Exchange China and Islamic Civilization

8/13/2019 Exchange China and Islamic Civilization

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Whether by land, along the famous ancient SilkRoute, or by sea, along the age-old routes of antiquity through the Persian Gulf (once calledthe China Sea) [Fig. 1], China seems to havebeen in continuous contact with the other twoancient and contemporary civilizations of theIndus Valley and Mesopotamia. On the wholethose contacts were conditioned by tradingexchanges, and yielded a very rich travelliterature describing China, its customs, rulers,religions, wonders, etc., that must haveentertained the urban centers around what istoday the Persian Gulf and all the way up theriver to the medieval city of Baghdad and, before

it, Ctesiphon. The earliest recorded lore of thistype comes from travel accounts, mostlylegendary, as all seamens records are, fromthat same area around the Persian Gulf anddating as early as the ninth and tenth centuriesCE [Fig. 2, next page]. In almost all of them,China was a land of wonders, far away, anddefinitely worth visiting. This literature thatbrought these contemporary civilizations intothe imaginary world of the story tellers, rarelydeveloped into more systematic appropriationsof scientific or technological ideas from oneculture to the other. And yet much of science,technology, medicine and alchemy, to name only

China and Islamic Civilization: Exchange of Techniques and Scientific IdeasGeorge Saliba

Columbia University (USA)

The Silk Road 6/1 (2008), pp. 9-17

Fig. 1. Routes Connecting the Islamic World with East Asia.

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a few, eventually crossed the same borders as

did the merchants.Even earlier, around the time of the adventof Islam in the first half of the seventh centuryCE, Chinas image was already invading theimagination of people inhabiting the maritimeports and urban centers all around what istodays Middle East. The image was that of adistant land; yet it must have made a powerfulimpression on people who were witnesses tothe rise of the great civilization of Islam whichwas destined to become todays worldcivilization. Once a civilization carves a niche

for itself in peoples imagination, it will staythere forever, and only grows with the changeof historical circumstances that governcivilizational dialogue. As evidence of thisconquest of the imagination, one could find,for example, in the very heart of Arabia andwithin the lifetime of Islams prophet,statements preserved in the prophetic traditionsthemselves, urging the Muslim believers to

seek knowledge even if it takes you as far awayas China. About two centuries later, one could

still hear of someone saying that a specificbook is so valuable that it is worth a trip toChina to get it. All these traditions andreferences seem to stress the immenseremoteness of the distant land of China. Butthey say very little about what one would

find once he got there. That informationwas to come later on.In Islams holy book, the Quran, the

mythical lands of Gog and Magog were alsosupposed to be located in China, at thefarthest edge of the East, that is, at theambiguous semi-legendary frontier of theknown world just before it would fade awayinto the surrounding sea of darkness. Thesame colorful and legendary references evenmentioned how one of the legendary biblicaltribes of the children of Israel which was

supposed to have converted to Islam andbelieved in the mission of the prophet of Islam, reportedly resided on the farthesteastern edge of China. All those impressionssimply paint a picture that was quasi-legendary, which most certainly reflects thepoorly known reality of old Chinese contactswith the civilizations of the ancient MiddleEast. Only a faint memory of those contactsseems to have remained well into the earlydays of Islamic civilization.

As Islamic civilization began to define its own

contours and project its map onto the globewith its rapid spread in the seventh and eighthcenturies and China came into direct contactwith the Islamic Empire, legends began quicklyto give way to historical realities. As ithappened, this new Islamic civilization was fastspreading along the western frontiers of Chinaitself, and had very swiftly encompassed all thelands from the western border of China, inmodern-day Central Asia, all the way to theIberian peninsula, the underbelly of Europe. Inthat new setting, more realistic visions of therespective cultures of China and the Islamicworld began to emerge, despite the fact thatthe sources in both cultures still spoke of theimmense distances between the two.

