The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

by Frankopan, Peter

  It was not just in Europe, then, that a Golden Age dawned. Vast building programmes were undertaken across the Ottoman world, from the Balkans to North Africa, funded by ever growing tax receipts. Many of the most spectacular projects were designed by Sinān, chief architect of Sultan Sulaymān the Magnificent (ruled 1520–66), whose soubriquet alone captures the spirit, and affluence, of the time. Sinān built more than eighty major mosques, sixty madrasas, thirty-two palaces, seventeen hospices and three hospitals, as well as many bridges, aqueducts, bathhouses and warehouses during the reigns of Sulaymān and his son Selīm II. The Selimiye mosque, built in Edirne (in modern north-west Turkey) between 1564 and 1575, was a highlight of architectural daring and engineering brilliance such that it was ‘worthy of the admiration of humankind’, according to one contemporary account. But it was also a statement of religious ambition: ‘people of the world’ had said it would not be possible to build a dome as large as that of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople ‘in the lands of Islam’. The mosque in Edirne showed that they were wrong.48

  In Persia, there was a similar surge in spending on lavish building work and the visual arts that rivalled the cultural blossoming in Europe. A new empire had emerged under the Safavid dynasty from the splinters of the Timurid realm that had fractured after the death of Timur in the early fifteenth century. It reached a high-point during the reign of Shah Abbās I (ruled 1588–1629), who oversaw an astonishingly ambitious reconstruction of Isfahan (in what is now central Iran), where old markets and gloomy streets were torn down and replaced with shops, baths and mosques constructed according to a carefully laid-out master plan for the city. Major irrigation works ensured that new Isfahan would be plentifully supplied with water – something that was essential for the Bāgh-i Naqsh-i Jahān, the ‘world-adorning garden’, a masterpiece of horticultural design that lay at the heart of the city. The glorious Masjid-i Shāh mosque was also built, intended – as Edirne had been – to be a jewel on a par with the very best of the Islamic world. As one contemporary noted, the Shah made Isfahan ‘like a paradise with charming buildings, parks in which the perfume of the flowers uplifted the spirit, and streams and gardens’.49

  Books, calligraphy and the visual arts – especially miniature painting – flourished in a culture that was self-assured, intellectually curious and increasingly international. Treatises explained how to create good art, the Qānūn al-Ṣuvar for example doing so in witty and stylish rhyming couplets. Bear in mind, the author of this work warns the reader, that it is all very well wanting to master the skill of painting, but ‘you must know that, to achieve mastery in this field, natural talent is a major consideration’.50

  Prosperity helped open new horizons: the Carmelite monks in Isfahan were able to present the Shah with a Persian translation of the Book of Psalms, which was gratefully accepted; and Pope Paul V sent a set of medieval illustrations from the Bible, which the Shah enjoyed so much that he commissioned Persian commentaries explaining what the scenes depicted. It was a time when Jews in the region made copies of the Torah in Persian, but using Hebrew characters – a sign of religious tolerance but also of the cultural self-confidence of Persia at this time of growth.51

  The Ottoman and Persian empires did well from the sharp rise in transit taxes and import duties on goods coming from further east, and of course from domestic goods and products that were much in demand among the newly wealthy in Europe, from royal houses to merchant families, from court favourites to well-to-do farmers. But although the Near East did well from the cascade of gold, silver and other treasures that flowed across the Atlantic from the Americas, the chief beneficiaries were the places where most of the exports originated: India, China and Central Asia.

  Europe became a clearing house for bullion that came in from spectacularly rich sources, such as the mine at Potosí, high in the Andes in what is now Bolivia, which turned out to be the single largest silver strike in history, accounting for more than half of global production for over a century.52 New techniques for extracting the metal using a mercury-amalgam process were developed, making mining cheaper, quicker and even more profitable.53 The discovery enabled an extraordinary acceleration in the redistribution of resources from South America, through the Iberian peninsula and on to Asia.

