Kazans and Connections
Iliyana Nalbantova
26 July 2021
The historical construct of the ancient Silk Road is often portrayed as an amalgamation of interactions and exchanges in an interconnected, shared past. But going beyond this popular imaginary, how can we understand the connections behind what has been constructed as the ancient Silk Road? What was their geographical extent? How did these exchanges affect different communities? What constituted the local and what transcended it?
Perfumes, porcelain, spice and, of course, silk are often invoked in an attempt to shed light on these questions. The kazan, a relatively plain and inconspicuous but ubiquitous cooking utensil, is virtually absent from the discussion of connections along the ancient Silk Road. Yet, the kazan can tell us much about the geographical spread of the network, the exchanges between nomads and city dwellers, and even the bitter disputes over ownership of heritage.
A display of a cauldron in the “Sharing a common future” exhibit, National Museum of China, Beijing
The kazan is a type of a cooking pot or a cauldron with a hemispherical shape traditionally made of cast iron. Thought to be invented by the medieval Turkic nomads, the kazan spread geographically from Central Asia to China in the East and to the Balkans in the West. The horizontal spread of the kazan along the Eurasian steppes fits a popular modern (Western) Silk Road imaginary conception as a corridor between East and West. However, the history of the kazan highlights the significance of the connections between North and South, too, as the utensil spread vertically across from the lower territories of the Ottoman Empire in the South to Tatarstan and Mongolia in the North.
The kazan was originally created by nomads to cater for the needs of nomads. Traditionally, it would be set over a fire on rocks or in a hearth dug in soil. In time, the simplicity and usefulness of the cauldron began to appeal to city dwellers and as a result, the utensil spread to urban settings where it was adapted to fit into indoors kitchen ranges and outdoors charcoal burners. Kazans of different sizes and with different attributes such as legs were created and served to prepare a wide range of local dishes from mantu dumplings to pilaf rice as well as to perform rituals – reminding us of the influence of nomads and their role as a key node in the connections forming what we now refer to as the Silk Road.
A visual representation of East-West and North-South connections along the Silk Road, Xi’an Museum, China
The spread of the kazan and its appropriation by communities with different needs and lifestyles did not make the original design obsolete, however. In fact, simple (as well as more sophisticated) cauldrons not only continue to be used for cooking both indoors and outdoors today but have also accommodated new uses. In the Balkans, for example, the kazan is central to the preparation of the traditional for the region fruit spirits called rakia (or rakija) today. The storymap below explores how the kazan connected different communities along the Silk Road imaginary separated by space, by lifestyle and by time.
The complexities of these connections, however, obscure the line between local and global along the Silk Road. Does the kazan belong to any one community? Does its legacy? At the turn of the twenty first century, questions of heritage ownership came to a dispute as the global South increasingly denied the legitimacy of art collections from pillaged objects. The Taikazan, or the “big kazan”, was placed at the center of such a dispute between Russia and Kazakhstan.
The Taikazan is a grandiose cauldron and a historic symbol of ritual, religion and tradition of the Timurid Empire. It was commissioned by Timur, founder of the empire, a fearsome conqueror and a patron of the arts, and it was crafted and decorated by the bronze master Abdulgaziz ibn Sharafutdin in 1399 in Turkistan. In 1935, the Taikazan was sent from Turkistan (city in present day Kazakhstan, then part of the Soviet Union) to Leningrad (present day St. Petersburg, Russia) as a part of a temporary, three month-long exhibition for the Third International Conference of Iranian Masters. However, the kazan was not sent back for decades.
The Taikazan was eventually returned to its original home in Turkistan 54 years later in 1989. Yet, reclaiming heritage to the local was only made possible by evoking the global. Upon return, the Taikazan was introduced in the Azret Sultan State Historical-Cultural Reserve-Museum in an exhibition celebrating the Great Steppe, a vast network stretching across Eurasia, rather than Turkistan, Kazakhstan or even the Timurid Empire alone.
Then, what constitutes the local and how it connects to the global construct of the Silk Road and beyond is fluid and dynamic, rather than rigid and fixed – much like the kazan itself.
An exploration of global and local along the Silk Road, Maritime Experiential Museum, Singapore
This feature was written with input from Dr. Marina Kaneti and her research paper entitled “China’s vision for multilateralism: a relational interpretation.”
Dr. Marina Kaneti is an Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. This research and write-up are part of a grant funded by the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. All images are available in the Image Repository.