongols must embrace Christianity and repent for murdering Christians in Hungary and Poland. The Great Khan was not moved. His reply delivered in a note carried rear to Europe by Friar John read : “ Come, Great Pope … and pay court to us. ”

Friar John and his polish companion, Friar Benedict, went foremost to the ruins of Kiev and then the Mongol summer camp at Sira Ordu, covering the final examination 3,000 miles to Karakorum in 106 days. The most unmanageable separate of their travel was in the Altai mountains where, Friar John wrote : “ I was ill to the point of death ; but I had myself carried along in a haul in the intense cold through the deep snow, then as not to interfere with the affairs of Christendom. ”
They besides had a hard time in the Gobi Desert. The Mongols, he wrote, “ told us that if we took into Mongolia the horses which we had, they would all die, for the snows were cryptic, and they did not know how to dig out the eatage from under the snow like Mongol horses, nor could anything else be found ( on the way ) for them to eat, for the Tartars had neither chaff nor hay nor fodder. sol, on their rede, we decided to leave our horses there. ”
When the two Friars arrived in Karakoram, two thousand Mongol chiefs were there Guyuk Khan ‘s coronation. Friar John wrote : “ They asked us if we wished to make any presents ; but we had already used up about everything we had, so we had nothing to give them at all. ”
Given up for dead, Friar John made it back to Europe two and half years after beginning his travel. other friars followed in their footsteps in the follow years but they besides had fiddling success in converting the Great Khan to Christianity. [ source : “ The Discoverers ” by Daniel Boorstin ]

Rabban Sauma: Chinese Christian Travels to Europe

between 1275 and 1288, around the same prison term Marco Polo made his travel, a Mongol Christian monk named Rabban Sauma traveled west from China to Europe. Described as a reverse March Polo, he originally intended to stop at Jerusalem but continued on to Constantinople and then Rome. He met the Philip the Fair, the king of France, and Edward I, the king of England .
Sauma trekked more than 7,000 miles on the Silk Road. He wrote diaries of his adventurers that have survived. His life sentence and adventures are described in the ledger “ Voyager from Xanadu : Rabban Sauma and the First Journey from China to the West ” by Morris Rossabi, a professor at the City University of New York .
Born in Beijing, Sauma was a cleric in the nestorian Church. His goal was try help from Europe to drive the Muslims out of areas where Nestorians lived. Samua wrote that crossing the Taklamakan Desert was “ a arduous and fatiguing travel that took two months. ” It took him four years to reach the Middle East, where he lingered for a while, and another three years to reach Rome from Jerusalem. He said Italy “ resembled a paradise ; its winter was not cold ; and its summer not hot. ” In the goal he was unable to win support for his campaign and headed bet on east and died in Baghdad in 1294 .

Friar Oderic and Other Silk Road Explorers

One of the greatest european explorers in China after Marco Polo was Friar Odoric of Pordenone, a franciscan monk from Italy who wore a hair shirt and walked barefoot when he traveled. After arriving in China by ocean in 1321, Oderic was the beginning Westerner to give detailed accounts of cormorant fishing, the foot bind of women and the chinese custom of letting one ‘s fingernails grow long .
After arriving in Canton from India Friar Odoric ventured eastward where he wrote he “ came unto a city named Fuzo, which contains … great and fair cocks, and all their hens are a white as the very coke, having wool rather of feather, like unto sheep. ” Hangzhou he said had “ many houses of ten or twelve stories ” and “ eleven thousand bridges … I marveled much how such an countless number of persons could inhabit and live together. ”
In 1997, a manuscript of Europe-to-China travel surfaced under the name City of Life that was reportedly written by a Jewish-Italian merchant named Jacob d’Ancona in 1272, four years before Marco Polo arrived in China. The manuscript was largely dismissed as a fake. Some of the words in it, scholars claimed, were the equivalent of finding the words like Oldsmobile in the Dead Sea scrolls .

