The Silk Road Part II – The Desert’s Art Gallery, Alexander’s Legacy and the Fragrant Concubine
The Silk Road, May 2008
And so on to Dunhuang and the Mogao caves. Dunhuang lies at the edge of the formidable Taklamakan desert, second largest sand desert in the world after the Sahara. Travelers – monks, merchants and warriors, about to cross it needed somewhere to pray for safe crossing, travelers who had crossed it successfully wanted somewhere to give thanks for having survived. And so along the sandstone cliffs of the Ji river over a period of a thousand years from the 4th to the 14th century AD, spanning the dynasties of the Sixteen Kingdoms to the Yuan, or Mongol, 735 caves were carved out at Mogao. (There are 5 sites in all but the other 4 have only 77 caves altogether.)
Caves cut out of the rock at Dunhuang
Artists were hired to paint their interiors with often wildly colorful scenes from the Jataka Tales (the life of the Buddha), Buddhist mythology and illustrations of the Buddhist sutras (scriptures), as well as scenes of court life with musicians, dancers, and courtiers. Statues of clay and wood were sculpted of Buddha, Boddhisattvas, kings and demons and installed, or sometimes carved out of the walls. Dunhuang supported a community of monks and over time it became a center for meditation, burial, worship and for the storage of documents and artifacts. Documents in Chinese, Tangut Uighur, Tibetan, Mongolian, Syriac, Sanskrit and Brahmi have been found, as well as metals, bone and stone vessels, bricks, coins, pottery, silk and textiles, figurines and stenciled stupas. (There are no photographs of the caves, cameras are forbidden.) The caves are also a UNESCO World Heritage Site http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/440
The scope of Dunhuang and its unique importance to the understanding of Buddhism is such that it required
discrete study - a branch of archaeology called Dunhuangology has therfore spun off, rather as Egyptology did decades ago. A research academy has been set up and in addition to their study at Dunhuang itself, members of the academy travel to London and other European cities to study the finds which were carted off at the beginning of the 20th century by Aurel Stein and others. In 1900 in the waning days of the Qing, or Manchu, dynasty, a treasure trove at the caves, The Library Cave, was discovered. A lone monk called Wang was put in charge of the cave which had been sealed up to protect its treasure. The archaeologist/explorer Marc Aurel Stein learned of the cave and befriended the monk. Over time, he was able not only to gain access to the cave, but to take away tens of thousands of manuscripts in exchange for a small amount of cash. Most of them are now to be found in the British Museum. Later the French Sinologist, Paul Pelliot, would remove more of its treasures, to be followed by others. Only a fraction of the documents remain at Dunhuang.
Crescent Lake at the 'Singing Sands' just outside of Dunhuang.
In terms of trade Dunhuang was known as the ‘throat of the Silk Road’ because east of it lay the road to the royal capitals of Xi’an and Luoyuan, while to the west the road split into a northern route via the Yumenguan Pass to Turfan, Kashgar and into the present-day Ferghana Valley and Uzbekistan, while a southern route via the Yungguan Pass led to Khotan, Yarkand, Afghanistan and Iran. Dunhuang became one of the centers where traders traveling west provisioned for the journey ahead with animals, water and forage. We followed the northern route although we took a train and had no need of forage…...
The lead camel in our caravan which we took at sunrise for a jaunt among the dunes.
Turfan is the second lowest place on earth after the Dead Sea and thanks to the quite extraordinary feat of men who built an effective irrigation system of underground tunnels and channels called kariz, it is a verdant place known for its grapes, great trellises of which are still a main feature of the town. The kariz system is identical in principle to the qanat system in Iran and both peoples lay claim to its invention. A series of underground tunnels bored by hand runs on a slight gradient from the foot of a mountain to the area to be irrigated. The water from snow melt runs down through the tunnel to emerge at the town at which point it is filtered through open channels to fields and orchards and through the town as drinking and washing water. In order to bore the tunnel in a straight line, a man above ground held a bar of wood attached by a rope to another bar of wood, which was dangled down a well, which were dug at regular intervals into the tunnel. If the digger underground started to dig off-center the wood would change direction alerting the person at ground level who would straighten it for the digger to follow. A series of light beams from candles between the wells also helped keep the tunnels straight. The tunnels,
which ran for tens of kilometers, date back to around 500BC, an incredible example of early engineering ingenuity.
