T he Disin t egr at ion of E mpir es

where he owned a foundry. It was the merchants resident in Fustat who managed
the contracts between the two far-flung networks. Close family ties and reliance on
friends and partners were crucial to the success of these potentially hazardous ven-
tures. One institution that developed at this time was the karim, an annual convoy of
ships organized for mutual security. One can imagine the anxiety of the merchants
waiting for the safe arrival of their precious cargoes.
There can be no doubt, from the Fustat archive, that after about the year 1000 trade
between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean was organized on a massive scale
and the quantity of goods arriving from the Indian Ocean by sea must have been
enormous. These would have included luxury products from China, transhipped in
the ports of the Malay peninsula, increasing in quantity as China’s sea-borne trade
was expanded under the Song dynasty. Trade with the East African coast also devel-
oped at this time, reaching as far south as the ports of Kilwa and Manda. At Kilwa
there is archaeological evidence of ocean trade as early as the ninth century, and at
Manda, Islamic and Chinese pottery of the ninth and tenth centuries has been found.
It is impossible to quantify the changing volumes of long-distance trade passing
through the different networks, but standing back from all the detail it does seem
that the ocean routes were beginning to take over from the overland networks after
the mid-eighth century. The turmoil caused by nomadic migrations and the clashes
between the Tibetans and the Chinese must have made the old Silk Road unsafe. At
the same time, the growing confidence of seamen, the skills of shipbuilders, and the
institutionalization of trade by the port authorities would have made ocean travel a
far more attractive and profitable option.

A More Distant Perspective

Amid the clash of arrogant elites, the relentless westerly flow of population, and the
Copyright © 2015. Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

frenetic bustle of traders, other developments of great moment were under way. In
Song China, enclosed and inward-looking, the beginning of an industrial revolution
was in progress. Coal was being exploited, water power was being developed to drive
textile machines, and wood-block printing was perfected together with movable
type. This last, in conjunction with the now widespread use of paper, facilitated the
multiple-copy printing of books and paper money. Gunpowder, first developed in
the Tang period, was now being used to fire missiles from early forms of iron guns, to
power rockets, and to be packed into thick ceramic containers to make lethal bombs.
At the same time medicine was developing fast, human bodies were being dissected,
and major progress was being made in pharmacy. The burgeoning pharmaceutical

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Cunliffe, B. (2015). By steppe, desert, and ocean : The birth of eurasia. Oxford University Press.
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 T he Disin t egr at ion of E mpir es

industry became so extensive that a government agency, the Imperial Drugs Office,
was set up in 1076 to ensure that patients got a fair deal.
The frantic pace of change in industry and science was matched by innovation in
painting, literature, and pottery-making, which were seen by many contemporaries
to be a way of compensating for hectic daily life. One artist, Guo Xi (1020–90), in his
book Advice on Landscape Painting, accepts that it is natural for humans to seek solace
in the forests, streams, and hills, but duty requires them to remain in the busy world.
The purpose of the artist is to provide them with landscape paintings to offer peace in
the home when they return from work.
Meanwhile, in the Muslim cities of Central Asia, a quite separate intellectual life
was thriving, with major advances in mathematics, astronomy, and medicine con-
tinuing to build on the stunning discoveries of scholars like al-Khwarizmi, whose
famous treatise on mathematics was introduced to a stunned west European world
through its translation, The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing.
Many of the works of Central Asian scholars were now reaching the west through
contacts with the Muslim communities in Iberia. Once in circulation the translations
inspired western scholars to new heights of scientific endeavour. But the decline in
overland trading contacts between China and the west at this time ensured that the
traditions of scientific and artistic endeavour in the far east and the far west devel-
oped in their own distinctive ways, largely in ignorance of each other.
One final reflection needs to be made on this crucial period, 840–1150. It was now
that the old divisions between pastoralists and sedentary agriculturalists were begin-
ning to break down along all the interfaces across which they had once confronted
each other: the north China steppe, Central Asia, and the Pontic steppe. New waves
of pastoralists met earlier nomads who had already settled down to take up agrar-
ian practices and to form states. They soon followed suit. In this way urbanism crept
gradually northwards into the steppe.
Copyright © 2015. Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

412

Cunliffe, B. (2015). By steppe, desert, and ocean : The birth of eurasia. Oxford University Press.
Created from trinitycollege on 2023-11-30 22:24:09.
Copyright © 2015. Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Cunliffe, B. (2015). By steppe, desert, and ocean : The birth of eurasia. Oxford University Press.
Created from trinitycollege on 2023-11-30 22:24:09.
Copyright © 2015. Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Cunliffe, B. (2015). By steppe, desert, and ocean : The birth of eurasia. Oxford University Press.
Created from trinitycollege on 2023-11-30 22:24:09.