As it extended westwards from the ancient commercial centres of China, the overland, intercontinental Silk Road divided into northern and southern routes bypassing the Taklamakan Desert and Lop Nur.
"Earliest Silk Route: The Southwest Route." Gemstones and other merchandise from Thailand and Java were traded in the delta and through it. For only $5 per month you can become a member and support our mission to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide. Han general Ban Chao led an army of 70,000 mounted infantry and light cavalry troops in the 1st century CE to secure the trade routes, reaching far west to the Tarim Basin. The Silk Roads' origin lay in the hands of the Chinese. Some Judeans could have traveled as far east as Bactria and Sogdia, though there is not clear evidence for this early settlement of Judeans. World History Publishing is a non-profit company registered in the United Kingdom. Diseases such as plague also spread along the Silk Road, possibly contributing to the Black Death.[11]. Merchants found the moral and ethical teachings of Buddhism an appealing alternative to previous religions. This also applied to the massive trade barriers of the Cold War. The plan was successful and initiated the Byzantine silk industry. Speaking of the bombyx or silk moth, he wrote in his Natural Histories "They weave webs, like spiders, that become a luxurious clothing material for women, called silk. Charles Stevens "Along the New Silk Road Piraeus: Chinas gateway into Europe" In: Geographical 17.8.2018. The Mongol ruler Genghis Khan had the once vibrant cities of Bukhara and Samarkand burned to the ground after besieging them. Byzantine Greek historian Procopius stated that two Nestorian Christian monks eventually uncovered the way silk was made. Ming Pao. The emerging evidence of the ancient cities of Bangladesh, in particular Wari-Bateshwar ruins, Mahasthangarh, Bhitagarh, Bikrampur, Egarasindhur, and Sonargaon, are believed to be the international trade centers in this route. For other uses, see, For online dark web marketplace that sold illegal drugs, see, Please expand the article to include this information. Y, Ying-shih. [170] The voluntary conversion of Chinese ruling elites helped the spread of Buddhism in East Asia and led Buddhism to become widespread in Chinese society. ", Epidemics and pandemics: their impacts on human history, "The Silk Road: Connecting People and Cultures", "Neue Seidenstrae: Das Mega-Projekt aus China", "Hauling New Treasure Along the Silk Road", "Asia-Pacific | Asia takes first step on modern 'Silk Route', "A Silk Road for the 21st century: Freight rail linking China and Germany officially begins operations", Silk Road route back in business as China train rolls into London, "New Silk Route or Classic Developmental Cul-de-Sac? to the Second Half of the First Millennium C.E.," in Annette L. Juliano and Judith A. Lerner (eds). Further details may exist on the, Chinese and Central Asian contacts (2nd millennium BCE), Expansion of the Greek Empire (329 BCE10 CE), SogdianTrkic tribes (4th8th centuries), Decline and disintegration (15th century). Trade Links between the Roman Empire and the East (1st - 3rd centuries). Persian Sassanid coins emerged as a means of currency, just as valuable as silk yarn and textiles. [64] The Roman Empire connected with the Central Asian Silk Road through their ports in Barygaza (known today as Bharuch[65]) and Barbaricum (known today as the city of Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan[66]) and continued along the western coast of India. The Parthians then became the central intermediaries between China and the west. Jerry Bentley, Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 16. The trade route encompassed numbers of bodies of waters; including South China Sea, Strait of Malacca, Indian Ocean, Gulf of Bengal, Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea. It extended, via ports on the coasts of India and Sri Lanka, all the way to Roman-controlled ports in Roman Egypt and the Nabataean territories on the northeastern coast of the Red Sea. von Le Coq, Albert, 1928. Many scholars have attributed this to Greek influence. Thorsten, Marie. Richard Foltz, Xinru Liu, and others have described how trading activities along the Silk Road over many centuries facilitated the transmission not just of goods but also ideas and culture, notably in the area of religions. A route for caravans, the northern Silk Road brought to China many goods such as "dates, saffron powder and pistachio nuts from Persia; frankincense, aloes and myrrh from Somalia; sandalwood from India; glass bottles from Egypt, and other expensive and desirable goods from other parts of the world. Later envoys included Odoric of Pordenone, Giovanni de' Marignolli, John of Montecorvino, Niccol de' Conti, and Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan Muslim traveller who passed through the present-day Middle East and across the Silk Road from Tabriz between 1325 and 1354. Waugh, Daniel. As a result, merchants supported Buddhist monasteries along the Silk Road, and in return, the Buddhists gave the merchants somewhere to stay as they traveled from city to city. The Romans may have been part of Antony's army invading Parthia. The increasing importance of the Mediterranean as a trading center with its direct, fast connections to Central and Eastern Europe is evident from the international investments in port cities of Piraeus and Trieste. Intercontinental trade and communication became regular, organised, and protected by the "Great Powers". [103] The Persian Samanid Empire (819999) centered in Bukhara (Uzbekistan) continued the trade legacy of the Sogdians.
