Central Asia is coming to London
news of a major Silk Roads exhibition, plus a recipe for a bygone Uzbek salad
Journeys Beyond Borders is different this week in that it is a dual destination dispatch. We’ll start in London (not typical territory for this newsletter), and then, for reasons that will become clear, head briefly to Samarkand, or rather to the northeast of the modern city and to a former hill fort called Afrosiab.
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When I was a young student in London, long before I ever set foot in Central Asia, I used to sometimes stand stock still staring through the glass of a cabinet in the British Museum.
Back then, more than twenty years ago, you could simply stroll up the museum’s grand stairs and enter without the delays of security checks so I would occasionally saunter through, using the BM as a short cut on my walk to SOAS (University of London). What luxury!
With spare time, though, I would wander deeper into the maze of halls, inevitably drawn to a certain room containing what is collectively known as the Oxus Treasure, or Oxus Gold.
The hoard (not all of which is always on display), dating back to around the 4th-century BC, was found in what is today southern Tajikistan, and it includes armlets, animal figurines, rings and plaques. But the most striking of all, to me at least, is the chariot, weighing 75g - little more than an egg - and standing just 8cm tall. Small, yet intensely powerful. Full of character, movement and life. A wonder.
The Oxus lot, of over 170 objects, was discovered in 1880 - during the height of the Great Game era as British and Russian empires fought over influence in Central Asia - when Captain Burton, a British officer in Afghanistan, rescued a group of kidnapped merchants who'd been taken by bandits while travelling between Kabul and Peshawar.
The details are murky but the traders had with them a priceless stash of the finest ancient goldsmithery imaginable. One of the most important surviving collections of Achaemenid Persian metalwork ever found. Apparently discovered on the banks of the River Oxus, later to be “bequeathed” to the British Museum (much has been recently written about the cultural theft and restitution of objects at the BM and other museums, just last month The New Yorker published this piece about recent scandals).
Having marvelled at the Oxus gold over the years, I’ve always associated the British Museum with Central Asia, and my university days, so I was excited to learn that this autumn a major new exhibition will be on display entitled Silk Roads: Journey beyond sand and spices.
The show promises to “highlight objects from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan that have never been seen in the UK before” whilst also underpinning “the importance of Central Asia to this continent-spanning story.”
The story of the Silk Roads is as huge as it is unruly. A giant and wayward swathe of geographies, peoples and even spiritual expanses, about as far from a straightforward ‘road’ as you can get. It is better to think of it as a vast network appearing like capillaries, arteries or tributaries. But ‘Silk Roads’ remains a handy term for such a vast topic.
While there will be all manner of enticing objects on display, each one with unique tales to tell, there is one large tableaux travelling to the UK that I am expecting to steal the show.
Exhibition literature suggests that coming from Uzbekistan’s own Afrosiab Museum will be a wall painting, dating from the mid-7th century. It is from the ceremonial hall of the Palace of Afrosiab, in the ancient city of Afrosiab (near modern-day Samarkand) and it will be displayed for the first time in the UK.
The British Museum states this will offer visitors “A spectacular glimpse of the Sogdians in their homeland [showing] the local ruler's entourage travelling to the shrine of his ancestors to pay their respects. The entire mural features envoys from distant lands, and scenes about India and Tang-dynasty China, conveying the Sogdians' vision of themselves as integral players along the Silk Roads.”
The Sogdians - people of great mercantile and artistic ability - exchanged goods and ideas between China and other parts of Asia from the early 3rd century BC until the 10th century AD, while producing their own unique culture in their homelands around Bukhara and Samarkand.
What exactly is portrayed in the paintings is debated by scholars partly as the scenes depicted are patchy with large parts missing. The historian Christoph Baumer says in his book A History of Central Asia: The Age of the Silk Roads of this particular mural:
“two bearded men, each carrying a ceremonial staff, are riding camels at the front of a group consisting of a priest … the riderless horse symbolises the deceased king Shishpir.”
In the beautifully illustrated book Silk Roads edited by Susan Whitfield, a leading scholar of the Silk Roads, the wall painting is described more simply as: “Zoroastrian priests leading animals for sacrifice.”
I visited the Afrosiab Museum a few years ago and I remember the space to be small and unassuming given the importance of what lay inside. The building itself was a classic Soviet-looking building, brutalist but with local motifs, built in the 1970s using marble. I remember how cool it was inside the halls, devoid of other visitors, and how everything smelled faintly dusty. It was a little drab inside the galleries, the displays formal and uninviting, not an ideal setting for such grandeur, such a spectacular murals. But it was where it should be, in Afrosiab, not in the Hermitage in St Petersburg where many Central Asian artefacts are kept, or in grand London museums.
While it is a more exciting, and more fitting, prospect to see it in Uzbekistan, I do wonder if seeing the mural afresh, with all the fanfare, expensive lighting and curation that the British Museum will offer it, will mean seeing it with fresh eyes.
The photographs on my phone tell me that during same the day of my trip out to Afrosiab I’d also gone to the the Samarkand plov centre for a lunchtime treat. Alongside Uzbekistan’s ubiquitous rice dish (this version came with quail eggs and yellow carrots), I ordered salads and a teapot steaming with green chai.
I thought of this salad in relation to this newsletter as way before New World ingredients such as chillies and tomatoes arrived in Uzbekistan, fruit was used to provide sweet or sour flavours. Quince was paired with lamb while black and pink radishes went with cherries and blackberries for salads to serve with plov and shashlik, which benefit from acidity.
Below is a recipe to try, perhaps as you book your tickets for the BM’s blockbuster autumn show.
A Bygone Uzbek Salad
Based on a recipe that features in my book Red Sands, I have slightly adapted the recipe here. This is mainly because in the book there is an additional recipe for how to make your own pink pickled onions which is too drawn out for here. For ease, a shop bought jar of pink pickled onions would work just fine.
Serves 2
150g/5oz black radish, sliced into wafer-thin coins
Handful of pistachios, shelled
1 tbsp of olive oil
100g/3½oz pickled red onions
Flaky sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to season
There is no detailed method here, as the flavours happily do their own thing. Simply arrange the radishes, pickled onions and pistachios on a plain white plate to let the colours sing.
Drizzle over a little oil and add a pinch of salt and pepper.