Of course the first thing that I think when I read these letters is the very different way that they spoke to each other than we do. Of course there is a language barrier, but I believe that it is more than that. Particularly in the letters written to wives and husbands, a lot can be said for the sense of real desperation and dread of being both away from their spouses and stuck in a foreign land. Obviously this speaks volumes about how this particular group of people saw both far-flung areas on the Silk Road and gender roles in society.
Although it is never easy being alone in a strange land with strange customs and a language barrier, as far as I can tell the Sogdians as a people ruled the Silk Road and administered it; therefore I have a hard time believing that the average Sogdian would have this sense of real fear and distress when talking about a foreign land, even when this was only private conversations with their spouses. This was partially explained by the second letter, which is famous for proving the connection between the Xiongnu and the Huns of Eastern Europe. In fact during this period I have often heard in my study of, for example Russia, about the constant wave of barbarian attacks coming from the fields of central Asia, which makes it even more unbelievable that a realistic trade route could have been maintained.
What really interests me, however, is the political institutions of the Sogdians. They do seem to have local leaders as mentioned in the person of Varzdak, but it seems to me that they lived largely in city states, unconquered, at least at this point, by larger emperors. This shines a fascinating light on just how important the Silk Road was to their life. The fertile flat plains of Central Asia would have been ideal for the making of such empires, purely because they could be so easily conquered, as successive rulers like Tamerlane learned. However the political system in Sogdia was tailored specifically for the use of Silk Roads, suggesting that for the sake of profit they barely tried to unite what would have been already linguistically and culturally one nation, just to keep up profit. This is indeed a wealth-crazed society.
Of course since these documents deal so explicitly with women writing to their husbands, it would be pointless to leave out the valuable information that can be learned about social structure of gender relations. Once again we see a political parallel. I found it very telling that men use many of the same terms to refer to their political superiors as women refer to their men. Here clearly we have a fairly ordinary pre-modern assessment where, at least in title, the man was the head (although these must have been fairly wealthy women, their husbands presumably being fairly important traders and themselves having at least enough surplus income to hire a letter writer). One wonders then why these women seem so desperate for their husband’s return? Of course once again we can safely assume much of the flowery dialogue to be simply a result of the time, and of course it is quite possible that she simply misses her husband, or at the very least wants him to think so. Still, when someone tells their spouse that they imagine themselves dead without them its certainly worth looking into further. It is of course also possible that with her husband gone away for so long, she would have limited access to money for example, or possibly imagined the results of a possible widowhood, although once again emotionally crippling, this would have worked out very badly for her in that society. Since these documents seem so incredibly rare and so extremely valuable as some of the very few documents from this period of Sogdian history, we must of course rule nothing out.

Xiongnu blog response

I find the whole question of the Xiongnu an incredibly fascinating one, particularly their relationship with the Huns in Europe, although I am disappointed by the fact that this article does not site the indeed wide evidence of a mutual relationship between the Hephalites, Xiongnu and the Huns, such as those found in ancient Sogdian manuscripts clearly indicating a group of nomadic Huns, that were seen terrorizing the north of the Han capital Chang’an. It also shows that the Han Empire engaged in war against these people and that the confederacy was so strong that objective foreign travellers were unsure whether the result would be in China’s favour. This is an invaluable first hand resource that is available at http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/sogdlet.html. As for the arguments made against the theory, that the Huns didn’t shave, that they didn’t practice cranical alteration, these would be legitimate gripes if the Roman Empire had actually gone to north China to see them in their original habitat as it were, however, over 300 years and countless contact with other cultures it is perfectly understandable that they finetuned there habits. This whole paper is of great interest to me specifically because I am at this moment also taking a course in Chinese history where I am learning much of the same information from a completely different perspective. First of all I was taught, not 4 days ago that the so-called Martial Emperor Wudi practically controlled an area about twice the size of modern China and perhaps 4 times the size of the Roman Empire, including all of central Asia, southeast Asia and Siberia almost as far as the Arctic ocean. This seems fantastical to say the least, which is why I am relieved to hear about an article which gives a more realistic view of a complex relationship of official sovereignty tempered with the reality of a highly structured tribute based relationships, between two unlikely equals. This is best summed up in some of the ways that China describes its friendly neighbours to the north. First they use the term barbarians as a matter of course, but I particularly liked the terms like the incestuous, unspeakably cruel and perverted king and how they traded with him a thousand horses and of course them breaking up the dispute between the fat king and mad king. However the thing that most strikes me about this article is the way that the Chinese Empire describes its so-called barbarian neighbours. The ethnic slurs of the colonialist Europeans is often focussed on particularly in classes like this, so it is comforting to see that the racial slurs of other peoples are not forgotten. It seems astonishing to me that in this time their government was willing to go to such extremes to avoid the appearance of the Chinese state getting absolutely anything from the outside world. How fast mutual governmental gift giving becomes tribute from an inferior subjugated nation, how fast a steady trade of foreign goods and horses can so easily become a divine gift of the river god and the heavenly dragon of powerful new winged horses. However, you can’t even really blame them for inventing such charming fairytales. Ever since writings of Zhang Qian, China seems to have been very interested not only in its own history, but also the way in which its own actions would have been looked upon by the various people coming after them. How would it look after all if these mad fat and monstrously perverted kings in the barbarian lands outside of China’s borders were seen to be trading with the great Chinese empire. Wouldn’t it be better to show that these new inventions were the latest in the long, long line of China relying on its own ingenuity, on its own gods in order to solve the problems of its day, and even to increase its cavalry and beat out the very invaders that they used to get these things from? Politics is always a dirty business; that is no reason to remember it as such.
Finally, a very fascinating point for me was Zhang Qian himself. This figure, a cross between Marco Polo and Herodotus, answers a lot of questions that I had about Chinese civilization in general, like how much they did know about the various trade empires that there empire, relied on or at least exploited, but all in all it raises many more questions than it answers. First of all I am always fascinated by a society that is completely isolated from the world around it, as I as a historian of the western school always largely assumed China was. I always knew that China built the great wall to keep out foreign invaders, (although this seemed to reinforce the idea that at the very least China did not want to know foreign cultures) This article of course opened my eyes to the fact that besides what I can now only assume would be a largely symbolic wall, they had extensive contact with their neighbours to the north and at least some contact with their neighbours to the west across the steppe. However what really strikes me about this point is that China before the unlikely voyage of a soon to be castrato, China did not know that the people of the Central Asian steppe rode around on what would have seemed to them to be giant horses. Now this would not be like not knowing that a person collects stamps. By all accounts horses were the lifeblood and then some of many of the people occupying the land. Therefore in order not to know this very basic fact about there life, there would have to be almost no contact whatsoever between anyone connected with the Chinese government and the Persian Empire, or the various tribes of central Asia. Now I know very well that the Taklimakan desert was no picnic to get across, and it’s just mean to ask people to cross the Tibetan plateau, but China had been a civilization for thousands of years, and had reliable records for hundreds, and nowhere did it mention that there was a very lucrative horse trading business which would vastly improve China’s army just across the desert there until Zhang Qian. Did this state have a monopoly on adventurers?