[24][25] From the 2nd millennium BCE, nephrite jade was being traded from mines in the region of Yarkand and Khotan to China. The Han Dynasty of China was regularly harassed by the nomadic tribes of the Xiongnu on their northern and western borders.
The network additionally connects to Madrid and Milan. [27], Following contacts between Metropolitan China and nomadic western border territories in the 8th century BCE, gold was introduced from Central Asia, and Chinese jade carvers began to make imitation designs of the steppes, adopting the Scythian-style animal art of the steppes (depictions of animals locked in combat). Seneca the Younger (c. 3 BCE 65 CE), Declamations Vol. Chinese missionaries were able to assimilate Buddhism, to an extent, to native Chinese Daoists, which brought the two beliefs together. Hulsew, A.F.P. Silk Road. World History Encyclopedia. R. Ernest Dupuy and Trevor N. Dupuy suggest that in 36 BCE, [A] Han expedition into Central Asia, west of Jaxartes River, apparently encountered and defeated a contingent of Roman legionaries. Octavian would triumph over Antony and Cleopatra; he could do nothing, however, to curtail the popularity of silk. Starting in July 2011 the line has been used by a freight service that connects Chongqing, China with Duisburg, Germany,[132] cutting travel time for cargo from about 36 days by container ship to just 13 days by freight train. Xinru Liu, The Silk Road in World History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 68. (2007). [116][119], The Suez Canal was also continually expanded and its time-saving role in Asia-Europe trade was highlighted. Paper, which had been invented by the Chinese during the Han Dynasty, and gunpowder, also a Chinese invention, had a much greater impact on culture than did silk. The Chinese were also strongly attracted by the tall and powerful horses (named "Heavenly horses") in the possession of the Dayuan (literally the "Great Ionians", the Greek kingdoms of Central Asia), which were of capital importance in fighting the nomadic Xiongnu. "[144] In exchange, the caravans sent back bolts of silk brocade, lacquer-ware, and porcelain. 3758, Learn how and when to remove these template messages, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Chang'an-Tianshan corridor of the Silk Road, Byzantine Empire a monopoly on silk production, Tang dynasty Trade and spread of culture, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Global silver trade from the 16th to 19th centuries, List of ports and harbours of the Indian Ocean, "ProtoThree Kingdomsof Korea | Silk Road", "Ancient bottom wipers yield evidence of diseases carried along the Silk Road", "The Horses of the Steppe: The Mongolian Horse and the Blood-Sweating Stallions | Silk Road in Rare Books", "ber die zentralasiatischen Seidenstrassen bis zum 2. [2], The Silk Road derives its name from the highly lucrative trade of silk textiles that were produced almost exclusively in China. and Loewe, M.A.N. By the early first century CE, Chinese silk was widely sought-after in Rome, Egypt, and Greece. "China's control of the Silk Road at the time of the later Han, by ensuring the freedom of transcontinental trade along the double chain of oases north and south of the Tarim, favoured the dissemination of Buddhism in the river basin, and with it Indian literature and Hellenistic art."[45]. At the end of its glory, the routes brought about the largest continental empire ever, the Mongol Empire, with its political centres strung along the Silk Road (Beijing) in North China, Karakorum in central Mongolia, Sarmakhand in Transoxiana, Tabriz in Northern Iran, realising the political unification of zones previously loosely and intermittently connected by material and cultural goods. in The Maritime Executive, 1 January 2020. [14][15] It derives from the German term Seidenstrae (literally "Silk Road") and was first popularized in 1877 by Ferdinand von Richthofen, who made seven expeditions to China from 1868 to 1872. Harper asserts that a 2nd or 3rd-century Roman gilt silver plate found in Jingyuan, Gansu, China with a central image of the Greco-Roman god Dionysus resting on a feline creature, most likely came via Greater Iran (i.e. [16][15][17][18] However, the term itself has been in use in decades prior. [56] Valerie Hansen (2012) believed that earliest Roman coins found in China date to the 4th century, during Late Antiquity and the Dominate period, and