54 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) lay between the Chinese capital and the Mediterranean, though the 'road' was never one highway but a shifting network of caravan routes.

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 sent an envoy west in about 138 BCE, opening China's route to Central Asia?

Emperor Wu sent the envoy to seek allies against the Xiongnu, who were raiding his northern borders, and the reports that came back spurred the Han push into Central Asia.

Which Han envoy's missions to the West, begun about 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 Han envoy captive on his way west?

About ten years, thirteen by some accounts, passed in captivity, during which he took a Xiongnu wife and had a son; he then escaped and pressed on west, only to be captured again 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 said to sweat blood, and the Chinese court sent two armies against Dayuan to bring breeding stock home.

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

Xi'an is the name the Ming dynasty settled on for Chang'an; the Eastern Han had moved their capital east to Luoyang, but the Sui and Tang later made the old city their capital again.

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

The Taklamakan has so little water that crossing it was hazardous, so caravans kept to the oasis towns along its northern and southern edges, and the two routes met again at Kashgar.

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

The Parthian Empire grew rich taxing the silk caravans, and a Chinese history says it blocked Roman envoys from reaching China so that it could keep the trade in its own hands.

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

Wine went east alongside horses and honey: Han envoys to Central Asia reported home that the people of Ferghana made theirs from grapes.

Why did the Roman Senate try to curb the wearing of silk?

It drained gold and was thought immoral: under Tiberius the Senate resolved that Oriental silks should no longer degrade men, but the law proved ineffectual and silk kept flowing in.

Chinese histories say the first Roman embassy reached China in 166 CE, in which Roman emperor's reign?

Marcus Aurelius is the likely 'Andun' of the Chinese record; the envoys arrived from the south through Vietnam, probably by sea, bearing ivory, rhinoceros horn and tortoise shell.

By Augustus's day some 120 ships a year sailed from Roman Egypt to India, riding which winds?

The monsoon winds let sailors cross the open ocean; Strabo, visiting Egypt, heard that 120 vessels were leaving Myos Hormos for India, where under the Ptolemies only a very few had dared.

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

Justinian I backed the monks' mission around 552; the eggs they brought back let the empire raise its own silkworms, and silk-making became an imperial monopoly.

How are the monks who smuggled silkworm eggs to Constantinople said to have carried them?

Hidden inside their bamboo canes is the popular version of the story; another Byzantine writer credits a Persian, not monks, with bringing the eggs to Constantinople.

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

The Sogdians, from around Samarkand and Bukhara, made their language the common tongue of the caravan trade; in 568 a Sogdian-led embassy reached Constantinople to sell silk direct, bypassing Persia.

What did Tang China do to the Silk Road around 640?

Reopened it by conquering the Western Regions: the oasis kingdom of Gaochang, allied with the Western Turks, had been blocking the route until the general Hou Junji marched in and annexed it.

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

Talas, fought beside a river in Central Asia, was not the final blow: four years later the An Lushan Rebellion forced China to pull its troops out of the region altogether.

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

Papermaking is said to have been taught in Samarkand by captives from the battle, but the tale has a hole: paper was already known and used there decades before 751.

Which city did the Abbasid caliphs build as their capital, making it a great hub of Silk Road trade?

Baghdad was commissioned by the caliph al-Mansur in 762 and was a hub of learning and commerce within a generation; five centuries later a Mongol army largely destroyed it.

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

Genghis Khan invaded after a Khwarazmian governor at Otrar seized a Mongol trade caravan and killed its merchants; Bukhara and Samarkand both fell to him in 1220.

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

Timur, known in the West as Tamerlane, could massacre a captured city's people yet spare its artisans, who were deported to Samarkand to help rebuild his capital over the next 35 years.

Which Mongol ruler did Marco Polo serve for some 17 years after travelling the Silk Road to China?

Kublai Khan kept Marco Polo in his service for some 17 years; back in Italy, Polo was captured by the Genoese and dictated the story of his travels to a cellmate.

Which Moroccan traveller used Silk Road routes on travels that lasted from 1325 to 1354?

Ibn Battuta left Tangier meaning to make the pilgrimage to Mecca and kept travelling for nearly 30 years; Morocco's sultan then had him dictate the whole story to a scholar.

Which Christian envoy of the Mongols toured Europe in 1287–88 seeking alliances with Edward I, Philip IV and the Pope?

Rabban Bar Sauma set out from China as a pilgrim bound for Jerusalem, never got there because of war, and ended up as the Persian Mongols' ambassador to Rome, Paris and Bordeaux.

Which empire's grip on the Silk Road after 1453 is traditionally said to have driven Europeans to seek sea routes?

The Ottoman Empire took Constantinople in 1453, but the old story has a snag: Portuguese ships were already working their way down Africa's coast and had passed the Senegal River by 1445.

Which people did Shah Abbas resettle at New Julfa, near Isfahan, for their skill in the silk trade?

Armenians were moved from their home town of Julfa by Shah Abbas, who granted some of them silk monopolies; their trading network came to stretch from Amsterdam to Manila.

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

Buddhism reached China in the first centuries CE with monks who travelled in merchant caravans; the traders funded monasteries along the way and lodged in them between cities.

Which classic Chinese novel fictionalises the Silk Road monk Xuanzang?

Journey to the West, a 16th-century fantasy, gives the monk a monkey king for a bodyguard; the real Xuanzang came home with hundreds of sutras and spent his last years translating them.

