The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

by Frankopan, Peter

  It was important, therefore, that there were also locations where Judaism itself made progress. In the kingdom of imyar in the south-western corner of the Arabian peninsula, in what is now Saudi Arabia and Yemen, Jewish communities became increasingly prominent, as recent discoveries of synagogues such as the fourth-century structure at Qana shows.66 Indeed, imyar adopted Judaism as the state religion – and did so enthusiastically. By the late fifth century, Christians were being regularly martyred for their beliefs, including priests, monks and bishops, after being condemned by a council of rabbis.67

  A botched Ethiopian military expedition across the Red Sea in the early sixth century to replace the Jewish ruler with a Christian puppet resulted in vicious reprisals as steps were taken to remove all traces of Christianity from the kingdom. Churches were demolished or turned into synagogues. Hundreds of Christians were detained and executed; on one occasion, 200 who had taken sanctuary inside a church were simply burnt alive. All this was reported with glee by the king, who sent letters across Arabia rejoicing at the suffering he had inflicted.68

  The Zoroastrian priesthood also reacted to Christianity’s progress in the Sasanian Empire, especially following several high-profile conversions of members of the ruling elite. This too resulted in a series of aggressive attacks on Christian communities, including multiple martyrdoms.69 In turn, Christians began to produce uncompromising morality tales, the most famous of which was the epic story of Qardagh, a brilliant young man who hunted like a Persian king and argued like a Greek philosopher but gave up a promising career as a provincial governor to convert. Sentenced to death, he escaped from captivity only to experience a dream telling him it was better to die for his faith than to fight. His execution, at which his father threw the first stone, was commemorated in a lengthy and beautiful narrative account whose aim was evidently to encourage others to find the confidence to become Christian.70

  Part of the secret of Christianity’s success lay in the commitment and energy of its evangelical mission. It helped, of course, that the enthusiasm was infused with a healthy dose of realism: texts from the early seventh century record clerics working hard to reconcile their ideas with those of Buddhism, if not as a short cut, then at least as a way of simplifying matters. The Holy Spirit, wrote one missionary who reached China, was entirely consistent with what the local population already believed: ‘All buddhas flow and flux by virtue of this very wind [that is, the Holy Spirit], while in this world, there is no place where the wind does not reach.’ Likewise, he went on, God has been responsible for immortality and everlasting happiness since the creation of the world. As such, ‘man . . . will always do honour to the name of Buddha’.71 Christianity was not just compatible with Buddhism, he was saying; broadly speaking, it was Buddhism.

  Others tried to codify the fusion of Christian and Buddhist ideas, producing a hybrid set of ‘gospels’ that effectively simplified the complex message and story of the former, with elements that were familiar and accessible to populations in the east in order to accelerate Christianity’s progress across Asia. There was a theological logic to this dualistic approach, usually called Gnosticism, which argued that preaching in terms that had understandable cultural reference points and used accessible language was an obvious way to spread the message.72 Little wonder, then, that Christianity found support among a broad sweep of the population: these were ideas that were deliberately made to sound familiar and easy to grasp.

  Other cults, faiths and sects benefited from the same process. The teachings of Mazdak, a charismatic preacher, proved extremely popular in the late fifth and early sixth century – as we can tell from the furious and colourful criticism showered on the preacher’s followers by Christian and Zoroastrian commentators alike. The attitudes and practices of Mazdak’s disciples, ranging from what they ate to their supposed interest in having group sex, were electrifyingly vilified. In fact, in so far as the highly partial source material allows us to understand, Mazdak advocated an ascetic lifestyle that had obvious resonances with Buddhist attitudes to material wealth, to Zoroastrian suspicions of the physical world and to well-established Christian asceticism.73

  In this competitive spiritual environment, it was important to defend intellectual – and physical – territory. A Chinese traveller passing through Samarkand in the sixth century noted that the local population violently opposed the law of Buddha, and chased away with ‘burning fire’ any Buddhist who tried to take shelter.74 On this occasion, the hostile reception had a happy ending: the visitor was eventually allowed to convene a meeting and apparently went on to persuade many to convert to Buddhism thanks to the strength of his character and of his arguments.75

