Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Prof., Department of History, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
2 PhD candidate of History, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
The city of Kashghar was situated at the convergence of Chinese communication routes that crossed the northern and southern parts of the Taklamakan Desert. This city served as the gateway for caravans traveling on the historical roads connecting Transoxiana, Sindh and the central plateau of Iran to China. This route has been known as the Silk Road from 19th century. The access routes from the western regions to the capital of China branched off from the city to the northern and southern edges of the Taklamakan, eventually these routes leaded to ancient Chinese capital, Chang’an (长安), or Xi’an (西安), referred to in Islamic texts as Khamdān (خَمدان). The northern route passed through the city of Turfan, while the southern route traversed Khotan and then, being on a single route that went to the imperial capital of China. Due to Kashghar’s pivotal role in the exchanges between China and the Islamic world, early Islamic texts referred to it as the border of Islam (ثغرالاسلام). Even in the pre-Islamic period, cultural and commercial interactions between Iran and China along this corridor carried out through the mediation of one of the oldest Iranian peoples—the Sogdians. This mediating role continued into the Islamic period and the Sogdians assumed a crucial role in facilitating cultural and economic exchanges between China and the Muslim world. Some Sogdians even settled along this route, serving as cultural intermediaries.The strategic importance of access routes to Kashghar as the gateway to China for Muslims led to this ancient road being introduced in various geographical, historical, and literary texts of the Islamic world. In other words, the toponyms along the route from Kashghar to the Chinese capital has been noted in Islamic sources from the early Islamic centuries to the 10th century AH (16th century CE). Despite numerous studies on the cities along this route, no dedicated research has yet focused on the transcription and phonetic transformations of their names based on manuscript versions of Islamic texts. The significance of this issue has prompted the present article to investigate the representation of caravan stations in northern China—from Kashghar to Chang’an—as a historical problem worthy of detailed examination. This study, while engaging with prior research on the subject, identifies and analyses the toponyms based on the oldest or most authoritative manuscript sources of Islamic texts and reconstructs the geographical conception of Muslim authors of this route
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