Socio-economic and political history of the Silk Road in the 6th century AD

With the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen coining a new word, Silk Road, into the world language in 1877, studies on the history of the Silk Road began. The studies showed that the Silk Road is an Afro-Eurasian history. In other words, the Silk Road is world history. For this reason, it has been understood that it is necessary to write the history of an era instead of the history of some civilizations or states on the Silk Road. The most important factor in determining the subject of our thesis has been the Covid-19 pandemic. It has allowed historical research to observe how an epidemic spreads and what socio-economic consequences it entails, and even what political results it creates. The following are the questions we are looking for answers to in our study; where and why did the Justinian plague appear in the sixth century? How did it spread? What are the socio-economic and political consequences? To answer these questions, we utilized the disciplines of medicine, archaeology, climatology and economics in our dissertation. According to our results, among the factors which affected the Justinian plague is the Late Antique Little Ice Age that occurred in the sixth century. The origin of the Justinian plague is the plague foci in the Tian Shan in Kyrgyzstan. We also determined that in the sixth century, which Peter Brown described as "Archaic Globalization", the Silk Road trade became global enough to spread the pandemic. The consequences of the epidemic were the decline of Indian Maritime trade and the increase of trade wars on the Silk Road. Thus, the Byzantine Empire allied with the Türk Khaganate to use the Caucasian branch of the Overland Silk Road as an alternative route due to the breaking of the Sasanian monopoly and the falling of the Maritime Silk Road.