  Few understood better than the Buddhists how important it was to publicise and show off objects that supported declarations of faith. Another Chinese pilgrim who made his way to Central Asia in search of Sanskrit texts to study looked with wonder at the sacred relics venerated by the local population in Balkh. These included one of the Buddha’s teeth, as well as the basin he used for washing, and a brush he used for sweeping, made of the kasha plant, but decorated with fine jewels.76

  There were, however, more visible and more dramatic statements that were designed to win hearts and minds. Cave temples had become a well-established way of evoking and enforcing a spiritual message, lying along trade routes and eliding the idea of sanctuary and the divine on the one hand with commerce and travel on the other. The complex at Elephanta off the coast of Mumbai and the Maratha caves at Ellora in northern India provide spectacular examples. Filled with majestic and ornate carvings of deities, these were designed to showcase moral and theological superiority – in this case, the superiority of Hinduism.77

  This had an obvious parallel with Bamiyan (in modern Afghanistan). Lying at the crossroads of routes linking India to the south, Bactria to the north and Persia to the west, Bamiyan contained a complex of 751 caves supplemented by immense figures of the Buddha.78 Two statues, one to a height of 180 feet and another, slightly older, approximately two-thirds of the size, stood carved into vast niches in the rocks for nearly 1,500 years – until they were blown up and destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 in an act of philistinism and cultural savagery that stands comparison with the destruction of religious artefacts in Britain and northern Europe during the Reformation.79

  When we think of the Silk Roads, it is tempting to think of the circulation always passing from east to west. In fact, there was considerable interest and exchange passing in the other direction, as an admiring seventh-century Chinese text makes plain. Syria, the author wrote, was a place that ‘produces fire-proof cloth, life-restoring incense, bright moon-pearls, and night-lustre gems. Brigands and robbers are unknown, but the people enjoy happiness and peace. None but illustrious laws prevail; none but the virtuous are raised to sovereign power. The land is broad and ample, and its literary productions are perspicuous and clear.’80

  And in fact, despite fierce competition and in spite of the chorus of religions fighting to make their voices heard, it was Christianity that kept chipping away at traditional beliefs, practices and value systems. In 635, missionaries in China were able to convince the Emperor to withdraw opposition to the faith and to recognise it as a legitimate religion whose message not only did not compromise imperial identity but potentially enforced it.81

  Around the middle of the seventh century, the future seemed easy to read. Christianity was on the march across Asia, making inroads at the expense of Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Buddhism.82 Religions had always played off each other in this region, and learnt that they had to compete for attention. The most competitive and successful, however, turned out to be a religion born in the little town of Bethlehem.83 Given the progress that had been made over the centuries that followed the crucifixion of Jesus at the hands of Pontius Pilate, it should have been only a matter of time before the tentacles of Christianity reached the Pacific, linking the great ocean with the Atlantic in the west.

  And yet, at the mo
ment of the triumph of Christianity, chance intervened. A platform had been laid for a spiritual conquest that would not just connect towns and regions, but span continents. At that moment, however, a debilitating war broke out which undermined the existing powers and opened up opportunities to new entrants. It was like unleashing the internet in late antiquity: suddenly, a new raft of ideas, theories and trends threatened to undermine the existing order, and to take advantage of the networks that had been established over centuries. The name of the new cosmology did not reflect how revolutionary it was. Closely related to the words for safety and peace, ‘Islam’ gave little sense of how the world was about to change. Revolution had arrived.

