A Silk Road Legacy: The Spread of Buddhism and Islam

Xinru Liu

Journal of World History, Volume 22, Number 1, March 2011, pp. 55-81 (Article)

Published by University of Hawai'i Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jwh.2011.0021

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/424100

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 A Silk Road Legacy:
The Spread of Buddhism and Islam*

xinru liu
The College of New Jersey

S ince Andre Gunder Frank published The Centrality of Central Asia 1

in 1992, world historians have paid more attention to the dynamic
forces radiating from Central Asia during the last few thousand years.
However, scholars are frustrated by the extremely fluid nature of the
region’s ethnic, religious, and political composition, which makes
research on the historical process of any specific period seem like an
overwhelming task. Scholars of Central Asia’s Buddhist culture feel
reluctant to deal with the region after the Islamic conquest, which
occurred in the late seventh and early eighth centuries, while those
who study its history after the Islamic conquest are perplexed by the
persistent presence of many pre-Islamic languages and cultural traits
in the region. Likewise, scholars who are familiar with the Chinese
historical literature on Central Asia often hesitate venturing into the
deep ocean of Persian and Arabic literature on the region. Further-
more, in the last two decades, the discovery of many documents writ-
ten in various versions of Greek alphabets in the region that once was
Bactria makes the task of treading through literary sources even more
daunting. Nevertheless, this article takes up the challenge of exploring

* This article was first presented at the 2009 Numata Conference “Buddhism and
Islam,” 29–30 May 2009 at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Professor Lynda Shaffer,
who has been my coauthor and first reader of my writings for the last decade, has edited and
revised this article as well.
1
Andre Gunder Frank, The Centrality of Central Asia (Amsterdam: VU University
Press, 1992).

Journal of World History, Vol. 22, No. 1

© 2011 by University of Hawai‘i Press

55
56 journal of world history, march 2011

the religious and social life of Central Asian people both before and
after Islamization, mainly by using sources written in Arabic, Persian,
and Chinese records, as well as modern scholarship in art history and
archaeology. Limited by my own language skills in Sanskrit and Classi-
cal Chinese, I have had to rely heavily on English translations of Ara-
bic and Persian works. Fortunately, many historical writings in these
two major Western Asian languages have been translated and edited
in recent decades by experts whose erudition make possible a world
historical approach of studying Central Asia.

T he S etting

Long before the arrival and spread of Islam in Central Asia, Buddhism
was already well established within two of its regions—Tukharistan,
in what is now northern Afghanistan, and Transoxiana (Khoresm and
Sogdiana) in what is now Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan where two riv-
ers, the Amu and the Syr, flow westward into the Aral Sea. These two
regions encompassed the most important way stations on the caravan
routes that moved Chinese silks westward to India, and in addition,
Tukharistan and Sogdiana became the homeland of Central Asian
Buddhists, some of whom played a major role in the spread of Buddhist
faith from South Asia to China.
By the first century c.e. the area that encompassed both Tukharistan
and Sogdiana (the southern part of Transoxiana) had become the site
of a major junction where routes going east and west crossed those
going north and south. It had also become a major trading center for
Chinese as well as Mediterranean and Iranian goods. In addition, Bud-
dhist missionaries from India, including some who were planning to go
on to China, moved to this area, and were thus located in the midst of
this commercial activity. By the third century c.e. artisans had begun
sculpting images of the Buddha on the sandstone walls of Tukharistan’s
Bamiyan Valley (about one hundred miles west of Kabul). The artistic
style of these Buddhas was closely related to the sculptural art of Gand-
hara (in northwestern India), and thus it displayed the results of the
Gandharan’s highly successful merging of Indian, Iranian, and Greek
aesthetic traditions. It was the fourth century b.c.e. presence of Alex-
ander of Macedonia’s armies, and their descendants, in Afghanistan
and northeastern India that accounts for the presence of Greek artis-
tic styles in this region. Probably during the fifth century c.e., when
a nomadic people, Hephthalites in the Greek record, Huna in the
Indian record, occupied the region and then further invaded India, two
Liu: A Silk Road Legacy 57

colossal Buddhas (one 165 feet high and the other 119 feet high) were
carved on the sandstone walls of Bamiyan Valley, where they stood for
more than 1,500 years as a testament to the Buddhist heritage of this
area. Even after the Taliban completely destroyed them in 2001, their
ruins still stand as a witness to the long legacy of Buddhism on this
route that connected India and China. The cosmopolitan nature of
this area continued to increase when Turkish nomads, originally from
the eastern steppe north of China, invaded it from the north around
the sixth century c.e. Some of these Turks also settled in this area, or
moved even farther south into India.
The ever-changing political situation in this region forced its popu-
lation to rely heavily upon nongovernmental institutions for both social
stability and local security. Zoroastrian and Buddhist establishments,
as well as other institutions and cultural practices, provided religious
and social cohesion in the region. The elites, which included scholars,
merchants, and generals, learned to be flexible regarding their political
allegiance and often changed masters in accordance with their eco-
nomic and social interests. Meanwhile, Indian, Chinese, Persian, and
Greek cultural elements continued to arrive and flourish in the region,
thereby contributing to a unique and robust Central Asian culture.
Perhaps it was in large part due to this eclectic but sound cultural
foundation that Central Asia would produce so many outstanding
politicians, religious leaders, and scientists during its transition from
a ­Buddhist religious sphere to an Islamic domain in the years between
700 and 1100 c.e. Although many of these individuals are now men-
tioned in the world history literature and texts, they are almost always
presented as “Islamic scholars,” or set in Persian Islamic heritage.
Their Central Asian origins are rarely, if ever, mentioned. Even after
the establishment of Islam in the region the local culture still retained
elements of its earlier multicultural traditions, including the Helle-
nistic culture that had taken root there during and after Alexander’s
conquests. This was especially true with regard to various artistic and
architectural styles, as well as the Dionysian viniculture that included
music, dancing, and wine drinking.

B uddhism in C entral A sia before the A rab C onquest

Since Kushan times (ca. second century b.c.e.–third century c.e.)

Buddhist institutions had been entrenched in Tukharistan. Chinese
records, however, indicate that it was their northern neighbors, the
Sogdians, who lived in the southern part of Transoxiana, both as trad-
58 journal of world history, march 2011

ers and religious teachers, who were among the first travelers to bring
Buddhism to China. Exactly how these Sogdians became exceedingly
competent teachers of Buddhism and the Sanskrit language is not clear.
Neither the written records of Sogdiana nor those of the Indian sub-
continent reveal the presence of Sogdian Buddhists studying in India.
This, however, does not necessarily mean that there were no Sogdian
converts studying Buddhism in India. Unfortunately, from the point
of view of historians, Indian governments during these centuries did
not attempt to compile records describing foreign travelers or foreign
residents within their domain, and thus they are largely absent from
the subcontinent’s records.
Although the archives of India are of little help, records from
other countries, especially China, clearly indicate that from the sec-
ond to the fourth century c.e. many of the Sogdian traders in China
were ­Buddhists. Indeed, Chinese records reveal that during the Han
dynasty, when Buddhists first started coming to China, some of the
earliest arrivals were not from India, the Buddhist homeland, but from
Sog­diana. It was a time that Kushan Empire controlled both north-
ern India and Central Asia. Kanishka, the most powerful Kushan king
who ­probably reigned between the first and second centuries, is a well-
known royal patron in Chinese Buddhist literature. Sogdian traders,
who most likely acted as trading agents for the Kushans, were among
the first to introduce the religion to the Chinese, and for some time
thereafter they continued to play an important role in the study of
Buddhism in China. For example, two Sogdians, whose Chinese
names were Kang Ju and Kang Mengxiang, lived in China for more
than twenty years (ca. 168–189 c.e.), and during this time they helped
translate Buddhist Sanskrit texts into the Chinese language. At that
time, the only place one could study the Sanskrit language and the
Buddhist scriptures was in India. Thus, given these very early dates
for the presence of such Sogdian Buddhist scholars in China, one can
conclude that at least some Sogdian traders must have first learned
about Buddhism in India, and then made their way to China, where
they practiced and preached it.
Despite the growing significance of Buddhism in Sogdiana it never
became an exclusively Buddhist country. Politically, the numerous
city-states never unified themselves into a single polity, and they often
fought among themselves for hegemony in the region. In general, in
each city urban elites, warriors, and merchant-princes formed oligar-
chies that made the decisions regarding war and diplomacy. Even when
a city-state established a local monarchy, its power, even over its own
subjects, tended to be weak. Likewise, the Sogdian city-states never
Liu: A Silk Road Legacy 59

