Beyond the Caucasus. Northern Pathways from Constantinople to Inner Eurasia from Justinian to Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (6th-10th Centuries)

Connections between the Byzantine Empire and the wider world of AfroEurAsia are still predominantly examined through the lens of the “Silk Road”, focusing on some main axes of terrestrial or maritime trade between the megacities of the medieval Middle East and East Asia. Routes from the Black Sea and Northwestern Caucasia, however, always provided alternative pathways towards Inner Eurasia, which allowed Constantinople in the sixth and seventh centuries to circumvent Sasanian Persia for diplomatic negotiations with the Western Turkic Khanate, for instance. These contacts equally involved the exchange of commodities such as silk, which can also be traced in archaeological sites such as Moščevaja Balka. Furthermore, these findings from the eighth and ninth centuries include fragments of Chinese writing and Buddhist texts, highlighting even more far-reaching connections in a period otherwise considered a time of contraction of Byzantium’s global reach. This paper illustrates the continuity of these connections from the sixth to the tenth centuries, when new commercial dynamics between the Middle East, Central Asia, Eastern Europe and Scandinavia made these regions even more relevant for Byzantine politics.