From Markets to Marvels: Jews on the Maritime route to China ca. 850–ca. 950 CE

Silverstein, Adam J.

doi:10.18647/2707/jjs-2007

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…From al‐Ṣīn, they bring back musk, aloe wood, camphor, cinnamon, and other commodities that are brought back from those parts. They return to al‐Qulzum, they carry [their goods] to al‐Farāma whence they sail on the Western Sea.” (1889, 153; Silverstein, , 96)…”

Section: Mediterranean and Indian Oceanmentioning

confidence: 99%

TheRedSea under theCaliphalDynasties, c. 639–1171

Power

2018

History Compass

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Students of world history will be familiar with the Red Sea as a strategic communications corridor linking the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. This paper examines the Red Sea region between the seventh and twelfth centuries, when it was ruled by a succession of Islamic caliphal dynasties, namely, the Umayyads, ʿAbbāsids, and Fāṭimids. It first sets out a sketch of the political history of the Red Sea and its constituent hinterland polities, including particularly Egypt, Sudan, al-Ḥijāz, and Yemen, drawing attention to episodes and processes in which the Red Sea was significant. A section on Africa and Arabia explores the Red Sea as a zone of economic and social interaction; another section deals with the historic shift of Indian Ocean trade from the ʿAbbāsid Persian Gulf to the Fāṭimid Red Sea. Finally, the impact of the Red Sea on its constituent hinterland polities and the wider sweep of Islamic history is considered.

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Section: Mediterranean and Indian Oceanmentioning

confidence: 99%

TheRedSea under theCaliphalDynasties, c. 639–1171

Power

2018

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“…Neither the reference to China nor the heady sum should inspire our confidence. Although maritime trade with China was of increasing significance in the eighth century (Silverstein 2007), sin may well refer to any territory beyond India, and literary sources are notoriously poor records of figures (Scheidel 1996). Nevertheless, the passage well indicates the processes through which merchant elites endowed the monastery with its property, namely by donating the profits of a trading enterprise.…”

Section: Dinars and Date Palmsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monks, dinars and date palms: hagiographical production and the expansion of monastic institutions in the early Islamic Persian Gulf

Payne¹

2011

Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy

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Der Weg in die Wüste war der radikalste dichterische Akt… Peter Sloterdijk, Weltfremdheit Recent archaeological studies have documented an expansion of monastic institutions in the Persian Gulf after the Islamic conquest, between the middle of the seventh and the end of the eighth centuries. Although the literary sources have often been invoked to support an earlier dating for the diffusion of coenobitic monasticism in the region, our principal source for the phenomenonthe History of Mar Yonan, hitherto misdated to the fourth centuryconfirms recent archaeologically informed interpretations. The narrative, moreover, provides an insight into the social and economic structures of monasticism in the seventh-and eighth-century Persian Gulf as well as the ideological conflicts that attended the emergence of those structures.

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“…Лист свідчить про існування єврейської торгової громади в західному краї ще у VIII ст. єврейські торговці розширили свою комерційну діяльність набагато далі на схід протягом раннього ісламського періоду (Hansen 2012, p. 217-219;Silverstein 2007), коли вони також мали ділові зв'язки з Хузестаном, Перською затокою та Індією (Andrade 2011, p. 69). єврейські торгові асоціації часто мали розвинену структуру, яка складалася з інвесторів, подорожуючих комісійних агентів і вантажовідправників (Goitein, Friedman 2007).…”

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The Great Silk Road Which Did Not Exist

Khazanov

2022

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Interregional long-distance trade in silk certainly existed in ancient and medieval times, but the transcontinental and regular «Great Silk Road», whether overland or even maritime, is a myth, a phantom. Its existence is not confirmed either by written sources or by archaeological data. A concept of the Silk Road implies at least knowledge of macro-routes and their final destination, as well as transcontinental connectivity. The latter, if it existed in antiquity and medieval times at all, was much more occasional than regular and intentional. As a rule, such trade involved many middlemen. The «Silk Road» and the trade in silk, even a trans-regional one, are quite different notions. The transcontinental overland trade existed in but a few short-lived historical periods; it was neither confined to silk nor was it even a road. The «silk roads» were only one of many long-distance continental and transcontinental trading itineraries that existed in the Old World in premodern times. It is also important to remember that transcontinental trade was limited only to high-value, low-volume goods. The exotic appeal of long-distance trade in luxuries combined with a striving for political correctness often results in distorted and exaggerated opinions on premodern commerce in general. Not only silk and other luxury and prestige goods, but also people, religions, languages, scientific knowledge, inventions, innovations, new technologies, know-how, chemicals, minerals, metals, plants, medicine, cultural transmissions and artistic styles and fashions, cuisine, and musical instruments moved along its numerous itineraries, but on the negative side, epidemic diseases and epizootics were also disseminated across Eurasia along with them. Finally, it is worth stressing again that the long-distance Eurasian trade not only directly or indirectly stimulated movements of people and created ethnic diasporas. Frequently it was just members of these diasporas who brought new knowledge and technological knowhow and contributed to their practical applications in the new milieus. That was the main achievement of Eurasian trade, with no continuity between the trade in silk in the ancient and medieval times.

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From Markets to Marvels: Jews on the Maritime route to China ca. 850–ca. 950 CE

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

TheRedSea under theCaliphalDynasties, c. 639–1171

TheRedSea under theCaliphalDynasties, c. 639–1171

Monks, dinars and date palms: hagiographical production and the expansion of monastic institutions in the early Islamic Persian Gulf

The Great Silk Road Which Did Not Exist

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