established an official religion, and they hosted a variety of religious

institutions. All of these city-states were interested in making com-
mercial profits, either from the long-distance trade on the Silk Road or
the local trade in food and clothing. Also there is much evidence that
Sogdian merchants who lived abroad practiced not only Buddhism, but
also Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism in their diasporas. For example,
recent discoveries of Sogdian merchant tombs in western China reveal
that those who were wealthy enough to build such elaborate graves
for themselves strictly followed Zoroastrian funeral rituals.2 Most likely
these Sogdians were Zoroastrians at heart, regardless of whatever
religious affiliation they may have claimed in the larger commercial
community.
Nevertheless, it should be noted here that the Zoroastrianism prac-
ticed in Samarkand and other Sogdian cities was quite different from
that practiced in Iran, the religion’s homeland. Just as there was no
strong monarchy in Sogdiana, Mazda Ahura was not the only patron
god. In the Sogdian homeland people worshiped gods from a variety
of religions. Every urban household made its own choices with regard
to its supreme patron god, and they also made their own choices with
regard to a host of minor deities. Thus a household “pantheon” often
included both imported and local deities.3 When the Chinese Buddhist
pilgrim Xuanzang passed through Sogdiana around 630, he noticed that
many people in the large and beautiful city of Samarkand did not wor-
ship the Buddha, but worshipped with fire, a practice of Zoroastrianism.
He also thought that the local residents were using firebrands to chase
worshippers of the Buddha away from the monasteries. According to
an account written by his disciples, Xuanzang subsequently preached
before the king and convinced him to stop this harassment.4
In this account Xuanzang, or his disciples, may well have been
­exaggerating his power as a missionary. If there really had been little
tolerance of Buddhism in the city, it is unlikely that there would have
been two Buddhist monasteries located there. Furthermore, given that
the city’s highest priority and most revered doctrine seems to have been
that its own commercial interests should prosper, and given that there
were many Buddhist merchants active on this portion of the Silk Road

2
Rong Xinjiang and Zhang Zhiqing, From Samarkand to Chang’an: Cultural Traces of the
Sogdians in China (Beijing: Beijing Library Press, 2004).
3
Boris Marshak, Legends, Tales, and Fables in the Art of Sogdiana (New York: Bibliotheca
Persica Press, 2002), p. 19.
4
Huili and Yanzong, Da Ci-ensi Sanzang Fashi Zhuan [Biography of the Darma Teacher
of the Great Ci’en Monastery] (Beijing, Zhonghua Shuju, 1983), p. 30.
60 journal of world history, march 2011

who expected to be hosted by the hostels that the monasteries pro-

vided, it would seem that the city-state’s protection of these Buddhist
monasteries would have been crucial to its own interests. Thus it is
quite possible that those wielding the firebrands were actually engaged
in a local fire ritual that had its roots in Zoroastrianism, but was prac-
ticed by the Samarkandis as a way of worshipping the Buddha. If so,
this use of the firebrands would not have been the only Zoroastrian
ritual that had been mixed into Buddhist worship in this region. As
early as the Kushan era, Buddhist rituals were mixed with Zoroastrian
fire worship, as Kushan kings patronized both religions.
The Sogdians also enjoyed a wide variety of entertainment in their
homeland. Many urban homes had murals of blissful scenes painted
on their walls, and they also held banquets where wine was served
and entertainment was provided by musicians, dancers, acrobats, and
probably storytellers. The wealthiest of the Sogdian merchants living
in China even engraved their tombs with displays of such banquets,
including the various performances enjoyed by the masters. At least by
the latter part of the sixth century, Central Asian musicians and danc-
ers were arriving in China on horseback or on camels, and soon there-
after the music and dancing of Samarkand became the most famous
in China. Indeed, a description of the dancers even made it into a
Tang dynasty history book, where the author wrote the following. “The
musicians wear black silk scarves and red silk robes with brocade col-
lars. (There are also) two dancers in red blouses with brocade collars
and green sleeves, green damask silk trousers, red boots and a white sash
that served as a belt. They whirl as fast as the wind, and thus the dance
is called huxuan (the Sogdian whirling dance). The instruments in the
band include two flutes, one main drum, one secondary drum, and a
pair of brass cymbals.” 5 During the Tang dynasty (618 – 907), Sogdians
came to China in such large numbers and attracted so much atten-
tion that Chinese artisans began turning out large numbers of figurines
representing them, and today, one can see these Tang dynasty tricolor
figurines displayed in museums all over the world.
South of Sogdiana, in the region known as Tukharistan (now in
the northern half of Afghanistan), Buddhist institutions were even
older, having become well established during Kushan times (ca. sec-
ond century b.c.e–third century c.e.). Tukharistan was similar to Sog-
diana, in that it was divided into many city-states. However, in the

5
Liu Xu (10th century), Jiu Tang Shu [Old Edition of Tang History] (Beijing: Zhonghua
Shuju, 1975), p. 29/1071.
Liu: A Silk Road Legacy 61

seventh century, when Xuanzang’s pilgrimage took him through this

region, all of Tukharistan was under Turkish rule. The nomadic Turks’
homeland was originally in Mongolia, but they had been making their
way westward for many years by this time. Balkh, the most important
city in Tukharistan, had once been known as Bactra, when it served
as the capital of Hellenistic Bactria. Greek cultural features had been
especially important in this region ever since Alexander, the king of
Macedonia (d. 323 b.c.e.), had led his armies into Central Asia in the
fourth century b.c.e.
Indeed, the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang makes it quite clear that the
Greek language was still being used, at least as a written language, in
Tukharistan in the seventh century c.e. He realized that its written lan-
guage was different from all the other languages that he had encoun-
tered in the regions through which he had already passed. In particular
he noted that it used twenty-five “signs,” that is, letters, which were
variously combined to write different words. He also noted that unlike
the Indian script Kharoshthi, which reads from right to left, the words
of this language were read from left to right. It was even more different
from classical Chinese, since the latter was written in vertical lines
from the top to the bottom of a piece of paper. In fact, the literary tra-
ditions of Tukharistan so impressed Xuanzang that he concluded that
they even surpassed those of Sogdiana.6 The discovery of more than
150 documents inscribed in Greek letters expressing local Bactrian
language dating from the second to the mid sixth century verifies that
Xuanzang’s observation is accurate.7
To Xuanzang, however, what was even more significant in the
Balkh area was a magnificent Buddhist monastery, the New Monastery
(Nafusengjialan) which not only housed many precious relics of the
Buddha, but was also the center of religious life in Balkh. The monas-
tery and the relics were so famous that Balkh was called “Little Raja-
graha” by both the local people and their Turkish overlords.8 Rajagraha
was a city in east Ganges basin where Buddha frequently sojourned, so
that its fame as a Buddhist pilgrimage destination remained to the time

