Seven-headed Dragon

The book consists of several articles. In the prologue, Bastani Parizi relates a local myth of a
stone dragon sleeping in the source of the river in Hangou, a village not far from his
birthplace, Pariz. ‘Seven-headed Dragon’ is a chapter of the book and uses a metaphor of the
Silk Road which Bastani sees as a great contributing factor to Iranian history. A route starting
from China: the appellation comes from its Chinese setting and topics, the Yellow Dragon of
Chinese culture. The road passed Chinese Turkistan, Kashgar and Otrar, reaching Oxus
River. The historical route also was visiting great Iranian plateau and flanked historical cities
such as Bukhara, Samarkand, Merv, Tous, Damghan, Gorgan, and Rey in central north of
Iran. Its many branches reached Iran’s peripherals and even crossed the borders to reach
neighbours. The trade route takes its name from its most valuable good: silk, which it helped
transported to remote parts of the world. Bastani then gives a history of the silk production,
tracing the huge dragon in Iran, with examining its impact on the prosperity of lands and cites
it crossed in bringing boom and plenty, and the events shaped by the route in its path. The
history begins during Achaemenid era in pre-Islamic times and culminates in Safavid times,
an era called by Bastani Parizi a time of productivity of the Silk Road. By the end of Qajar
era, the Silk Road experiences a fateful end, precipitated by modern developments in modes
of transportation by the sea, invention of steam power, which revolutionized the perception of
motion on land and the sea, opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, and turmoil and insecurity of
Qajar-ruled Iran. The history of the Silk Road surrenders Chinese yellow dragon to Japanese
cheaply produced artificial silk.