Record · Medieval world · Central Asia
Who actually carried goods along the Silk Road?
Sogdian merchants from Samarkand and Bukhara, who kept colonies across China from the AD 300s to the 700s and faded after the Arab conquest.
· AD 600Medieval world Central Asia
Central Asia in the medieval world (500 – 1500). A thousand years of kingdoms, caliphates, steppe empires and trading cities between the fall of Rome and the voyages that joined the hemispheres.
Record · Medieval world · Central Asia
Did one battle in 751 carry papermaking to the West?
Tang and Abbasid armies fought at Talas in July 751, but Sogdian letters on paper from about 313 show Central Asia had paper centuries earlier.
· AD 751
Record · Medieval world · Central Asia
A sealed room at Mogao, opened in 1900: the Dunhuang Library Cave
Cave 17 at Mogao held manuscripts from the 4th to the early 11th century until Wang Yuanlu opened it in 1900. Stein and Pelliot bought much of it from 1907.
· 1000
Record · Medieval world · Central Asia
A minaret rebuilt in 1127: the Kalyan tower of Bukhara
A minaret collapsed at Bukhara around 1121-22 and destroyed two-thirds of a new mosque. Arslan Khan Mohammad's replacement, 48 meters high, rose in 1127.
· 1127
Record · Medieval world · Central Asia
Not as big as Saint Denis: William of Rubruck measures Karakorum, 1254
A Franciscan friar entered the Mongol capital on May 7, 1254, sized it against a village near Paris, and described a silver fountain and Mongke's creed.
· 1254
Record · Medieval world · Central Asia
A forty-meter arc under a Samarkand hill: Ulugh Beg's observatory
Ulugh Beg's observatory at Samarkand held an arc of about 40 m radius. Its star tables were finished by 1440; he was put to death on October 25, 1449.
· 1429