The charming village of Tuyoq just outside of Turfan.
Grapes from Turfan are exported to the rest of China and to Central Asia, and drying houses are still a feature of the landscape around the city since air-dried grapes are plumper, sweeter and more expensive than those which are oven-dried. The grape was initially introduced to Ferghana by Alexander and the Macedonians, it made its way east along the Silk Road to Turfan and by the 3rd century AD it flourished in no small part due to the policy of the Han government which had decided to protect the trade routes to the west, by garrisoning soldiers at watchtowers in well-irrigated areas between the Western region and the Chinese interior. When the soldiers were not fighting off invaders, they were to engage in agriculture. Although Turfan did not always remain under Chinese control, the oasis grew due to its strategic location and the afore-mentioned kariz.
Although Buddhism, Manichaeism and Islam all forbade alcohol, there is ample evidence that winemaking took place in Turfan, and it still does. Wine was a major part of local and regional Buddhist festivals although it is not clear if such wine was made from grapes or the traditional Chinese alcoholic ‘wine’ made from rice, millet, sorghum or corn – the term in Chinese, jiu, not distinguishing between them.
Typical Uighur hats. Each region has its own design - this one is typical of Kashgar.
Kashgar, resonant with intrigue and swash-buckling adventure, is one of the armchair traveler’s dream cities; pivotal backwater outpost of the 19th century’s ‘Great Game’, or ‘Tournament of Shadows’, the more evocative Russian name for this last of the major imperialist chess games, Kashgar lives on in the form of a burgeoning modern Chinese city of considerably less fascination than before. The fabled Sunday market, while most certainly still worth a visit, is now covered, clean and wide of corridor, it has been gentrified - all smells removed, no jostling necessary. Not so the livestock market which remains a most disorderly, messy, smelly, chaotic maelstrom which is utterly irresistible.
Sheared sheep awaiting their fate.
Cows, sheep and goats are all penned, roped and ready for the butcher or the breeder; impressively huge bulls are brought in on flat-bed trucks and coaxed off into the ring, milk cows with swollen, pink udders are led in and paraded for inspection, tiny, doe-eyed calves throng the sides of one pen, while on the other chunky albino-eyed, sandy-lashed, ‘beef’ calves munch greedily on grass. Next to them, thousands of fat-tailed sheep sheared ignominiously like large pom-pommed poodles, are roped together awaiting their fate, as do troops of shaggy, long-haired goats – their expensive grey, cream and black hair probably saving them from the chop this time round.
A sheep getting spiffed up for sale.
On one side of the open-air arena are the appurtenances of this once-nomadic agricultural world; bridles and bits, tassels, ropes, belts and camel nosepegs, on another side are makeshift canvas-roofed food stands under which huge cauldrons of steaming noodles bubble away, and clay ovens produce piping-hot dumplings and flat-loaved bread as men whip and whirl long wheat noodles into arms-length shape - on a corner bench early breakfasters hunch over chipped enamel bowls of spicy soup and tiny cups of sweet tea.
This world belongs to them and while tourists are tolerated, no special treatment is accorded. You had better jump out of the way like everyone else when a menacing bull comes rumbling by, herds of animals and trucks stampeding clouds of dust always take precedence, and riders showing off their high-strung, dark-bay, tossing mounts lend you no quarter as they race by, a perfectly-calculated inch from your side. But this is what most people come to see because this is a dying piece of pageantry in our overly-ordered, overly-protective world.
Wheeling and dealing at the livestock market.
I am not certain we would see such a shambolic, vibrant spectacle in the West because the bureaucrats have cleaned it all up, made it antiseptic, imposed rules and hard hats, roped-off areas, zoned and categorized it, shorn it of what makes it interesting.... just like the curly black wool of the fat-tailed sheep as it falls in clumps at the feet of its owner, busily preening his ovine beast for a buyer.