The historical narratives which began tocharacterize those visions included, for example,the famous account that spoke of an encounterbetween the Great Chinese Khan, as he wascalled in the Arabic sources, with theambassador of the last Persian King YezdigirdIII (d. 651). There is almost universal

Fig. 2. A sailing ship at sea, illustration to Buzurgibn Shahriyars 10 th -century Book of the Marvelsof India ( Kitab Ajaib al-Hind ). Af te r I. Iu .Krachkovskii, Izbrannye sochineniia , Vol. 4 (1957),Fig. 13 facing p. 145.

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agreement among historians that this accountcould very well portray a real historical event.In his account of the twenty-second year of Hijra(= 644 CE), the great Muslim historian Tabari(?838-923 CE), a native of Tabaristan in theCaspian Sea region of Persia, relates the

following (here quoted in paraphrase in orderto avoid the dry historical narrative):When the Muslim armies began to press

eastward against the borders of the SasanianEmpire, the last Sasanian monarch, YezdigirdIII, fled eastward in order to avoid capture. Inhis despair, this Yezdigird apparently sent anambassador to China in order to seek the helpof its king in fending off the Muslim invasion.In that encounter the Chinese king and thePersian ambassador were supposed to have hadthe following conversation:

He [the Chinese king] first said, Althoughit is the duty of kings to come to each othersaid, I still want you to describe those peopleto me, for you say that they were few andthey managed to expel you from yourcountry, despite the fact that you were amultitude, and that could only mean thatthey were onto something good, while youwere onto evil. [The ambassador] then responded, Ask me

and I shall tell you. The king asked, Do they fulfill their

promises? He responded, Yes, they do.

What do they ask of you before they fightyou?, [the king asked].The ambassador responded, They ask one

of three things: They either ask us to adopttheir religion, and if we accept they wouldtreat us like them. Or they ask us to paytribute and seek their protection. Or theyfight us. [The king] then asked, How do they obey

their chiefs? to which the ambassador said, They are most obedient to their spiritualguides. What do they forbid and what do theyallow? [the king asked].The ambassador told him.The king then asked, Do they ever permit

that which was forbidden to them, or forbidthat which was permitted? The ambassador said, No.

The king then said, These people will neverbe defeated until they permit that which wasforbidden and forbid that which waspermitted. Then he asked the ambassador, Tell me of

their dress. And the ambassador told him. And their mounts? To which he responded, Arabian horses, and he described them tohim. To which the king said, Whatmarvelous defenses these [horses] are!! Then [the ambassador] described for himthe camels, and how they kneel and risewith their loads. To which the king said, Thisis a description of mounts with long necks. The king then sent with the ambassador a

letter to Yezdigird that said, I did not refrainfrom sending you an army whose front couldbe in Merv and its rear in China because I

was ignorant of my obligations to you, butbecause these people, who were describedto me by your ambassador, could destroymountains if they so wished. They couldeven remove me from power. So my adviceis that you deal peacefully with them andaccept to live with them and do not stir themup if they dont stir you up.

This anecdote about a possibly real eventportrays the Chinese king in a very positivelight, the same kind of light one would usuallyreserve for an ally. One does not suspect any illintention towards the Chinese, this despite thefact that those same Chinese were described inthe same sources as being polytheists.Furthermore, one cannot fail to detect themutual respect with which the early Muslimstreated the Chinese. Other stories confirm thisby referring to the Chinese king as the epitomeof justice and fairness, and never recount a badword about him. All the while he is portrayedas being very far away, and thus was in noposition to constitute an immediate threat.

