Lands of Asia layouts (Eng) 26.11.21

4 .1
(which, in Ptolemy’s accounts, marked the mid-point of the Silk Road), and the
second, from the Stone Tower to Sera Metropolis. The Central Asian section of the
road began in Aria, an ancient region that was located in the most southerly region of
modern Turkmenistan and northwest Afghanistan. From Aria, the road turned north
to Antiochia of Margiana (today marked by the ruins of the ancient city of Merv near
Bairam-Ali), and then turned eastwards and went to Bactra, the capital city of Bactria
(Balkh in present-day northern Afghanistan). From Bactra the road went north,
crossing the Amu Darya near Termez, and then it bifurcated: the northern route led
through the Iron Gate Pass (a narrow mountain pass between Bactria and Sogdia
near the Derbent village in the Surkhan Darya region) to Maracanda (Samarkand),
the capital of Sogdia, while the southern route ran along the Surkhan Darya valley to
the mountainous region of Comedi, which, some scholars believe is located in Kara
Tegin. The northern route from Sogdia passed further on through Ferghana to arrive
at the Stone Tower and the so-called Merchants’ Station, while the southern route
reached here as well via Kara Tegin and the Alay valley (in present-day Kyrgyzstan).
The Stone Tower was, most probably, the terminus of the Silk Road through
Central Asia. Most scholars believe it to correspond to the Daraut-Kurgan area of
the Alay Valley. After the Stone Tower, the road went beyond Central Asia through
Xinjiang, where the so-called Merchants’ Station was situated near Irkeshtam.
The Central Asian section of the Silk Road described above became the primary
trade route for a long time, right up to the 4th–5th centuries AD. Minor branches
passing through Bukhara and Khorezm probably also existed. In the early medieval
period (5th–8th centuries AD), the northern segment of the road, which ran through
Semirechye to Chach (the Tashkent oasis) and Sogdia, and then through Paikend
(in the Bukhara region) to Merv, and further on to northern Khorasan, became
particularly important.
If you look at an ancient map, it is easy to see why Central Asia’s location along
the belt of the great civilisations of antiquity was so important. The distance from the
Yellow and East China Seas to its eastern boundary was approximately 4,200–4,300
km, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Caspian Sea, 5,100–5,200 km.
It is precisely this geographic location that has contributed to Central Asia’s
major ethnic movements, such as the migrations of Near Eastern, Dravidian, Indo-
European, Indo-Iranian and Turkic peoples; the dynamic intercultural interaction
(between Old Eastern, Eastern and Western Iranian, Hellenistic, Indian, Turkic and
Chinese cultures; and the long-distance trade operations along the Silk Road and the
signing of diplomatic treaties and military alliances. Central Asian peoples played a
significant role in the spread of alphabetic scripts and the ideas of the major religions
of the world (Buddhism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and Islam), as
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