58 Fun Facts About Silk Road

Roughly how long was the overland Silk Road from China to the Mediterranean?

About 6,400 km (4,000 miles) is the figure usually given for the overland Silk Road, stretching from the Chinese capital at Chang'an westward to the Mediterranean coast.

Which German geographer popularised the term 'Silk Road' (Seidenstraße) in 1877?

Ferdinand von Richthofen coined Seidenstraße in 1877 after his travels in China; his pupil Sven Hedin later popularised the name with his 1938 book The Silk Road.

Which emperor dispatched the 138 BCE embassy that opened China's route to Central Asia?

Emperor Wu, who reigned from 141 to 87 BCE, dispatched the envoy to seek allies against the Xiongnu, and the reports he brought back spurred the push into Central Asia.

Which Han envoy's missions to the West, from 138 BCE, trail-blazed the Silk Road?

Zhang Qian was sent to recruit the Yuezhi as allies against the Xiongnu; his reports on Ferghana, Bactria and the lands beyond gave the court its first clear picture of the West.

Roughly how long did the Xiongnu hold the envoy captive on his outward journey?

About ten years passed in Xiongnu captivity, during which the envoy took a Xiongnu wife; he then escaped, reached the Yuezhi, and was held again for a year on the way home.

What were the 'heavenly horses' that drew Han China towards Ferghana?

Tall, powerful mounts prized for fighting nomads, the Ferghana horses were so coveted that the Chinese court fought a war against Dayuan in 104–101 BCE to seize breeding stock.

The northern Silk Road began at Chang'an, which is now called what?

Xi'an, in Shaanxi province, stands on the site of Chang'an, capital of several dynasties and the eastern terminus of the route.

The overland Silk Road split into northern and southern branches to skirt which desert?

The Taklamakan, in the Tarim Basin, was too arid to cross, so caravans followed oasis towns along its northern and southern rims before the routes rejoined at Kashgar.

Which empire, Rome's eastern neighbour, controlled the overland routes in the 1st century CE?

The Parthian Empire, Rome's rival on its eastern frontier from the 1st century BCE until 224 CE, controlled the routes across Iran and took a cut of the silk passing west.

Which of these was a Western export sent east along the Silk Road?

Wine travelled east from the Mediterranean and Persia along with glassware, gold and woollen textiles, while silk and lacquerware flowed west.

Why did the Roman Senate repeatedly, and vainly, try to ban the wearing of silk?

It drained gold and was thought immoral: the Senate's edicts cited the outflow of gold to the East, while Seneca complained that silk garments hid neither a woman's body nor her decency.

Per Chinese histories, in what year did the first Roman embassy reach China?

166 CE is the year the Chinese dynastic history records an embassy from 'Andun', the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, arriving by sea at Rinan on the Gulf of Tonkin.

According to Strabo, how many ships a year sailed from Roman Egypt to India by the time of Augustus?

Up to 120 ships a year sailed from the Red Sea port of Myos Hormos to India under Augustus, Strabo wrote, where under the Ptolemies only a very few had ventured.

Which Byzantine emperor sent monks to smuggle silkworm eggs out of the East in the 6th century?

Justinian I, emperor from 527 to 565, commissioned the mission around 552; the eggs smuggled from the East let Constantinople breed its own silkworms and end its dependence on Persian middlemen.

How did the two monks carry the silkworm eggs back to Constantinople?

Hidden inside their bamboo canes, the eggs survived the long journey west and hatched in Constantinople, seeding the silk industry that Byzantium would guard as a state monopoly.

Which Central Asian people dominated Silk Road trade from the 4th to the 8th century?

The Sogdians, from the region around Samarkand and Bukhara, ran the caravan trade for centuries; in 568 a Sogdian envoy, Maniakh, reached Justin II to open direct silk trade bypassing Persia.

What did the Tang dynasty do to the Silk Road in 639?

Reopened it by conquering the Western Regions: the general Hou Junji's 639–640 campaign against Gaochang restored Chinese control, which Tibet seized in 678 and the Tang regained in 699.

At which battle in 751 did the Abbasid Caliphate halt Chinese westward expansion?

Talas, fought on the river of that name in Central Asia in 751, saw Abbasid and Karluk forces rout the Tang army led by Gao Xianzhi.

Which craft is said to have reached the Islamic world through Chinese prisoners taken at a battle in 751?

Papermaking spread west after 751: Chinese captives taken at the battle are said to have taught the craft in Samarkand, from where paper mills spread across the caliphate within a few decades.

Which city did the Abbasids build that became the most important on the Silk Road?

Baghdad, founded by the caliph al-Mansur in 762 on the Tigris, grew into the caliphate's capital and the greatest market city on the routes between East and West.

