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From the Silk Road to the Railroad (and Back): The Means and Meanings of the Iranian Encounter with China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Nile Green
Nile Green*
Affiliation:
UCLA
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Abstract

In view of the recent expansion of Indo-Persian studies, the neglect of the Sino-Persian nexus is a missed opportunity to place Iranian history on a larger Asian stage. While Iranian contact with China has continued episodically from antiquity to modernity, scholars have so far focused almost exclusively on the pre-modern phases of exchange. As a contribution to developing the field of Sino-Persian studies, this article situates two twentieth century Iranian travelers to China against the changing background of Chinese–Iranian exchange from the medieval to modern period. In so doing, it demonstrates the infrastructural and conceptual apparatus that enabled the modern Iranian encounter with China while asking how, if at all, twentieth century intellectuals were able to draw on a longer history of interaction to find meanings for Sino-Persian exchange.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , March 2015 , pp. 165 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 The International Society for Iranian Studies

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Footnotes

I am most grateful to Jonathan Lipman, Masumi Matsumoto, Alexandre Papas and Rahim Shayegan for comments and suggestions. I am also thankful to the various Hui and Uighur Muslims who guided me through their mosques and other historical buildings in different parts of China.

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