6
Xuanzang, Da Tang Xiyu Ji [Pilgrimage to the Western Region], ed. Ji Xianlin et al.
(Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1985), p. 100.
7
Nicholas Sims-Williams, Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan, I: Legal and
Economic Documents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); see also Nicholas Sims-Wil-
liams, “Linguistic Evidence from the Bactrian Documents and Inscriptions,” in Indo-Iranian
Languages and People, ed. Nicholas Sims-Williams, pp. 225–242 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2002).
8
Huili and Yanzong, Da Ci-ensi, pp. 31–32.
62 journal of world history, march 2011

of Xuanzang. The title “Little Rajagraha” means that Balkh claimed

its importance to the Buddhist followers just next to Rajagraha. Need-
less to say, Xuanzang enjoyed his stay there, where he visited many of
the relics attributed to the Buddha. As far as he was concerned, the
New Monastery was the most prestigious and wealthy Buddhist center
in Balkh. All its halls as well as its statues of the Buddha were richly
decorated with precious jewels, jewels so valuable that they appear to
have invited robberies carried out by greedy chiefs and kings. Never­
theless, owing to the protection of Vaishravana-deva, the Buddhist
deity who guards the northern heaven, the monastery survived many
attempted or even anticipated robberies. Xuanzang heard, for example,
that during the most recent incident, a prince of the powerful Kehan
(Khan) of the Turks had stationed his troops nearby in order to rob
the monastery. Then, in a dream the prince saw the god who guarded
the monastery using a long pike in order to pierce the prince’s chest,
and once the prince woke up from this nightmare he suffered a fatal
heart attack, and thus the robbery never happened.9 The moral of the
story was that even the Turkish power that controlled the region at this
time could not succeed in its attempt to run off with the monastery’s
treasures. Thus the Barmaki family, which was in charge of the monas-
tery, the most prestigious and powerful institution in Balkh, weathered
many invasions of the region and managed to keep themselves and the
wealth of the monastery intact.
After traveling southeast from Balkh toward the Bamiyan Valley
in the Hindu-Kush mountains, Xuanzang was welcomed by the two
gigantic standing statues of the Buddha. These landmarks appeared
some time after the collapse of the Kushan Empire, when nomadic
groups, first the Hephthalites, and then the Turks, ruled Tukharistan,
which included the region that stretched from Balkh to the Bamiyan
Valley. Nomadic rulers were friendly toward Buddhism in this region
and patronized it as well. Indeed, it was the Turkish ruler in Huoguo, a
mountain valley to the east of Balkh, Kunduz in modern Afghanistan,
who had persuaded Xuanzang to make the long detour westward to
Balkh, thereby delaying his trip to India.
During the seventh century, Turkish powers had expanded all the
way from northwest China to the border of India. Turkish rulers were
trade partners of Sogdians and patrons of whatever religions their
sedentary counterparts followed. On the steppe, where the Western

9
Xuanzang, Da Tang Xiyu Ji, p. 117.
Liu: A Silk Road Legacy 63

Turkish ruler Yabgu Khan observed Zoroastrian rituals as the Sogdians

did. In Tukharistan, the ruler of Huoguo patronized Buddhism. Mean-
while, they shared much of the cultural life of their sedentary partners,
especially the wine drinking and music. Xuanzang thus described the
­banquet of Yabgu Khan:

The khan, his ministers, and envoys drank wine, and grape juice was
served to the Dharma Master (Xuanzang). Thus, all urged others to
drink; wine was poured into bowls and goblets, accompanied by music
melodies of various styles of the region. Even though the music was
non-Chinese, was quite pleasing to one’s senses and feelings. After
a short while, foods such as cooked fresh lamb and veal were served,
set in front of everyone except for the Dharma Master, whom special
vegetarian food was served, which included such things as pancakes,
cream, crystallized sugar, honey, and grapes. After the food, they again
filled the Dharma Master’s cup with grape juice, and asked him to lec-
ture on the Dharma.10

Given that the steppe Turks were nomads, such things as the grapes,
the wine, and the crystalized sugar had to have come from their seden-
tary partners, the Sogdians or the Tukharians. To gain protection while
traveling on the Silk Roads, merchants were quite willing to entertain
their Turkish patrons with wine and music. In China there are still
visual depictions of this relationship. For example, the stone tomb of
An Jia, a Sogdian chief from Bukhara who died in China in 579, has
two scenes carved on it, one showing the Sogdian chief and a Turkish
chief, both on horseback, reaching out to each other, and the other
showing them both sitting down for a banquet.11 In short, during the
sixth and seventh centuries, Sogdians, Tukharians, and Turks followed
the tenets of a variety of religions, especially Buddhism and Zoroastri-
anism, and their religious practices were also imbued with local cus-
toms and values. Pervading all was a culture of commercial entrepre-
neurship, as well as a high level of literacy in traditions of scholarship
and learning that had roots in a variety of places. And last, but not
least, they shared a culture that was imbued with drinking, music, and
dancing that may well have evolved from both local, Hellenistic, and
nomadic traditions.

10
Huili and Yanzong, Da Ci-ensi, pp. 27–28.
11
Rong and Zhang, From Samarkand to Chang’an, p. 70.
64 journal of world history, march 2011

The Arab Conquest of Central Asia

The Arab takeover of Central Asia was anything but a sweeping mili-
tary conquest followed by forced religious conversions. The aim here,
however, is not to analyze the complicated movements of the mili-
tary forces or the paths that led to Central Asia’s conversion to Islam.
From the perspective of the Islamic empires, the Arab conquest of this
part of Central Asia was an extension of the conquest of the Sasanian
Empire. The conquest therefore incorporated both Transoxiana and
Tukharistan into the Iranian province of Khurasan. From a Central
Asian perspective, the more interesting question with regard to early
eighth-century Islamic history is how the Arab takeover of Central
Asian lands, especially Transoxiana and Tukharistan, suddenly pro-
pelled a significant number of Central Asians into powerful positions
on the front stage of the Islamic empire.
A recent study of the decline and fall of the Sasanian Empire argues
that the goal of the Arab conquest of the Iranian plateau was to con-
trol Central Asia, where the key stations of the Silk Road trade were
located. Relatively few Arabs established themselves on the Iranian
plateau. Indeed, most went farther east in order to settle in Tukharistan
and Transoxiana, which was referred to as “Outer Khurasan.” 12 Given
the commercial entrepreneurship of the Islamic cause and the amount
of infor­mation available about the Silk Road trade in the eastern
Mediterranean region, it is quite likely the case that Central Asia pro-
vided more interesting prey than the Iranian Plateau. Some details of
Arab conquests of Central Asia are available thanks to English trans-
lations of Arab historian al-Tabari’s extensive records of the process.
For instance, according to Tabari, during a punitive Arab expedition
against the Sogdians who had been aiding the Turkish resistance, the
Arab commander Sa’id Khudhaynah forbid his soldiers from pursuing
the fleeing Sogdians, “for al-Sughd is [now] the garden of the com-
mander of the Faithful.” 13 In other words, the Sogdians and their cities
should not be destroyed, but be put to good use for the caliphate. In
fact, the long-term ambition of the Ummayad caliphate was to conquer
China, the utmost source of silk and other wealth that came from the

12
Parvaneh Pourshariati, Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire, the Sasanian-Parthian
Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 2008), p. 464.
13
Tabari, The History of al-Tabari, vol. 24, The Empire in Transition, trans. David Stephan
Powers (1428; Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), p. 159.
Liu: A Silk Road Legacy 65

east. Indeed, Hajjaj the lieutenant of Caliph Malik promised to give

the governorship of China to Qutayba, the governor of Khurasan, or
to Muhammad Qasim, who conquered Sind in 711, depending upon
which one of them reached China first.14 This ambition, of course,
was never fulfilled. The reason, however, was not that Arab military
strength weakened, but that the Islamic empire, once it had Central
Asia in its fold, lost the will to conquer China.
Qutayba conquered Central Asia with all the cruelty and craft that
he could muster. His strategy was playing some city-states off against
others. In 712, Qutayba helped the Khwarazmshah subdue his rebel-
lious brother, and then allied with the Khoresmians and Bukharians
in an attack on Samarkand.15 Qutayba also ordered that mosques be
built in the cities and then forced local inhabitants out of their homes
in order to provide for the Arabs who were moving in. It is said he
converted residents of Bukhara three times, but the people apostatized
each time. The fourth time, he had a great mosque built and ordered
residents to attend Friday prayer, through which he succeeded mak-
ing Bukharians Muslims.16 His harsh policies inevitably fueled rebel-
lions, some of which forced the Arabs to at least temporarily flee from
the cities. Qutayba himself was killed in 715 when he tried to lead
an unsuccessful rebellion against the new caliph Sulayman.17 In short,
politics at the Ummayad court seem to have had a direct impact on the
campaigns in Central Asia.
Throughout the centuries, Central Asian city-states had been the
target of many different invaders, and thus they had developed vari-
ous survival strategies. Sometimes they resisted invaders, and some-
times they compromised with them, if the latter would allow them
to survive. There were times when they even bribed invaders to join
them in attacks on neighboring city-states. On other occasions, if the
invader became too oppressive, they called upon allies from near and
far to join them in an attack on the invader. And after a catastrophe,
they did what they had to do to survive. For example, when Qutayba’s