Which Mongol ruler had Bukhara and Samarkand burned to the ground in the early 13th century?

Genghis Khan's armies took Bukhara and Samarkand in 1220 during the Khwarazmian campaign, slaughtering or enslaving much of the population and leaving the cities in ruins.

Which ruler made Samarkand his capital in 1370 and filled it with forcibly moved artisans?

Timur, known in the West as Tamerlane, made Samarkand his capital in 1370 and deported craftsmen from conquered cities to build monuments such as the Bibi-Khanym Mosque.

Between which years did Marco Polo travel through Asia along the Silk Road?

1271–1295 spans the journey: Marco Polo left Venice with his father and uncle in 1271, spent some 17 years in Kublai Khan's service, and returned home in 1295.

Which Moroccan traveller crossed the Silk Road from Tabriz between 1325 and 1354?

Ibn Battuta, born in Tangier in 1304, set out on pilgrimage in 1325 and kept travelling for nearly 30 years, reaching India, the Maldives and China before returning to Morocco.

Which Christian diplomat left Beijing in the 1280s to seek alliances with Edward I, Philip IV and the Pope?

Rabban Bar Sauma, a monk of the Church of the East born near Beijing, reached Constantinople, Rome, Paris and Bordeaux in 1287–88 on behalf of the Ilkhanate.

Whose control of the overland routes from 1453 pushed Europeans to seek sea routes to Asia?

The Ottoman Empire, after taking Constantinople in 1453, sat astride the routes to the East; its tolls and wars helped push Portugal and Spain to seek sea routes, opening the Age of Discovery.

Which people held a near-monopoly on Persian silk exports between 1700 and 1765?

Armenians of New Julfa, the merchant suburb of Isfahan founded by Shah Abbas I in the early 1600s, ran the Persian raw-silk export trade through networks stretching from Amsterdam to India.

Which religion spread from India to China along the Silk Road, its monasteries sheltering travellers?

Buddhism travelled from India through Central Asia to China in the first centuries CE; merchants endowed monasteries along the route and found lodging in them from city to city.

Which Chinese pilgrim's Silk Road journey to India was fictionalised as Journey to the West?

Xuanzang left for India in 629 and returned in 645 with hundreds of sutras; the 16th-century novel Journey to the West turned his pilgrimage into a fantasy with a monkey king for company.

A stele of 781 records missionaries of which branch of Christianity arriving in China via the Silk Road?

It carried Syriac with it; Nestorian, Manichaean and Buddhist faiths all reached China this way.

The southern stretches of the route from Khotan were first used, as early as 5000 BCE, to trade what?

Jade, the nephrite of the Khotan river beds, was carried east into China thousands of years before silk moved west, which is why some Chinese writers prefer the name 'Jade Road'.

The Tarim mummies, dated as early as 1600 BCE, suggest what about the region?

Very ancient contact between East and West is what their culture implies: the mummies were buried with woollen twill cloth, wheat and dairy products that all originated far to the west of the Tarim Basin.

Which Greek historian described a trade route east across the steppe in the 5th century BCE?

Herodotus, writing around 430 BCE, described a route from the Black Sea through Scythian lands far into Central Asia, the steppe precursor of the later silk routes.

Who primarily established and operated the Maritime Silk Road in Southeast Asia?

Austronesian sailors from island Southeast Asia pioneered the sea lanes in sewn-plank, lashed-lug vessels and carried spices and goods between India and China centuries before Chinese ocean-going junks appeared.

Which section of the Silk Road became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014?

The Chang'an–Tianshan corridor, a 5,000 km network across China and Central Asia with 33 component sites, was inscribed in 2014; the Zarafshan–Karakum corridor followed in 2023.

What is a caravanserai?

An inn for merchants and their animals, the caravanserai was built around a walled courtyard with storerooms and stabling, and such inns stood roughly a day's journey apart along the main routes.

How many humps does the Bactrian camel, the classic Silk Road pack animal, have?

Two humps distinguish the Bactrian camel from the one-humped dromedary; its thick coat and tolerance of cold and drought suited the deserts and mountain passes of Central Asia.

The Mogao Caves, with their walled-up Library Cave, lie near which Silk Road oasis?

Dunhuang, the last oasis before the desert crossings westward, lies about 25 km from the Mogao Caves, whose 492 decorated grottoes were cut into a cliff from the 4th century onward.

What is the Diamond Sutra of 868, found in the Library Cave at Mogao?

The earliest dated printed book, the scroll bears a colophon dated to 11 May 868; it was printed with woodblocks and is held today by the British Library.

Which archaeologist reached the Library Cave in 1907 and removed thousands of manuscripts?

