The Kushan Empire

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Craig Benjamin

Published:

2021

Publisher:

Oxford University PressNew York

Abstract The Kushan Empire remains one of the least known of all ancient empires. Yet between ca. 50 and ca. 250 ce the Kushans dominated the political, cultural, and economic landscape of a vast region of Inner Eurasia, including extensive parts of Central, East, and South Asia. Along with their direct political and military control of this enormous realm, the veritable “crossroads of Eurasia,” the Kushans also exerted significant influence upon much of ancient Eurasia by playing a crucial role in facilitating the extraordinary levels of cross-cultural exchange that characterize the first Silk Roads Era. For two centuries the Kushans were one of the key powers of their era during a period in which much of Afro-Eurasia was controlled by just four imperial states. So crucial were they to this dynamic and interconnected period in world history that the First Silk Roads Era could justifiably be renamed the “Kushan Era.”

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