Azerbaijan’s Silk Road: Rethreading history’s greatest trade network

By Mark Elliott, CNN

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.

We’ve just been handed a bowl full of white, lozenge-shaped balls, each the size of a boiled sweet. They appear to be made of dry, compressed cotton wool and they rattle when shaken.

“These,” reveals our affable guide Ilqar Aghayevm, “are the cocoons. They’ve already been sorted and baked and yes — I’m afraid the pupa inside didn’t survive. That’s the rattle you can hear. But if it had bitten its way out and become a moth, it would have died a few days later anyway”.

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.

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. The process employs a veritable army of nimble-fingered operatives — mostly older women in colorful floral aprons — to keep the rumbling machines threaded.

After 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.

Silk Road, Silk Roads, Silk Routes?

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. And the work being done here today is part of a far wider resurgence of East-West trade across the region.

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.

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.

These would typically seek overnight safety in sturdy walled enclosures where the traders could find lodging and sustenance. 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.

Despite 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. 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.

Geopolitical opportunity

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.

Typically, trans-Caucasian routes tended to grow popular when conditions were less conducive to trade via the Persian world.

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.

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.

And 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.

Tourism draw

Back at Sheki’s silk factory, Ilqar relates how less than a decade ago the city’s historic silk industry had faced collapse as the factory went into bankruptcy.

However, Azerbaijan’s latest economic boom helped fund a massive resurgence in the local popularity of the kelaghayi: wearing these traditional scarfs has gained an almost patriotic aura since they were added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage listing in 2014.

Sheki’s silk, as well as its Silk Route heritage, is now being consciously harnessed as a tourist draw.

As of late 2022, a large part of the city’s photogenic old core is awash with renovations of historic buildings and museums aimed at bringing out more of the story.

Sheki’s most archetypal hotel, The Karvansary, is itself within a gigantic old caravanserai. Wraparound corridors lead to modest rooms set behind repeated archways that frame a central gated courtyard which now protects a little fountain pool rather than a chaos of pack animals. This hotel is also due for a makeover in the upcoming year.

The rejuvenation of Basqal

While Sheki takes the limelight, it isn’t Azerbaijan’s only “silk center.”

The overgrown village of Basqal won accolades for its silk products at London’s 1862 International Exhibition world fair. In the 20th century, Basqal’s historic center had become very rundown, leaving its single surviving scarf-design workshop utterly antiquated, making do with stained old bathtubs for the multiple dyeing processes.

Here too, things are now moving fast. A brand new workshop is under construction and in August 2022 a handsome restoration of the old center was unveiled.

The streets’ river-stone cobbles have been stabilized, old houses in typical earthquake-resistant ketil (layered timber and stone) have been partly patched up while newer buildings have been given a disguise of new stonework and lantern-lamps.

Most significantly, in the leafy outskirts, the vast new Basqal Resort & Spa opened this summer designed as a “silk route getaway” for fastidious travelers, a social enterprise for local employment and an artistic inspiration with demonstration classes of kelaghayi silk-printing.

And the newly widened highway, that now runs most of the way here from Azerbaijan’s glitzy capital Baku, makes driving this way far faster than ever before.

Other Silk Road legacies

One of the reasons that Sheki grew into a silk center was the destruction of the former regional capital Shamakhi by both military siege (1742) and earthquakes (especially 1859). However, other Silk Route remnants remain elsewhere.

Today Baku is by far Azerbaijan’s biggest, richest city, but it was comparatively unimportant before the late 19th-century “oil boom.”

Its one earlier period of brilliance was between the 12th to 15th centuries, and four small stone caravanserais from that era have survived remarkably well.

As of late 2022, the 14th-century Multani Caravanserai and 15th century Bukhara Caravanserai are both being given facelifts as part of Azerbaijan’s “rediscovery” of its silk route heritage.

The main 21st-century rail-and-oil trade route passes through central Azerbaijan’s second city, Ganja, whose silk road credentials are less publicized. However, this too was also an historically important regional center.

Right in the city center is a 17th-century caravanserai almost as grand as Sheki’s that has been recently transformed into a good-value hotel, the Karvansaray Shah Abbas, adding a lot of character for visitors staying in this part of the country.

For Azerbaijan’s silk route network to be fully restored, one last reconnection awaits — that of the historically vibrant trade route along the Araz River, which flows through border country between Turkey, Armenia, Iran and Azerbaijan.

Once one of the most important threads of the region’s medieval trade matrix, international disputes left any transport this way paralyzed for decades.

But if in the future the route becomes viable, the magical journey to Turkey via the ancient city of Nakhchivan (in a disconnected exclave of Azerbaijan) should once again be a major trade and tourism corridor.

With or without your precious kelaghayi in hand, that’s yet another timeless journey that will really reawaken the grand spirit of the Silk Route.

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