Script - Part I - THE UNKNOWN EAST
Introduction
We will take a journey along the most ancient and thrilling
road in Man's history, through a mysterious and little known
part of the world, but one which has experienced all there is
- the great religions have all thrived here at one time or
another - Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam; at certain
periods great centres of learning and the arts sprang up and
declined, as did great warrior-princes. It is a region of
violent contrasts - desert, mountains, lush valleys and oases.
It is a mix of many races. Until a century ago, it was all but
lost to the march of civilisation. Until the fall of
Communism, it maintained its shroud of secrecy. With modern
means of communications, it is now as accessible as any other
destination. I am speaking of course of where East truly meets
West - Central Asia.
Turkestan - the name sounds of
pastoral romance and adventure. In fact there is no Turkestan.
It's a bit like Camelot, a mythical kingdom lost to the annuls
of history, or more tragically, like Kurdistan, divided up
between many states. There is a Chinese Turkestan (Uiguria),
an Afghan Turkestan (centred around Herat and Masar i Sharif),
and even an Iranian Turkestan. Until 1991, the heart of
Turkestan was Russian dominated. Now most of it is composed of
5 new 'stans' which cover the vast lands from the Caspian Sea
to the Tien Shan Mountains. Oddly enough, the only Turkestan
you can find on a map is a shabby settlement in Kazakhstan
with the spectacular yet mysterious ruined mausoleum of the
Sufi mystic Akhmad Yasari, built on Timur's orders. Even in
our jet age, it is still far, far away ... from anywhere, and
harsh and bleak, but sometimes brilliantly so.
[graphics,
maps]
The Silk Road began its long and eventful history in
the 2ndc BC, when the Chinese Emperor Wu Ti, hearing of a
civilised nation to the West (they turned out to be half way
along the future Silk Road - in Afghanistan), sent out an
expedition to make contact with them against the Hun
barbarians.
He found no military interest, but lots of
merchants, fine horses and the mysterious silk, and the
far-sighted Emperor began sending well-fortified caravans out
with silk to be exchanged for those horses. At that time,
China had only ponies to fend off the lightning horseback
attacks of the dreaded Huns.
The term Silk Road was coined
in the 19thc by a German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen.
It was not a single road but a vast network of trade routes
stretching from China to the eastern Mediterranean. The main
northern route followed the northern foothills of the
Tien-shan or Celestial mountains to Khorasmia - the oasis
south of the Aral Sea (Khiva), and on to the Caspian and
Volga, and the Greek settlements on the Black Sea. Advantage:
water, Disadvantage: nomads. This was the best known route,
and the one which we will more or less follow. The other
routes tended to be much more prey to the vicious extremes of
climate and geography, not to mention the Huns and their like,
and often caravans of hundreds of camels and men would
disappear without a trace.
Silk. The Chinese knew they had
a good thing, and managed to keep the secret of silk
production just that for hundreds of years [till 5thc, when
Sogdiana (Uzb, Taj, Pak, Afg) began producing, albeit, lower
quality silk]. And there were many, many middlemen on this
10,000km road, with all its many natural and manmade
hazards.The Romans developed such a passion for the sensuous
material that it was bartered for its weight in gold, having
such a disastrous effect on the balance of payments, that in
AD 14 the Senate was forced to issue a decree drastically
restricting its use.
An alternate sea route was finally
discovered by the Romans in the lstc (through the Red Sea to
nw India), and used at times over the next millenium when the
land route just became too dangerous. It proved to be no safer
than the caravan trails, and many a cargo was lost in storms
and many a crew sold into slavery. Sailing techniques were
primitive, and the last leg - to India - depended on
favourable monsoons... Well, we know enough about sailing in
monsoons to know better!
[Sir Peter's hat blows of and he
trips chasing it]
This great road was not just for
merchants. As always happens, men of religion - whether
pilgrims, missionaries or refugees, were very much a part of
it, though in this realm the traffic was mostly West-East.