  Precious metal was melted down and struck into coinage that was shipped east in astonishing quantities. From the mid-sixteenth century, hundreds of tons of silver were exported to Asia each year to pay for sought-after eastern goods and spices.54 A shopping list drawn up in Florence in the 1580s shows how large appetites had become. The Grand Duke Francesco de Medici provided generous funds to Filippo Sassetti, a Florentine merchant about to set off for India, along with instructions to purchase a range of exotic goods. He duly received capes, textiles, spices, seeds and wax models of plants, a particular personal interest of the Grand Duke and his brother, Cardinal Ferdinando, as well as a range of medicines, including a remedy against poisonous snakebites.55 Such acquisitive curiosity was typical of powerful and cultured men at this time.

  Europe and the Near East sparkled with the discoveries coming from the Americas and the opening up of the sea route along the coast of Africa. But nowhere shone more brightly than India. The period following Columbus’ crossing of the Atlantic corresponded to one of consolidation across a realm that had disintegrated after the death of Timur. In 1494, Bābur, one of his descendants, inherited lands in the Ferghana valley in Central Asia and set about trying to expand them, focusing his attention on Samarkand – with fleeting success. After being finally ejected from the city by Uzbek rivals, he moved south and, after years of struggle with little to show for it, he turned his attentions elsewhere. First, he made himself master of Kabul and then took control of Delhi by expelling the tyrannical Lodi dynasty whose members were wildly unpopular thanks to their regular and savage persecutions of the Hindu population.56

  Bābur had already shown himself to be a keen builder, taking pleasure in setting out the magnificent garden of the Bāgh-i Wafa in Kabul with impressive fountains, pomegranate trees, clover meadows, orange groves and plants brought from far and wide. When the oranges turn yellow, he wrote proudly, ‘it is a beautiful sight – really handsomely laid out’.57 As he established himself in India, he carried on with his glorious garden designs – despite complaining about the difficulties of the terrain. He was dismayed that water supply was such a problem in the north of the Indian subcontinent; ‘everywhere I looked’, he wrote with horror, ‘was so unpleasant and desolate’ that it was hardly worth the effort of trying to create something special. Eventually he steeled himself, settling on a site near Agra: ‘although there was no really suitable place [near the city], there was nothing to do but work with the space we had’. Eventually, after considerable effort and great expense, in ‘unpleasant and inharmonious India’, splendid gardens were created.58

  Despite Bābur’s initial misgivings, the timing of his move south could not have been better. It did not take long for the new domain to turn into a mighty empire. The opening up of new trade routes and the enthusiastic purchasing ability of Europe meant that there was a sudden influx of hard currency into India. A considerable proportion of this was spent buying horses. Even in the fourteenth century, we have reports of thousands of horses being sold each year by dealers in Central Asia.59 Horses bred on the steppes were popular, not least because they were bigger – and better fed – than those reared on the subcontinent itself, which were ‘by nature so small that, when a man is upon them, his feet nearly touch the ground’.60 With European silver pouring in to buy goods from the east, much was spent buying the best steeds, for reasons of prestige, for social differentiation and for ceremonial events – rather as money that has flowed more recently into oil-rich states has been spent on the best rides: Ferraris, Lamborghinis and other fine cars.

  There were great profits to be made from the horse trade. It had been one of the very first things to catch the eye of the Portuguese when they reached the Persia
n Gulf and the Indian Ocean. Excited reports were sent home in the early sixteenth century about the demand for thoroughbred Arabian and Persian horses, and about the high prices that Indian princes were willing to pay for them. The Portuguese became so heavily involved in the lucrative business of shipping horses that it spurred technological change, with vessels like the Nau Taforeia being built with horse transport in mind.61

  Most horses, however, came from Central Asia. With money flowing into India, one contemporary commentator told of eye-wateringly high margins as the inflationary pressures of a surge in demand outstripping supply kicked in.62 Rising revenues prompted investment in building bridges, upgrading caravanserais and ensuring the security of major routes running north. The result was that the cities of Central Asia enjoyed another burst of life and splendour.63

