[
    {
        "id": 216509,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2003",
        "page_number": 268,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "220\n\nBuddha. After all, the Greeks had settled here even earlier, in the third century BCE. Other examples, before being blown up in 2001, were the huge images of Buddha carved out of the cliff in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, with their moulded mud and stucco draperies. Alexander's forays and settlements to lands well to the east of his Macedonian homeland remind us that several of the cities that Tucker describes were far more ancient than the Silk Road. Babylon, which fell to Alexander in 331 BCE, had already by then been the Middle East's most magnificent city for over fifteen hundred years. The earliest city to occupy the site of Chang'an was in existence before 1000 BCE.\n\nTucker manages to convey a huge sweep of history and geography. You will need time to read this book as, if you merely dip into it, you will lose the interconnecting threads, which are the crux of his thesis, i.e. that, throughout fifteen hundred years, numerous cultures met along the Silk Road and nourished each other's creative spirits. You will need to read it at a table because it is too heavy to read on your knees. And you will need an atlas alongside it that has maps showing some realms not often shown on a single spread. Your maps will need to show the geographical proximity of the towering mountain ranges of the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush with the drainage basins of the Aral Sea to their west and north and with the upper tributaries of the Indus to their east and south. The passes connecting these regions beckoned both Alexander and, nearly two thousand years later, Tamerlane, both intent on conquering and settling the north of the Indian subcontinent. You will need a single map to show the vast latitudinal spread of the great grasslands, deserts and semi-deserts from Turkey to northern China over which the nomads galloped. It was along these northernmost routes of the Silk Road that the Mongols charged on their terrifying way to Vienna, besieging it in 1241 and only withdrawing because they had to travel back, unexpectedly but unavoidably, all the way to Karakorum to appoint a new Grand Khan. The Silk Road saw many such events that were turning points in history, such as when in 1218 the governor of a city in what is now Kazakhstan killed an envoy of Ghengis Khan, suspecting that he was a spy, an action that precipitated the wrath of the Khan, and \"was to propel the world into an abyss, setting in motion a chain of events that would lead to the deaths of millions of people from the Danube to the Sea of Japan' (p.221) - because Ghengis Khan's horsemen set out to avenge this insult, inflicting terrible retribution on all in their path.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216510,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2003",
        "page_number": 269,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "221\n\nTucker establishes a framework, too, for the rise of Islam. An Arab attempt on Constantinople in 718 seems to have failed only because of outbreaks of the plague, and famine, in the Arab forces. Chillingly, Tucker argues that it was only these chance events (though famine, surely, could have been attributed to mismanagement) that gave Christianity time to strengthen its precarious hold in Europe. And, on the eastern frontier of Islam, a Chinese army was defeated by an Arab force at the River Talas in modern Kazakhstan in 751, and this meant the end to Tang hopes to control Central Asia beyond Xinjiang. Tucker argues that it was Chinese captured at the Talas River who introduced the technology of paper and silk manufacture to Damascus and Samarkand.\n\nOther books on popular reading lists about the Silk Road tend to be books of travel. Some are almost gazetteers, while others concentrate on archaeologists' researches. This book is different, focusing as it does on telling the Silk Road's history and demonstrating the links between the art forms that emerged from each era and culture. To give an idea of the scope of the book, here are the Section headings:\n\nBeginnings (three chapters: on the Silk Road's precursors; on Nomads; and on the Kushans)\n\nChina (three chapters: on the introduction of Buddhism to China; on Luoyang, and on Xi'an)\n\nThe Silk Road between Xi'an and Dunhuang (one chapter) The Silk Road through China beyond Dunhuang (two chapters, one each on the northern and the southern routes)\n\nThe Silk Road through Central Asia (ten chapters including one on The Coming of Islam to Central Asia; one on The Mongols; one on Tamerlane and the Timurids; and the rest focusing on different routes.\n\nPersia and Beyond (nine chapters, including one on The Parthians and The Sasanians, seven on different routes, and a concluding chapter on The End of the Road: The Silk Road in Decline).\n\nThe pattern, then, is to use some chapters to describe chains of events, and others to present the artistic achievements of specific periods. In addition, there are useful chronological tables on China; on the pre-Islamic States of Western and Central Asia; on the Islamic States; and on the Emperors of Byzantium. Tucker also provides a Summary of Traded Goods.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    }
]