come from the Byzantine Empire. In the 20th century, the Silk Road through the Suez Canal and the overland connections were repeatedly blocked from the First World War on. The northern route travelled northwest through the Chinese province of Gansu from Shaanxi Province and split into three further routes, two of them following the mountain ranges to the north and south of the Taklamakan Desert to rejoin at Kashgar, and the other going north of the Tian Shan mountains through Turpan, Talgar, and Almaty (in what is now southeast Kazakhstan). Despite repeatedly surviving many geopolitical changes and disruptions, the Silk Road abruptly ended with the rise of the Ottoman Empire in 1453, which almost immediately severed trade between East and West. In the second half of the thirteenth century Mongol-sponsored business partnerships flourished in the Indian Ocean connecting Mongol Middle East and Mongol China[108], The Mongol diplomat Rabban Bar Sauma visited the courts of Europe in 128788 and provided a detailed written report to the Mongols. Imperial envoy Zhang Qian was commissioned to explore the unknown lands beyond the region in search of potential trading partners and allies. Thomas Fromm "Hanseatische Seidenstrae" In: Sddeutsche Zeitung 5 October 2020. [107] The Mongols developed overland and maritime routes throughout the Eurasian continent, Black Sea and the Mediterranean in the west, and the Indian Ocean in the south. Few individuals crossed the entirety of the Silk Road, instead relying on a succession of middlemen based at various stopping points along the way. The horse had long been known in China and had been used in warfare for cavalry and chariots as early as the Shang Dynasty (1600 1046 BCE) but the Chinese admired the western horse for its size and speed. Books While many trade flows were interrupted in the 20th century by the World Wars, the Suez Crisis and the Cold War, from the beginning of the 21st century many of the trading centers that had already existed in the 19th century were activated again. The Dayuan had mighty horses, Zhang Qian reported back to Wu, and these could be employed effectively against the marauding Xiongnu. (1986). Andreas Eckert: Mit Mao nach Daressalam. Their commercial interests were protected by the resurgent military power of the Gktrks, whose empire has been described as "the joint enterprise of the Ashina clan and the Soghdians".
"Richthofen "Silk Roads": Toward the Archeology of a Concept.". The soil in China lacked Selenium, a deficiency which contributed to muscular weakness and reduced growth in horses. Marcus Hernig: Die Renaissance der Seidenstrae (2018) pp 112. These nomadic peoples were dependent upon neighbouring settled populations for a number of important technologies, and in addition to raiding vulnerable settlements for these commodities, they also encouraged long-distance merchants as a source of income through the enforced payment of tariffs. [168] With the rise of Mahayana Buddhism, the initial direction of Buddhist development changed. [3][4][5] First coined in the late 19th century, the name "Silk Road" has fallen into disuse among some modern historians in favor of Silk Routes, which more accurately describes the intricate web of land and sea routes connecting East and Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, the Middle East, East Africa and Europe. [171] The Silk Road transmission of Buddhism essentially ended around the 7th century with the rise of Islam in Central Asia. They continued to expand eastward, especially during the reign of Euthydemus (230200 BCE), who extended his control beyond Alexandria Eschate to Sogdiana. The Silk Road - from its opening to its closure - had so great an impact on the development of world civilization that it is difficult to imagine the modern world without it. [40] Some say that the Chinese Emperor Wu became interested in developing commercial relationships with the sophisticated urban civilizations of Ferghana, Bactria, and the Parthian Empire: "The Son of Heaven on hearing all this reasoned thus: Ferghana (Dayuan "Great Ionians") and the possessions of Bactria (Ta-Hsia) and Parthian Empire (Anxi) are large countries, full of rare things, with a population living in fixed abodes and given to occupations somewhat identical with those of the Chinese people, but with weak armies, and placing great value on the rich produce of China" (Hou Hanshu, Later Han History).
