Chapter 224: How Did It Become Prosperous Instead?

In the early morning in Bukhara, a middle-aged man wearing a pointed Sogdian cap hurried out the door.

He was a carpenter belonging to the Ghulam Guard of Bukhara, specifically tasked with making saddles and even siege engines such as battering rams and trebuchets.

This was a craft his family had passed down for several hundred years, and even the neighbors around his home all did the same work.

Every morning, they had to report for roll call at the dihqan in charge of the carpenters. If there was work, they worked; if there was no work, that was the finest day of all, because they could go out and take private jobs to supplement the household income.

"Hey! Qadir, look — the street looks just the same as usual, not a bit changed.

Didn't the dihqan say some man-eating Gurkhan had entered the city? Why haven't they come to kill and loot? Could it be that no one entered the city at all, just Ha—"

Qadir spun around abruptly and clamped his hand over the mouth of this thick-headed neighbor and colleague who had caught up with him.

Such words must not be spoken carelessly. Yesterday, the postal official of a block on the west side was dragged out with his whole family and never came back, all because he said Prince Hamid had murdered the Emir.

"People definitely came, because Salman's two daughters were both taken away and still haven't come back. They only had someone send back four silver dinars — supposedly they went off to drink and eat meat with the Gurkhan's warriors!"

The neighbor's eyes rolled back from Qadir's big sweaty hand over his mouth — that smell was more than most people could bear. Wailing, he struggled fiercely and finally pried Qadir's hand away.

Qadir, afraid he would keep on with such deadly topics, could only change the subject himself. Sure enough, the neighbor was drawn in by Qadir's new topic.

"Bah! For silver coins they don't even care about their faces. No matter how pretty they are, it's useless, because their souls are already filthy!"

The neighbor's teeth were nearly falling out from sourness, yet his mouth was cursing low with envy, jealousy, and hatred.

Qadir knew that Salman's two daughters were both as lovely as flowers. This neighbor of his had always coveted them and had even gone to propose marriage, but Salman had looked down on him.

Now, hearing that the goddesses of his heart had been taken by the Gurkhan's warriors to drink, eat meat, and do unspeakable things, he was naturally so sour he was on the verge of collapse.

"I actually think your chance has come!" Another burly man walked over, also their neighbor and colleague. The big fellow clapped the sour-lemon neighbor on the shoulder.

"The Gurkhan's warriors are said to be able to fight a hundred of us single-handed. If they want someone to warm their beds, who dares refuse?

But this way, Salman's daughters won't be able to marry into any good family. If you go propose again, won't you get a beauty for free?"

In Transoxiana at this time, even after two waves of impact from Great Tang culture and Islamic culture, belts were still worn very loose when it came to matters of men and women.

Weren't the Hu beauties mostly women from this region — famous in the Great Tang for being fiery.

In fact, both the Great Tang and Islam were also very open in their attitudes toward men and women.

China's conservatism would have to wait until after the mid-Southern Song, when Neo-Confucianism reached its extreme.

Islam's conservatism came about because in modern times they were bullied terribly by their hereditary enemies, the Christian Europeans.

Christianity and Islam share the same origin. If Islam had continued to remain open, it likely would have had its culture completely washed away by European Christianity.

So they could only cling desperately to conservatism, wrapping the masses in conservative fundamentalism to deny Christianity any chance to brainwash them.

Therefore, in this era, there was not much concept of chastity in Transoxiana. It was just that secondhand goods were certainly not as sought-after as originals. But for Qadir's thick-headed neighbor, being able to marry a daughter of Salman — even one already carrying a child — would still be quite fine.

The three walked along, laughing and talking. Though the streets were a bit quieter, Qadir actually rather liked this feeling now.

The Gurkhan's warriors had not come to harass ordinary people like them. Although from time to time some lord's whole family was dragged out and beheaded, that had nothing to do with them — in fact, they secretly felt a bit of schadenfreude.