14
Ya’qubi, Hist., ii.346, quoted in W. Barthold, Turkistan down to the Mongol Invasion,
4th English ed. (1977; repr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 185.
15
Tabari, The History of al-Tabari, vol. 23, The Zenith of the Marwanid House, ad 700 –715
(AH 81-90), 1237–1239, trans. Martin Hinds (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1990), p. 1244; Barthold, Turkistan down to the Mongol Invasion, p. 185.
16
Al-Narshakhi, The History of Bukhara, trans. Narshakhi from Persian abridgement of
the Arabic original, trans. Richard N. Frye into English (Princeton, N.J.: Markus Wiener
Publishers, 2007), pp. xx, 65–66.
17
Barthold, Turkistan down to the Mongol Invasion, p. 186.
66 journal of world history, march 2011

forces reoccupied Paykand, a well-known merchant town in the oasis

of Bukhara, after it had rebelled against the Arabs, they killed all the
men that they had captured, enslaved the women and children, and
leveled much of the city. There was, however, a one-eyed man, a man
who attempted to ransom himself. He offered to give the Arabs “five
thousand pieces of Chinese silk worth one million dirhams” if they
would let him live. It was a tempting offer, and thus there was some
discussion about it, but Qutayba insisted that the man must die. His
reason was that it was known that this man had been encouraging
Turks to attack Muslims, and for that reason there could be no ransom,
and he was killed along with the other men that they had captured.18
Later it became clear that many of the Paykand men had not been at
home during the reoccupation of the city, but in caravan towns east
of Paykand, as far as probably China. These traders were able to make
a deal with Qutayba. They agreed to pay a hefty ransom in order to
recover their wives and children, and once they were back in Paykand
they began rebuilding the city.19
After the Sogdians were conquered by the Arabs they were willing
to abandon their previous religions and convert to Islam, provided that
their Arab rulers granted them the usual benefits of conversion. Early
in the process the Arab governor Ashras (727–729) had launched a
missionary campaign in Sogdiana, during which he promised freedom
from taxation for converts who underwent circumcision and read a
sura (one section) of the Qur’an. The Sogdians claimed that they had
all converted and had started to build mosques. However, in order to
increase state revenues, Ashras reversed his policy and tried to tax the
entire population. The cities rebelled and called in Turkish troops to
help them.20
The widespread trading networks of the Sogdians and their com-
mercial ethics were helpful from time to time. Turkish chiefs, who had
long been in the region and often employed Sogdian traders to sell the
silks that the Turks had brought from China, were called in to help
fight the Arabs. However, in many parts of Central Asia the Turks
were not able to sustain their power at a time when the Arab army

18
Tabari, History of al-Tabari, 23: 1188.
19
Narshakhi, History of Bukhara, xix, 62, mentioned by Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The
Venture of Islam, Conscience and History in a World Civilization (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1977), 1:227.
20
Tabari, History of al-Tabari, vol. 25, The End of Expansion, trans. Khalid Yahya
Blankinship (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), pp. 1507–1509 (46–47);
­Barthold, Turkistan down to the Mongol Invasion, p. 190.
Liu: A Silk Road Legacy 67

was at the height of its military power. The Turks lost control over
Tukharistan to the Arabs, and thereafter the city of Balkh became a
headquarters of the Arab forces in the enlarged province of Khurasan.
The Turkish tribes also were constantly engaged in fighting with each
other, and, at the same time, they also had to contend with the Tang
Empire. Never­theless, Tang archives reveal that even after the Arabs
took over a ­significant amount of what had been Turkish-ruled Central
Asia, Turkish envoys from Central Asia continued to make their way
to China, and when they got there they still claimed that they had
been sent by former Turkish rulers. In particular, the Tang archives
indicate that from 718 until 748 a long list of envoys, bearing gifts or
commodities, were sent to the Chinese court by the “Yabgu Khan” of
Tukharistan.21 Thus it appears that even after the Turkish chiefs had
submitted their political sovereignty to the Arabs, at least some of
them still managed to sustain a significant, if unofficial, presence in
Arab-controlled ­Central Asia.
During these decades the Sogdian cities also sent envoys loaded
down with gifts to the Tang court, where they made an appeal for Chi-
nese aid against the Arabs. For example, in 719 the king of Samarkand
sent a letter to the Tang emperor that described Qutayba’s seizure of
the city some six years before, saying that the Arabs “attacked with 300
mangonels (a device used to throw missiles), and had excavated three
big tunnels.” He also pointed out to the Tang court that he was send-
ing gifts that included an excellent horse, a Bactrian camel, and two
donkeys, and that he hoped that the Tang emperor would send military
aid so that the Sogdians could fight the Arabs. The king of Samar-
kand also told the Chinese emperor that the Tang court should at least
send him something in return for the gifts that he had sent to China.22
Meanwhile, the Sogdians continuously rebuilt their towns whenever
there was a break in the war. In the years following the Arab conquest
of the Sogdian cities, their merchants continued to send many missions
to the Tang court, and they continued to export their specialties, such
as whirling dancers, cheetahs, grape wine, lions, and horses, to China.23
In addition, they somehow succeeded in maintaining many of their
religious and cultural traditions inside their own homes, while in the

21
Cefuyuangui (Most important files from the archive); the items are collected in
Zhang Xinglang, Zhong Xi Jiaotong Shiliao Huibian [A Collection of Sources on the Commu-
nication between China and the West] (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 2003), pp. 1435–1440.
22
Cefuyuangui, vol. 999, Zhang, Zhong Xi Jiaotong Shiliao Huibian, p. 732.
23
Cefuyuangui, Zhang, Zhong Xi Jiaotong Shiliao Huibian, pp. 1382–1390.
68 journal of world history, march 2011

public sphere they gradually accepted Islam for economic and political
reasons.
During the first half of the eighth century, Khurasan, which was far
from Damascus, Syria, the center of the Ummayad caliphate, became
a place where Muslim dissidents from many different backgrounds
gathered. Among the various protesters in the Islamic movements,
it was the Abbasid revolution, in particular, that changed the direc-
tion of Islamic expansion. Even though the Abbasids had overthrown
the Ummayads claiming that they would reestablish the power of the
Prophet’s family, one of the real sources of Abbasid power was based
in Khurasan, or, more precisely, in outer Khurasan—that is, its newly
acquired Central Asian parts. The man who was most significant in the
Abbasid seizure of power from the Ummayads was Abu Muslim, whose
power base was in what had been Central Asian Transoxiana.24 Abu
Muslim, however, was not trusted by al-Mansur, the second Abbasid
caliph, and thus Abu Muslim was lured westward and murdered by the
caliph in 754. Nonetheless, even without Abu Muslim, the Abbasid
caliphate still represented a totally different culture from that of the
Ummayad caliphate. Thus rather suddenly, Central Asians, along with
their culture and their wealth, soon gained a strong presence in the
newly established political center in Baghdad, Iraq.
It was in 751, soon after the retreat of Ummayad power from
Khurasan and Central Asia, that the first and only military encounter
between the Islamic empire and the Tang Empire took place near Talas
on the border between present-day Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The
cause of the event was the unfair treatment of the ruler of Tashkent
by the Tang general Gao Xianzhi, who was actually a Korean national
who had risen through the ranks of the Chinese army. After Gao had
reached an agreement with the Tashkent ruler, he had then betrayed
him and had him killed. Central Asian states then allied with Arab
forces in the region in order to attack the Tang force. To a large extent,
this battle had no significant military or political impact on the rela-
tionship between the Tang Empire and the new Abbasid caliphate.
What it did have was a very significant cultural impact. Many of the
twenty thousand Chinese and Central Asian prisoners captured by the
Caliphate and its allies were taken westward and employed in the con-
struction of the new caliphate, and thus they made a profound cultural
contribution to the new Islamic center.