Yet, despite the impression of distance, thepresence of each culture in the imagination of the other became more immediate duringIslamic times. We are told, for example, thatthe second Abbasid caliph al-Mansur (754-775CE), laid down the foundations of his new cityBaghdad in what is today Iraq and at thatspecific geographic site simply because hethought he would gain a tremendous advantageon account of its proximity to the Tigris River.Since the river empties into the Persian Gulf,

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he emphasized that this gave him ready accessto trade with China. The other reason was tocollect taxes from the western Muslim landsthrough the equally nearby Euphrates River. Forthose reasons, and for many others as well,that very same city, Baghdad, was destined to

become later on the bustling center of theIslamic Empire for some seven centuries.Al-Mansurs dream of locating his capital at

the start of the Chinese trade route seems tohave borne fruit. Two centuries after thefoundation of his city, a biographer andintellectual historian of Baghdad, al-Nadim,recounts a captivating story in his famous bookal-Fihrist , a veritable encyclopedia of what aneducated gentleman of the time should knowdrawn from an almost exhaustive record of names of authors and books. He spoke of a

Chinese student who appeared in the city of Baghdad towards the beginning of the tenthcentury. There he requested that the famousMuslim physician Abu Bakr al-Razi (Latin:Rhazes) [Fig. 3] dictate to him the works of theGreek physician Galen as fast as he could, sothat the student could take a copy of thoseworks with him back to China.

The story may be completely apocryphal. Yetit confirms a frame of mind of a Baghdadiintellectual who was apparently full of admiration for the ability of the Chinese studentto write down every word in his short-handsystem. Now, whether the student carried Greek

medicine back with him to China remains inthe realm of legend, to say the least. Mysuspicion, and Joseph Needhams as well, is thathe did not. Chinese medicine remains to thisday quite independent of the philosophico-medical tradition of the Greeks.

On the cultural level, and irrespective of thestorys scientific validity, it certainly confirmsthe sense of the immediate presence of Chineseculture in the imagination of the early Muslimintellectuals. It also confirms the other reportsthat are preserved in the various Arabic sources

about the amazing skills of the Chinese, inalmost every field they undertook. In the wordsof the fourteenth-century geographer andbelletrist Qazwini, we are told that the Chinesehave magnificent skills in the crafts ( lahumyadun basitatun fi al-sinaat ). The ninth-centuryJahiz had already reported that God hadendowed the Chinese with the very special skillfor the crafts, and goes on to say that it wasprobably the only gift they were given.

This widespread fame for excellence inartifacts could have also been strengthened by

the marvelous techniques that the Muslimsbrought back from China along with their tradeobjects [Fig. 4]. Deservedly so, Muslims

Fig. 3. European depiction of the Arab doctor al-Razi,in Gerardus Cremonensis Recueil des traits demdecine, 1250-1260. Source: Wikipedia Commons,after, Samuel Sadaune, Inventions et dcouvertesau Moyen-ge.

Fig. 4. Tang Dynasty earthenware plate found inthe 9 th -century CE remains of Samarra, upriver from Baghdad. Museum fr Islamische Kunst,Berlin, Inv. no. Sam. 839.

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regarded these trade objects with the utmostadmiration. The trade required skills innavigation, a flourishing field in which thereclearly was a debt to the Chinese. Navigationalinstruments came to include the magneticcompass, which was first invented in China,

quickly modified in Islamic lands, and laterpassed on to Europe.The acquisition of paper followed a similar

route, in that this Chinese invention wasappropriated by the Muslims towards the middleof the eighth century and passed on to Europeas well. The manufacture of fine silk and artobjects in Islamic lands similarly imitated andadapted Chinese examples, as did thedevelopment of block printing in completeimitation of the Chinese practice. Gunpowderdid not become a military tool until slightly later,

but it too passed on from China to Europethrough Islamic lands. Wherever one looked inearly and medieval Islamic times, one couldnot help but notice the fascination with thingsChinese that circulated widely in the society. Itwas such impressions of the superior Chinesecraftsmanship which must have given rise to awidely disseminated Arabic adage reportedeven by the seventeenth-century Andalusianauthor al-Maqarri, in his Nafh al-tib whichsaid: God has granted his beneficence to threehuman organs: the brains of the Greeks, thehands of the Chinese, and the tongues of theArabs.