With the Gurkhan's warriors present, the powerful officials and dihqans who usually swaggered so arrogantly had all lowered their heads, each as meek as a sheep.

The coarse wheat and flatbread in the market had not risen much in price either. On the whole, these lowest-class people of Bukhara felt no particular discomfort.

"Qadir, I heard your ancestors were Tawgach people from the east. Maybe this Gurkhan also came from the east!" the burly neighbor suddenly said.

Qadir, with his typically mixed-blood features, tilted his head and tried to recall. His family did have a legend that their ancestors were Tawgach people from the east.

Perhaps they had been captured, or perhaps they had settled here. The specifics could no longer be made clear, but their family's woodworking skills were indeed somewhat different from those of the other locals.

Even the surname Qadir was said to be connected to his ancestors' origins. Qadir in Bukhara meant "capable, able person" — a surname bestowed by the governor back then because his ancestor excelled at woodwork.

But this was only a legend. Even the elders in the family did not dare say it was true, so Qadir had not taken it seriously either — only in his heart, he felt a faint stirring of expectation.

Du Huan. When Zhang Zhao heard this name from the mouth of a court poet of the Ark Citadel called Jafar Rudaki, he was stunned for a long while.

To many later Chinese, this name is utterly unfamiliar, but among those who follow Great Tang history, he holds considerable renown.

Du Huan, a man of the Tang Xuanzong era, came from the Du clan of Jingzhao. Born of a distinguished family, he joined the Anxi army in his early years and served under Gao Xianzhi, Military Governor of the Four Garrisons of Anxi, as a minor civil official — a Secretary.

He followed Gao Xianzhi into the Battle of Talas. During the war, Du Huan was captured by the Arabs and carried off to Transoxiana and other places, only being released several years later.

But Du Huan did not return home directly. Instead, he traveled with the Arab army throughout the entire Islamic world.

He went to the Mesopotamian plain, to the Mediterranean region, to Egypt, Tunisia, Ethiopia, Somalia, Turkey, and even Greece and other places.

He was the earliest Chinese to reach Africa, and possibly also the earliest to reach Europe.

In 762, Du Huan ended his travels and returned home by merchant ship. He wrote his experiences into a book called the Record of Travels.

The book described in detail the geography and local customs of Transoxiana, Persia, the Arab regions, the Mediterranean, and the east coast of Africa.

It also contained detailed records of the Arab law (Islam) and the Roman law (Christianity), far more detailed and reliable than the Westerners' own accounts.

Most regrettably, the Record of Travels was later lost. We can only find a few traces of it in certain works that quote its accounts.

One could say that had Du Huan's Record of Travels not been lost, it is highly likely that much of the history of Central Asia, West Asia, and the Byzantine Empire would have had to be rewritten.

Zhang Zhao's mind was wandering far away, but this Persian who called himself Jafar Rudaki was still chatting with Zhang Zhao in Uyghur.

Talking about how his great-grandfather had studied under Du Huan and learned knowledge from Tawgach.

Of course, Zhang Zhao did not know that this old man chattering away beside him, with his poor eyesight, was how famous in the later five Central Asian states and even the entire Islamic world.

This Jafar would later be called the father of Persian poetry, the soul of desert verse, a fixed star in the history of Persian literature, the founder of Persian classical literature.

Because of this connection, the Tajikistan embassy in China has held commemorations of Jafar Rudaki's birth in China on multiple occasions.

Not knowing, one does not value. Jafar Rudaki found that this Gurkhan actually came from Tawgach, was courteous, learned, and especially respectful of men of culture — chatting with him was a pleasure.

Zhang Zhao, meanwhile, chatted while recalling a passage Du Huan recorded in the Record of Travels.

Du Huan recorded that after the Battle of Talas, a great number of craftsmen were captured by the Abbasid Caliphate. In Bukhara, he had seen Fan Shu of Jingzhao working as a Han carpenter, and Le Ling and Lu Li of Hedong as weavers, among others.

