| This dissertation studies Eurasian cultural interactions along the so-called Silk Road by examining the role in the culture of the Islamic Near East of a product from Central Eurasia. Musk, produced by the musk deer of the highlands of Central Eurasia, was the most important aromatic substance in the medieval Islamic world. The first chapter explores musk, the names for it in various languages, and special terminology associated with it. The second and third chapters use a variety of sources to trace the history of musk during the first millennium CE in China, India, Central Asia, and Iran. In the Islamic period, the explosion of Arabic literature means that a large corpus of textual material is available for the study of musk. The importance of musk as the best of aromatics, which were themselves symbolic of the purity and immortality of the divine Paradise, means that musk figures prominently in religious literature, which is examined in the fourth chapter. The history and geography of the musk trade, based primarily on accounts preserved by Arabic and Persian geographers and physicians, as well as the cultural importance of musk as seen in poetry and belles-lettres are studied in the fifth and sixth chapters. All of these sources have been used to produce a portrait of the use of musk in Islamic Near Eastern Civilization. This portrait reveals that the trade in musk was of great cultural, as well as economic significance, and thus throws more light on the workings of Eurasian commerce in the medieval period. |