Explorers from the Marco Polo Era

1245-1247, 1249-1251. Andrew of Longjumeau. A dominican and papal emissary to the Mongols, traveled from the Holy Land to vicinity of Tabriz ( N. Iran ) on his inaugural trip. On the second, accompanied by several others including his brother William, went a lot farther ( his route is not well documented ) to the inner asian dominions of the Mongols, where he arrived during the regency of Oghul Qaimish, the widow of Khan Güyüg. We know of his travel from summaries in Matthew Paris ‘s Chronica Majora. [ source : Silkroad Foundation silk-road.com |*| ]
1220-1221. Wu-ku-sun Chung tuan.Accompanied by An T’ing chen, sent as ambassador of the Jin emperor to Chingis Khan, whom he found obviously in the Hindukush mountains ( today ‘s Afghanistan ), not “ the North. ” The Pei shi qi ( Notes on an embassy to the North ) is a written adaptation of his oral report copied in the Chi plutonium tsu chai ts’ung shu. Bretschneider indicates the “ narrative is of little importance. ” |*|
1221-1224. K’iu Ch’ang Ch’un and Li chi ch’ang. An eminent Taoist monk born in 1148 CE and frankincense aged at the time of his slip, Ch’ang Ch’un was ordered by Chingis Khan to travel to his woo. The path went through the Altai and Tienshan mountains, the southern parts of today ‘s Kazakhstan, through Kyrgyzstan, to Samarkand and then down into NE Iran and Afghanistan. He was accompanied by Li Chi ch’ang, who wrote the Hsi Yu Chi, a preferably detail diary of the travel ; it was published with an introduction by Sun silicon in 1228 and included in the Tao tsang tsi yao. Bretschneider feels that this account “ occupies a higher place than many reports of our european medieval tavellers. ” |*|
1245-1248. Ascelinus and Simon of San Quentin. Dominican emissary of the Pope to the Mongols, who went from the Levant into the southern Caucasus and returned ( accompanied by Mongol envoys ) via Tabriz, Mosul, Allepo, Antioch and Acre. There is information about the embassy in Matthew Paris ‘s chronicle a well as in an account written by Simon of San Quentin, which has not been translated into English. |*|
1245-1247. John of Plano Carpini ( Pian del Carpine ) and Benedict the Pole. franciscan monks sent as envoys of Pope Innocent IV to the Mongol Khan. Traveled through the dominions of Khan Batu ( rule of the “ fortunate Horde ” ) to the vicinity of Karakorum, where they witnessed the proclamation of Güyüg as the new Great Khan. Where he is discussing that which he actually saw, Friar John ‘s account ( “ History of the Mongols ” /Historia Mongalorum ) is “ the first direct authentic description of Asia ” ( Olschki ) and one of the most perceptive and detailed accounts we have of the Mongols in the thirteenth hundred. Considering his european Christian perspective, it is amazingly unbiased. It became quite widely known in Europe through excerpts in an encyclopedia compiled by Vincent of Beauvais, the Speculum Historiale. |*|
1253-1255. William ( Guillaume/Willem ) of Rubruck ( Ruysbroeck ). franciscan missionary from Flanders who traveled through the Black Sea and the territories of the Golden Horde to the court of the Great Khan Möngke at Karakorum. His report ( Itinerarium ) is “ a mine of varied information about the Asiatic life of his times ” ( Olschki ). It contains “ the fullest and most authentic information on the Mongol Empire in its pre-Chinese phase ” ( Dawson ) ; it is of matter to for descriptions of encounters with nestorian Christians, of Karakorum itself and the palace which is no longer extant, and much more. Although his experiences interested his contemporaneous Roger Bacon, Rubruck ‘s history did not become widely known until it was translated and published belated in the one-sixteenth hundred. |*|
1254-1255. Hayton I ( besides, Hethum, Haithon ) and Kirakos Gandsaketsi. King of Little Armenia, Hayton traveled through the Caucasus and territories of Khan Batu to the Great Khan Möngke in Karakorum and then back via Samarkand, Bukhara and Tabriz. The account of his travels was written down by Kirakos, who accompanied Hayton. This account is not to be confused with a descriptive narrative of the Near East written by Hayton ‘s nephew of the same name. |*|
1259-1260. Ch’ang Te.Envoy from Mongol Khan Möngke to his brother Hülegü soon after the latter ‘s conquest of the Abbasid Chaliphate. Ch’ang Te ‘s Si Shi Ki, recorded by Liu Yu, is part travel diary and separate a second-hand account of Hülegü ‘s campaigns in the West. Its geographic information is inferior to that of Ch’ang Ch’un. |*|
