In the steppes of the ancients: travels on the Silk Road

It is difficult to fault this remarkable volume. The publishers have created a book of quality with stunning illustrations and lucid maps. It will, I believe, become a standard reference for all who study the complex history of Central Asia and the Silk Road.

This is the second volume in Christoph Baumer’s projected four-book series on Central Asia and shows its author to be an extraordinary person, whose skills encompass those of an explorer, a geographer, a historian, an archaeologist and a photographer. Moreover, in each of these exacting disciplines he is no amateur. He displays the rare qualities of both an academic and a man of action. His sparkling prose ensures that the armchair traveller will not nod off.

He starts with the creation of the early Central Asian empires, their collapse and replacement by subsequent kingdoms. These imperial histories are interlaced with a complex migration of peoples and lead on to the establishment of the powerful Sogdian kingdom, the foundation of Samarkand and the more recent migrations of Turkic nomads. Tibet is shown as a major power, influencing, through battles and Buddhism, vast sections of the Silk Road. Then Islam appears and its effect upon the old Silk Road oases in Xinjiang is still with us today.

These empires, peoples and their religions formed strategic outposts along the Silk Road, that vast trading highway, which for centuries connected diverse and far-flung sedentary empires. This commercial network expanded as rapid economic growth was generated by one imperial dynasty after another.

Perhaps the most important of all the many commodities which were carried along these frequently dangerous highways was in fact silk. Highly valued as a material in Europe, partly because lice could not obtain a foothold, it also served as a currency for such varied activities as the payment of salaries, the purchase of horses and for tribute to gain entrance into nomadic empires.