When talking about the Silk Road, Anatolia is often referred to as the “bridge” between East and West due to its landmass stretching out in the Mediterranean and its division by the colliding limits of Europe and the east of Eurasia which greatly influenced its becoming. This image of a bridge is manifested at its best through the city of Istanbul, built on the Biafra canal separating the European and Asian continent, and of which the legacies of the exchanges between East and West are inherent to its architectural and cultural beauty. But as some scholars have pointed out, the term “bridge” has a passive connotation undermining the agency of the Anatolian populations and considering them as mere subjects of the Silk Road. While the history of the region is for a major part marked by imperial subjugation, the diversity of the culture of its population was always prominent and reflected in the empires that came to dominate the region. In that sense, the beautiful legacies of the Silk Road in Anatolia cannot be simplified as a product of exchanges of Eastern and Western empires but should be seen as a dynamic evolution of diverse cultures through their proactive adoption of features of exchanges and their singular development. The Anatolian “bridge” of the Silk Road surpasses the limitations attributed to the infrastructural role of a bridge of which the meaning is given by the road which crosses it. The Anatolian “bridge” is dynamic, polymorphous, singular and determined the road as much as the road provided it with meaning. The Anatolian “bridge” is in itself a body of diverse bodies with singular cultures of which the differences constitute the light shining through its glorious reflection. In other words, the glories of the Silk Road and the prominent role Anatolia played in its achievements were a result of the immanent productions of the diverse cultures of Anatolia and the great power of differentiation.
Anatolia encapsulates a multitude of territories and land, with its definition subject to controversies and the interpretation of its limits often seen as political affirmations. In this article, Anatolia will refer to the territories covered by modern turkey. This conception of Anatolia will able a wider spectrum of historical events and populations to be considered, including territorial colliding limits in which the nature of the diversity and identity of the region can be read.
Painting representing the birth of the Ottoman Empire in Bursa, Turkey
The earliest civilizations which have been recorded in Anatolia were the Hattians and the Hurrians of Indo-European origine which appeared during the Bronze Age. During that period, trade between Anatolia and the southern Mesopotamian lands started to emerge. Trade between the two-region intensified with the emergence of the Assyrian Empire in northern Mesopotamia. The Assyrians developed trading colonies from central Anatolia to Mesopotamia where tin and textiles were exchanged for copper, silver and gold. In the 18th century BCE, a new ethnic group appeared in northern Anatolia referred to as the Anatolian Hittites which came to dominate the Hattians and Hurrians. The Hittie empire reached its height in the 13th century BCE, controlling much of Asia Minor, northwestern Syria, and Upper Mesopotamia. During that period, trade roads throughout Anatolia leading to its southeastern neighbouring regions (now Iraq and Syria) were developed, linking them to the first trade routes established by the Babylonians stretching from Upper Mesopotamia to the heartland of the Iranian plateaux. By the end of the bronze age, the Hittie empire disintegrated into several independent Syro-Hittie states following the loss of much of their territory to the Middle Assyrian empire. The main groups in Anatolia following the fall of the Hittites included: the Luwians in the centre; the Arameans in the south-centre; the Neo-Assyrian empire in much of the region but particularly in the southeast; the Cimmerian and Scythian in the north and northeast; and the Achaean/Mycenaean (which would later become Greece) in the northwestern coast.
Tigris river in Cizre (Upper Mesopotamia), Turkey
The first sketches of what would become the silk road in Anatolia appeared in the following centuries through the Persian and later Greek imperial domination of the region. During the 6th century BCE, all of Anatolia was conquered by the Persian Achaemenid Empire of which the territory stretched as far as the Syr Darya river (running from eastern Kirgizstan to the Aral Sea), the Indus River, Afghani and Pakistani Himalayas and northern Arabia. The Persians fostered a common culture throughout the region and developed strong communicative links between communities from Anatolia to central Asia. The territory would later become a key corridor for movement on the Silk Road. In the 5th century BCE, Darius the Great developed what is referred to as the “Royal Road”, an ancient highway reorganized and rebuilt to facilitate rapid communication on the western part of his large empire, stretching from the western Anatolian town of Sardis to the Persian city of Susa in the south of the Tigris. The “Royal Road” later became a key part of the Silk Road, greatly facilitating the transportation of goods and communication between civilizations.