Naturally some Chinese inventions and craftworks had greater influence than others. Forexample, it was quickly realized that paper wasof momentous importance. As a result, it spreadvery quickly in Islamic lands. Arguably it wasresponsible for the genuine revolution of knowledge that took place in the Islamic worldduring the late eighth and early ninth centuries.Incidentally, the same person who reported thestory of the Chinese student coming to Baghdadto study medicine with Razi was also called al-warraq (= the paper maker/ or paper consumer;by his time this could also mean a bookseller).The fourteenth century bureaucrat andencyclopedist, al-Qalqashandi, enumerated sixdifferent Arabic names for paper, and thenclassified their qualities starting with theBaghdadi paper as the best, and the Europeanpaper as the worst. More importantly, he didnot forget to mention that paper was inventedin China, before he went on to speak of his

intimate knowledge of the paper culture. He

classified all kinds of paper that he knew hehad to know a lot of them as a bureaucrat and he specifically stressed that the Baghdadi-type paper became the preferred medium forthe writing of the Quran, because, unlikevellum, it could not be easily erased andchanged [Fig. 5]. That very same feature mayalso explain the reason why the caliph Harunal-Rashid (786-809 CE), of the Thousand and One Nights fame, would give an order at thebeginning of the ninth century to have all thegovernment records be transferred onto paper[Fig. 6].

O t h e rsources, andthere are greatnumbers of them, speak of Chinese objectsin such super-lative languagethat one getsthe impressionMuslim authors

were enamoredwith the fantas-tic techno-logical skillsand inventionsimported fromChina to thelands of Islam. Those stories point to theconclusion that the material objects stood asbrilliant witnesses to the technicalaccomplishments of the Chinese artisans. The

Fig. 5. Illuminated Quran, Shiraz (Iran), ca. 1560-1575 (not on Baghdadi paper). The pages are opento the end of Sura 113 and beginning of Sura 114.Museum fr Islamische Kunst, Berlin, Inv. no. I.42/ 68.

Fig. 6. Gold dinar of CaliphHarun al-Rashid, AH 174/CE 790-91. Col lect ion of theMnzkabinett, Bode-Museum,Berlin.

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admiration for those artisans began to inspirethe Islamic artists themselves to produce theirown wares in the Chinese style, as anyrespectable collection of Islamic art can easilytestify [Fig. 7].

When it came to the theoretical sciences, thestory was slightly different. In contrast to thequick dissemination of Chinese technologicalinventions in the Muslim world and the eventualpassage of those inventions on to Europethrough its Muslim contacts, the theoreticalsciences seemed to have faced a virtual wall, one not far removed from the physical Chinawall. Even if we were to believe the story of the Chinese student managing to copy down,in one month as the story went, the whole of the Galenic medical works that were circulatingin tenth-century Baghdad, we are still prettycertain that Galenic medicine did not makemuch of an impact on the independent Chinesemedicinal system.

The wall might block exchange in bothdirections, as we can see from the example of the very sophisti-cated astronomicalsystem of theancient and medievalChinese, which usedour very modernequatorial coordinatesystem instead of theecliptic system of theGreeks and theMuslims who fol-lowed them. Chineseastronomy could notpass westward

through that wall, until perhaps the most recenttimes, well after the Jesuits had landed in Chinain the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.Despite the Chinese sophistication inastronomy, a deliberate attempt to transfer toChina some of the latest state-of-the-artastronomical instruments of thirteenth centuryMuslim lands [Fig. 8] was an apparent failure.A medieval source describes how around theyear 1267 a Persian astronomer Jamal al-Din(Cha-ma-lu-ting, in the Chinese sources) carriedto China from the famous Ilkhanid observatoryin Maragheh in northwest Iran a dozen or soastronomical instruments, together with theirdetailed description in Chinese. Yet, as Needhamhas carefully documented, the Arabic names of the astronomical instruments weretransliterated into Chinese rather than

translated. So one must concur with Needhamsobservation that despite the great efforts toinitiate this transfer of astronomical knowledgefrom the lands of Islam into China, the directeffect [of those instruments] upon Chineseastronomical practice seems to have been nil.