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

Nestorian missionaries led by a monk called Alopen reached the Chinese capital in 635, the stele records; it is thought to have been buried during a persecution in 845 and was not dug up again until the 1620s.

Long before silk, the southern Silk Road from Khotan into China carried a trade in which material?

Jade from Khotan has been found in Chinese tombs of the Shang dynasty, a thousand years before the silk trade began; its caravans entered China through a frontier post called the Jade Gate.

What do the oldest Tarim mummies, some 4,000 years old, suggest?

Very ancient contact between East and West is what the graves imply: DNA shows the earliest mummies were an isolated local people, yet they herded dairy animals and grew wheat, both skills from outside.

Centuries before the Silk Road, which Greek historian described a trade route running east across the steppe?

Herodotus traced the peoples living north-east of the Black Sea as far as a wall of impassable mountains, noting that Scythians who traded there did business through seven interpreters.

The silkworms that spun the Silk Road's silk feed on the leaves of which tree?

Mulberry leaves are the silkworm's food; legend has a Chinese princess smuggle silkworm eggs and mulberry seeds to Khotan in her headdress, so that her new kingdom could make silk.

What was a caravanserai on the Silk Road?

An inn for merchants and their animals, the caravanserai was walled like a fort against bandits, and they stood about a day's journey apart so that no caravan had to spend a night on the open road.

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

Dunhuang lies about 25 km from the Mogao Caves, where the Library Cave was walled up in the 11th century and lay forgotten, manuscripts and all, for some 900 years.

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

The earliest dated printed book, the scroll ends with a note that Wang Jie had it made 'for universal free distribution' on behalf of his two parents, on a day equal to 11 May 868.

Which Silk Road archaeologist reached Mogao's Library Cave in 1907 and removed thousands of manuscripts?

Aurel Stein knew no Chinese, so the manuscripts he bought at the cave were a lucky dip; Paul Pelliot, fluent in the language, picked out the choicest a year later.

Who found the Library Cave at Mogao around 1900?

A Taoist abbot, Wang Yuanlu, had appointed himself guardian of the caves and was restoring one in 1900 when he found a walled-up doorway; he later sold manuscripts to pay for more repairs.

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

Reeling follows a hot-water bath that loosens the gum binding the cocoon and kills the pupa inside, so the filament comes away in one continuous strand before any moth can break it.

Silk production originated in China during which period?

The Neolithic is when silk begins: legend credits an empress whose teacup a cocoon fell into, but the hard evidence is a cocoon sliced open with a knife, dug up at a Yangshao village site.

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.

Archaeologist Warwick Ball calls the Silk Road a 'myth', arguing which trade mattered more to Rome?

The spice trade with India, Ball argues, weighed far more in Rome's economy than Chinese silk; even Marco Polo, who travelled it, never called it the 'Silk Road', a name coined only in the 19th century.

On the Silk Road, what was 'relay trade'?

Goods changed hands many times before arriving: few people ever travelled the whole route, so a bale of silk passed along a chain of middlemen and trading posts instead.

Which Chinese general won back the Tarim Basin oasis states and in 97 CE sent an envoy to seek out Rome?

Ban Chao's envoy Gan Ying reached the shore of a great western sea, where local sailors told such tales of the crossing that he gave up and went home without ever seeing Rome.

Which navigational instrument were Chinese pilots on the Maritime Silk Road using by the early 1100s?

The magnetic compass began as a fortune-teller's tool, used in geomancy long before any sailor trusted it; Chinese pilots were steering by it decades before Europe's first mention around 1190.

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

Lapis lazuli from the mines of Badakhshan in Afghanistan was ground into ultramarine, a blue at times valued as highly as gold, which Renaissance painters saved for the Virgin Mary's robes.

Which Roman writer described a moth, the bombyx, whose webs were woven into silk for women's clothing?

Pliny the Elder described the bombyx spinning webs 'like spiders' that became luxury cloth; yet of the distant Seres he repeated the old tale that their silk was combed from the leaves of trees.

Under the Umayyads, which city became the caliphate's capital and a major Silk Road trade centre?

Damascus became the Umayyad capital in 661; Ctesiphon, the old Persian capital, had fallen to Arab armies in 637 and stood largely empty within two centuries.

From which Crimean port are Genoese ships said to have carried the Black Death to Europe in 1347?

Kaffa, a Genoese colony now called Feodosia, was under Mongol siege when plague broke out; a chronicler who was not there claims the besiegers hurled infected corpses over the walls.

The Silk Road city of Samarkand lies in which modern country?

Uzbekistan's Samarkand was known to the Greeks as Maracanda; it was there that Alexander the Great killed his officer Cleitus in a drunken quarrel.

Which Silk Road town beside the vanished lake Lop Nur was rediscovered in 1900?

Loulan was abandoned around 330 CE, probably because its water supply failed; Sven Hedin came upon the ruins in 1900 and returned the next year to dig out its written records.

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

Gansu holds the Hexi Corridor, a narrow string of oases hemmed in by the Qilian Mountains on one side and desert on the other, which funnelled traders and armies west from China.

Which Ming admiral led seven treasure fleets along the Maritime Silk Road as far as East Africa?

Zheng He, captured as a boy and made a palace eunuch, commanded seven voyages between 1405 and 1433; giraffes that came back with the fleets caused a sensation at the Ming court.