  4

  The Road to Revolution

  The rise of Islam took place in a world that had seen a hundred years of turmoil, dissent and catastrophe. In 541, a century before the Prophet Muammad began to receive a series of divine revelations, it was news of a different threat that spread panic through the Mediterranean. It moved like lightning, so fast that by the time panic set in, it was already too late. No one was spared. The scale of death was barely imaginable. According to one contemporary who lost most of his family, one city on the Egyptian border was wiped out: seven men and one ten-year-old boy were all who remained of a once bustling population; the doors of houses hung open, with no one to guard the gold, silver and precious objects inside.1 Cities bore the brunt of the savage attacks, with 10,000 people being killed each day in Constantinople at one point in the mid-540s.2 It was not just the Roman Empire that suffered. Before long cities in the east were being ravaged too, as disaster spread along the communication and trade networks, devastating cities in Persian Mesopotamia and eventually reaching China.3 Bubonic plague brought catastrophe, despair and death.

  It also brought chronic economic depression: fields denuded of farmers, towns stripped of consumers and a generation scythed down in their youth naturally altered the demography of late antiquity, and caused a severe contraction of the economy.4 In due course, this was to have an impact on the way emperors in Constantinople sought to conduct foreign policy. During the first part of the reign of Justinian (527–65), the empire had been able to achieve a series of stunning successes that saw the recovery of the provinces of North Africa and significant progress in Italy. Judicious use of force was coupled with deliberate efforts to retain the flexibility needed to deal with problems that could flare up at any time on its extended borders, including in the east. Striking this balance became increasingly difficult later during Justinian’s reign as manpower shortages, inconclusive military campaigns and rising costs drained a treasury that was already depleted before the plague struck.5

  Stagnation took hold and the public mood towards Justinian soured. Particularly fierce criticism was reserved for the way he seemed willing to buy the friendship of the empire’s neighbours by paying out money and promiscuously bestowing favours. Justinian was foolish enough to think it ‘a stroke of good fortune to be dishing out the wealth of the Romans and flinging it to the barbarians’, wrote Procopius, the scathing, and most prominent, historian of Justinian’s reign. The Emperor, Procopius remorselessly went on, ‘lost no opportunity to lavish vast sums of money on all the barbarians’, to the north, south, east and west; cash was dispatched, the author went on, to peoples who had never even been heard of before.6

  Justinian’s successors abandoned this approach and took a strident and uncompromising line with Rome’s neighbours. When ambassadors from the Avars, one of the great tribes of the steppes, arrived in Constantinople shortly after Justinian’s death in 565 to ask for their usual payment of tribute, they met with short shrift from the new Emperor, Justin II: ‘Never again shall you be loaded at the expense of this empire, and go your way without doing us any service; for from me you shall receive nothing.’ When they threatened consequences, the Emperor exploded: ‘Do you dead dogs dare to threaten the Roman realm? Learn that I will shave off those locks of yours, and then cut off your heads.’7

  A similarly aggressive stance was taken towards Persia, especially after it was reported that a powerful constellation of Türk nomads had taken the Huns’ place on the Central Asian steppe and was putting pressure on their eastern frontiers. The Türks were playing an increasingly dominant role in trade, much to the annoyance of the Chinese, who portrayed them as difficult and untrustworthy – a sure sign of their rising commercial success.8 They were led by the magnificent figure of Sizabul, who took to receiving dignitaries in an elaborate tent while reclining on a gold bed supported by four gold peacocks and with a large wagon brimming with silver conspicuously positioned near by.9

  The Türks had extensive ambitions and dispatched envoys to Constantinople in order to propose a long-range military alliance. A joint attack, ambassadors told Justin II, would destroy Persia.10 Eager to win glory at the expense of Constantinople’s traditional rival and encouraged by the prospects, the Emperor agreed to the plan and became increasingly grandiloquent, issuing threats to the Shah and demanding the return of towns and territories ceded under previous agreements. After a poorly executed strike by the Romans had failed, a Persian counter-attack made for Dara (the site of which is now in southern Turkey), the cornerstone of the border defences. After a terrible siege lasting six months the Persians succeeded in taking the city in 574, whereupon the Emperor experienced a mental and physical breakdown.11

