78 Part II: Outsiders
We turn first to Central Asia (chapter 3), whose people inhabit an arid
region of grasslands and deserts and at present appear to be caught betwixt and
between greater states who all have the better land: Russia to the north, China
to the east, India to the south. The major spaces on the map seem to be occu-
pied by the “-stans”—meaning “place”—belonging nominally to five ethnic
groups: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.
Only a few decades ago, however, these were units of the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics (USSR), along with Ukraine, Belarus, and of course Russia,
in an empire that lasted only 70 years. But “Central Asia,” historically speak-
ing, is a much larger space, including Afghanistan, parts of Iran, Mongolia, the
western regions of China, and Tibet. We could describe it in geographical
terms as stretching from the western Caspian Sea to the Gansu Corridor lead-
ing into the interior of China, and from the southern edge of Siberia to the
Himalayan heights of Tibet. As we look at the peoples and cultures of this vast
space, if we do not let modern borders constrain the discussion, we will find
movements of peoples, goods, and armies that shook and shaped the rooted
civilizations of India and China. These outsiders sometimes wanted to be left
alone. At other times, they wanted in: to loot, to learn, to rule.
If we think all the emerging states of Asia grew in splendid isolation with no
knowledge of each other, eating out of their own plates, all we have to do is look
at the Silk Road to see how much they must have known about each other and
craved each other’s goods. Chapter 3 describes some of these goods and travelers:
silk and horses, but also ivory, glass, silver and gold, jade, bronze, porcelain, fur.
Roman chariots (and horse skeletons) have been found in Shang dynasty tombs
of the second millennium B.C.E. A string of trading cities linked stretches of the
Silk Road, less a single highway than a network of roads skirting the worst des-
erts. These were multiethnic places, where people of many cultures and faiths
rubbed shoulders. Buddhism traveled this road in the early centuries of the Com-
mon Era, and later so did Islam, soon after the Prophet began his teaching in the
seventh century. Monks, merchants, mullahs, and priests joined in caravans going
east or west or dropping down into India. The monks Faxian and Xuanzang and
the Italian Marco Polo trudged the length of it and back again (chapter 3).
The people who lived outside the cities of the Silk Road herded sheep,
goats, and yaks, which provided meat, milk, clothing, shelter, and fuel. Camels
could transport their household equipment and trade goods. Above all, horses
made them mobile. As mounted warriors, three of the most earth-shaking, dis-
ruptive populations of Central Asia were the Turkic people, the Mongols, and
the Tibetans. Each of these was a vast ethnolinguistic group whose named sub-
groups make for a confusing array of peoples. Turkic people still dominate the
various states of modern Central Asia (25 million in Uzbekistan, 15 million in
Iran, 12 million in Kazakhstan, etc.). They called their chiefs “Khan” and
formed polities known as khanates, reaching the Middle East and Eastern
Europe in the Middle Ages. In the thirteenth century they fought their way into
North India, forming the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1414) and sending Hindu