I’ve always loved the romantic notion of the Silk Road stretching from China through Asia, the Middle East and into Europe. A road travelled by countless travellers from the 2nd century BCE through to the mid 15th century. Merchants, travellers and pilgrims carrying commodities and currencies, spreading culture, ideas and religion.
I recently heard a report from one of those golden cities on the Silk Road, Bukhara in modern day Uzbekistan. A city of ancient libraries and mosques and beautiful Islamic art and architecture. A city too of Jewish culture – and later too a Christian church. Cultures and religions living side by side.
Not long ago, one late Autumn afternoon I was in Durham Cathedral. Evensong had finished. No-one was about. I was there with two friends for a few moments of quiet. Another magnificent building and, with its links to Lindisfarne, a place of pilgrimage and culture across the centuries. A symbol of the enduring history of the Christian Church.
So what links the two?
In Durham Cathedral a thin black line is set into the marble floor near the back of the building, far from the altar. It marks the boundary beyond which women were prohibited to venture. A physical and symbolic sign of control. And Bukhara? Control there went a stage further. Its economy rested on its being, for centuries, a major centre for the slave trade.
Chris Dawson