Vol. 18 Now Available

I am delighted to announce the publication of Vol. 18 (2020) of The Silk Road. After a trying and often traumatic year that disrupted many of the normal rhythms and cycles of academic life, a return to normalcy is finally on the horizon. It is perhaps fitting then that the latest volume of The Silk Road looks not only back in time, but also to the future. In addition to fascinating articles on the ancient peoples and monuments of the Silk Road—stone-joint metal clamps in China and Korea, medieval Muslim conceptions of “China,” the conservation of a mausoleum in Afghanistan—it also presents insightful work on the modern Silk Roads: the German expeditions to Turfan, urban change in Kashgar, Mongol tourism in China, and Italian ethnographers in Afghanistan. A remembrance of the great Sergei Stepanovich Miniaev reminds us of those we have lost over the past year. Rounding out the volume is our usual collection of book reviews and notices, including an overview of the innovative digital exhibition on the Sogdians hosted by the Freer and Sackler Galleries.

Kashgar: Lost in the Mists of Time—A Photo Essay
Daniel C. Waugh

Conservation of the Mausoleum of Shahzada Abdullah in Kuhandiz, Herat
Jolyon Leslie

The “Turfan Files” in the Museum of Asian Art, Berlin
Caren Dreyer

A Study of Stone-joint Metal Clamps in China and Korea during the 6th-8th Centuries
Hongnam Kim

Appellations of China in Medieval Muslim Literature
Chen Chunxiao

The True Origin of the Mongols?
John Man

Piero Morandi, An Italian Traveler in Kafiristan
Luca Villa

Continue reading

Hagia Sophia Revisited: A Photo Essay

The Hagia Sophia is one of the oldest sites of continuous worship in the world and an iconic symbol of cultural exchange across Eurasia. Since its founding in the year 537, the Hagia Sophia has alternately served as a Christian church and Islamic mosque for many centuries. In 1935, it was turned into a museum, which is now visited by millions of people every year. In July 2020, it was again converted back into a mosque, thereby eliciting a wide range of reactions from the global community. In response to this renewed attention—and in some cases controversy—our former editor Daniel C. Waugh has taken the opportunity to revisit his voluminous photographic archives and has assembled an engaging photo essay about the art, architecture, and history of the Hagia Sophia. To access the full essay, please click here.

Vol. 17 Now Available

It gives me great pleasure to announce the publication of Vol. 17 (2019) of The Silk Road. We begin with a critical re-examination of Richthofen’s vaunted distinction as the inventor of the phrase “the Silk Road” and an in-depth interview with Roderick Whitfield on his career working with the Stein collection in the British Museum. Next up are stimulating features on the forgotten history of the Museo Indiano in Bologna, knotted carpets and cultural exchange along the Taklamakan, Sogdian fashions in early Tang China, modern Chinese colophons on the Dunhuang manuscripts, and a photo essay on camel fairs in India. Book reviews by Susan Whitfield, Samuel Rumschlag, Charles J. Halperin, and Barbara Kaim follow.

From the Editor

Did Richthofen Really Coin “the Silk Road”?
Matthias Mertens

An Interview with Roderick Whitfield on the Stein Collection in the British Museum
Sonya S. Lee

Faces of the Buddha: Lorenzo Pullè and the Museo Indiano in Bologna, 1907-35
Luca Villa

Knotted Carpets from the Taklamakan: A Medium of Ideological and Aesthetic Exchange on the Silk Road, 700 BCE-700 CE
Zhang He

Some Notes on Sogdian Costume in Early Tang China
Sergey A. Yatsenko

An Analysis of Modern Chinese Colophons on the Dunhuang Manuscripts
Justin M. Jacobs

Camel Fairs in India: A Photo Essay
Harvey Follender

Continue reading

Vol. 16 (2018): Table of Contents

From the Editor

Recent Excavations of Xiongnu Graves on the Left Bank of the Ulug-Khem in Tuva
Marina Kulinovskaya and Pavel Leus
PDF    HTML

Japanese Spies in Inner Asia during the Early Twentieth Century
Jin Noda
PDF    HTML

Sogdians in Khotan
Zhang Zhan

Caravan Routes East of Chang’an: Iranian Elements in the Buddhist Art of Shandong Province
Li Sifei
PDF    HTML

On the Northern Branch of the Great Silk Road: A Celadon Dish from the Excavations at Novgorod the Great
Marina Anatol’evna Rodionova and Iakov Viktorovich Frenkel’
PDF    HTML

One Bow (or Stirrup) Is Not Equal to Another: A Comparative Look at Hun and Mongol Military Technologies
Samuel Rumschlag
PDF    HTML

Heroes Fighting Snake Demons: Problems of Identification in Panjikent Paintings
Matteo Compareti
PDF    HTML
Continue reading

From the Editor: Vol. 16 Now Available

It gives me great pleasure to introduce Volume 16 of The Silk Road. After more than fifteen years in the capable hands of longtime editor Daniel C. Waugh, The Silk Road baton has now passed into my hands. Much like parenthood, the responsibility of managing an annual journal is equal parts both blessing and burden, the latter marked by daily anxieties so consuming as to occasionally disrupt one’s evening slumber. Then come the minor triumphs that remind us why we got into this business in the first place: the production of fresh knowledge and dissemination of exciting new discoveries derived from the lands and peoples who continue to animate the historical rubric of the Silk Road.

The latest volume of The Silk Road fully lives up to this promise. Our excursion through place and time begins with a fascinating archaeological report by Marina Kulinovskaya and Pavel Leus on recently excavated Xiongnu graves in Tuva, lavishly illustrated with nearly fifty color photographs from the field. We are then treated to Jin Noda’s analysis of Japanese intelligence agents in Russian and Qing Inner Asia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Next up is Zhang Zhan’s in-depth reassessment of ancient Sogdian documents from Khotan and what they can tell us about the status and occupations of these far-flung travelers during the first millennium CE. Zhang’s philological analysis is followed by Li Sifei’s investigation into the complex subject of Chinese perceptions of “Persians” and “Sogdians” during the Northern Zhou, Sui, and Tang dynasties. Marina Rodionova and Iakov Frenkel’ then encourage us to transfer our attention to the other, far less popularized end of the Silk Road, with a detailed case study of how a Mongol-era Chinese celadon made its way to the Novgorod Kremlin in Russia. Continue reading

Call for Papers: Centennial of Laufer’s Sino-Iranica

The international scholarly yearbook Quaderni di Studi Indo-Mediterranei (whose editor is the Iranologist Prof. Carlo Saccone at the University of Bologna) devotes each volume to a different theme. Vol. 12 (2019) of QSIM is scheduled to appear in 2020. Its theme is “Sino-Iranica’s Centennial. Between East and West: Exchanges of Material and Ideational Culture. Commemorating the publication, in 1919, of Sino-Iranica by Berthold Laufer (1874–1934).”

Laufer showed the importance of contacts between the Iranic world and China as reflected in the exchange of items of material culture, and this also involved exchanges between Iran and more western cultures, such as the Graeco-Roman world, and Syria. Moreover, he also showed how trade with India and Indo-China percolated into such exchanges. Continue reading

Western Influences on an Early Unified Silla Bas-relief

A carved granite slab in the Gyeongju National Museum in Korea has images in roundels whose iconography suggests widely ranging connections to the West in the Unified Silla period. Hongnam Kim (Asia Museum Institute, Korea) analyzes the Western influences of this iconography, concluding that it is likely that the craftsman who executed the work was familiar with Christian imagery.

Click here to download the full PDF