This shows that in cities like Bukhara, there had once been large numbers of craftsmen who were sons of Tang. Whether captured or unable to return to their homeland, their numbers were certainly not small.

More than two hundred years had passed, and the descendants of these people must long since have become locals — they themselves probably did not even know these things anymore. But Zhang Zhao did not care: these were all skilled talents!

He had been worrying about lacking an excuse to extort a batch of skilled craftsmen from Bukhara, and now he finally had one.

In this era, craftsmen were the most advanced productive force.

So apart from the six million dinars Hamid had promised, which had to be paid in full without a single coin missing, Zhang Zhao also planned to extort at least two hundred craftsmen of various trades from Hamid.

No sooner said than done. Zhang Zhao immediately had Wang Tongxin, who was serving as his personal bodyguard today, go out and notify Yin Yaozi, telling Yin Yaozi to go directly to Prince Hamid and demand them.

Extortion and robbery are actually a field of study in themselves, especially once they rise to the level of state behavior.

Zhang Zhao chatted with the great poet in the forbidden city of Alka and teased the little loli, but Yin Yaozi, leading Zhang Zhong, Guo Tiance, Zhu Qingquan, Yang Shouli, Guo Guangsheng, and the rest, were worked half to death.

Because four million of the six million dinars Hamid had promised to pay Zhang Zhao had to be withdrawn in Bukhara.

But if you think it was simply a matter of withdrawing four million silver coins and heading home, you would be very foolish.

If it were forty thousand silver coins being brought back to Fergana, that would be a windfall, but four million — that was trouble.

Because in Fergana, which had a population of barely a hundred and seventy or eighty thousand, bringing back four million dinars at once was no different from bringing back four million pebbles.

Currency has to be matched with productive capacity; it only has meaning when it circulates.

With Fergana's tiny population and meager produce, and the pitifully small scale of the Silk Road, bringing back four million — no, six million dinars would directly trigger severe inflation.

Even adding Shule and Khotan would be the same. Dumping that much money in would absolutely cause indigestion.

Unless Zhang Zhao had some immortal art to transport these silver coins to the Central Plains. Only the Central Plains could absorb six million dinars in one go without causing inflation.

So Zhang Zhao established the Grand Granary Bureau, headed by Yin Yaozi. They sealed away one million of these four million dinars as Zhang Zhao's private gain, and Zhang Zhao would not let them flow into the market quickly.

Of the remaining three million dinars, another two million were taken out to purchase strong oxen, cow and sheep hides, ox sinew, mail armor, spices, grain, Arab rubies, dried fruit, woolen blankets, and other goods around Bukhara.

This would promote the prosperity of the Bukhara market on one hand, and also ease the hostility of the surrounding Samanid Persian iqtas toward Zhang Zhao.

Because these goods had to be bought in the areas around Bukhara, once these iqta holders made money, they would not be so easily stirred up by schemers to oppose Zhang Zhao.

Of the final one million dinars, five hundred thousand would be taken out as a reward for the seven thousand troops on this campaign.

The remaining five hundred thousand, Yin Yaozi and the others used to purchase horses.

The region from Bukhara to Khujand was the homeland of the Ferghana horses. Although purebred Ferghana horses were rather delicate and costly to raise, they were not very suitable for large-scale equipping.

But this region had many crossbred descendants of the Ferghana horse, and some of the mature crossbred lines had already become quite stable.

There were those with good endurance, those with good explosive power, and those strong enough to pull carts — Zhang Zhao planned to bring a large batch back.

In addition, Zhang Zhao also wanted to recruit a herdsman here who was skilled at raising horses to take back with him, which would require some settling-in money.

Under Zhang Zhao's arrangements, the Bukhara he occupied actually appeared joyous and full of vitality.

Merchants and iqta holders made money, commoners' wages rose by fifty percent, and there was always work to be had.

The six thousand troops who entered the city were well looked after with fine wine, good meat, and three thousand young ladies of Bukhara, and few of them broke military discipline to cause trouble.

What a scene of prosperity and flourishing!

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