The reason for the celebrated success of thetransmission of Chinese technologicalinnovations westwards and the apparent total

Fig. 7 a) Tang Dynasty ceramic bowl, found inthe 9 th -century CE remains of Samarra, upriver from Baghdad, and b) its Islamic imitation. Mu-seum fr Islamische Kunst, Berlin, Inv. nos. Sam.784a, 748. Photos Daniel C. Waugh, 2004

Fig. 8. Although not oneof the instruments pur-

portedly sent to China,astrolabes, like this el-egantly decorated one inbrass with silver inlay,made in AH 638/CE 1241 by Abd al-Karimal-Misri, exemplify thesuperb craftsmanship of Muslim astronomical in-struments. Collection of the British Museum, Inv.no. ME OA 1855.7-9.1.

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failure of transmitting fundamental scientificideas eastward to China itself deserves somere-emphasizing. The explanation may lie in themanner in which Chinese science itself haddeveloped, and even more importantly in thevery antiquity of that science. China came in

contact with Islamic civilization during theseventh and the eighth centuries, at the verytime when Islamic civilization was open to allsorts of other scientific traditions. Chinesescientists, whether inm a t h e m a t i c s ,astronomy, medicine,or chemistry (thencalled alchemy), werealready set in theirways and had alreadyformed a coherentexplanation of theuniverse aroundthem. Unlike Islamiccivilization, which atthe time had noworld-view of its ownwith which to opposeincoming ideas,Chinese civilizationwas already of a great antiquity and hadachieved the required harmony between itssocial and scientific needs. At that stage foreignideas would naturally have little, if any, effect.

But this did not mean that a technique hereor a solution of a specific problem there couldnot be passed from one culture to the other. Allit means is that individual technological ideasthat do not incorporate a change in ones world-view could actually be adopted without greatlyaffecting the normal practice of science or thefundamental scientific beliefs and concepts thatlay at the very foundation of science itself. TheChinese could adopt, as they did, the screw, orthe clock, or the crankshaft, as has been soabundantly demonstrated by Needham, withouthaving to change their minds about the natureof the heavenly bodies, or the five elements of which the world was made, all in total variancewith Aristotelian views.

None of the travelers who went to China fromthe Muslim lands during the Middle Ages everseems to have brought back impressions of scientific ideas or actual scientific texts thatcould cause a fundamental change of scientificattitude in either culture. But they always

brought back scores upon scores of medicinalsubstances and drugs (rhubarb and gingerimmediately come to mind), as well as metallicand porcelain objects, which became abundantlypopular and imitated in Islamic civilization [Fig.9]. They also brought descriptions of items of

clothing as well as the cloths themselves. Thetechniques used to craft the objects could beemulated in the Islamic world and improvedupon, as was done with the production of paper,

in which linen andrags replaced mul-berry bark.

Naturally, thosevisitors and mer-chants brought backas well many, many

stories of the exoticlands which theyhad visited. Thet w e l f t h - c e n t u r ygeographer andtraveler al-Idrisilists some twenty-five trade itemsbrought by sea from

China to Aden in southern Arabia, starting withiron and ending with lead, and including suchthings as spices, camphor, coconuts, and itemsof fine clothing and velvet. When he spoke of Chinese rhubarb, which was apparentlyregularly imported by Muslim merchants, hespoke of it as the best, both for its physical aswell as its medicinal qualities. The Muslimmerchants who imported the plant obviouslylearned about its medicinal value from theChinese themselves during their sojourn inChina. Thus it was only in such cases that onecould say that some hard-core scientificknowledge was passed on as well.