These hardy souls (or sometimes merely restless ones) brought
to Central Asia the creeds of Buddhism, Zoroastrianism,
Manichaeism and Nestorian Christianity. And with religion came
manuscripts, art and architecture. And each successful journey
required carefully ministered gifts along the way, to whatever
Almighty reigned at that time and place. Perhaps this helps
explain how such isolated oases as these could flaunt fabulous
monuments which, reduced to rubble by invaders, soon gave way
to even greater monuments - wave after wave, for thousands of
years...
[Opening shots of Sir Peter in Samarkand]
Samarkand is
a magical, evocative word - Milton speaks of 'Samarchand by
Oxus, Temir's throne'. It was the fantasy of Goethe, Handel,
Marlowe ... For Keats Samarkand was 'silken' with its caravans
bearing Chinese treasures, while Oscar Wilde, throwing botany
to the winds, wrote of
The almond-groves of Samarcand,
Bokhara, where red lilies blow,
And Oxus, by whose
yellow sand
The grave white-turbaned merchants go.
Central Asia, with Samarkand at its heart, has produced or
inspired some of the great poetry in history. Omar Khayyam
immediately comes to mind, with his Rubiat, translated into
English by Edward Fitzgerald.
[QUOTE re Samarkand]
It
rings with a landlocked strangeness, and was the seat of an
empire so remote in its steppe and desert that it only touched
Europe to terrify it.
[Sir Peter in the central square]
Samarkand itself dates from 530 BC, then called Maracanda,
when it was recorded that Alexander the Great 'paused there in
his mad career', which meant that it celebrated its first
2500th anniversary in 1970 as a sleepy Soviet backwater. It's
SECOND 25ooth anniversary, as decided by further finds and
sanctioned by UNESCO, takes place in 1997. Samarkand has been
called the 'Mirror of the World', the 'Garden of Souls', the
'Fourth Paradise'; a city which, for better or for worse, is
at long last open to the vulgar gaze of tourists, who, year by
year in ever-growing numbers, 'take the Golden Road to
Samarkand'.
_______________________________________________________
Let us start our journey along the Silk Road with one of
the most breath-taking events of world history:
[map,
paintings of Alexander and his campaign, death of Cleitus]
Alexander's empire 4thc BC
At the time that Alexander
swept across the Near East into Central Asia, he met and
conquered the Sogdians, who were a highly cultured, relatively
peaceful Persian civilisation. Alexander soon succumbed to the
decadent charms of Persian living. The dry climate of
Turkestan and the tainted water had led the Macedonians to
indulge freely in the strong local wines. He even came to
adopt the sensible and comfortable native dress. Indeed he
later tried to insist upon those who approached him making the
deep Persian prostration or 'kow-tow' - an act which aroused
much resentment among the Macedonians, who considered it
appropriate only to a god. Persian ostentation and effeminacy
were having an even worse effect on Alexander's generals; it
got to the point that even he had to put a stop to things.
Plutarch gives some examples: one general sent camels to Egypt
to fetch his favourite 'powder' for use when wrestling. 'Have
you still to learn,' asked Alexander, 'that to make our
victories perfect we must avoid the vices and follies of those
we have conquered?' Such moralisings fell strangely from his
lips.
Still, he swept through Central Asia, scaled the
mountain stronghold of the Bactrian chieftain Oxyartes, whose
lovely daughter Roxana, he fell in love with and married in
Balkh, a few hundred kilometres south of Samarkand, in
present-day Afghanistan. He conquered what he thought was
India (Punjab) the next year, and 4 years later, while
preparing to march into Arabia, he was struck down by a fever
and died.
All other attempts to conquer the world since
must pay homage to this spectacular feat. It's as if the
Apollo missions set up colonies on Mars. Indeed, medieval
legends abound concerning Alexander, in his flying machine
propelled by griffins (straining to reach prey dangling
convieniently out of reach), or exploring the ocean depths in
his glass diving-bell.
[pictures]
[Sir Peter in
mountain village surrounded by 'descendants' of Alexander]
There are remote mountain villages of blue eyed, fair
haired natives in Tadjikistan that proudly trace their lineage
to Alexander and his army. But that is another story.
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