1260-1263. Yeh-lü Hi Liang. Great-grandson of Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai, who, with his father, worked for Möngke Khan and then Qubilai. His biography in the Yüan-shi relates his travels in Inner Asia in the period of the Mongol civil war anterior to Qubilai ‘s consolidation of ability. |*|
1260-1269, 1271-1295. Niccolò and Maffeo Polo. The merchant church father and uncle of Marco Polo traveled from the Crimea through the other territories of the Golden Horde to Bukhara and ultimately to the court of Qubilai Khan in North China. Qubilai sent them back to Europe on a mission to the Pope via the overland road ; they arrived in Venice in 1269. When they departed again for China in 1271 via the Levant, Anatolia and Persia, they were accompanied by youthful Marco. Our cognition of their travel is from Marco ‘s book. |*|
1271-1295. Marco Polo. The most celebrated of the Silk Road travelers, who, by his own account, worked for Qubilai Khan. He traveled overland through Persia across the Pamirs and south of the Taklamakan ; his come back was by sea from China around south Asia to Hormuz, whence he went overland to the Mediterranean. A venetian, Marco dictated his account to a professional writer of romances while imprisoned by the Genoese on his restitution. It is significant to remember he was not keeping a diary. Olschki calls it “ not … a book of travel and adventure, but a treatise of empiric geography. ” clearly some of the descriptions are formulaic, others not based on lineal observation, and others reflecting the common stock certificate of travel mythology. many of his observations are precise and confirmable ; others unique but likely accurate. Since his main associations seem to have been with the Mongol rulers of China and with the Muslim merchant community, much he is silent about “ obvious ” features of chinese society. Polo ‘s book became well known in Renaissance Europe and served as a stimulation to further travel and discovery. |*|
1275-1279. 1287-1288. Rabban Bar Sauma and Markos. Önggüd ( Turkic ) nestorian monks who traveled from Tai-tu, Qubilai Khan ‘s northern capital, to the Middle East, via the southern outgrowth of the Silk Road ( through Khotan and Kashgar ). Although on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem ( which they never reached ), they seem to have had official sponsorship from the Khan. once in the Mongol Ilkhanid realms, they became involved in nestorian church politics, and Markos finally was elected head of the church as Patriarch Mar Yaballaha III. Bar Sauma was sent to the West as an emissary of the Ilkhanid rule Arghun in 1287, with the finish of concluding an alliance against the Mamluks. Bar Sauma ‘s writings were preserved in an abridge translation into Syriac, from which there are several translations into modern languages. As Rossabi notes, “ His narrative remains the entirely one of its era to provide an East asian perspective on european ways and rites, ” even though it is reasonably disappointing in detail about life in the places through which he traveled. Like their contemporary, Marco Polo, the travelers are not mentioned in any chinese sources. |*|
1279-1328. John of Monte Corvino. Franciscan missionary, active voice in Armenia and Persia, and then in India and China. He left Tabriz for India in 1291 and arrived in Beijing credibly after the end of Qubilai Khan in 1294. He was elevated to the rank of Archbishop in ca. 1307 and continued to head the Catholic deputation there until his end. Although he did not write a travel narrative, several of his letters have been preserved. |*|
ca. 1316-1330. Odoric of Pordenone. Franciscan monk who traveled via Constantinople and the Black Sea to Persia, and then via the amerind Ocean to India in the early 1320s. From there he sailed around southeast Asia to the east coast of China and spend several years in Beijing. His claim to have returned via Tibet is doubtful, although he apparently traveled overland, arriving back in Venice via the Black Sea and Constantinople. His drawn-out travel account, which he dictated in 1330, became a “ best seller, ” in part because of Odoric ‘s indiscriminate mixture of tall tales with more authentic data. He occasionally notes aspects of chinese culture that were ignored by Marco Polo, “ with whose report he was surely familiar ” ( de Rachewiltz ). significant portions of his substantial were re-worked and given a promote fictional glossary by the generator of the very popular belated medieval travel fable attributed to John Mandeville. |*|

