Forms of Mobility in the Southern Tarim Basin in the 7th to 10th Centuries
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22135366 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tomas Larsen Høisæter (0000-0003-1961-470X, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | medieval worlds |
| Issue | 20. 2024 |
| Pages | 17-36 |
| Publication date | 2024-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Medieval Worlds (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2412-3196 • E-ISSN: 2412-3196 |
| Publisher | Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Verlag (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1553/medievalworlds_no20_2024s17 |
| OpenAlex | W4400131839 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 6 |
The written records excavated from sites in the southern Tarim Basin in modern Xinjiang, China, bear witness to a wide range of actors moving for an equally varied range of reasons. Envoys and emissaries moved between the kingdoms and empires, bearing gifts and news between the royal courts. Buddhist monks traversed the same routes on journeys of pilgrimage, while merchants of many different backgrounds carried their commodities between the different oases. Yet all these forms of regional and interregional mobility formed but the tip of an iceberg, with local forms of mobility across rather short distances accounting for the majority of movement. Here we see officials moving tax around the kingdoms, local farmers heading to the court with their grievances, and slaves being bought and sold, to name but a few forms of local movement. This contribution seeks to explore this great variety of mobility seen in the unusually rich written sources from the southern Tarim Basin. The study will mainly focus on the Khotanese documents from sites that were once part of the kingdom of Khotan, especially Domoko and Mazar Tagh, as well as from Dunhuang in the eastern Tarim Basin. These will be supplemented by documents in other languages from these same sites. On this basis, the contribution will explore the various forms of mobility in the Southern Tarim Basin in the 7th-10th centuries CE and focus on the question of how and why people travelled. In order to do this, it will investigate four reasons for movement: administrative, commercial, religious, and diplomatic. It will furthermore discuss how these types of mobility should be understood in relation to each other, arguing that regional and transregional movement necessarily depended upon more local forms of mobility
Ancient history · Archaeology · Buddhism · China · Geography · Kingdom · Pilgrimage · Political science · Structural basin · Tarim basin · Witness · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations · Chinese history and philosophy · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History · Law · Geology · Paleontology
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |