The Silk Road

This map is a simple sketch to help you picture where events took place. Positions, distances and borders are approximate, so please use it for reference only, not as an accurate map.

1. 1Up next

   Baghdad, Iraq9th century CE

   Stop 1: Baghdad, the City of Peace

   Our caravan sets out from Baghdad, the round city that the caliph al-Mansur founded on the Tigris in 762. In the 9th century it is one of the largest cities in the world. Its markets sell Chinese silk and porcelain beside Indian spices, African gold and Persian carpets. Booksellers line whole streets, and in the House of Wisdom scholars translate books from Greek, Persian and Sanskrit into Arabic.

   Baghdad stands where the trade roads meet. Ships come up the rivers from the Gulf, and the great overland road runs east from the city's Khurasan Gate, across the Zagros mountains and onto the Iranian plateau. Our road will follow it for months, through deserts, mountains and oases, to the edge of China.

   Read more: The revolution and the Round City of Baghdad (Era 3 · Chapter 01)

2. 2Locked

   Merv, in today's Turkmenistan8th-12th centuries CE

   Stop 2: Merv, the oasis city

   After crossing Iran by way of Hamadan and Nishapur, the road reaches Merv, a great oasis city on the edge of the Karakum desert. Merv was where the Abbasid revolution began in 747, when black banners were raised in Khurasan against the Umayyads. It became a centre of learning with famous libraries.

   Under the Seljuk sultans, in the 11th and 12th centuries, Merv was one of the largest cities in the world. Its fortunes ended in 1221, when the Mongols took it and left it in ruins. The walls of its old cities still rise from the desert sands, and travellers can walk among them today.

   From Merv the caravans turn north-east, toward the Amu Darya river, which the Greeks called the Oxus, and the lands beyond it.

   Read more: The Mongol storm (1219-1258) (Era 6 · Chapter 01)

3. 3Locked

   Bukhara, in today's Uzbekistan9th-10th centuries CE

   Stop 3: Bukhara, the noble city

   Across the Amu Darya lies the land the Arabs called Ma wara' al-nahr, "what lies beyond the river", Transoxiana. Muslim armies reached it under the Umayyads, and over the following centuries most of its people became Muslim.

   Bukhara became one of the great cities of Islam under the Samanids, a Persian dynasty that ruled here in the 9th and 10th centuries. Their court revived the Persian language and supported scholars, poets and physicians. Ibn Sina grew up here and read in the royal library as a young man. The great hadith scholar al-Bukhari, compiler of the Sahih, came from this city and took his name from it.

   Bukhara's markets were full of merchants from every direction, and its domed bazaars and caravanserais still stand. The Samanid mausoleum, built of patterned brick in the 10th century, survived even the Mongols.

   Read more: Mathematicians, physicians and the science of light (Era 3 · Chapter 04)

4. 4Locked

   Samarkand, in today's Uzbekistan751 CE and after

   Stop 4: Samarkand, where paper came west

   A few days' ride east of Bukhara lies Samarkand, set among orchards and canals in the Zarafshan valley. In 751 an Abbasid army defeated a Chinese army of the Tang dynasty at the river Talas, far to the north-east. After that battle Chinese power withdrew from Central Asia, and Islam slowly spread further east.

   Tradition says that Chinese prisoners taken at Talas taught the people of Samarkand how to make paper. Whatever the exact story, Samarkand became famous for paper, and by the end of the 8th century paper mills were working in Baghdad. Paper was cheaper than parchment and papyrus, and it helped books and learning spread across the Muslim world, and later to Europe.

   Centuries later, Timur made Samarkand his capital and filled it with turquoise domes, and his grandson Ulugh Beg built an observatory here.

   Read more: Muslims in China: from the Tang to Zheng He (7th-15th centuries) (Era 10 · Chapter 05); The Mongols & the Mamluks (Era 6 · Overview)

5. 5Locked

   Kashgar, in today's Xinjiang10th century CE and after

   Stop 5: Kashgar, gateway to China

   From the Fergana valley the road climbs over the high passes of the Tian Shan and the Pamirs and comes down to Kashgar, an oasis at the western edge of the Tarim Basin. Here the routes split to run north and south around the Taklamakan desert.

   In the 10th century Satuq Bughra Khan, ruler of the Karakhanid Turks at Kashgar, became a Muslim, and his dynasty carried Islam into the western Tarim Basin. The Uyghurs of the eastern oases kept their older faiths for several more centuries. Under the Chagatai khans, who themselves became Muslim, and through the work of Sufi teachers, the region became mostly Muslim by the 15th century.

   Kashgar's Sunday market drew traders from Central Asia, India and China, and its people still speak a Turkic language that descends from the Chagatai of the khans.

   Read more: Muslims in China: from the Tang to Zheng He (7th-15th centuries) (Era 10 · Chapter 05)

6. 6Locked

   Xi'an, Chinafrom the 7th century CE

   Stop 6: Chang'an (Xi'an), the end of the road

   Skirting the desert by way of oases such as Turfan and Dunhuang, and passing through the long Hexi corridor, the caravan reaches Chang'an, the capital of the Tang dynasty, now called Xi'an. In the 8th century it was one of the largest cities on earth, home to merchants from Persia, Arabia, India, Korea and Japan.

   The Tang annals record an embassy from the Arabs in 651, in the time of the caliph Uthman. Muslim merchants and soldiers settled in the city, and their descendants married into Chinese families. Over the centuries they became part of the Hui, the Chinese-speaking Muslims of China.

   The Great Mosque of Xi'an, rebuilt many times, looks like a Chinese temple, with courtyards, wooden halls and a pagoda-like tower for the call to prayer. It shows how Muslims in China kept their faith while making the land their home.

   Read more: Muslims in China: from the Tang to Zheng He (7th-15th centuries) (Era 10 · Chapter 05)