Life Along the Silk Road.

• Author: Drompp, Michael R.
• Position: Reviews of Books

Life along the Silk Road. By SUSAN WHITFIELD. London: JOHN MURRAY, 1999. Pp. xiii + 242, maps, illustrations. [Distrib. in North America by Univ. of California Press]

This book is intended for a popular audience. Nevertheless, since it is being marketed in North America by a scholarly press, and since interest in the region known as the Silk Road may cause scholars and teachers to approach this book as a possible resource for their work, it seems appropriate to review it in these pages. The observations made in this review are intended to inform such potential readers of the book's nature (and problems that may arise from it) and are in no way to be construed as intending to chide the author for not having written a different sort of book.

It should be stated at the outset that this book is, in fact, generally unsuitable as a resource for scholars or teachers, for it is in essence a work of historical fiction. Whitfield, who currently is director of the International Dunhuang Project at the British Library, presents ten "tales," each focusing on a single personage, in order to "offer a glimpse into the character and characters of the eastern Silk Road between A.D. 750 and 1000" (p. ix). The characters she presents, however, are composites that she has created from information gleaned from a number of sometimes unrelated resources. That is, Whitfield has chosen ten representative "persons"--a merchant, a soldier, a horseman, a princess, a monk, a courtesan, a nun, a widow, an official, and an artist (only some of whom are historical)--and woven tales around them in order to achieve her goal. While the book may indeed offer the reader images of life along the Silk Road, it cannot be considered an accurate scholarly resource, since it does not mak e clear to the reader what is conjecture and what is not.

From the perspective of the scholar, teacher, or student, there are many problems with the book. Some of these are relatively minor, but nevertheless have an impact on the book's utility. Trouble with names and terminology emerges almost from the outset; after stating that she will employ "k" rather than "q" in Turkic terms and names (i.e., "Kocho" rather than "Qocho"), since that will make them more accessible to English speakers, the author then informs the reader that she will use "Beshbaliq" (not "Beshbalik," as one would expect) for the city known in Chinese sources as Beiting (p. xi). She writes often of a "Rokhshan," never identifying...