Aurel Stein, working for the British, paid the cave's caretaker for thousands of manuscripts and paintings in 1907, including the Diamond Sutra; Paul Pelliot followed for France in 1908.

Who found the Library Cave at Mogao around 1900?

A Taoist abbot, Wang Yuanlu, who had made himself caretaker of the caves, uncovered the sealed chamber in 1900 while clearing sand; he later sold manuscripts to fund repairs to the statues.

What is the process of unwinding the filament from a softened silk cocoon called?

Reeling is the unwinding of the softened cocoon's continuous filament onto a reel; several filaments are combined to make a single raw-silk thread.

Silk production originated in China during which period?

The Neolithic Yangshao culture of the 4th millennium BCE provides the earliest evidence, including a silkworm cocoon cut in half found at Xiyin village in Shanxi.

Where did Xi Jinping first announce the 'Silk Road Economic Belt' in September 2013?

Astana, Kazakhstan hosted the speech at Nazarbayev University on 7 September 2013; a month later in Jakarta he added the '21st-century Maritime Silk Road', and together they became the Belt and Road Initiative.

Warwick Ball calls the Silk Road a modern 'myth' partly because which commerce mattered far more to Rome?

The maritime spice trade with India and Arabia, Ball argues, dwarfed the overland silk trade in Rome's economy; Roman ships sailed the monsoon route from the Red Sea to Indian ports.

What does 'relay trade' mean in the context of the Silk Road?

Goods changed hands many times before arriving: a bale of silk might pass through Central Asian, Persian and Syrian middlemen, each taking a profit, so that almost no merchant travelled the whole route.

The southern 'Karakoram route' survives as a paved highway through which pass linking Pakistan and China?

Khunjerab Pass, at 4,693 m on the Pakistan–China border, carries the Karakoram Highway, completed in 1979 and opened to the public in 1986, along the line of the old southern route.

Which Han general led 70,000 troops west in the 1st century CE and reached the Caspian shore?

Ban Chao, Protector General of the Western Regions, campaigned across the Tarim Basin for some 30 years and in 97 CE dispatched his envoy Gan Ying towards Rome, though Gan turned back at the Persian Gulf.

Which navigational instrument was in use at sea in Song China by the early 1100s?

The magnetic compass was used for navigation in Song China by the early 12th century, decades before its first recorded use in the Mediterranean around 1190.

Which blue stone flecked with gold was traded along the Silk Road and ground into powder for paint?

Lapis lazuli, mined for millennia at Sar-i Sang in Afghanistan's Badakhshan, was carried west to Egypt and Mesopotamia and later ground into ultramarine, the costliest blue pigment of medieval painters.

Which Roman writer, unlike Seneca and Virgil, described silk as the product of a moth?

Pliny the Elder described in his Natural History the bombyx, a moth whose caterpillars spin the thread that is wound into silk, an account most of his contemporaries ignored.

Under the Umayyads, which city overtook Ctesiphon as the region's major trade centre?

Damascus, the Umayyad capital from 661, drew the trade that had once flowed to Sasanian Ctesiphon, until the Abbasids moved the centre of power east to the Tigris in 762.

From which Crimean port did Genoese ships carry the Black Death to Europe in 1347?

Kaffa, the Genoese colony now called Feodosia, was under Mongol siege in 1346 when plague struck; ships fleeing to Sicily and Genoa in 1347 carried the disease into Europe.

Whose party is said to have reached farthest east along the Silk Road from the Mediterranean?

Maës Titianus, a merchant of Macedonian background, sent agents east as far as the 'Stone Tower', usually placed at Tashkurgan in the Pamirs, and Ptolemy drew on their itinerary for his Geography.

Which Tarim Basin oasis town, abandoned in the 4th century, was rediscovered in 1900?

Loulan, a garrison town on the shore of the vanished Lop Nur lake, was deserted as the waters shifted, and its ruins were found by Sven Hedin in 1900.

Which Chinese province did the northern Silk Road pass through after leaving Shaanxi?

Gansu's Hexi Corridor, a chain of oases between the Qilian Mountains and the Gobi, carried the route from Lanzhou northwest to the frontier passes at the province's far end.

Frankincense, aloes and myrrh reached China along the northern Silk Road from which region?

Persia sent dates, saffron and pistachios, India sandalwood and Egypt glass bottles; China returned silk brocade, lacquer and porcelain.

Which Mongol ruler sent a Christian monk from China as envoy to Europe in 1287?

Arghun, Ilkhan of Persia from 1284 to 1291 and a grandnephew of Kublai Khan, sought a Christian alliance against the Mamluks; his envoy met Philip IV in Paris and Edward I in Gascony.