SILK ROAD NETWORK The Silk Roads continued to focus on luxury items such as silk and other items whose weight to value ratio was low. In the post-classical age, however, the Silk Roads diffused important technologies such as paper-making and gunpowder. Continuing a phenomenon from the classical age, they would also spread disease; the Black Death would spread from Asia to Western Europe along Silk Road and maritime routes eventually killing about one third of the people there. Despite these continuities, the Silk Road network would be transformed by cultural, technological and political developments. By 600 C.E., the classical empires of China, India and Rome had all crashed. Silk Road trade declined with them. The rise of the Islamic Abbasid Caliphate would invigorate trade along the Silk Roads once again. Sharia law, which gave protection to merchants, was established across the Dar al-Islam. Indian, Armenian, Christian and Jewish merchants alike took advantage of Muslim legal protection.[2] Courts and Islamic jurists called qadis presided over legal and trade disputes. All of this enabled trade by decreasing the risks associated with commerce. A more important boost to Silk Road trade in this era was the rise of the Mongol Empire. The Mongols defeated the Abbasid Caliphate in 1258 and the vast Pax Mongolica soon placed the majority of the Silk Roads under one administrative empire. Merchants were more likely to experience safe travel.[3] The Mongol code of law, known as the Yassa, imposed strict punishments on those disturbing trade.[4] The rule of the Mongols in central Asia coincided with the peak of Silk Road trade between 600 and 1450 C.E..
The archaeological site of Carthage was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1979. Punic and Roman ruins at Carthage, Tunisia. According to tradition, Carthage was founded by the Phoenicians of Tyre in 814 bce; its Phoenician name means “new town.”
