Mercantile Harmony: The Ancient Silk Roads as Intercultural Meeting Points Amongst Monks, Pilgrims and Merchants

The international and intercultural relations of Asia are frequently perceived and predicted to be ripe for conflict. This chapter poses a counter-question by reading the stories and recollections of pilgrims that have travelled the Middle East, Persia, Central Asia, the Straits of Malacca and the Indian Ocean towards Arabia: have the different faiths of pilgrims and the rival ideologies of merchants stoked inevitable conflict in southern Asia’s pre-modern past? Based on a philosophical reading of assorted texts by Ibn Battuta, Fa-Hsien, Tome Pires and Marco Polo, this chapter ventures the answer that ancient Asians and Europeans have developed a unique sense of circulating and integrating difference into hybrid amalgamations that have generated a culture of toleration that co-evolved with prosperous trading relations all along the maritime Silk Road.