1325-1354. Ibn Battuta. A native of Tangier ( Morocco ), Shams al-Din Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad Ibn Battuta ( 1304-1368/9 or 1377 ) is celebrated for spending the years between 1325 and 1354, when he returned home, traveling across North Africa and through much of Eurasia, all the room to China. His initial goal was to participate in the pilgrimage to Mecca ( the hajj ) ; his concern in Muslim holy place men and places dominates portions of his text. While he may have kept notes, the report as we have it is “ a work of literature, separate autobiography and part descriptive compendium ” ( Dunn ). It was dictated to Ibn Djuzayy between 1354 and 1357. Some sections clearly do not contain eye-witness material ; chronology is often broken. There are critical views of the value of his material on Iran and questions about how much he saw in China. Among the most valuable sections are his descriptions of Anatolia, the territories and customs of the Golden Horde, and Southern India. |*|
1339-1353. John of Marignolli. Franciscan sent as papal legate to Yüan ( Mongol ) Emperor of China. Entered the lands of the Golden Horde via the Black Sea. His road credibly ran through Urgench ( S. of Aral Sea ), via Hami ( north of the Taklamakan ) to Beijing and Shang-tu, where he was received in August 1342. After three years, headed home plate via embark to Hormuz and then overland to the Levant. Included his change of location recollections in his history of the history of Bohemia ; his bill was ignored until the nineteenth century. |*|