The Achaemenid Empire in its expansion to the West collided with the Greeks on the Aegean coasts leading to the Persian/Greco wars of the 5th and 4th century. The Persians were eventually defeated by Alexander the Great, which inherited all of the Achaemenid territories. After his death, the territory was divided in Greek Kingdoms, with Anatolia being separated into Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Pontus, Cappadocia, the Kingdom of Armenia, Atropatene and the Seleucid empire. While some of these kingdoms developed a strong Hellenist identity (Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Pontus and Cappadocia), the Seleucid conserved a strong Persian identity and the Kingdom of Armenia a distinct Armenian culture. The Silk Road emerged within that context through the expeditions of Zhang Qian (sent to the west by the Chinese empire to find horses capable of competing with the horses of the northern nomads raiding their northern borders) which encountered the legacies of the Greeks in Eastern Bactria and was made aware of the existence of great empires to the West with high potential for trade.
“Serpent column” Greek ancient bronze column in Istanbul, Turkey
The Hellenic kingdoms gradually lost power and were conquered by the Roman and Parthian empires. Anatolia was cut into two, with the Romans dominating the west, centre and northwest of the region while the Parthians dominated the east and southeast. In the Van and Mount Ararat area, at the east of Anatolia, the kingdom of Armenia which had until then existed under the Persian and Hellenic empires, became independent for about two centuries before becoming a client kingdom for the Romans, serving as a buffer zone with the Parthian empire. Because of their control of Western Anatolia and the rest of the Mediterranean coast, the Romans dominated the western part of the silk road. They developed strong trading networks throughout the Mediterranean and a European culture of exchange and demand for Eastern goods which would remain throughout history. Western Anatolia became a key geographical zone guaranteeing economical prosperity and tremendous geopolitical power to anyone controlling it. While the great Roman empire eventually crumbled, the Eastern Roman empire kept its imperial consistency and became the Byzantine empire, the capital being what is now called Istanbul on the Biafra canal separating the European and Asian continent.
Byzantine ruins in Dara (Upper Mesopotamia), Turkey
The emergence of Christianity in the first century was a revolution for the Roman empire and the middle eastern region, leading to the fall of the western part of the empire while being adopted by the Byzantine empire which centered its art and culture around its symbolisms. The religion was first practiced by the Orthodox Syriac Christians of upper Mesopotamia which used religious writings and traditional liturgies expressed in classical Syriac language, thus practicing a singular version of Christianity transpiring through Assyrian culture. The Armenians also adopted what is referred to as Oriental Christianism and were the first to proclaim Christianity as a national religion. Christianity became one of the main Anatolian religions, with Zoroastrianism in the Persian regions and Judaism throughout the region although mostly concentrated in the southern territories.
The spread of Christianity throughout Europe significantly contributed to the enrichment and prosperity of the Byzantine empire as churches and Christian states of Europe were highly reliant on incense, silk and other products of the east for their processions. Exchanges of the Silk Road increased during that period, which meant enormous economic gain for the Byzantine empire who controlled the western Anatolian coast. Byzantium (which became Constantinople under Constantine II), symbolized the economic boom of the Silk Road through its construction of palaces, its creation of some of the most important marketplaces in the world and its concentration of goods from all around the world. It became the capital of trade of Eurasia. The Persian Parthian (247BC-224AD) and later Sasanian (224-651) empires also greatly gained from these exchanges and greatly influenced the silk road through their Persian culture. Sasanian merchants transported goods from central Asia to the Mediterranean, therefore being key for the communication between the West and the East.
The emergence of Islam and the conquests of the Caliphates of the 7th and 8th century led to the decrease in power of both the Byzantine and Sasanian empires. The Caliphate progressively conquered most of the Sasanian territory, Byzantine Syria, Upper Mesopotamia and Armenian lands. Although Islam was not formally introduced across Anatolia, its influence through exchanges on the Anatolian portion of the Silk Road was already felt, with new forms of knowledge (especially medicine), art and products appearing in the bazars of Constantinople.
Painting in the Tigran Honents Armenian Church, Ani Ruins, Turkey
Painting in the Bursa Grand Mosque, Turkey
The Turkish nomads started to appear in Anatolia by the end of the 9th century, migrating from central Asia due to political clashes. One of the Turkish nomadic groups which migrated west, the Seljuk Turks, would come to transform Anatolia. The history of the Seljuk Turks begins with the Arab invasion of Central Asia and their conversion to Islam, although filtered through Persian and Central Asian culture, thus consisting of a singular version of Islam differing in practice from the Caliphate’s. Turks were being taken captive in Arabic raids, at first mostly as domestic servants, but with time, as soldiers for the Abbasid Caliphate. By the ninth century, Turkish commanders were leading troops into battle. As the Abbasid Caliphate’s power declined, Turkish officers assumed more military and political power, taking over and establishing provincial dynasties with their own corps of Turkish troops. During the 11th century, the Seljuk Turks progressed through the Iraqi part of the Abbasid Empire and made their first incursions into Anatolia. Although ethnically Turkish, the Seljuk Turks appreciated and became carriers of Persian culture rather than Turkish culture. The Seljuk’s victories over the Byzantine empire and progression in Anatolia created the space for other Turkish tribes to migrate and settle in the region. These settlements and clans were referred to as beyliks, united under the Seljuk’s sultanate of Rum. A slow transition from a predominantly Christian and Greek-speaking Anatolia to predominantly Muslim and Turkish-speaking was underway. The Turkish society in Anatolia was divided into urban, rural and nomadic populations; other Turkoman (Turkmen) tribes who had arrived at Anatolia at the same time as the Seljuks kept their nomadic ways. These tribes were more numerous than the Seljuks, and rejecting the sedentary lifestyle, adhered to an Islam impregnated with animism and shamanism from their Central Asian steppe land origins, which then mixed with new Christian influences.
