About

Cultural Crossings: Exchanges Beyond the Silk Road is QAIC’s flagship program that aims to celebrate the transmission of culture along the Silk Road routes and highlight the living cultural traditions that continue to be expressed around the world today.

The Arabian Gulf sits at the crossroads of land and maritime trade routes, dating to the earliest iterations of the famous Silk Road over 2,000 years ago. Many goods—textiles, precious minerals, teas, and perfumes, to name a few—moved along this network of trade routes. But more than just the physical materials, the networks facilitated the …