1340. Francesco Balducci Pegolotti. A Florentine merchant, Pegolotti was active in the Eastern Mediterranean in the second quarter of the fourteenth century, at which time he acquired first- and second-hand information on the Asian trade. While he himself never travelled further east, his account is of particular interest for its description of the relative security of trade routes through the territories of the Mongol Empire and the great variety of products available in commercial centers such as Constantinople by about 1340. His merchant handbook survived in a copy made in 1471. |*|

Later Explorers

1403-1406. Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo and Alfonso Paez. Ambassadors of spanish King Henry III of Castile and Leon to Timur ( Tamerlane ). A third envoy, Gómez de Salazar, died en route. Traveled through the Mediterranean to Constantinople, into the Black Sea to Trebizond and then overland via Tabriz to Balkh, Kesh ( Shahr-i Sabs ) and Samarkand. On fall travel, they passed through Bukhara. Clavijo ‘s account, written soon after his return in 1406, is a identical crucial source for travel on the western separate of the Silk Road. Its description of Tamerlane ‘s Samarkand is one of the fullest available and includes substantial detail on economic life, trade with India and China, and Timurid buildings. [ source : Silkroad Foundation silk-road.com |*| ]
1413-1415, 1421-1422, 1431-1433. Ma Huan. Muslim interpreter who accompanied the celebrated Ming admiral Ch’eng Ho ( Zheng He ) on his fourth, one-sixth and one-seventh expeditions to the indian Ocean. His Ying-yai sheng-lan ( overall Survey of the Ocean ‘s Shores ) ( published in 1451 ) contains valuable information on geography, products and trade in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East. On the first two voyages, he went arsenic far as Hormuz ; on the third gear he apparently reached Mecca. |*|
1419-1422. Ghiyathuddin Naqqash. Artist representing Prince Mirza Baysunghur, son of Timurid rule Shahrukh, in embassy send by latter to Beijing in 1419. Describes travel via road union of Tarim Basin ( through Turfan, Jiayuguan, Suzhou to Beijing and back via Kashgar to Herat ), respective aspects of culture along way, including Buddhism, and reception at Ming motor hotel. |*|
1435-1439. Pero Tafur. A native and noteworthy of Cordoba, born ca. 1410, Tafur traveled from Spain to the eastern Mediterranean and rear. While not a merchant, he was very interested in commercial affairs and well connected with the trading networks. He was in Egypt, the Black Sea region and in the sad remains of the dying Constantinople ; while he thought about going to India, the closest he came was a conversation with the celebrated traveler Nicolo di Conti, whom he met on the latter ‘s return journey from South Asia. |*|
1436-1452, 1473-1479. Giosofat Barbaro.A merchant who spent a ten and a half in the venetian colony of Tana at the mouth of the Don River and then in the 1470s traveled as an ambassador to Persia. In his “ Journey to Tana ” he describes the regions adjoining the Black Sea vitamin a well as distant Muscovy, which he never visited ; his “ Journey to Persia ” follows close his official report on his mission. The latter, at least, incorporates information from early travelers and presumably was influened by the author ‘s having seen the irani travels of Contrarini. |*|
1466-1472. Afanasii Nikitin. A merchant from the russian city of Tver on the upper Volga River who traveled through Persia to India and spent more than 18 months there. He died good before reaching home. The largest contribution of his locomotion bill trace India ; the score is of some interest for his advice to fellow christian merchants to leave their faith at home and profess Islam if they wished to prosper on the Silk Road. There is a 1958 Russian film based on his travel ; a soviet oceanographic expedition named a newly discovered submarine climb off the southerly coast of India for Nikitin. |*|
1474-1477. Ambrogio Contarini.Venetian ambassador to Persia, who traveled through Central Europe, Ukraine, the Crimea and the Caucasus. In Persia he spent meter in Tabriz and Isfahan, and returned home via Muscovy and Poland. Although he traveled quickly, he was a good perceiver. apart from what he relates about conditions in the Caucasus and Persia under Uzun Hasan, his narrative is of considerable pastime for its substantial on Moscow in the authoritative predominate of Grand Prince Ivan III. |*|
1490s-1530. Babur. The great-great-great-grandson of Timur ( Tamerlane ), Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur ( 1483-1530 ) wrote a stun memoir of his early life and struggles in Central Asia and Afghanistan before ultimately settling in northerly India and founding the Mughal Empire. His Baburnama offers a highly educated Central Asian Muslim ‘s observations of the universe in which he moved. There is much on the political and military struggles of his time but besides across-the-board descriptive sections on the forcible and human geography, the flora and fauna, nomads in their pastures and urban environments enriched by the architecture, music and persian and Turkic literature patronized by the Timurids. His most late translator declares, “ said to ‘rank with the Confessions of St. Augustine and Rousseau, and the memoirs of Gibbon and Newton, ‘ Babur ‘s memoirs are the first gear and until relatively late times, the only — dependable autobiography in Islamic literature. ” |*|
1557-1560, 1561-1564, 1566-1567, 1571-1572. Anthony Jenkinson. Representing the english Muscovy Company and accompanied by Richard and Robert Johnson, traveled via the White Sea and Moscow, down the Volga River and across the caspian Sea to Bukhara and then bet on by the like route in 1557-60. In 1561-1564, via the like route to the Caspian, he went to Persia to try negotiating trade agreements ; spent the winter in Kazvin discussing the zest trade with indian merchants. Jenkinson ‘s subsequent trips did not take him beyond Moscow. Beginning in 1546, well prior to his Russia service, Jenkinson had traveled widely in the Mediterranean and the Levant. |*|
