|
|
During the 8th century the Silkroad across the Mediterranean was exposed to severe disturbances. The moslem Caliphates had freed
themselves from Byzantium and was expanding along the southern shores of the Mediterranean and finally to Spain. Byzantium and the
other christian states around the Mediterranean blocked the trade from the Caliphates and there was an extensive piracy. There was
however an increasing demand for silk from the emerging Anglosaxon and Frankic kingdoms in northwestern Europe. Silk was primarily
needed for the exquisite robes of the new clerical and feudal elites and for the adornment of the churches and palaces. The Silkroad was
then increasingly diverted to the northbound river systems of Dnepr and Don-Volga.
The Silkroad to the North
Blue
shows the Don/Volga and
red shows the Dnepr route
The town of Kiev (Turk. "the site at the shore"), at the Dnepr river, had been founded by the Khazars around the beginning of the 8th
century, as a trading and administrative center in the western part of the Khazarian empire. The Scandinavians accordingly called it
Changard or Könugård (Swe. "The stronghold of the Kha[ga]n). A process of defection rose among the western Khazars during the 9th
century primarily as a result of a harsh rabbinisation and an extensive immigration of jews from mainly Byzantium to the Khazarian
empire. Hence, the cultural and ethnical fusion between the western Khazars and the other peoples of that area, like Slavs, Scandinavians
and Magyars increased. The emerging Kievan state showed itself as a fullscale competitor to the Khazarian empire towards the latter part
of the 9th century.
The Khazarian empire then had a good political excuse to concentrate the Silkroad to the Don-Volga route. Byzantium exercized
restrictions of trade against the Kievan state and preferred the safe-route through the Khazarian empire for its own trade and export of silk.
The great caravanroad to Kiev was cut off and the Kievans did not reach the markets in the Caliphates, with their speciality, the slaves
(mamlucks). The Kievan state was set aside from the Silkroad.
Not only silk was brought through the Silkroad,
but also Frankic swords.
The Khazarian tradecenter Sarkel was fortified in the year 833 as a protective action against the progressing Kievan aggression. In the
year 839 a couple of Varangian traders, accompanied by a couple of jewish radhanite traders, complained to the Frankic emperor that they
could not travel the Dnepr route through Kiev anymore. Thus the Khazarian empire had full and practical control over the Silkroad routed
along the Volga river. Ibn Fadlan tells us that the great silk loads reached the Khazarian empire on five thousand camels at a time!
Hence, the great Silkroad to the northern and western Europe was routed from Byzantium, the Caliphates, Sogdiana and China, along the
Don-Volga river system and the Baltic sea through the sites of support and transit Sarkel, Itil, Bulgar, Staraja Ladoga, Birka and Hedeby to
the final destinations of Dorestad and London. This trade was run jointly by the Khazarian, Frankic-Frisian, Varangian and later German
houses of trade and closely monitored by the foremost merchants, bankers, emissaries, tally masters and other commanding officers, as
well as, at call, a small, but harsh, mounted detachment of warriors to support the diplomacy.
The Silkroad also produced a widespread secondary and local activity of trade of mostly supply, fancy goods and as a service to the
long-distance trade. Thus many local and regional centers of trade of an ambiguous and manyfold ethnical, social and political origin,
emerged around the Baltic sea and the North Sea. Another dominating organisation for trade would later emerge from this trade, namely
the Hanseatic League.
Next page, The Ending!
|
|
|