Salt Going South, Gold Coming North
For a thousand years camel caravans carried salt from the Sahara's mines to Timbuktu and returned with gold. Selin follows the Azalai route and the traders who still walk it.
The Sogdians Who Ran the Middle of the Road
0:00 / 0:53
This episode is for members. Sign up free or log in to hear the whole episode.
Show notes
The merchants in the middle
The Sogdians of Samarkand and Bukhara never ruled an empire, yet for five centuries their language was the language of trade from Chang'an to Merv. This episode starts with the Sogdian Ancient Letters, found in a ruined watchtower near Dunhuang in 1907, and builds outward from what those letters reveal.
- The letter from Miwnay, a stranded wife, to her husband who never came back
- How Sogdian trading houses financed a caravan and shared the losses
- Silk, musk, silver and the goods that actually moved
- Why the Sogdians disappeared and where their descendants went
Sources and a route map are on the episode page.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to Silk, Salt and Saddlebags. I am Selin Aydin, and in this series we follow the old trade roads one stop at a time, with the merchants' own words wherever they survive. We begin in the middle of the Silk Road, with a people most listeners have never heard of. The Sogdians of Samarkand and Bukhara never had an empire, never had an army worth the name, and for five hundred years their language was the language of business from the Chinese capital to the Persian border. In 1907 a bundle of their letters was found in a ruined watchtower near Dunhuang, undelivered for sixteen centuries. One is from a woman called Miwnay, abandoned by her merchant husband, and it is heartbreaking. We read it, and then we follow the money. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
Open as text