The 'Myth' of the Silk Road

[Michael Kerr]

Nathan Ross wrote:
My interest is mainly in the overland silk (etc) trade through the entrepots of Nisibis and Callinicum (the only ones permitted, it seems, after AD298), so I'm sure there should be some useful material in there.

 Not much material on Nisibis or Callinicum in the book Silk which is a bit more general covering regions from Rome to China even though some chapters do cover Rome they mainly deal with the Price Edict of Diocletian and Roman silk traders.

There are three books that I know of that cover mainly Nisibis.
“Rome's Eastern Trade” by Gary Young.
“The Roman Near East 31 BC 337 AD” by Fergus Millar which is available at Scribd
“Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity - Neighbours and Rivals” by Beate Dignas and Engelbert Winter.
 The third book goes into a bit of detail on the 298 AD Treaty of Nisibis and is probably the best one.

Gary Young when writing of Nisibis mentions that the silk trade there was probably dominated by Jewish silk merchants and that the siting of Nisibis meant that it received most of its goods via the overland route which maybe was more profitable for Rome in late 3rd century as it seems sea trade was severely hampered at this time with a combination of high inflation partly due to severe debasement of Roman currency meant that their merchants and agents were outbid by Sassanid merchants for their goods at the source, Southern India was in turmoil at this time and the earlier Cheran and Pandian dynasties that ruled Tamil India were if not destroyed, were still severely weakened by conflict around this time. The Cherans in particular were good trading partners with the Romans. The aggressive Sassanids built a series of ports on both sides of the Persian Gulf all the way to India which enabled them to dominate Indian Ocean trade up to the rise of the Arabs who in turn displaced the Persians. Sea trade in the Indian Ocean did pick up during the reign of Constantine but it never reached the heady heights of the 1st and 2nd centuries.

 Fergus Millar thinks that the selection of Nisibis was an acknowledgement that after the treaty of 298 that the Tigris and not the Euphrates was the new border between Rome and Persia. Millar writes about Nisibis after the Treaty of Nisibis in 298

 The provisions relating to Nisibis were also of great significance. In spite of reported objections by Narses, it was laid down tbat commercial exchanges between the two empires would take place there. For over sixty years, until it was surrendered after Julian's campaign in 363, Nisibis was to be the commercial and military centre of the eastern part of Roman Mesopotamia. Like Edessa, it was also to be one of the major centres of Christian Syriac literature. The greatest of all Syriac writers, Ephrem, was born there a few years after the treaty, and left it only when it was abandoned to the Persians in 363.

 

Winter and Dignas mentioned in their book about the Treaty of 298 that in a region of numerous caravan and trade routes that the Romans were trying to funnel and centralize trade. Fiscal reasons must have been important though as the Roman ambassador Sicorius Probus insisted on the inclusion of the clause of the 298 treaty that Nisibis be the only place of trade in Mesopotamia where as a result every Sassanid merchant had to pay customs duties if he wanted to sell his goods in Nisibis, possibly up to 25%. Nisibis also served as a strategic fortress.

 

  But even later on in 408/409 there was a constitution de commerclis et mercatoribus (mentioned in the Codex Justininius) under the emperors Honorius and Theodosius II regarding guidelines for trade between the Romans and the Persian empire where it was forbidden for merchants of either empire to hold markets outside the cities or towns agreed on together which were Nisibis, Callinicum and Artaxata in Armenia which infers a channelling of the flow of goods, Nisibis for the trade beyond the Tigris, Artaxata for the trade through Armenia and Callinicum for the more southerly regions including the Gulf and Arab peninsula. At this time Nisibis and Artaxata were in the Sassanid realm.

 Until late in the third century the most important route from the Persian Gulf was via the Euphrates where goods were transported to Callinicum, where luxury items like silk were taxed before being transported to the markets of Edessa, Batnae, which is mentioned as a market for Indian and Chinese goods by Ammianus (Book XIV,3,3) and Harran (Carrhae), the situation seemed to change after the treaty of Nisibis in 298 even after the Sassanids regained the city in 363.
From what I know Callinicum was a customs district where before entering the empire via the Euphrates, raw silk and other luxury items were taxed before being transported to the markets of Edessa, Batnae and Harran (Carrhae) from where merchants transported their goods to the Mediterranean coastal cities. (Ammianus mentions Batnae as a market for Indian and Chinese goods in Book XIV,3,3). From the reign of Theodosius the comes commerciorum was the only person permitted to acquire and sell (raw silk) from the barbarians. This official was also largely in charge of assessing import and export duties and was responsible for ensuring that official bans on the export of certain goods like arms, iron and gold were respected.

Regards

Michael Kerr