"Earliest Silk Route: The Southwest Route." Gemstones and other merchandise from Thailand and Java were traded in the delta and through it. For only $5 per month you can become a member and support our mission to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide. Han general Ban Chao led an army of 70,000 mounted infantry and light cavalry troops in the 1st century CE to secure the trade routes, reaching far west to the Tarim Basin. The Silk Roads' origin lay in the hands of the Chinese. Some Judeans could have traveled as far east as Bactria and Sogdia, though there is not clear evidence for this early settlement of Judeans. World History Publishing is a non-profit company registered in the United Kingdom. Diseases such as plague also spread along the Silk Road, possibly contributing to the Black Death.[11]. Merchants found the moral and ethical teachings of Buddhism an appealing alternative to previous religions. This also applied to the massive trade barriers of the Cold War. The plan was successful and initiated the Byzantine silk industry. Speaking of the bombyx or silk moth, he wrote in his Natural Histories "They weave webs, like spiders, that become a luxurious clothing material for women, called silk. Charles Stevens "Along the New Silk Road Piraeus: Chinas gateway into Europe" In: Geographical 17.8.2018. The Mongol ruler Genghis Khan had the once vibrant cities of Bukhara and Samarkand burned to the ground after besieging them. Byzantine Greek historian Procopius stated that two Nestorian Christian monks eventually uncovered the way silk was made. Ming Pao. The emerging evidence of the ancient cities of Bangladesh, in particular Wari-Bateshwar ruins, Mahasthangarh, Bhitagarh, Bikrampur, Egarasindhur, and Sonargaon, are believed to be the international trade centers in this route. For other uses, see, For online dark web marketplace that sold illegal drugs, see, Please expand the article to include this information. Y, Ying-shih. [170] The voluntary conversion of Chinese ruling elites helped the spread of Buddhism in East Asia and led Buddhism to become widespread in Chinese society. ", Epidemics and pandemics: their impacts on human history, "The Silk Road: Connecting People and Cultures", "Neue Seidenstrae: Das Mega-Projekt aus China", "Hauling New Treasure Along the Silk Road", "Asia-Pacific | Asia takes first step on modern 'Silk Route', "A Silk Road for the 21st century: Freight rail linking China and Germany officially begins operations", Silk Road route back in business as China train rolls into London, "New Silk Route or Classic Developmental Cul-de-Sac? to the Second Half of the First Millennium C.E.," in Annette L. Juliano and Judith A. Lerner (eds). Further details may exist on the, Chinese and Central Asian contacts (2nd millennium BCE), Expansion of the Greek Empire (329 BCE10 CE), SogdianTrkic tribes (4th8th centuries), Decline and disintegration (15th century). Trade Links between the Roman Empire and the East (1st - 3rd centuries). Persian Sassanid coins emerged as a means of currency, just as valuable as silk yarn and textiles. [64] The Roman Empire connected with the Central Asian Silk Road through their ports in Barygaza (known today as Bharuch[65]) and Barbaricum (known today as the city of Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan[66]) and continued along the western coast of India. The Parthians then became the central intermediaries between China and the west. Jerry Bentley, Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 16. The trade route encompassed numbers of bodies of waters; including South China Sea, Strait of Malacca, Indian Ocean, Gulf of Bengal, Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea. It extended, via ports on the coasts of India and Sri Lanka, all the way to Roman-controlled ports in Roman Egypt and the Nabataean territories on the northeastern coast of the Red Sea. von Le Coq, Albert, 1928. Many scholars have attributed this to Greek influence. Thorsten, Marie. Richard Foltz, Xinru Liu, and others have described how trading activities along the Silk Road over many centuries facilitated the transmission not just of goods but also ideas and culture, notably in the area of religions. A route for caravans, the northern Silk Road brought to China many goods such as "dates, saffron powder and pistachio nuts from Persia; frankincense, aloes and myrrh from Somalia; sandalwood from India; glass bottles from Egypt, and other expensive and desirable goods from other parts of the world. Later envoys included Odoric of Pordenone, Giovanni de' Marignolli, John of Montecorvino, Niccol de' Conti, and Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan Muslim traveller who passed through the present-day Middle East and across the Silk Road from Tabriz between 1325 and 1354. Waugh, Daniel. As a result, merchants supported Buddhist monasteries along the Silk Road, and in return, the Buddhists gave the merchants somewhere to stay as they traveled from city to city. The Romans may have been part of Antony's army invading Parthia. The increasing importance of the Mediterranean as a trading center with its direct, fast connections to Central and Eastern Europe is evident from the international investments in port cities of Piraeus and Trieste. Intercontinental trade and communication became regular, organised, and protected by the "Great Powers". [103] The Persian Samanid Empire (819999) centered in Bukhara (Uzbekistan) continued the trade legacy of the Sogdians.
