Silk Road Trivia
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54 free Silk Road trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Silk Road was never one road, and this quiz treats it the way historians do: as a web of routes, middlemen and ideas running 6,400 km between Chang'an and the Mediterranean. It starts with the Han envoy who spent thirteen years as a Xiongnu captive, the heavenly horses of Ferghana, the Parthian bridge to Rome, and the Roman senators who thought silk grew on trees and tried to ban it anyway. From there it follows the monks who smuggled silkworm eggs in bamboo canes, the Sogdian merchants whose language became the lingua franca of Asia, the Tang reconquests and the Battle of Talas, Baghdad and Samarkand, Genghis Khan and Timur, Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta and Rabban Bar Sauma, and the marmots that carried the Black Death west. There are also questions on Buddhism's spread, the Diamond Sutra at Dunhuang, jade, camels, caravanserais, the maritime routes and China's 21st-century Belt and Road. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Silk Road, its cities, travellers and goods, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. For the man who wrote it all down, try our Marco Polo quiz, and for the empire that built the first stretch, our Ancient China quiz.
30 of 54 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Roughly how long was the overland Silk Road from China to the Mediterranean?
About 6,400 km
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.
Q 02Which German geographer popularised the term 'Silk Road' (Seidenstraße) in 1877?
Ferdinand von Richthofen
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.
Q 03Which emperor sent an envoy west in about 138 BCE, opening China's route to Central Asia?
Emperor Wu
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.
Q 04Which Han envoy's missions to the West, begun about 138 BCE, trail-blazed the Silk Road?
Zhang Qian
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.
Q 05Roughly how long did the Xiongnu hold the Han envoy captive on his way west?
About ten years
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.
Q 06What were the 'heavenly horses' that drew Han China towards Ferghana?
Tall, powerful mounts prized for fighting nomads
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.
Q 07The northern Silk Road began at Chang'an, which is now called what?
Xi'an
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.
Q 08The overland Silk Road split into northern and southern branches to skirt which desert?
The Taklamakan
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.
Q 09Which empire, Rome's eastern neighbour, controlled the overland Silk Road routes in the 1st century CE?
The Parthian Empire
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.
Q 10Which of these was a Western export sent east along the Silk Road?
Wine
Wine went east alongside horses and honey: Han envoys to Central Asia reported home that the people of Ferghana made theirs from grapes.
Q 11Why did the Roman Senate try to curb the wearing of silk?
It drained gold and was thought immoral
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.
Q 12Chinese histories say the first Roman embassy reached China in 166 CE, in which Roman emperor's reign?
Marcus Aurelius
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.
Q 13By Augustus's day some 120 ships a year sailed from Roman Egypt to India, riding which winds?
Q 21Which Mongol ruler had Bukhara and Samarkand burned to the ground in the early 13th century?
Genghis Khan
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.
Q 22Which ruler made Samarkand his capital in 1370 and filled it with forcibly moved artisans?
Timur
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.
Q 23Which Mongol ruler did Marco Polo serve for some 17 years after travelling the Silk Road to China?
Kublai Khan
The monsoon 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.
Q 14Which Byzantine emperor sent monks to smuggle silkworm eggs out of the East in the 6th century?
Justinian I
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.
Q 15How are the monks who smuggled silkworm eggs to Constantinople said to have carried them?
Hidden inside their bamboo canes
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.
Q 16Which Central Asian people dominated Silk Road trade from the 4th to the 8th century?
The Sogdians
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.
Q 17What did Tang China do to the Silk Road around 640?
Reopened it by conquering the Western Regions
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.
Q 18At which battle in 751 did the Abbasid Caliphate halt Chinese westward expansion?
Talas
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.
Q 19Which craft is said to have reached the Islamic world through Chinese prisoners taken at a battle in 751?
Papermaking
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.
Q 20Which city did the Abbasid caliphs build as their capital, making it a great hub of Silk Road trade?
Baghdad
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.
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.
Q 24Which Moroccan traveller used Silk Road routes on travels that lasted from 1325 to 1354?
Ibn Battuta
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.
Q 25Which Christian envoy of the Mongols toured Europe in 1287–88 seeking alliances with Edward I, Philip IV and the Pope?
Rabban Bar Sauma
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.
Q 26Which empire's grip on the Silk Road after 1453 is traditionally said to have driven Europeans to seek sea routes?
The Ottoman Empire
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.
Q 27Which people did Shah Abbas resettle at New Julfa, near Isfahan, for their skill in the silk trade?
Armenians
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.
Q 28Which religion spread from India to China along the Silk Road, its monasteries sheltering travellers?
Buddhism
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.
Q 29Which classic Chinese novel fictionalises the Silk Road monk Xuanzang?
Journey to the West
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.
Q 30A stele of 781 records missionaries of which branch of Christianity arriving in China via the Silk Road?
Nestorian
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.