The most famous Muslim traveler, Ibn

Battuta, brought word in the fourteenth centuryof the Chinese innovation of paper money, whichwas used nowhere else. He also brought backstories of the huge Chinese chickens that weremuch larger in size than the geese with whichhe was familiar. What seems to have impressedhim most, however, was the fantastic ability of the Chinese to paint the likeness of a person,and to do so with such incredible details thatsuch paintings were used to locate and arrestforeign visitors if they committed crimes. This

Fig. 9. Stonepaste ceramic bowl with dragon design.Iran, 14th c. Copy of design on Chinese Blue-and-White

porcelain. Museum fr Islamische Kunst, Berlin, Inv.no. 5380.

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was something probably similar to our modernmug shots, but apparently with much betterfidelity. Their kings, just like the Indian kings,says al-Idrisi, were highly interested in paintingand took care to teach this art to their children.They even went as far as choosing the best

painter among their children to succeed them.In other scientific areas such as alchemy,

Chinese theory and practice did not owe muchto the Islamic, nor did the mostly Hellenistic-based Islamic alchemy apparently owe muchto the Chinese. Islamic alchemy was on thewhole attempting to transmute the base metalsin order to produce gold, as one couldreasonably expect to do if one based his workon an Aristotelian theoretical basis. Chinesealchemy was seeking a drug, called the elixir,that would lead to longevity or even ensure

immortality. The two systems were essentiallyincompatibleOne has to wonder about the direction of

transmission of ideas when such concepts aselixir began to appear in both cultures almostat the same time, slightly after the early Muslimships first landed in China in the early part of the eighth century. Thinking in terms of comprehensive world views and major coherentsystems of thought, one would assume thatcultures with such deeply diverging orientationsregarding the purpose of alchemy would havelittle to borrow from one another. Techniquesand individual concepts and processes mightbe quite another matter. It is plausible that theearly Muslims who heard of that Chineseenterprise would themselves attempt to preparethe elixir, as long as it did not require a majorshift in their system of thought. Lacking a wellformulated system of scientific and philosophicalthought, early Islamic culture could freelyborrow such ideas and techniques. In contrast,the deeply ingrained Chinese world viewprevented analogous borrowing from the Islamic

world.Although in later centuries there are

borrowings touching some theoretical medicinalconcepts, their exact circumstances are far frombeing well understood. In other fields such asastronomy, we may witness similar approachesto the techniques of observations andobservational instruments, but may look in vainfor analogous influences in more theoreticalfields such as planetary theories.

One could easily trace scientificdevelopments in both cultural spheres and attimes see similarities that invite speculation asto who was borrowing from whom. But giventhe current state of our knowledge about eitherculture, it is impossible to determine the

direction of such influences if there were any.However, one thing seems certain: technologicalinventions which were definitely produced inChina during the first thirteen centuries of theCommon Era, such as the discovery of earthmagnetism and the use of the compass fornavigation, invention of paper, printing,gunpowder, the wheelbarrow and the like, allseemed to have swept through the rest of theworld thanks to the mediation of the vast Muslimempire on the western border of China. Preciouslittle of hard-core scientific knowledge followed.

Note : This essay is based on a lecture co-sponsored by the Silkroad Foundation and IonaCollege, New Rochelle, New York, where the talkwas presented May 3, 2008.

About the author

George Saliba , Professor of Arabic and IslamicScience, Columbia University, works on thehistory of Arabic/Islamic science in general andparticularly the history of planetary theoriesfrom antiquity to the Renaissance. He has aspecial interest in the transmission of science,and particularly the transmission of Islamicscience to western Europe during theRenaissance, the subject of his most recent bookIslamic Science and the Making of the EuropeanRenaissance (MIT Press, 2007). One of hisearlier publications about the transmission of science, which was published on the Internetunder the title Mediterranean Crossings , waslater translated into Chinese and published inthe Chinese journal Horizons , vol.1 (2000): 46-63. For more information visit his website at< h t t p : / / w w w. c o l u m b i a . e d u / ~ g a s 1 /saliba.html>.