24
Pourshariati, Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire, pp. 426, 435.
Liu: A Silk Road Legacy 69

Central Asians in an Islamic World

The Abbasid revolution changed the fortunes of Tukharistan and Tran-

soxiana, which included both Khoresm and Sogdiana. The Abbasid
imperial agenda encouraged conquered peoples to join the Islamic
cause. Central Asians were willing to join the empire as the leading
intellectual and economic elite. In Baghdad, the famous Barmakid
family who served the Abbasid caliphate for several generations came
from the city of Balkh, the city called Bactra in Hellenistic times.
According to Mas’udi, the historian of the Abbasid caliphate, Barmak
the Elder was managing the “Nawbahar” in Balkh before he joined the
Islamic cause.25 What Mas’udi calls the Nawbahar is most likely the
Sanskrit navavihara, namely the New Monastery that Xuanzang had
visited. Xuanzang had called it the nafusengjialain Chinese, which is a
transliteration of nava sangharama in Sanskrit.
There is no information in the historical sources that describes
how the Barmakid family survived the initial Arab military attacks
on ­Central Asia. What we do know is that the city of Balkh and the
navavi­hara were destroyed during the Arab conquest, and that they were
reconstructed around 725. Perhaps the reason that Khalid al Barmak,
the son of Barmak the Elder, moved to Baghdad, where he became
very influential, was part of the family’s plan to protect their interests
not only in Baghdad but also in Tukharistan. It was at that time that
Asad B. Abdullah, the Arab commander in Khurasan, commissioned
Barmak the Elder, the father of Khalid al Barmak, to take charge of
the reconstruction of Balkh and “Nawbahar.” Given the amount of
tax collected by the Arab government, the family would have had
no trouble in recruiting workers from the area.26 The New Monastery
remained an important religious institution in Balkh for quite a while.
Its legacy lingered even when the region well evolved into an Islamic
country. As late as the time of Mongol conquest of Central Asia in
the thirteenth century, the memory that Balkh was once a religious
pilgrimage destination was still alive. Ata-Malik Juvaini (1226 –1283),
the historian of Genghis Khan, quoted from Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
(940 –1020): “He departed unto fair Balkh to the nau-bahar which at

25
Mas’udi, The Meadow of Gold, trans. and ed. Paul Lunde and Carolyn Stone (Lon-
don: Kegan Paul International, 1989), p. 131.
26
Tabari, History of al-Tabari, 25:1490 (27); Barthold, Turkistan down to the Mongol
Invasion, p. 77.
70 journal of world history, march 2011

that time the worshippers of God held in as much honor as the Arabs
now hold Mecca.” 27
The Barmakids held great power in the court of the Abbasid caliphs
after they migrated to Baghdad, and at the same time they maintained
frequent contacts with their homeland. No one knows exactly when
or how the Barmakids converted to Islam, but by the time Fadl ibn
Yahya ibn Khalid Barmaki became the governor of Khurasan, he was
an enthusiastic builder of great mosques.28 The family’s contribution
to establishing the state structure and culture of the Abbasid caliph-
ate is well known. Mas’udi spent many pages detailing the activities
of several generations of Barmakids in the service of the caliphate.
Given that the Chinese invention of paper, along with knowledge of
its manufacturing processes, had spread to Tukharistan when Buddhism
flourished there, and that Central Asian papermaking was generally
associated with Buddhist institutions, as were the Barmakids, and that
paper’s sudden arrival in the caliphate during the time that a Barmakid
was in the process of constructing a government bureaucracy for the
Abbasids, one can say that the Barmakids are the most likely people
to have introduced paper to the caliphate. In addition, they probably
were also responsible for the transmission of papermaking technology
from Central Asia to Baghdad.29
The Barmakid family, as vazirs of the caliphs, supported many cul-
tural activities, including the collecting and translating of Persian,
Greek, and Sanskrit literature into Arabic. There is no way to ascer-
tain their knowledge of Greek literature, but at least they were aware
of the significance of Greek literature and made an effort to have it
collected and translated. And one must add that following the steps of
the Barmakids, many scholars from various parts of Central Asia went
to Baghdad to seek their future.
Even though many of the early Central Asian converts to Islam
changed their religion for survival purposes, some of them eventually
did become sincere and learned Muslims. Al-Bukhari, obviously from
Bukhara, became one of the most respected authorities on the Hadith,
the collection of the Prophet’s teachings. His rigorous scholarship, a
legacy of the Central Asian tradition, won him the reputation of hav-

27
Ata-Malik Juvaini, Genghis Khan, the History of the World Conqueror, trans. and ed.
J. A. Boyle (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), p. 130.
28
Narshakhi, History of Bukhara, pp. xxi, 68.
29
Jonathan Bloom, Paper before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic
World (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001), p. 49.
Liu: A Silk Road Legacy 71

ing produced a reliable collection of the Prophet’s words. Al-Khwarizmi

(ca. 780 – 850), who modified the Indian digits and transformed them
into Arabic numerals and also invented algorisms and algebra, came
from Khoresm, the northern part of the Transoxiana region. In Bagh-
dad, he worked in the House of Knowledge, a center of scholarship that
put much effort into translating Greek, Persian, and Sanskrit works into
Arabic. Indeed, the knowledge of those languages was a prerequisite for
scholars who wanted to work in that facility. Al-Khwarizmi, for exam-
ple, was familiar with the geography of Ptolemy, and corrected many
of the author’s mistakes.30 Presumably, Al-Khwarizmi had acquired his
language skills in Transoxiana before he set out for Baghdad.
Among the renowned philosophers in Baghdad, Al-Farabi (d. 950)
was from a Turkish military family based in Transoxiana. In Baghdad
he had studied the teachings of the Hellenistic Christian tradition,
also known as the school of Alexandria. Although he considered him-
self a Muslim, he really thought that religion was just for common-
ers, who should follow its rules for the good of the society. A society
that believed in a single god would have an advantage in creating a
politically ideal society, a society such as Plato described.31 In addi-
tion to Plato, he translated and studied many Greek works, including
both philosophy and literature. The first half of the tenth century, the
period when Al-Farabi was active in Baghdad, witnessed the arrival of
the Turkish Mameluks, sometimes referred to as slave troops, although
that term is misleading, and the growth of their power in the capital
of the caliphate. They had arisen on the Eurasian steppe, and this new
Turkish military power entered the center of the Islamic empire with
violent force. Al-Farabi, on the other hand, represented another face
of Turkish culture from Central Asia, the culture preserved in the Tran-
soxiana region, in spite of the many invasions from the steppe.
During the eleventh century, the central power of the Abbasid
caliphate had been shattered, and many scholars from Transoxiana no
longer went to Baghdad to look for jobs. Instead they sought patronage
from local sultans and amirs (commanders). Those that were interested
in Greek studies could not go to Byzantium to study, the only major
source of Greek literature at that time. Nevertheless, these scholars
were still very familiar with the classical Greek sciences. One example
of these scholars was Al-Biruni (973– ca. 1050), who like Al-Farabi,
came from the Khoresm region. He had been captured by Mahmud of

