![]() Sheki’s most archetypal hotel, The Karvansary, is itself within a gigantic old caravanserai. This 21st-century “silk route” is most clearly symbolized by the newly inaugurated rail-link between Istanbul and Baku – dubbed the “Iron Silk Road” – which parallels the even more crucial Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline for much of its route.Īnd just as in days of old, with burgeoning trade volumes comes a whole raft of associated benefits – not least a rediscovery of older layers of the region’s Silk Route history, as a spur for further commerce and for tourism. Today’s geopolitical problems in both Iran and Russia can be seen as another such phase in the periodic cycles that occasionally spur Asian trade to funnel itself via the Caspian, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Typically, trans-Caucasian routes tended to grow popular when conditions were less conducive to trade via the Persian world. The best-known sections of the Silk Route crossed the deserts of Central Asia and Iran, but there were many points in history when disorder, insecurity or international politics served to interrupt the more major routes. Pepper and spices were also in demand in pre-medieval Europe, while so much silver and gold flowed east to pay for these luxuries that Rome faced a balance-of-payments crunch in the third century CE on a scale rather reminiscent to the world’s current big debts to China. This developed into caravanserais (literally “sarays,” or palaces, for caravans) all along the trade routes: precursors of traveler’s inns, but for a pre-motorized era.ĭespite the name, the Silk Route was always a diffuse network rather than a single “route” and that trade was in much more than just silk. These would typically seek overnight safety in sturdy walled enclosures where the traders could find lodging and sustenance. In an ancient world without trains or planes, transporting valuable commodities across vast inhospitable swathes of Eurasia required well equipped teams of pack animals – typically camels traveling in groups known as caravans. The Great Silk Route, or Silk Road, was the fabled overland supply chain that famously allowed the supply of Chinese goods to reach ancient Rome from the second century BCE. And the work being done here today is part of a far wider resurgence of East-West trade across the region. It comes as some surprise to discover that, in previous centuries, this pretty rustic backwater was one of the main stops in a Caucasian branch of the classic Silk Route. This quiet town was a major silk-trading center well into the 19th century. The process employs a veritable army of nimble-fingered operatives – mostly older women in colorful floral aprons – to keep the rumbling machines threaded.Īfter so much work, followed by dying and hand stamping it’s rather astonishing that Azerbaijan’s archetypal kelaghayi (hand-stamped silk scarfs) cost as little as $30 – at least from the factory’s elegant outlet boutique. The baked cocoons must be softened, their outer coatings removed by fanciful soft-brushing machines, then unraveled, spooled onto bobbins, re-spun and finally woven. Ilqar is clearly more aware than many in the Caucasus of Western sensitivities to animal welfare, but there’s no way around the uncomfortable fact that making silk requires the sacrifice of millions of silk pupae before the near miraculous process of creating silk cloth can even begin. ![]() But if it had bitten its way out and become a moth, it would have died a few days later anyway”. They’ve already been sorted and baked and yes – I’m afraid the pupa inside didn’t survive. “These,” reveals our affable guide Ilqar Aghayevm, “are the cocoons. They appear to be made of dry, compressed cotton wool and they rattle when shaken. ![]() We’ve just been handed a bowl full of white, lozenge-shaped balls, each the size of a boiled sweet. We’re in Sheki, a magical little UNESCO World Heritage city tucked up against the thickly wooded foothills of Azerbaijan’s Greater Caucasus Mountains, on a rare tour of the silk factory which for decades has been the region’s economic mainstay.
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