Silk Road Trivia
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58 free Silk Road trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 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 58 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) is the figure usually given for the overland Silk Road, stretching from the Chinese capital at Chang'an westward to the Mediterranean coast.
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 dispatched the 138 BCE embassy that opened China's route to Central Asia?
Emperor Wu
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.
Q 04Which Han envoy's missions to the West, from 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 envoy captive on his outward journey?
About ten years
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.
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 so coveted that the Chinese court fought a war against Dayuan in 104–101 BCE to seize breeding stock.
Q 07The northern Silk Road began at Chang'an, which is now called what?
Xi'an
Xi'an, in Shaanxi province, stands on the site of Chang'an, capital of several dynasties and the eastern terminus of the route.
Q 08The overland Silk Road split into northern and southern branches to skirt which desert?
The Taklamakan
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.
Q 09Which empire, Rome's eastern neighbour, controlled the overland routes in the 1st century CE?
The Parthian Empire
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.
Q 10Which of these was a Western export sent east along the Silk Road?
Wine
Wine travelled east from the Mediterranean and Persia along with glassware, gold and woollen textiles, while silk and lacquerware flowed west.
Q 11Why did the Roman Senate repeatedly, and vainly, try to ban the wearing of silk?
It drained gold and was thought immoral
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.
Q 12Per Chinese histories, in what year did the first Roman embassy reach China?
166 CE
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.
Q 13According to Strabo, how many ships a year sailed from Roman Egypt to India by the time of Augustus?
Q 21Which Mongol ruler had Bukhara and Samarkand burned to the ground in the early 13th century?
Genghis Khan
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.
Q 22Which ruler made Samarkand his capital in 1370 and filled it with forcibly moved artisans?
Timur
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.
Q 23Between which years did Marco Polo travel through Asia along the Silk Road?
1271–1295
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.
Up to 120
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.
Q 14Which Byzantine emperor sent monks to smuggle silkworm eggs out of the East in the 6th century?
Justinian I
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.
Q 15How did the two monks carry the silkworm eggs back to Constantinople?
Hidden inside their bamboo canes
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.
Q 16Which Central Asian people dominated Silk Road trade from the 4th to the 8th century?
The Sogdians
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.
Q 17What did the Tang dynasty do to the Silk Road in 639?
Reopened it by conquering the Western Regions
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.
Q 18At which battle in 751 did the Abbasid Caliphate halt Chinese westward expansion?
Talas
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.
Q 19Which craft is said to have reached the Islamic world through Chinese prisoners taken at a battle in 751?
Papermaking
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.
Q 20Which city did the Abbasids build that became the most important on the Silk Road?
Baghdad
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.
Q 24Which Moroccan traveller crossed the Silk Road from Tabriz between 1325 and 1354?
Ibn Battuta
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.
Q 25Which Christian diplomat left Beijing in the 1280s to seek alliances with Edward I, Philip IV and the Pope?
Rabban Bar Sauma
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.
Q 26Whose control of the overland routes from 1453 pushed Europeans to seek sea routes to Asia?
The Ottoman Empire
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.
Q 27Which people held a near-monopoly on Persian silk exports between 1700 and 1765?
Armenians
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.
Q 28Which religion spread from India to China along the Silk Road, its monasteries sheltering travellers?
Buddhism
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.
Q 29Which Chinese pilgrim's Silk Road journey to India was fictionalised as Journey to the West?
Xuanzang
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.
Q 30A stele of 781 records missionaries of which branch of Christianity arriving in China via the Silk Road?
Nestorian
It carried Syriac with it; Nestorian, Manichaean and Buddhist faiths all reached China this way.