1579, 1580-1582, 1583-1584. John Newbery.A London merchant, Newbery undertook three trips. The first went only vitamin a far as the Levant. The second took him from the Levant through Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf and Hormuz and then back through central Persia, the southerly periphery of the Caucasus, Anatolia, and Eastern Europe. On the third he was accompanied by Ralph Fitch ( see freestanding entrance ), John Eldred ( who stopped short of the Persian Gulf ), William Leeds and James Story all the means to the Mughal court in India. Newbery died on the route base. He was the first gear Englishman to visit several of these regions. unfortunately, he never wrote much about his travels — notes on the first base and particularly the second trip were apparently worked into a narrative by Purchas in the seventeenth hundred ; the third trip is known from some letters, Fitch ‘s explanation, and Linschoten. |*|
1583-1591. Ralph Fitch.English merchant ( d. 1611 ) who traveled with John Newbery ( s. v. ) via the Levant and Mesopotamia to India, through northern India and on a far as Malacca ( in Malaysia ) before returning base via the Persian Gulf, to discover in London that he was presumed dead and his property had been divided among his heirs. He late returned to Aleppo. He obviously did not keep a diary ; in writing down his report, in function with the encouragement of Hakluyt, he drew upon the travel account by the italian Cesare Federici. The indian section of Fitch ‘s score is “ disappointingly meager and haphazard ” ; distinctly he must have known a batch more than made its means into writing. Since, unlike Newbery, he survived to tell the fib, he often is given the greater bulge of the two. |*|
1602-1607. Benedict Goës. In 1594 the Portuguese Jesuit Benedict Goës joined a mission to the Mughal Emperor Akbar, where he was chosen by the Jesuit leadership ( partially because of his cognition of Persian ) to travel on an exploratory mission to China via Kashgar. He died before reaching Beijing ; what survived of his notes and letters and some oral accounts were late ( 1615 ) combined by the celebrated Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci into his travel journal. Despite some inconsistencies and problems in dating, the account is a singular record by a European of travel on the overland trade wind routes in inner Asia at the beginning of the seventeenth century. One is struck by the route itself — heading northwest into Afghanistan before going north across the Hindu Kush to the headwaters of the Amu Darya, then east to Sarikol and on to Yarkand and Kashgar before skirting the Taklamakan on the union. The account details human and natural threats to travel and other aspects of the inner asian trade, and provides some valuable information on the political divisions of the meter. |*|
1615-1616. Richard Steele and John Crowther. Agents for the british East India Company, traveled from Agra, the Mughal capital in N. India, overland via Kandahar to the Safavid capital Isfahan. Their report highlights the continuing importance of the overland deal routes, in region as a way of avoiding the Portuguese dominance of the indian Ocean ports. There is concern information on the function of the Afghan nomads along the route and an stress on the relative safety of travel in the period of Mughal and Safavid strength and stability. Steele then returned to England by traveling overland to the Mediterranean and taking a gravy boat via Marseilles ; Crowther returned to India. |*|
1629-1675. denim Baptiste Tavernier ( 1605 ? 98 ). french merchant/jeweler who probably knew the overland craft routes through Persia better than any other european in the seventeenth century. He traversed parts of the Silk Road in the the Ottoman Empire, Safavid Persia and Mughal India on six journeys and witnessed the build of Versailles, Isfahan, and the Taj Mahal, traded in diamonds and pearls, was awarded “ oriental ” silk robes of respect by the Shah of Iran and a barony by Louis XIV ( for the sale of what by and by became the Hope Diamond ). His interactions with the merchant communities ( notably the Armenians in Persia ) gave him an insider ‘s perspective. His history reflects the edit of a professional writer but is precise and detail. [ reservoir : “ The Silk Road : Connecting People and Cultures ” by Richard Kurin, the Smithsonian institution ]
1633-35, 1635-39, 1643. Adam Olearius. Secretary to Embassy of Holstein and ( in 1643 ) ambassador from Holstein. First and third missions were to Moscow ; second went through Moscovy to Persia, where he spent a year and the demeanor of one of its members did a great share to discredit the enterprise. knowing at the University of Leipzig, Olearius compiled one of the most wide read and detail accounts of Muscovy and Persia, seen through the lens of his Protestant breeding and learned european perspective. It was published first gear in 1647 ; the revised german edition of 1656 became the standard one and drew upon a across-the-board range of other sources. It was translated into several languages and frequently re-published. |*|
1664-1667, 1671-1677. John Chardin. A french Hugenot jeweler, Chardin spent meaning time in the Caucasus and Persia and traveled to India. His is one of the major european accounts of Safavid Persia, whose measure is enhanced by his good cognition of Persian. persecution of Protestants in France forced him to flee to England, where he was recognized as an expert on the Middle East. |*|
1682-1693. Hovhannes Joughayetsi. armenian merchant who traveled and traded between New Julfa ( the Armenian suburb of Isfahan ), Northern India and Tibet. He spent five years in Lhasa. His commercial ledger is a unique generator of information on products, prices, trade conditions, and the armenian commercial network on the seventeeth-century routes involving the Safavid and Mughal empires .

