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Journey to the centre of the World – 7
The Great Silk Route, under Genghis Khan’s patronage, became the safest road to travel anywhere on Earth. His empire became the biggest. His communications system the fastest. His Devil-worshipping bogeymen the most frightening.
The great Khan never came second in anything.
The Ruler of the World
BUKHARA and Khiva were fortresses near the far end of the Silk Route, but we were still on the "golden road to Samarkand", making the journey "For lust of knowing what should not be known" as James Elroy Flecker's poetic pilgrims sang.
So there we were, our female travellers, our female Uzbek guide, our female tour guide, three spouses and me, riding through the wilderness to the ultimate destination. When we stopped for an overdue "convenience break" in traditional tourist fashion, we stopped in the heat-throbbing open desert and the women went into the sand on the left of the road, I went into the sand on the right. The bus-driver kept a soliticous eye on the women. Those in slacks instead of long dresses were in difficulties.
As we took relief, on either side of our bus, I looked at the flat, grey, undulating desert - boundless and horizonless because of the distant dust. . . . a pallid, inert, featureless, dead desert whose only sign of movement, on this side of the bus, was a shimmer of rising heat. You had to be a real romantic, standing among the shredded truck tyres and the discarded fuel cans along this thin bumping road, to appreciate that this used to be one of the exciting camel-caravan stages of the Great Silk Route. . . the road to Samarkand. To understand its significance you needed, while standing in the desert zipping up your fly, to get a picture of the whole of ancient Asia into your head.
Picture for a moment Genghis Khan, with horsemen stretched out a mile each side of him - cavalry advancing in a line through the dust from invisible horizon to horizon. His horsemen ride easily, slack saddled and each carrying everything he needs for a trans-continental campaign. Each horseman has his own bag of dried horsemeat, and his own cakes of dried milk. It is winter, so his pony is wrapped in yaks' hides, and the long-riding Mongolan horseman warms himself by opening a vein in the leg of his mount, drinking the blood, and closing the vein again. He will ride for two days and two nights without dismounting, and take his sleep in his swaying saddle, if Genghis Khan asks him to. Elite messengers ride close to the Ruler of the World, ready to run despatches to the far ends of his empire. These men, their bodies tightly bound to keep them alive on bumping, galloping journeys, would change horses every three miles - without pausing - and cover as many as 500 miles in 24 hours.
The Great Khan’s empire grew at an explosive rate. He captured the treasures of China in the East and then sent his Golden Horde westwards into the lands of the Ukraine and the Crimea. His son, Batu, terrorised Europe so that the mere rumour of his advancing Golden Horde made mighty Rome tremble.
Genghis Khans grandsons, Kublai Khan and Mongke, held great drinking parties twice a year at which they discussed whether it would be worthwhile conquering France.
Not worth the trouble, they decided. It was hard enough governing all China and Asia and beating up the kingdoms of India. So far as Europe was concerned it would be easier and more fun to plunder Russia and the Baltic, rape East European women, and slaughter or enslave their men. The Horde had had a fine old time.
Genghis Khan ravaged the northern hemisphere from Siberia to Sweden and established a trade route across half the globe, from China’s east coast to Africa’s west coast. Kublai Khan built palaces and stately pleasure domes. Mongke, I imagine, monkeyed about in Mongolia. But their terrible descendant Tamerlane was bent on building his own empire – and the blue domes of a religious and administrative capital. Thus it was that the magnificent edifices of his Registran, his Bibi Khan, and his future tomb, the Gur Emir, rose on Persian ruins of Samarkand.
We would finally get there. But before doing so, let us bypass Samarkand and explore the Silk Route to the west.
Next: A wench in Urgench
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