30
Ibid., p. 145.
31
Hodgson, Venture of Islam, pp. 433–437.
72 journal of world history, march 2011

Ghazni in Afghanistan and was then sent to India to study astronomy

and other sciences. In his book about India, he compared every the-
ory in the Indian sciences with its classical Greek counterpart. “The
­heathen Greeks, before the rise of Christianity, held much the same
opinions as the Hindus; their educated classes thought much the same
as those of the Hindus; [and] their common people held the same idola-
trous views as those of the Hindus. Therefore I [would] like to confront
the theories of the one nation with those of the other simply to account
of the close relationship, not in order to correct them.” 32
Al-Biruni made this statement in the first chapter of his book. He
obviously thought that it would be very difficult to explain the com-
plicated ideas found in the difficult Sanskrit language to his fellow
Muslim scholars. He thus concluded that it would be much easier to
explain by comparing it to the philosophy and sciences of the Greeks,
since he knew that the Muslim scholarly audience was familiar with all
the important Greek works and authors.
Ibn-Sina, or Avicenna in Western literature (980 –1037), a con-
temporary of Al-Biruni, never went to Baghdad either. His life story
illustrates how the education of scholars was carried out in eleventh-
century Central Asia. His father was born in Balkh, then moved to
Bukhara, where Ibn-Sina was born. His father hired tutors to teach him
the Qur’an, and the adab, the Arabic secular literature. Thereafter he
studied philosophy, geometry, and Indian mathematics under various
teachers. He learned the geometry of Euclid quickly, but had a hard
time with the metaphysics of Aristotle. He read the book forty times
and remembered every word, but still could not understand it. Finally,
he was enlightened by an introductory book on Aristotle, written by
Al-Farabi, which he bought from the local market.33 Ibn-Sina’s most
important work, The Canon of Medicine, quickly became the most used
medical text both in the Middle East and in Europe and remained so
for many centuries thereafter. Clearly it was the highly educated and
accessible scholars, as well as the availability of books from several
classical traditions in the Transoxiana region, that paved the way for
Ibn-Sina’s accomplishments, and thus his significant influence on sub-
sequent scholars throughout a large part of Eurasia.

32
Edward Sachau, Alberuni’s India: An Account of the Religion, Philosophy, Literature,
Geography, Chronology, Astronomy, Custom, Laws and Astrology of India about ad 1030 (Lon-
don: Kegan Paul, 1910), p. 24.
33
William E. Gohlman, The Life of Ibn Sina, a Critical Edition and Annotated Translation
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974), 22ff., pp. 33–35.
Liu: A Silk Road Legacy 73

Central Asian Islam Spread Out

Central Asia gradually became a truly Islamic region, with Transoxiana

serving as Islam’s eastern center. Nevertheless, this religious transfor-
mation did not mean that its peoples had abandoned all of their pre-
Islamic customs. Furthermore, its conversion to Islam had the effect
of turning Central Asia into an even larger center of communications
with ties to an even larger geographical area, thereby connecting it
with even more diverse cultural traditions. With regard to the study of
religious and cultural conditions in Central Asia, the next major tran-
sition did not occur until the Mongol conquests. This time, its con-
querors came not from the southwest, but from the easternmost steppe.
The early thirteenth-century conquest of Central Asia, carried out by
a nomadic power fresh from the steppe, brought utter devastation to
the urban structures and the economy of Transoxiana and Tukharistan.
There was, however, a small silver lining, not so much for the Central
Asian peoples, but for other lands conquered by the Mongols. Because
their armies at that time had little familiarity with the administration
of either agricultural or urban areas, they needed educated administra-
tors who could assist in such areas. Thus they adopted a policy of taking
highly educated and skilled Central Asian Muslims and forcing them
to relocate in other conquered lands where their services were needed.
There they served the Mongolian regimes, and inadvertently spread
the rich knowledge and advanced technology of Central Asia to other
regions.
Actually, not all of the educated people that the Mongols used were
Central Asians. Even before Genghis Khan conquered Transoxiana in
1218 –1219, he already had realized the usefulness of scholars. One of
the khan’s advisors who followed his army to Central Asia was not
Mongolian. Yelü Chucai (1190 –1244) was a Khitan national whose
ancestral homeland was in what is now northeastern China. Although
the Khitan peoples were semi-nomadic, the ruling elite who estab-
lished the Liao Dynasty in north China (916 –1125) managed to learn
Chinese culture, and Yelü Chucai was one of the Khitan nobles who
had studied the Chinese classics. Prior to the Mongol conquest of
North China, the Jin dynasty (1115–1234), established by the Ruzhen,
another semi-nomadic people from northeastern China, had con-
quered the Liao and established their capital in the site of modern Bei-
jing. Yelü Chucai served the Jin government for a while in the capital.
It was only after the Jin fell to the Mongols that Yelü Chucai became
an advisor to Genghis Khan. Fortunately for historians, in his memoirs
74 journal of world history, march 2011

this Khitan scholar wrote a detailed description of Samarkand just after

its capture by the Mongols.
According to him, the city was located on very fertile land and sur-
rounded by numerous gardens. Every household had a garden, and they
all were well watered by means of canals and large fountains that sup-
plied water to both round and square ponds. Willows and cypress trees
lined the landscape, while peach and plum orchards followed one after
the other. During Central Asia’s dry summers, water from the river was
lifted for irrigation. And, needless to say, Yelü Chucai thought that the
locally made grape wine was excellent. Indeed, he was so impressed by
the beautiful city that he even wrote several poems to praise it.34 He
was even more impressed by the area’s advanced technology, particu-
larly such things as the use of windmills to grind wheat into flour.35 In
one of his poems written at Samarkand, he admired the resilience of its
people: “In the silence of the land between rivers, people always suffer
disasters. They dig tunnels to hide from warfare, and build high dykes
to ward off flooding water.” 36 He enjoyed the region’s sweet melons,
and numerous other kinds of fruit, whether fresh or dried. Nevertheless,
foremost among its produce and products were grapes and grape wine.
Furthermore, as one of the advisors of Genghis Khan, Yelü Chucai
knew very well that the wine and food crops produced in the region
were not taxed by the Mongols.37 The Mongols did indulge themselves
with local foods and beverages, and they did drink the grape wine, but
they did not try to tax it. They were much more interested in tak-
ing advantage of the trading skills of Central Asian Muslims than in
collecting agricultural taxes. Fortunately this policy provided the local
people just a little breathing room that helped them start to recover
from the war.
Qiu Chuji, a Daoist teacher, visited Central Asia when he was sum-
moned by Genghis Khan soon after the conquest. Although Qiu Chuji
and Yelü Chucai had known each other for a long time, they were rivals,
not friends, and their argument about religious affairs was well known.
Nevertheless, in their accounts of Central Asia they shared the same
impression, not only about Samarkand, but all the cities. Wherever

34
Yelü Chucai, Xiyou Lu [ Journey to the West ], ed. Xiangda (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju,
2000), p. 3.
35
Yelü Chucai, Hezhongfu Jishishi [ Poems Written in Samarkand ], ed. Zhang Xinglang,
Zhongxi Jiaotong Shiliao Huibian [ Historical Sources on the Communication between China
and the West ] (Beijing, Zhonghua Shuju, 2003), p. 1668.
36
Ibid.
37
Ibid.
Liu: A Silk Road Legacy 75