Recommended readings

Apart from the authors own publications, whichmay be consulted for additional bibliography,note Arun Bala, The Dialogue of Civilizations inthe Birth of Modern Science (New York: PalgraveMacmillan, 2006). In Joseph Needhams

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magisterial, Science and Civilization in China ,7 vols. in 27 (Cambridge, Eng.: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1954-), alchemy is coveredin vol. 5, pts. 2-5; medicine in vol. 6, pt. 6. Onthe importance of paper in the Islamic worldsee Jonathan M. Bloom, Silk Road or Paper

Road? The Silk Road 3/2 (2005): 21-26, whichsummarizes his elegant book Paper Before Print:The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World (New Haven: Yale Univ. Pr., 2001). A goodmany (but by no means all) of the importantArabic sources are available in English

translation. Note in particular the translationof The History of al-Tabari / Tarikh al-rusul wal muluk , 40 vols. (Albany: State University of NewYork Pr., 1985-); The Fihrist of al-Nadim: aTenth-Century Survey of Muslim Culture , BayardDodge, ed. and tr. (New York: Columbia Univ.

Pr., 1970); The Travels of Ibn Battuta , A.D.1325-1354, tr. H.A.R. Gibb [Works issued bythe Hakluyt Society, 2 nd ser., nos. 110, 117, 141,178, 190], 5 vols. (Cambridge, Eng.: CambridgeUniv. Pr., 1958-2000).

For travelers and merchants of the middle ages,Iran was unavoidable. The great caravan roadsthat linked China and India to Rome orConstantinople passed through Persian lands,and the sea-lanes terminated at ports in thePersian Gulf. Iranian rulers took full advantageof their geographical opportunities: they taxedforeign trade, and made every effort to keepEast and West from making direct contact.Merchants chafed at the exorbitant tolls, butthere was little they could do about it; effortsto by-pass Iranian spaces, either by land northof the Caucasus Mountains, or via the Red Sea,had only limited success. Irans relativeprosperity from medieval times through the 17 thcentury was due, in no small measure, torevenue from trade.

Iran is a large country, with a continuoushistory of some 2500 years as a nation and astate. The major caravan routes, which traceback far into antiquity, remained in use intothe 20 th century, and geography dictates thatmodern roads must generally run parallel tothose of the past. In consequence, Iransabundant legacy of art and architecture is quiteaccessible, or would be but for recurrent politicalfrictions. The present article is the fruit of a

long road journey in 2000, when tensionsabated for a time, which took us diagonallyacross Iran from northwest to southeast,roughly following the route of Marco Polos

journey in 1273 CE. The world of the caravansis vanishing fast, but those who look can stillfind places where the roar of automobile traffichas not yet drowned out the whispers of thedesert-wind, the tinkling of the camels bell.

The world of the Arab geographers

We are remarkably well informed concerningthe historical geography of Iran, thanks chieflyto a small band of Muslim scholars, writingmostly in Arabic, who recorded in detail thestate of the region in the 10 th and 11 th centuriesCE. At that time, Iran was at least nominallypart of the Abbasid Empire (though in practicemuch of the country was ruled by local dynastiesor by the Seljuk Turks), and Baghdad was thecenter of the universe. This was the city glorifiedin The Thousand and One Nights (known inEnglish as The Arabian Nights), a glitteringmetropolis of palaces, mosques and schools,hospitals and bazaars, that covered some fivesquare miles and held more than a million souls.

On the Road:

Caravan Routes of IranFrank HaroldUniversity of Washington, Seattle (USA)Photographs by Ruth Harold

The Silk Road 6/1 (2008), pp. 17-28 17

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Exchange China and Islamic Civilization