  The fiasco convinced the Türks that Constantinople was an unworthy and unreliable ally, something the Türk ambassador stated point-blank in 576, angrily rejecting any chance of another attack on Persia. After putting ten fingers in his mouth, he said angrily: ‘As there are now ten fingers in my mouth, so you Romans have used many tongues.’ Rome had deceived the Türks by promising to do their best against Persia; the results had been pitiful.12

  All the same, this reopening of hostilities with Persia marked the start of a tumultuous period that had extraordinary consequences. Two decades of fighting followed, with moments of high drama, such as when a Persian army penetrated deep into Asia Minor, before returning home. As it did so, it was ambushed, with the queen taken prisoner, along with the royal golden carriage that was decorated with precious gems and pearls. The sacred fire the Persian ruler took with him on campaign, considered to be ‘greater than all fires’, was captured and thrown into a river, while the Zoroastrian high priest and a ‘multitude of the most senior people’ were drowned – perhaps forcibly. The extinguishing of the sacred fire was an aggressive and provocative act, designed to belittle the religious cornerstone of Persian identity. The news was celebrated with wild enthusiasm by the Romans and their allies.13

  As hostilities continued, religion became increasingly important. When troops revolted over a proposed reduction in pay, for example, the commanding officer paraded a sacred image of Jesus in front of the troops to impress on them that serving the Emperor meant serving God. When Shah Khusraw I died in 579 some claimed, without any foundation, ‘that the light of the divine Word shone splendidly around him, for he believed in Christ’.14 Stiffening attitudes led to vociferous denunciations of Zoroastrianism in Constantinople as base, false and depraved: the Persians, wrote Agathias, have acquired ‘deviant and degenerate habits ever since they came under the spell of the teaching of Zoroaster’.15

  Infusing militarism with a heavy dose of religiosity had implications for those on the periphery of the empire who had been courted and converted to Christianity as part of a deliberate policy to win their support and loyalty.16 Particular effort had been made to win over the tribes of southern and western Arabia with the promise of material rewards. The bestowal of royal titles, which introduced new concepts of kinship (and kingship) that could be powerfully exploited locally, also helped convince many to throw their lot in with Constantinople.17

  The stiffening of religious sensibilities during the confrontation with Persia therefore had consequences – because the Christianity adopted by some of the tribes was not that of the formula agreed at Chalcedon in
451, but a version or versions that held different views about the unity of Christ. Relations with the Ghassānids, Rome’s long-term allies in Arabia, soured as a result of the strident messages emanating from the imperial capital.18 Partly because of mutual religious suspicions, relations broke down at this sensitive moment – which provided the Persians with a perfect opportunity to exploit. Control was gained over the ports and markets of southern and western Arabia, as a new overland trade route was opened up connecting Persia with Mecca and Ukā. According to the Islamic tradition, this dislocation prompted a leading figure in Mecca to approach Constantinople with a request for nomination as the phylarch, or guardian, of the city as Rome’s representative, with a later, royal title of a kingship of Mecca being awarded by the Emperor to a certain Uthmān. A parallel process saw the appointment of a nominee to take a similar role in Yathrib – on behalf of Persia.19

  While these tensions were crystallising in the Arabian peninsula, little progress was being made in the long-drawn-out war in its main theatre in the north. The turning point came not on the battlefield but at the Persian court at the end of the 580s, when Vahrām, a popular general who had stabilised the eastern frontier with the Türks, took matters into his own hands and revolted against the Shah, Khusraw II. The Shah fled to Constantinople where he promised the Emperor Maurice major concessions in the Caucasus and Mesopotamia – including the return of Dara – in exchange for imperial support. After Khusraw had returned home in 591, and dealt with his rival with surprisingly little ado, he set about honouring his agreement. It was, as one leading scholar has put it, a Versailles moment: too many towns, forts and important locations were handed over to the Romans, exposing the economic and administrative heartlands of Persia; the humiliation was so great that it was bound to provoke a vigorous response.20