MEASURING TIME ALONG THE SILK ROAD AT THE TIME OF MARCO POLO

Abstract

The Silk Road is a metaphorical term for the network of roads extending from Southern Europe to East Asia. In the Middle Ages, this vast area included the Eastern Mediterranean, Byzantium, the Muslim Middle East, India and China. Expensive commodities were supplied through this network and various cultural and scientific achievements were exchanged. Thus, astronomical knowledge, hour systems and clocks were exchanged too. In this paper, their study is based primarily on the works of al-Biruni. Travelling over several thousand kilometers at the time of Marco Polo, the Silk Road travellers used to come across different timing systems: temporal and equinoctial. The first was a formal system according to which synchronization of social activities was performed, while the other was used only by scientists. Therefore, there were various sundial constructions of ancient Greek origin for the temporal system, while, as far as is known, equinoctial sundials existed only in ancient China at the time. Besides, during the Middle Ages, as products of naive gnomonics, semicircular sundials became widespread across Europe. They did not belong to any of the previously mentioned systems, and, paradoxically, they dictated a separate time system of their own – one showing unequal hours