  The infrastructure necessary to support the horse trade was also lucrative. One quick-witted speculator invested in rest-houses along the main routes, establishing more than 1,500 in the space of fifteen years in the middle of the sixteenth century. The rising flow of money into this region is even recognised in the writing of Granth Saheb, the great Sikh sage, where the mundane and the commercial sit squarely alongside the spiritual: buy goods that will last, the guru advised his followers; and always keep accurate accounts, for these are a means of enshrining truth.64

  There was a boom in gateway cities that were well located to hold major horse markets, including Kabul. The most important to flourish, however, was the city of Delhi, which grew rapidly thanks to its position close to the Hindu Kush. As the city’s commercial importance grew, so did the position of its rulers.65 A thriving local textile industry soon developed, producing materials that were highly prized across Asia and beyond, carefully nurtured by the Mughal authorities.66

  It was not long before a mighty realm sprawled outwards, using its financial muscles to knock out one region after another and unite them into a single entity. Over the course of the sixteenth century, Bābur, followed by his son Humāyūn and grandson Akbar I, oversaw the dramatic territorial expansion of the Mughal Empire, which by 1600 stretched from Gujarat on the west coast of India to the Bay of Bengal, and from Lahore in the Punjab deep into central India. This was not conquest for conquest’s sake. Rather, it was a case of taking advantage of a unique set of circumstances to seize control of cities and regions that offered juicy and rapidly growing income streams that reinforced and strengthened a nascent empire. As one Portuguese Jesuit noted in a letter to his Order at home, the conquest of Gujarat and Bengal, both studded with bustling cities and fat tax bases, made Akbar the master of the ‘gem of India’.67 Each new addition provided more power to the centre, enabling even more momentum to build up.

  The Mughals brought new ideas, tastes and styles with them. Miniature painting, long favoured by the Mongols and the Timurids, was now championed by the new rulers, who brought in master practitioners from far and wide to create a thriving school of visual arts. Watching wrestling became popular, as did pigeon racing, both favoured Central Asian pastimes.68

  Innovation in architecture and garden design was even more pronounced, with the influence of buildings and landscapes honed and perfected in Samarkand soon becoming evident across the empire. The results can be seen today. Humāyūn’s magnificent tomb stands in Delhi not only as a masterpiece of Timurid design, constructed by an architect from Bukhara, but as testimony to a new era in Indian history.69 New landscaping styles were also introduced, transforming the built environment and its relationship with its surroundings further still, heavily influenced by practices and ideas from Central Asia.70 Lahore flourished with grand new monuments and carefully planned open spaces.71 With huge resources at their disposal and the wind in their sails, the Mughals transformed the empire in their own image. And they did so on an extraordinary scale.

  The astonishing city of Fatehpur Sikri, built in the second half of the sixteenth century as a new capital, provides an unequivocal picture of the seemingly unlimited resources and imperial aspirations of the buoyant ruling house. An exquisitely designed series of courtyards and buildings built from red sandstone blended styles and designs from Persia and Central Asia with those of India to create a splendid court where the ruler could receive visitors and leave them in no doubt of his power.72

  The most famous monument testifying to the immense wealth that resulted from money flowing in from Europe was the mausoleum built by Shah Jahān in the early seventeenth century for his wife, Mumtāz. To mark her death, Jahān distributed huge quantities of food and money to the poor. After a suitable burial plot had been selected, millions of dollars in today’s terms were spent constructing a building topped with a dome, before millions more were spent adding a golden screen and cupolas decorated with enamelled work of the highest quality and vast amounts of gold. Pavilions ‘encircled by superb canopies’ were added either side of the mausoleum, which then had gardens set out all around it. The foundation was endowed with an income from nearby markets to ensure that it would be properly maintained in the future.73

  For many, the Taj Mahal is the most romantic monument in the world, an extraordinary demonstration of a husband’s love for his wife. But it represents something else too: globalised international trade that brought such wealth to the Mughal ruler that he was able to contemplate this extraordinary gesture to his beloved spouse. His ability to complete it stemmed from the profound shifts in the world’s axis, for Europe and India’s glory came at the expense of the Americas.

