In her book Susan Whitfield has pulled back the curtain to allow us to experience everyday life amongst the people of the silk road in the late 10th century. She has gathered information from original sources and presented a study of ten individuals who lived in the lands intersected by the silk road. Akin to Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," but true, her characters come alive for us in ways that almost seem to belong to our modern world. We meet Uighurs, Turkic peoples, Tibetans, Arabs and Chinese as they make their way from ancient Samarkand through the mountains and Gobi Desert to Chang'an in China. We meet people as diverse as royalty, merchants, monks, nuns, merchants, artists and courtesans. Each character has a fascinating story. The tales encompass greed, marriage customs, war, riches, survival struggles and the tenacity of the human character. The book includes a good map to help us place the route. It can be used to compare the lands to their modern counterparts. Like today, these ancient kingdoms were always at war, vying for riches, and their people victims of raids and invasions.
Susan Whitfield runs the International Dunhuang Project which provides Internet access to original pre-eleventh century silk road manuscripts and sources. If you have any interest in this era this book is a fascinating and interesting read.
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