Han in Bursa transformed into a Bazar in Bursa, Turkey
The Seljuk Turks played a major role in facilitating exchanges on the Anatolian portion of the Silk Road in parts due to their inherited nomadic culture and traditions based on traveling and exchange with other people. They guaranteed security along the routes and constructed the famous caravanserais referred to as “Hans”, symbols of the Silk Road. The Hans were a typical Central Asian architectural type of building offering travellers all the comfort of civilization, with restaurants, cheap dormitories, bazars, caravan repair workshops, stables etc. The Hans were always located so that a caravan could be sure of reaching one by the day’s end. About 250 Anatolian caravanserais have been recorded. Seljuks created a unique artistic world with cultural links reaching out from the Anatolian heartland to Central Asia, the Middle East and the shores of the Mediterranean.
At the end of the 13th century, Mongolian hordes swept through eastern and central Anatolia causing Seljuk power to gradually deteriorate. This context encouraged the beylics to declare sovereignty over their dominions. Beys joined forces with the atabegs (former Seljuk leaders) and other religious Muslim leaders to enhance the strength of their attack on Byzantine land. Their successes significantly increased the powers of the beyliks and by the beginning of the 14th century, the Turks had reached the Aegean coastline. One Beylik, led by the great Osman Ghazi, transformed the historical course of Anatolia through its unification of Beylics and its outstanding victories. In 1326, Osman’s son Orhan managed to capture Bursa, making it the capital of what would be called the Ottoman Empire (taking its name after Osman I).
Sculpture of Osman Gazi in Bursa, Turkey
Through countless military campaigns, the Ottoman empire became one of the greatest world empires in history, with its territory at its greatest extent including the Balkans, the Danube region, Moldavia, Ukraine right bank, Georgian principalities, all of now day Iraq, Syria, the western coast of the Arabic gulf, Egypt, the northern coast of East Africa and the coasts of North Africa. The empire became so powerful that the fear of Ottoman complete control of Europe was a predominant concern in Western Europe. The Empire became a dominant naval force, controlling much of the Mediterranean Sea and therefore having a monopoly on trade. Through their control of the western part of the Silk Road, the Ottoman empire accumulated enormous amount of wealth which they used to construct extraordinary palaces. The Hagia Sophia and the Top Kapi palace are demonstrations of the extremely rich cultural and artistical achievements of the Ottoman empire: the Hagia Sophia symbolizes the beauty of the combination of Christian and Islamic art and the Top Kapi Palace the extravagant wealth of the sultans pushing the limits of luxury at their greatest heights.
Hagia Sophia, Turkey
Gate of Top Kapi Palace, Turkey
The Ottomans were holders of the Caliph title, meaning they were the leaders of Muslims worldwide. However, freedom of religion and differing cultural practices were allowed in the empire, even though non-Muslims would need to pay a tax and Christian’s boys occasionally were conscripted in the Ottoman army. Nevertheless, diversity and freedom of beliefs was highly valued by Ottomans, with large Jewish populations fleeing from Europe where they were prosecuted to find refuge within the Ottoman territory. By leaving space for minorities to express themselves, while united in trade, the Ottoman empire managed to survive for five centuries.
The decrease in power of the empire and its final fall can be explained by a couple factors but one of the main causes was the greed, corruption, and sense of injustice vehiculated by the ruling elite leading many regions to claim their independence. The over taxation and the discovery of new trade roads by European empires reduced the Ottoman’s monopole on trade with the East and contributed to their rise. The empire finally fell during the first world war. It is said that ottoman troops, although outnumbering their enemies, were defeated due to their low esteem of their ruling class and their low attachment to the empire. Nationalism would reemerge in the 1920’s with Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, although now with a much stronger Turkish connotation which would turn out to leave very little space for other ethnic groups in its narration of the history of Anatolia.
