Bassam Abu Abdallah

(Director, Center for Strategic Studies, Damascus University)

Author

Dr. Bassam Abu Abdallah is Director of Center for Strategic Studies, Damascus University He teaches in Damascus University, Faculty of Political Sciences. He is also Advisor to Minister of Information. He was a diplomat in Syrian Embassy in Ankara (2004-2008). He is also a columnist for Syrian daily newspaper AL-WATAN, and Turkish newspaper AYDINLIK. He speaks Arabic, Russian, English and a little Turkish.

Abstract

The Silk Road is a series of transcontinental trade and cultural transmission routes extending over 4,000 miles linking East Asia with Central Asia, South Asia and the Mediterranean by a network of exchange linking traders, merchants, pilgrims, monks, soldiers, nomads, and urban dwellers from China to the Mediterranean Sea during various periods of time. The Silk Road derives its name from the lucrative trade in Chinese silk carried out along its trading routes. Though silk was the most noticeable trade item from China, many other goods were traded, ranging from gold and ivory to exotic animals and plants. In addition to economic trade, the Silk Road served as a means of carrying out cultural trade among the civilizations along its network, where various technologies, religions, and philosophies traveled along the silk routes. Trade on the Silk Road was a significant factor in the development of the civilizations along the Belt, opening long-distance, political and economic interactions among the civilizations of China, India, Persia and Arabia. Trade represents an essential part of inter-society relations and it is a crucial element of their development and prosperity – without its existence, as it has been proven that societies and their representative states can't stand isolating themselves from each other. Even though many tried to prove the viability of autarky and even theorized its expediency, the course of societies' evolution necessitates interdependency at the regional and international levels and by that refutes the essence of autarky. The Silk Road embodied the first historical phenomenon of what we might recognize today as an intercontinental trading bloc. In today's words, the members of the bloc shared common interests, since the Silk Road represented a common prosperity system to them. The countries sharing the Silk Road were themselves a part of a de facto common security equation where each city-state, kingdom or empire along the road was responsible for the security of the part of the Silk Road passing through its land, since they all recognized the vital importance of "international trading" to their prosperity. Also, they recognized that the security of each part of the trading chain (Silk Road) was essential for the existence and development of the common system they shared.