[24][25] From the 2nd millennium BCE, nephrite jade was being traded from mines in the region of Yarkand and Khotan to China. The Han Dynasty of China was regularly harassed by the nomadic tribes of the Xiongnu on their northern and western borders.
The network additionally connects to Madrid and Milan. [27], Following contacts between Metropolitan China and nomadic western border territories in the 8th century BCE, gold was introduced from Central Asia, and Chinese jade carvers began to make imitation designs of the steppes, adopting the Scythian-style animal art of the steppes (depictions of animals locked in combat). Seneca the Younger (c. 3 BCE 65 CE), Declamations Vol. Chinese missionaries were able to assimilate Buddhism, to an extent, to native Chinese Daoists, which brought the two beliefs together. Hulsew, A.F.P. Silk Road. World History Encyclopedia. R. Ernest Dupuy and Trevor N. Dupuy suggest that in 36 BCE, [A] Han expedition into Central Asia, west of Jaxartes River, apparently encountered and defeated a contingent of Roman legionaries. Octavian would triumph over Antony and Cleopatra; he could do nothing, however, to curtail the popularity of silk. Starting in July 2011 the line has been used by a freight service that connects Chongqing, China with Duisburg, Germany,[132] cutting travel time for cargo from about 36 days by container ship to just 13 days by freight train. Xinru Liu, The Silk Road in World History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 68. (2007). [116][119], The Suez Canal was also continually expanded and its time-saving role in Asia-Europe trade was highlighted. Paper, which had been invented by the Chinese during the Han Dynasty, and gunpowder, also a Chinese invention, had a much greater impact on culture than did silk. The Chinese were also strongly attracted by the tall and powerful horses (named "Heavenly horses") in the possession of the Dayuan (literally the "Great Ionians", the Greek kingdoms of Central Asia), which were of capital importance in fighting the nomadic Xiongnu. "[144] In exchange, the caravans sent back bolts of silk brocade, lacquer-ware, and porcelain. 3758, Learn how and when to remove these template messages, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Chang'an-Tianshan corridor of the Silk Road, Byzantine Empire a monopoly on silk production, Tang dynasty Trade and spread of culture, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Global silver trade from the 16th to 19th centuries, List of ports and harbours of the Indian Ocean, "ProtoThree Kingdomsof Korea | Silk Road", "Ancient bottom wipers yield evidence of diseases carried along the Silk Road", "The Horses of the Steppe: The Mongolian Horse and the Blood-Sweating Stallions | Silk Road in Rare Books", "ber die zentralasiatischen Seidenstrassen bis zum 2. [2], The Silk Road derives its name from the highly lucrative trade of silk textiles that were produced almost exclusively in China. and Loewe, M.A.N. By the early first century CE, Chinese silk was widely sought-after in Rome, Egypt, and Greece. "China's control of the Silk Road at the time of the later Han, by ensuring the freedom of transcontinental trade along the double chain of oases north and south of the Tarim, favoured the dissemination of Buddhism in the river basin, and with it Indian literature and Hellenistic art."[45]. At the end of its glory, the routes brought about the largest continental empire ever, the Mongol Empire, with its political centres strung along the Silk Road (Beijing) in North China, Karakorum in central Mongolia, Sarmakhand in Transoxiana, Tabriz in Northern Iran, realising the political unification of zones previously loosely and intermittently connected by material and cultural goods. in The Maritime Executive, 1 January 2020. [14][15] It derives from the German term Seidenstrae (literally "Silk Road") and was first popularized in 1877 by Ferdinand von Richthofen, who made seven expeditions to China from 1868 to 1872. Harper asserts that a 2nd or 3rd-century Roman gilt silver plate found in Jingyuan, Gansu, China with a central image of the Greco-Roman god Dionysus resting on a feline creature, most likely came via Greater Iran (i.e. [16][15][17][18] However, the term itself has been in use in decades prior. [56] Valerie Hansen (2012) believed that earliest Roman coins found in China date to the 4th century, during Late Antiquity and the Dominate period, and