ABSTRACT
Throughout the history of the Silk Road, periods of thriving communications along it alternated with those of low-intensity contacts or outright disconnection. While the former often focuses on the limelight, the latter carries too much information about communications between the East and the West. One such period was the final century and a half of the first millennium when land communications between the Muslim world and China ground to a halt. The same period saw the flourishing of an unlikely connection between Central Asia and the Baltic area that consisted in an exchange of slaves and furs for Islamic silver coins, dirhams. Were the two systems related? Did one replace the other? This chapter will attempt some answers by looking at the two systems in connection.