Europeans and Trade In China After Marco Polo

The Portugese were the first Europeans to land in China. In 1513, about 20 years after the Portuguese arrived in India and Columbus sailed to the New World, the portuguese internet explorer Jorge Alvares arrived in China. The Portuguese set up a barter monopoly in China in 1557 that operated through the strictly controlled colony of Macau. They besides traded at the twice-yearly fairs in Canton. Since the Chinese were forbidden from deal with Japan, the Portuguese served as middlemen, trading capsicum from Malacca, silks shape China and silver from Japan .
british, Dutch and spanish traders arrived in China after the portuguese but most of their attempts to set up trading partnerships with Qing dynasty were met with rejection. In 1760 Canton was opened to foreign traders under the Canton system, which was controlled by a club known as the Cohong .
early on european arrivals in China were fascinated by chopsticks, print, the high numbers of people, the collection of night territory, and the songs of cage nightingales that “ melt themselves into music. ” The discovery of large deposits of eloquent in the New World in the sixteenth century lead to waves of high ostentation in Ming earned run average China .
In 1636, King Charles I authorized a small fleet of four ships, under the command of Captain John Weddell, to sail to China and establish deal relations. At Canton the dispatch got into a firefight with a chinese fort. other battles occurred after that. The british blamed the failure in part on their inability to communicate. Later tea became an crucial trade item between China and England. The first tea arrived in London from China in 1652 .
See distinguish Article EUROPEAN PRESENCE IN CHINA IN THE MING AND EARLY QING DYNASTY hypertext transfer protocol : //mindovermetal.org/en/china/cat2/sub4/entry-5499.html factsanddetails.com

Aurel Stein and 20th Century Explorers of the Silk Road

Explorer David Neel Western China was caught up in the bang-up Game. Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, western China and Afghanistan were more important in the Great Game than other central asian states because they formed the buffer zone zone between the Russian Empire and the British-Indian Empire. See Uzbekistan .
In the 1920s, Sven Hedin ‘s Sino-Swedish excavations in Xinjiang and Manchuria unearthed 10,000 strips with write, Han documents on silk, wall paintings from Turpan and pottery and bronzes .
The most outstanding of the westerly explorers of the distant parts of China was Sir Aurel Stein ( 1863-1943 ), an internet explorer, linguist and archeologist who made four expeditions to Central Asia in the early twentieth hundred. Stein was jewish and born in Hungary. He pioneered the cogitation of the Silk Road and looted Buddhist art from caves in the western Chinese desert. Accompanied by his frump Dash, he carted away a gem treasure trove of ancient Buddhist, Chinese, Tibetan and Central Asia artwork and text in a number of languages from the ancient city of Dunhuang and gave them to the british Museum .
In the late 1920s, Stein trekked over 18,000-foot Karakoram Pass three times and traced the Silk Road through Chinese Turkestan and followed routes on which Buddhism gap to China from India. Stein discovered the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas near Dunhuang in northwest China and carted away 24 cases of artifacts, including silk paint, embroideries, sculptures and 1,000 early manuscripts written in Tangut, Sanskrit and Turkish, which included the world ‘s oldest record, The Diamond Sutra .
Inspired by his “ patron saint ” Xuanzang, , the seventh century Chinese Buddhist monk, Stein followed the Silk Road described by Xuanzang in his travels from Chang ’ an ( xian ) to India. During his expeditions Stein documented and photographed the ancient locations he visited and found many Silk Road treasures. Among those he took with him were ancient tablets, relics and frescoes. His most significant discovery was 40,000 scrolls including the earth ’ sulfur oldest printed text the Diamond Sutra found at Dunhuang in Gansu, western China .
When news got out about Stein ‘s discoveries it set in apparent motion and long time of discovery and loot. During the first quarter of the twentieth hundred, archaeologists from Great Britain, Russia, Germany, Japan and early nations competed for shares of Silk Road treasure. These archaeological exploits even got tangled up in what has been termed the Great Game where Great Britain and Russia competed for political influence in Central Asia and Western China. christian missionaries besides made their direction out to Xinjiang. Among the most celebrated were Francesca French and Mildred Cable who wrote the book “ The Gobi Desert ”.

visualize Sources : wikipedia ; Brooklyn College ; University of Washington ; Silk Road Foundation ; Wikimedia Commons
text Sources : New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton ’ mho Encyclopedia and versatile books and other publications .
last updated August 2021