come from the Byzantine Empire. In the 20th century, the Silk Road through the Suez Canal and the overland connections were repeatedly blocked from the First World War on. The northern route travelled northwest through the Chinese province of Gansu from Shaanxi Province and split into three further routes, two of them following the mountain ranges to the north and south of the Taklamakan Desert to rejoin at Kashgar, and the other going north of the Tian Shan mountains through Turpan, Talgar, and Almaty (in what is now southeast Kazakhstan). Despite repeatedly surviving many geopolitical changes and disruptions, the Silk Road abruptly ended with the rise of the Ottoman Empire in 1453, which almost immediately severed trade between East and West. In the second half of the thirteenth century Mongol-sponsored business partnerships flourished in the Indian Ocean connecting Mongol Middle East and Mongol China[108], The Mongol diplomat Rabban Bar Sauma visited the courts of Europe in 128788 and provided a detailed written report to the Mongols. Imperial envoy Zhang Qian was commissioned to explore the unknown lands beyond the region in search of potential trading partners and allies. Thomas Fromm "Hanseatische Seidenstrae" In: Sddeutsche Zeitung 5 October 2020. [107] The Mongols developed overland and maritime routes throughout the Eurasian continent, Black Sea and the Mediterranean in the west, and the Indian Ocean in the south. Few individuals crossed the entirety of the Silk Road, instead relying on a succession of middlemen based at various stopping points along the way. The horse had long been known in China and had been used in warfare for cavalry and chariots as early as the Shang Dynasty (1600 1046 BCE) but the Chinese admired the western horse for its size and speed. Books While many trade flows were interrupted in the 20th century by the World Wars, the Suez Crisis and the Cold War, from the beginning of the 21st century many of the trading centers that had already existed in the 19th century were activated again. The Dayuan had mighty horses, Zhang Qian reported back to Wu, and these could be employed effectively against the marauding Xiongnu. (1986). Andreas Eckert: Mit Mao nach Daressalam. Their commercial interests were protected by the resurgent military power of the Gktrks, whose empire has been described as "the joint enterprise of the Ashina clan and the Soghdians".
"Richthofen "Silk Roads": Toward the Archeology of a Concept.". The soil in China lacked Selenium, a deficiency which contributed to muscular weakness and reduced growth in horses. Marcus Hernig: Die Renaissance der Seidenstrae (2018) pp 112. These nomadic peoples were dependent upon neighbouring settled populations for a number of important technologies, and in addition to raiding vulnerable settlements for these commodities, they also encouraged long-distance merchants as a source of income through the enforced payment of tariffs. [168] With the rise of Mahayana Buddhism, the initial direction of Buddhist development changed. [3][4][5] First coined in the late 19th century, the name "Silk Road" has fallen into disuse among some modern historians in favor of Silk Routes, which more accurately describes the intricate web of land and sea routes connecting East and Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, the Middle East, East Africa and Europe. [171] The Silk Road transmission of Buddhism essentially ended around the 7th century with the rise of Islam in Central Asia. They continued to expand eastward, especially during the reign of Euthydemus (230200 BCE), who extended his control beyond Alexandria Eschate to Sogdiana. The Silk Road - from its opening to its closure - had so great an impact on the development of world civilization that it is difficult to imagine the modern world without it. [40] Some say that the Chinese Emperor Wu became interested in developing commercial relationships with the sophisticated urban civilizations of Ferghana, Bactria, and the Parthian Empire: "The Son of Heaven on hearing all this reasoned thus: Ferghana (Dayuan "Great Ionians") and the possessions of Bactria (Ta-Hsia) and Parthian Empire (Anxi) are large countries, full of rare things, with a population living in fixed abodes and given to occupations somewhat identical with those of the Chinese people, but with weak armies, and placing great value on the rich produce of China" (Hou Hanshu, Later Han History).