Silk in the Steppe

Silk came to the steppe in four ways. The Göktürks bought it at the frontier, received it as peace money, traded horses for it, and sold it on. It served as a gift, as tribute, as currency and as merchandise.

Silk bought at the frontier

The Zhou Shu says that Bumin’s people grew stronger and began to come to the Chinese border to trade for silk and floss. In 545 the Western Wei sent them an envoy.^[1] The sources do not agree on whether the Göktürks came to buy silk or to sell it. Border Markets sets the interpretations side by side.

Silk as peace money

The silk grew into a regular payment. After Taspar became khagan, the Zhou court gave him 100,000 lengths of floss, brocade and coloured silk each year, and the Qi court emptied its storehouses for him as well.^[1] Some scholars count 100,000 pieces for each of the two dynasties every year, to buy their neutrality or their services.^[2] The deliveries went on for about thirty years, until the Sui ended them.^[3] The Tang paid in silk as well. Under Bilge Khan it opened a market at the Western Shouxiang city in 727.^[4] After 757 it paid the Uyghurs 20,000 bolts a year and forty bolts for every horse.^[5]

The khans described the silk themselves. In the inscriptions Bilge Khan says that the Chinese people gave gold, silver, raw silk and figured silk in such quantity, and without being asked. He adds that Chinese words are sweet and their silks are soft.^[6]

Silk as currency

Some scholars think that silk was one of the oldest and most precious currencies of Asia, and a kind of money in China as well. Through the Göktürks and other nomads, who used it and sold it, it played an intermediary role in the economy of Eurasia.^[7] Under the Uyghurs, silk was used as a form of currency. It paid for the comfort of the court, and it could be sent on to other countries for goods that the Uyghurs needed more.^[8] Others call silk the main currency of the Silk Road, which the Uyghur elite received from China in exchange for horses.^[9]

Silk sold to the west

The Greek historian Menander shows the Sogdians seeking to sell silk to Persia. He writes that as Göktürk power grew, the Sogdians, who had been subjects of the Hephthalites and were now subjects of the Göktürks, asked their ruler to send an embassy to the Persians. The Sogdians wanted leave to travel to Persia and sell raw silk to the Medes. The ruler Sizabul agreed, and the Sogdian envoys were led by Maniakh.^[10] The Persian king put off his answer from day to day. On the advice of a Hephthalite who had gone over to the Persians, he then bought the silk and burned it before the eyes of the envoys.^[11] The quarrel over this silk is told in The Göktürk–Sasanian Trade Conflict.

Some scholars put the silk offered to the Persians in the context of the Chinese deliveries of the same years. The Sogdians, on this view, proposed to the Göktürk princes that they double their profit by selling the surplus of the silk that the Chinese sent in such numbers.^[3] The same scholars suppose that the windfall of the massive Chinese silk transfers to the west from 550 to 750 could have brought the Sogdians a golden age on a basis more political than commercial.^[12] The Chinese states made the heads of the Sogdian communities officials, as the article on the sabao shows.^[13]

Chinese limits on silk

The Chinese authorities did not welcome the trade. At times they forbade the sale of gold, silver and silk to foreigners.^[14] The khans saw the silk as theirs by right. In 584 Ishbara Khan wrote to the Sui emperor that all the silks of the emperor’s country were his.^[15]

No source gives a total for the silk that left the steppe for Persia or Byzantium.

References

^ a b Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
^ de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 209
^ a b de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 210
^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
^ Bilge Khan inscription; Kül Tegin inscription
^ Ecsedy 1968, p. 142
^ Mackerras 1972, p. 48
^ Cosmo 2018, p. 453
^ Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 10.1, p. 111
^ Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 10.1, p. 113
^ de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 194
^ de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 148–149
^ Ecsedy 1968, p. 145
^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84

Sources

Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
Menander Protector
Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84
Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194, 195
Kül Tegin inscription
Bilge Khan inscription

Literature

Ildikó Ecsedy, Trade-and-War Relations between the Turks and China in the Second Half of the Sixth Century (1968)
Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History (2005)
Colin Mackerras, The Uighur Empire According to the T'ang Dynastic Histories (1972)
Nicola Di Cosmo; Amy Hessl; Caroline Leland; Oyunsanaa Byambasuren; Hanqin Tian; Baatarbileg Nachin; Neil Pederson; Laia Andreu-Hayles; Edward R. Cook, Environmental Stress and Steppe Nomads: Rethinking the History of the Uyghur Empire (744–840) with Paleoclimate Data (2018)
R. C. Blockley, The History of Menander the Guardsman: Introductory Essay, Text, Translation, and Historiographical Notes (1985)