Heirs to the Silk Road

Since its rediscovery by European explorers and travelers in the nineteenth century, the Silk Road has lost none of its fascination. It continues to evoke images of heavily laden caravans crossing endless deserts, steppes, and mountain ranges to reach the markets of wealthy oasis towns. From the second century BC, this network of merchants' routes, well over 4,000 miles long, linked China and the Roman Empire. It served the trade of luxury goods, notably silk, and stimulated the spread of ideas about religion, culture, and art. The young republic of Uzbekistan, with its ancient urban cultural centers of Bukhara, Chiwa, and Samarkand, is the heartland of the Silk Road. The artistic and cultural history of the region, through more than two millennia, is clearly explained here, together with analyses of the architecture, the art of the book, Islamic arts and crafts, and the rich variety of textiles of the region. The wealth of illustrations is drawn from objects in European and Uzbek museums and private collections, many published for the first time.