  Shah Jahān’s lavish expression of sorrow at his wife’s death finds a neat parallel with that articulated on the other side of the globe not long before. The Mayan Empire had also been flourishing before the arrival of the Europeans. ‘Then there was no sickness; they had then no aching bones; they had then no high fever; they had then no smallpox; they had then no burning chest; they had then no consumption. At that time the course of humanity was orderly. The foreigners made it otherwise when they arrived here. They brought shameful things when they came,’ was how one author writing not long afterwards put it.73 Gold and silver taken from the Americas found its way to Asia; it was this redistribution of wealth that enabled the Taj Mahal to be built. Not without irony, one of the glories of India was the result of the suffering of ‘Indians’ on the other side of the world.

  Continents were now connected to each other, linked by flows of silver. It drew many to seek their fortunes in new locations: by the late sixteenth century, an English visitor to Hormuz in the Persian Gulf recorded that the city was teeming with ‘Frenchmen, Flemings, Almains, Hungarians, Italians, Greeks, Armenians, Nazaranies, Turks and Moors, Jews and Gentiles, Persians [and] Muscovites’.74 The call of the east was a powerful one. It was not just the thought of commercial gain that drew men in growing numbers from Europe, but also the prospect of well-paid employment. There was no shortage of opportunities for gunners, pilots, navigators, galley commanders or shipbuilders in Persia, India, the Malay peninsula and even Japan. There were chances for those seeking to start new lives for themselves: deserters, criminals and undesirables, whose skills and experience were valuable to local rulers. Those who did well were able in effect to establish themselves as independent princelings, as was the case in the Bay of Bengal and the Molucca Sea, where one fortunate Dutchman found he was able to cavort ‘with as many women as he pleaseth’, singing and dancing ‘all day long, near-hand naked’ while completely inebriated.75

  In 1571, the foundation of Manila by the Spanish changed the rhythm of global trade; for a start it followed a programme of colonisation whose character was markedly less destructive for the local population than had been the case after the first Atlantic crossings.76 Originally established as a base from which to acquire spices, the settlement quickly became a major metropolis and an important connection point between Asia and the Americas. Goods now began to move across the Pacific without passing through Europe first, as did the silver to pay for them. Manila became an emporium where a rich array of goods could
be bought. Many different kinds of silk could be acquired there, according to one highly placed official in the city around 1600, as could velvets, satins, damasks and other textiles. And so too could ‘many bed ornaments, hangings, coverlets and tapestries’, as well as tablecloths, cushions and carpets, metal basins, copper kettles and cast-iron pots. Tin, lead, saltpetre and gunpowder from China were also available – alongside ‘preserves made of orange, peach, pear, nutmeg and ginger’, chestnuts, walnuts, horses, geese that resembled swans, talking birds and many other rarities. Had I tried to list everything for sale, continued the author, ‘I would never finish, nor have sufficient paper for it’.77 Manila was, in the words of one modern commentator, ‘the world’s first global city’.78

  This naturally had important implications for other trade routes. It was no coincidence that there was a chronic contraction in the Ottoman Empire not long after the route via Manila had been established. While this owed something to domestic fiscal pressures and overspending on expensive military campaigns against the Habsburgs and Persia, the emergence of a new major crossroads for trans-continental commercial exchange thousands of miles away was also a factor in the Ottoman Empire’s declining revenues.79 The amount of silver heading from the Americas through the Philippines and on into the rest of Asia was staggering: at least as much passed this way as it did through Europe in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, causing alarm in some quarters in Spain as remittances from the New World to Europe began to fall.80

  The silver road was strung round the world like a belt. The precious metal ended up in one place in particular: China. It did so for two reasons. First, China’s size and sophistication made it a major producer of luxury goods, including the ceramics and porcelain that were so desirable in Europe that a huge counterfeit market quickly grew up. The Chinese, wrote Matteo Ricci while visiting Nanjing, ‘are greatly given to forging antique things, with great artifice and ingenuity’, and generating large profits thanks to their skill.81 In China, books were written advising on how to spot fakes, with Liu Dong explaining how to authenticate Xuande bronzework or Yongle porcelain.82