Back in town, we trundled off to have a look at the British Consulate where, from 1890 Lady Catherine McCartney lived for 28 years with her husband George, the British consul, who despite being unrecognized by the Chinese in what was then ‘Chinese Turkestan’ ‘represented’ British interests or, more accurately, kept an eye on the Russians. It was in the throes of renovation where it will be turned into a new restaurant. The Russian Consulate where the wily Nikolai Petrovsky implemented the Tsar’s Central Asia strategy, is now part of the Semen hotel – an apt name given its rather seedy exterior...... You can stay in the consulate these days but it is a forlorn prospect, and what it needs is the touch of an A-List hotelier with a sense of duty to history and lots of money, although even if such a desirable combination existed, I suspect the glitterati are not quite ready for Kashgar.
Kashgar hosts the tomb of Apak Khoja, which is also known as the tomb of Xiangfei, the ‘Fragrant Concubine’. Built in 1640 as the tomb of Mohammed Yusuf, it is a pretty building with unusual green-glazed tiling, and its dual names suit its history which like all worthy legends is a mixture of a little bit of truth and a great deal of myth. The tomb used to be visited frequently by the good burghers of Kashgar but no longer. Apak Khoja was the descendant of a great Naqshbandi Sufi and was revered as a Sufi teacher in his own right. He was also a political leader who seized power from the Chagatay dynasty by inviting the Dzungarians to help him to power in return for silver coin. (The Dzungarians were Tibetan Buddhists from Western Mongolia.)
After his death in 1694, his descendants remained in power although mainly as vassals of the Dzungar. In the mid-18th century two descendants of Apak Khoja helped the Qing dynasty to defeat the Dzungarians giving the Qing hegemony over much of Turkestan. It did not take long for them to realize this had been a mistake and they began to challenge the Qing Empire for greater independence. Naturally this was not welcome, and in 1759 they were forced to flee to Afghanistan where they were promptly beheaded by Sultan Shah who sent their severed heads to the Chinese Emperor.
The tomb of Apak Khoja
In Kashgar there is a sense therefore that Apak Khoja sold the Muslim Uighurs down the proverbial river, and quite understandably they spurn him. But more importantly many Kashgaris are once again very devout Muslims in the mold of the most austere of Koranic interpretation, which does not permit the existence of shrines, let alone their visitation. Furthermore this school of Islamic thought takes a rather dim view of Sufism. And so, now that the good Kashgaris have been shown the ‘error of their ways’, the shrine is the exclusive haunt of tourists.
I wonder what Ibn Battuta would have made of all this? He was indisputably a devout Malikite Muslim but he himself met more than a few men of exceptional and other-worldly gifts, and frequently visited the tombs of such men. But this was still the heady days of Islam with its probing intellectual innovation, and long before the madrasas of Deoband, and the preaching of Mohammed Abdul Wahab.
As for the fragrant concubine, the Han version of the tale is that she was a grand-daughter of Apak Khoja who was sent to Beijing as a gift to Emperor Qianlong. She was not only beautiful but her skin emitted a most intoxicating perfume - the Emperor besotted, did everything he could to make her happy but she pined for her native land, until he had a jujube tree planted and thereafter all was well. She lived happily ever after and was transported back to Kashgar on her death. The Uighur version is a little different - their spin on the tale is that she was captured and taken to Beijing where she hid daggers up her sleeves ready to kill the Emperor if he ever came near her. He was besotted however (on this they all agree) and in the end the dowager empress fearing what would happen to her son, had her killed by palace eunuchs.
And so continuing the northern Silk Road over the 12,307 foot Turugart Pass under leaden skies and a chilly rain, we crossed the border into the gorgeous Kyrgystan, a country of staggeringly beautiful scenery, high unemployment and the disruptive but paying presence of a large US air base.
Scenery of the Kyrgyz Republic