Qiu went, he was entertained with grape wine. Even when he became
ill in Samarkand, the governor of the Mongols brought him freshly
made wine as a remedy.38 He noted that the population of Samarkand
reached ten thousand or more before the Mongol conquest, but only
one quarter of the people remained there at his time.39 Thus in spite of
the demographic changes caused by the war and the forced migrations,
viticulture and wineries seem to have survived and flourished in Tran-
soxiana during the Mongol occupation.
It should be noted that when Yelü Chucai and others like Qiu
Chuji were writing about the charms of Samarkand, they were describ-
ing a city that was in postwar ruins. Both Samarkand and Bukhara
were among the places in Central Asia that were severely damaged by
the Mongol conquest. Yelü Chucai was very much aware of the dam-
age caused by the military action, but because of his relationship with
Genghis Khan, he was not at liberty to write about it. Only in some
of his poetry can one find hints of what he really thought about the
destruction.
Yet even in its damaged state, the charm of Samarkand persisted. A
little more than one hundred years after the conquest, at some point in
the 1330s, the famous Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta stopped to visit
the city on his way to India. He, a scholar from the western edge of
the eastern hemisphere, seemed to have been just as impressed by the
city as Yelü Chucai had been. He described Samarkand as “one of the
largest and most perfectly beautiful cities in the world.” 40 And he also
admired the water wheels on the river that supplied its gardens with
water.41 On the other hand, he noted that the formerly grand palaces
were still in ruins and the city’s walls and gates had disappeared.
By the time that Ibn Battuta arrived, many of the Mongols living
in what was then known as the Chaghatai Khanate, which included
Sogdiana, had converted to Islam. In particular, he noted that the city’s
residents were allowed to pray at the tomb of a Muslim martyr who had
died trying to defend the city from the Mongols. He also noted that
even Mongols, presumably those who had converted to Islam, visited

38
Qiu Chuji, Changchun Zhenren Xiyoulu [Travel to the West], Zhang Xinglang, 1712.
39
Ibid., 1710.
40
H. A. R. Gibb, trans., The Travel of Ibn Battuta (1929; New Delhi: Goodword Books,
2001), p. 175.
41
Ma Jinpeng, trans., Yiben Baitutai Youji [Travels of Ibn Battuta] (Yinchuan, China:
Ningxia Renmin Chubanshe, 1984), p. 308.
76 journal of world history, march 2011

this tomb and made donations to it that included large numbers of

cattle and sheep, as well as money.42
The destruction carried out by the Mongols also led to the displace-
ment of many people, including renowned literati and religious leaders
of the time. One of the refugees was an ancestor of Jalal ad-din Muham-
mad Din ar-Rumi (1207–1273). He had fled from Balkh to Konia, in
Seljuk Anatolia, where Rumi was born and flourished as a spiritual
leader of a Sufi school. Juzjani, a thirteenth-century historian from
­Juzjan (Ghuzgan), a city located southwest of Balkh in Tukharistan,
was one of the refugees who served at the court of the Delhi sultanate.
In his writings he described the Delhi sultanate’s eager reception of
Central Asian refugees. The father of the most well-known poet in the
court of the Delhi sultanate, Amir Khusrau (c. 1253–1324), was a Tur-
kic refugee from the Transoxiana region who had fled to India. And an
ancestor of Nizam Ad-din Awliya (c. 1243–1325), the teacher of the
Chishti Sufi community near Delhi, had fled from Bukhara to India.
These names provide only a few examples of the many eminent person-
ages who had no choice but to leave what had been the easternmost
centers of Islamic culture. Thus one could say that when the Mon-
gol invasion damaged Samarkand, Bukhara, and Balkh, and thereby
pushed a large refugee population to India, especially Delhi, the first
capital of the Islamic Indian sultanates, the Mongols were in large part
responsible for the relocation of the easternmost centers of Islamic cul-
ture from Samarkand and Bukhara to the sultanates of India.
The first sultans in Delhi were ghulams, military slaves who served
in the Turkish Islamic army. Though slaves in status, they served in
elite military units, and many ascended to the position of commander
and even became sultans through their military achievements. Once
they became the rulers of India, they were eager to obtain recogni-
tion from Islamic authorities in western Asia and Egypt in order to
legitimize their regime in a newly conquered land. Sultan Iltutmish
sent an envoy to Baghdad for an investiture document from the caliph
al-Mistansir, and duly received it in 1229. Even after the Mongols
destroyed Baghdad, Sultan Muhammad Ibn Tughluq struggled to get
credentials and finally got in touch with the “caliph” captured in Cairo
in 1343.43 Nevertheless, the sultans knew that these caliphs no lon-
ger had any real authority over Islamic doctrine. Instead, they had to

Gibb, Travel of Ibn Battuta, p. 175.

42

Carl W. Ernst, Eternal Garden (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992),
43

pp. 55–56.
Liu: A Silk Road Legacy 77

look toward people from their own Central Asian homeland for any
religious direction that they felt a need for. And given the influx of
ulemas from Samarkand and Bukhara to India, the interpretations of
the Sharia law books in the Indian sultanates were based on the schol-
arship of Transoxiana.44
The sultans in Delhi were enamored with the culture of Samarkand.
They missed the gardens, melons, music, poetry, dance, and, in the case
of at least some of them, also the wine. They often set their eyes toward
Transoxiana and dreamed of reconquering the lands that had been lost
to the Mongols. While this dream was never to be realized, they did set
about remaking Delhi in the image of Samarkand. With this inspira-
tion, the talented poet Amir Khusrau found himself in a position for
achieving excellence. Khusrau’s linguistic talents were not limited to
Persian poetry, for he became familiar with Hindustani languages, and
a lexicon of Persian, Arabic, and various Indian dialects was popularly
attributed to him. Although his authorship of the lexicon is doubtful,
Khusrau was clearly a pioneer in writing in Hindustani and enriching
it with Persian and Central Asian vocabulary and literary metaphors.
Most certainly, he was one of those who helped fashion what became
Urdu as a literary language.
But despite his official position, Khusrau was not always comfort-
able writing eulogies for sultans. When in despair, he looked to Nizam
Ad-din Awliya, the Chishti Sufi saint whose residence was outside
Delhi, for spiritual guidance. It was said that Khusrau went to see the
Sufi master several times to express his pain at being a poet who had
to praise tyrants. However, the master’s answer was to be patient until
God intervened.45 Nizam Ad-din Awliya was not associated with the
court, but he was more influential than most of the ulemas who did
serve the sultans. Khusrau went to see the master not only to complain
about his job at the court, but also to write music for the master so
that he could practice sama’, the music and dance through which Sufis
tried to reach a union with God. The music was purely Perso-Islamic
in style.46 In the practice of sama’, Khusrau and the Sufi master shared
the same cultural tastes, tastes that were deeply rooted in the history of
Samarkand and Bukhara.
A sama’ is an occasion when Sufi dervishes gather to listen to music
and perform a whirling dance that follows the beat of the music. Nizam

44
Ibid., p. 27.
45
Ibid., p. 197.
46
Stephen Dale, The Garden of Eight Paradises (Leiden: Brill 2004), pp. 393, 401.
78 journal of world history, march 2011

Ad-din Awliya was quoted as saying: “The masters of the Way have
declared that divine mercy alights on three occasions—(1) at the time
of a musical assembly (sama’). (2) at the time of eating food with the
intent (of keeping fit) to obey God’s will and (3) at the time of dis-
course among dervishes when they clarify (to one another their inner
thoughts).” 47 It is obvious that Nizam Ad-din Awliya considered sama’
as one of the important approaches, if not the most important approach,
to reaching a union with God. Not all Sufis agreed with this practice.
A master named Maulana Rukn ad-din Samarkandi, presumably a man
of Samarkand ancestry, was a fierce opponent of sama’ and avoided any
performance of it.48 Sama’ nevertheless persisted in India, especially
among the Chishti Sufi order. Indeed, Burhan al-din Gharib, the Sufi
master who succeeded the line of Nizam Ad-din Awliya in the ­Deccan
region, became famous for his ecstasy in both sama’ and dance.49
The sama’ and the dancing dervishes were not just an Indian phe-
nomenon. Its roots actually went back to the Transoxiana / Tukharistan
region, to Samarkand, Bukhara, and Balkh. It is generally agreed that
Jalal al-Din ar-Rumi was the founder of Mevlevi Sufi, the school of
dancing dervishes. His name, Rumi, indicates that he was from Tur-
key and his order was based in Konia. However, as mentioned above,
his family was actually from Balkh, and had gone to Turkey only after
fleeing from the Mongol conquest. Legend has it that he started the
new style of dance because of the sadness that settled on him after the
departure of his beloved friend and teacher. However, his own writ-
ings tell a somewhat different story. In one of his collections of moral
teaching stories, known as the Mathnawi, he described a group of poor
dervishes who played music and danced to ecstasy all night in a hos-
pice.50 It seems that Rumi, himself, did not think that he had invented
this new style of music and dance session that was practiced by the der-
vishes. More likely, it developed as a common practice among wander-
ing dervishes. The dervishes from certain schools that practiced sama’
would seize every opportunity to practice music and dance, especially
when they gathered in the hospices that catered to the Sufi dervishes.
One might wonder if the dancing dervishes in Turkey that Rumi
wrote about were related in some way to the Sufi masters in India.