Painting depicting ottoman warriors in the Bursa museum, Turkey
In the history of the Silk Road, Anatolia has played a prominent role in guaranteeing communication between civilizations across Eurasia. As key to the control of trades with Europe, Anatolia was not only a place of exchange between the East and the West or its common limits, but played a proactive role in their making by setting the tempo of exchanges and creating the rhythms of its communicative flow. While the Silk Road could have gone through other paths and avoid Anatolia, which it did from time to time due to conflicts or high taxation, it instead encapsulated the region and was encapsulated by the region because of the population’s desire to actively participate in exchanges. The Silk Road was performed in places like Anatolia through the actions of dialogue, through storytelling between travellers, through artistic creations encapsulating the fluidity of identity and the beauty of exchange, through the creation of a common understanding of how the world works feeding the developments of different sciences and through the emergence of beautiful monuments which will continue to amaze future generations throughout time.
This history of Anatolia and its impacts on the nature of the Silk Road is at its core a product of its immensely rich cultural diversity. The different imperial dominations of the region never did equate to homogenous identity. For instance, in Hellenic times, Anatolian populations in the Greek city states differed from the Hellenics in mainland Greece and influenced Greek myths and culture through their Anatolian specificity. The Armenian population, which once resided on the shores of lake Van, made their appearance in the 2nd century BC and their culture, language and history remained throughout their subjugation to the Greeks, Persian, Byzantine, Caliphate, Seljuk and Ottoman. Their culture contributed to Anatolian art, Christian practices, progress and the heritages attributed to the silk road. The Assyrian culture survived throughout the centuries, transforming with time but always in their singular way in accordance with their traditions symbolized in Syriac Christianity. The sub-Persian nomadic groups of Southeast Anatolia, which later self identified as a common ethnicity referred to as the “Kurds”, maintained their own language, rituals and identity, playing a key role in Silk Road exchanges by guaranteeing the connection between the Iranian plateau and the rest of Anatolia. The Turkish nomadic groups greatly influenced the nature of West and East exchanges, as well as both cultures directly, by infusing their singular nomadic culture within the infrastructure of the Anatolian “bridge”, facilitating the path of merchants and travelers and inspiring the artistic creations of other empires through their cultural beauty. In other words, the history of Anatolia and what has constituted its reality throughout ancient time is a productive conjunction of diverse culture.
Syriac inscriptions in the Deyrulzafaran Christian Orthodox Syriac monastery in Mardin, Turkey
Armenian St Gregory Church in Ani Ruins, Turkey
Kurdish celebration of Newroz (Kurdish new year celebration) in Diyarbakir, Turkey
Painting representing Turkish warriors in Bursa, Turkey
When talking about empires and their culture or phenomenon like the Silk Road, it is easy to fall into over symbolic representation of history, shading the spaces where differences and nuances activated themselves to produce their present. History is always interpreted in a certain way because in the infinite number of presents flowing through time, only a few can be grasped in retrospection and always in a secondary way, as symbolic events. These events when manifested in retrospection are never the same as they originally were in the past but reproduced in the consciousness of a new present, with new significances and implications assigned by the complex structure of the now, betraying the original nature of the event. Because the act of retrospection is always the creation of something new, interpretations of history are always more about the present than they are about the past. The symbols and visions created through the reproduction of a particular meaning condition the nature of the present event making the bed of its consequences on the future. While historical retrospection is crucial for us to understand the nature of things, it is to often corrupted for other means serving interests of a few instead of the interest of all. Through the selective nature of retrospection, historical narratives can be created in ways which totalize a set of particular presents over all the presents constituting the history of a region. This set of particular presents is unified within a narrative with an already predefined conclusion neglecting the existence of other presents and their legitimate right of presence in the now. Concretely, the negation of differences or the right of presence of diversity can have terrible consequences through discrimination, persecution, assassinations and a regime of terror using fear as its preferred tool for unification. Historical narratives which totalize a particular set of events, locking the history of other communities in the dungeon of the present, are more about the negation of the power of life than the protection of all.
Diversity is the essence of being because without differentiation nothing could exist. Rather than combatting diversity and neglecting the right of existence of other presents with different cultural heritages by fear that they will lead to the disintegration of a unified region, diversity should be affirmed and differences accentuated, unified by their common love and self-reliance on productive exchange and enabling differentiation. The diverse history of Anatolia is integral to the greatness of the Silk Road as it vehiculated and performed the exchanges which led to the positive transformation of Eurasian populations through their intercommunication. It is a symbol of the power of differentiation and a beautiful constellation of singular beauty, sadly bruised by the fear of the extraordinary possibilities of diversity. The dynamic polymorphous nature of the bridge unlocks its potential to surpass itself in the warm intensity of differentiation rather than remaining fixed in the cold and lifeless destructive forces of the negation of differences.
Graveyard in Bursa, Turkey
