Treasures Of The Silk Road

Turkestan – the great landmass of Central Asia and Western China – is an intriguing meeting point of civilizations. Four major invasions – Greek, Arab, Mongol and Russian – together with Persian, Turkic and Chinese cultural influences, have made their mark on this vast and sometime forbidding region. The Great Silk Road ran to the West through it, while nomad and urban peoples combined over the centuries to produce a cultural flowering under Timur and his successors in the late medieval and early modern periods, through a rich profusion of artistic and architectural styles and ornament. In this comprehensive account of the culture and history of Central Asia, Edgar Knobloch describes the main centres of our human civilization. He spices the text with quotations from the works of contemporary travellers, while providing an expert's commentary on the archaeological, architectural and decorative features of the sites he describes. The stunning and evocative photographs are supplemented by numerous maps, incorporating the recent developments in the region's borders and frontiers. With up-to-date information on borders, check points and visas, Treasures of the Great Silk Road should appeal not only to scholars and those interested in the great cultural heritage of this region, but also to travellers to the region.

Stunning works in precious metals, glass, and stone -- many recently excavated and virtually unknown outside China -- shed new light on a pivotal epoch in Chinese history. From the 4th through 7th century, monks and merchants freely traveled along the fabled Silk Road, linking China with the west, propagating Buddhism, and purveying exotic goods and artifacts that fundamentally transformed Chinese culture and society. This sumptuous volume, the first to explore the magnificent treasures and sites of China's northwest section of the Silk Road, accompanies an exhibition at the Asia Society in New York. The text by an international team of scholars illuminates the importance of the region in this period of fertile cross-cultural exchanges between Eastern and Western Asia.

The Silk Road, which linked imperial Rome and distant China, was once the greatest thoroughfare on earth. Along it travelled precious cargoes of silk, gold, and ivory, as well as revolutionary new ideas. Its oasis towns blossomed into thriving centres of Buddhist art and learning. In time it began to decline. The traffic slowed, the merchants left, and finally its towns vanished beneath the desert sands to be forgotten for a thousand years. But legends grew up of lost cities filled with treasurees and guarded by demons. In the early years of the 20th century, foreign explorers began to investigate these legends, and very soon an international race began for the art treasures of the Silk Road. Huge wall paintings, sculptures, and priceless manuscripts were carried away, literally by the ton, and are today scattered through the museums of a dozen countries. Peter Hopkirk tells the story of the intrepid men who, at great personal risk, led these long-range archaeological raids, incurring the undying wrath of the Chinese.

The Silk Road, which linked imperial Rome and distant China, was once the greatest thoroughfare on earth. Along it travelled precious cargoes of silk, gold and ivory, as well as revolutionary new ideas. Its oasis towns blossomed into thriving centres of Buddhist art and learning. In time it began to decline. The traffic slowed, the merchants left and finally its towns vanished beneath the desert sands to be forgotten for a thousand years. But legends grew up of lost cities filled with treasures and guarded by demons. In the early years of the last century foreign explorers began to investigate these legends, and very soon an international race began for the art treasures of the Silk Road. Huge wall paintings, sculptures and priceless manuscripts were carried away, literally by the ton, and are today scattered through the museums of a dozen countries. Peter Hopkirk tells the story of the intrepid men who, at great personal risk, led these long-range archaeological raids, incurring the undying wrath of the Chinese.

When a Chinese monk broke into a hidden cave in 1900, he uncovered one of the world’s great literary secrets: a time capsule from the ancient Silk Road. Inside, scrolls were piled from floor to ceiling, undisturbed for a thousand years. The gem within was the Diamond Sutra of AD 868. This key Buddhist teaching, made 500 years before Gutenberg inked his press, is the world’s oldest printed book. The Silk Road once linked China with the Mediterranean. It conveyed merchants, pilgrims and ideas. But its cultures and oases were swallowed by shifting sands. Central to the Silk Road’s rediscovery was a man named Aurel Stein, a Hungarian-born scholar and archaeologist employed by the British service. Undaunted by the vast Gobi Desert, Stein crossed thousands of desolate miles with his fox terrier Dash. Stein met the Chinese monk and secured the Diamond Sutra and much more. The scroll’s journey—by camel through arid desert, by boat to London’s curious scholars, by train to evade the bombs of World War II—merges an explorer’s adventures, political intrigue, and continued controversy. The Diamond Sutra has inspired Jack Kerouac and the Dalai Lama. Its journey has coincided with the growing appeal of Buddhism in the West. As the Gutenberg Age cedes to the Google Age, the survival of the Silk Road’s greatest treasure is testament to the endurance of the written word.

A journey along the greatest land route on earth, from the master of travel writing Colin Thubron On buses, donkey carts, trains, jeeps and camels, Colin Thubron traces the drifts of the first great trade route out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey. Covering over 7000 miles in eight months Thubron recounts extraordinary adventures - a near-miss with a drunk-driver, incarceration in a Chinese cell during the SARS epidemic, undergoing root canal treatment without anaesthetic in Iran - in inimitable prose. Shadow of the Silk Road is about Asia today; a magnificent account of an ancient world in modern ferment. 'It is hard to think of a better travel book written this century' Times 'Thubron is the pre-eminent travel writer of his generation' Sunday Telegraph