47
Bruce B. Lawrence, trans., Nizam Ad-din Awliya, Morals for the Heart, Conversations
of Shaykh Nizam ad-din Awliya recorded by Amir Hasan Sijzi (New York: Paulist Press, 1992),
pp. 179–180.
48
Ibid., p. 348.
49
Ernst, Eternal Garden, p. 120.
50
A. J. Arberry, Aspects of Islamic Civilization as Depicted in the Original Texts (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967), pp. 327–329.
Liu: A Silk Road Legacy 79

Given that after the Mongol takeover of Transoxiana this use of music
and dance to get closer to Allah could be found both in Konia in Tur-
key and in Delhi in India, two places that had taken in refugees from
Transoxiana / Tukharistan, means that this particular form of worship
had come from the same source—the cities of Samarkand, Bukhara,
and Balkh. This would not be too surprising given that Sufi Muslim
groups were highly mobile. They had long wandered all around the
Islamic world, carrying with them little more than simple clothing and
eating utensils. Indeed, Ibn Battuta stumbled upon a group of “Persian
Darvishes” in Granada, Spain. While talking with this particular group
he found out that one of them was from Samarkand, one was from
Tabriz, a third was from Konia, a fourth was from Khurasan, two more
were from India.51
When sacking cities, the Mongols deliberately spared the lives of
traders, artisans, and some scholars. Often they would directly employ
the Muslim traders from the region. At that time the Mongols were
constructing new tent cities on the steppe. Among other things, they
used the traders as contractors, ordering them to secure all the sup-
plies needed to build and decorate their huge tent palaces. The Mongol
term for these contractors was orto, and the various Mongol courts
provided them with protection letters. Not surprisingly, many of these
Muslim contractors came from the Transoxiana / Tukharistan region,
which had long been involved in the trade between China and India.
When Qiu Chuji was in Samarkand, he reported seeing peacocks and
elephants that had been imported from India.52 Thus it was not long
until the Mongols followed the centuries-old trade routes and invaded
the western part of India, where the city of Lahore was among their
prizes. According to Juzjani, the leaders of Lahore had failed to put up
a unified front against the Mongols, in part because many of the traders
living in Lahore had long traded into Mongol-controlled Central Asia
and thus they possessed protection letters issued by the invaders.53 In
any case, the Muslim sultans of India did manage to force the Mongols
out of India shortly thereafter.
Meanwhile, back in Mongol-controlled China, Central Asian Mus-
lim scholars constituted much of the administrative apparatus. Since
they had better administrative skills than their Mongol overseers, they

51
Gibb, Travel of Ibn Battuta, p. 316.
52
Qiu Chuji, Changchun Zhenren Xiyoulu, Zhang Xinglang, 1712.
53
Tabakat-i-Nasiri, A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia Including
Hindustan, trans. from the Persian by H. G. Raverty (London, 1881; repr., Osnabrück: Biblio
Verlag, 1991), p. 1133.
80 journal of world history, march 2011

were more efficient in collecting taxes from Chinese peasants and mer-
chants, and thus some of them reached a high level in the bureaucracy.
Since the contributions of these Central Asian Muslim artisans and
scholars in all of the Mongol-controlled territories have already been
fully addressed by Thomas Allsen in his two monographs Commodity
and Exchanges in the Mongol Empire, a Cultural History of Islamic Tex­
tiles (Cambridge University Press, 1997) and Culture and Conquest in
Mongol Eurasia (Cambridge University Press, 2001), the focus here is
on a single individual, a Bukhari, who clearly stands out in the ranks of
Mongol-appointed administrators.
Sayyid Ajall Omer Shams Al-Din, whose Chinese name was Saidi-
anchi, had once been an aristocrat in Bukhara. When Genghis Khan
began marching toward his country, Sayyid Ajall went out to meet the
Mongol chief, and when he saw him, Sayyid Ajall offered his services
to him, as well as the services of his thousand-man cavalry. Ghenghis
Khan accepted his surrender, and he was soon posted to strategically
important positions such as Yanjing (modern Beijing) as “daluhuachi”
(darughachi in Mongolian), which could be translated as governor.
Sayyid Ajall was both an excellent military commander and a skillful
administrator. He participated in numerous military campaigns against
the Chinese, including the last major battle with the Song dynasty at
Xiangfan, the last stronghold on the Han River, near where it meets
the Yangzi River. He managed to restore order and increase the taxable
population in his jurisdictions and the revenue of several provinces.
His political savvy saved him from disasters caused by the jealousy of
Mongol colleagues, disasters that were a major problem for the non-
Mongol staff of the regime. But his most remembered achievement was
his governorship of Yunnan, in the southwestern corner of China. Prior
to the coming of the Mongols, Yunnan had never been a part of China.
It was conquered by Khubilai Khan, the first Mongol khan to transform
himself into a Chinese-style emperor and establish his own dynasty, the
Yuan. Prior to Khubilai’s conquest of Yunnan there had been very little
Chinese influence there. It was a mountainous land with a great many
distinct ethnic groups, and thus it posed a serious challenge to the
Mongolian-Chinese administration. Nevertheless, Sayyid Ajall man-
aged to introduce both irrigation agriculture and Confucian educa-
tion to the region without provoking rebellions.54 Thus his benevolent

54
Yuanshi [History of the Yuan Dynasty], compiled by Song Lian et al. (Beijing: Zhon-
ghua Shuju, 1976), pp. 3063–3070.
Liu: A Silk Road Legacy 81

administration has been well remembered by the peoples of Yunnan,

even until the present day.55
The Central Asian Muslim scholars, traders, generals, and officials
who traveled to and sometimes settled in India, China, Turkey, and
Iran during Mongol times left records of their lives in which they pro-
vide much information about Islam in Central Asia. Furthermore, their
activities outside Central Asia also tell us something about Islam in
their homeland. On the one hand, most of the Muslims in Transoxiana
and Tukharistan were dedicated to the study of the Qur’an, as well as
many secular topics, and they sought to follow all the disciplines of
Muslims. On the other hand, they were also shrewd merchants, savvy
politicians, and grape growers, and some of them were wine drinkers.
Most of them were adept at surviving and flourishing in the constantly
changing political environment of their homelands. And those who
practiced sama’ in the sufi orders were also good musicians and whirl-
ing dancers who spread their cultural traits all over Eurasia. As Central
Asian people have survived numerous calamities and thrived in a con-
stant changing environment, as demonstrated in the transitional phase
from a Buddhist religious domain to Islamic countries, there is a reason
to expect that they will continue to do so.

55
For specific policies adopted by Sayyid Ajall to pacify rebellions of Mongol nobles
and bring the many ethnic groups of Yunnan under a civilian administration, see Bin Yang,
Between Wind and Clouds: The Making of Yunnan (Second Century bce to Twentieth Century
ce ) (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), pp. 112–116.