60 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 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Roughly how long were the overland routes of the Silk Road?
Over 6,400 km
Very few travellers ever covered the whole distance; goods passed through a chain of middlemen.
Q 02Which German geographer popularised the term 'Silk Road' (Seidenstraße) in 1877?
Ferdinand von Richthofen
He made seven expeditions to China; his student Sven Hedin wrote the first book titled The Silk Road in 1938.
Q 03Which Chinese dynasty opened the Silk Road by expanding into Central Asia around 114 BCE?
The Han
The Great Wall was extended westward partly to protect the new trade route.
Q 04Which Han envoy's missions to the West, from 138 BCE, trail-blazed the Silk Road?
Zhang Qian
He was sent to find the Yuezhi as allies against the Xiongnu and came back with reports on Ferghana, Bactria and Parthia.
Q 05How long did the Xiongnu hold the Han envoy captive on his outward journey to the Yuezhi?
Thirteen years
He married a Xiongnu wife, escaped, completed his mission and was 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
China fought the Han–Dayuan war partly to get them.
Q 07The northern Silk Road began at Chang'an, which is now called what?
Xi'an
The Later Han moved the capital east to Luoyang; the route ran on through Gansu.
Q 08The overland Silk Road split into northern and southern branches to skirt which desert?
The Taklamakan
The branches rejoined at Kashgar; the desert's name is often glossed as 'go in and you won't come out'.
Q 09Which power acted as the vital bridge linking the Silk Road to the Mediterranean?
The Parthian Empire
Rome's on-and-off wars with Parthia repeatedly choked the trade.
Q 10Which of these was a Western export sent east along the Silk Road?
Wine
Horses, camels, honey and gold went east too; tea, dyes, perfumes and porcelain came west.
Q 11Many Romans, including Seneca and Virgil, believed silk was obtained from what?
Trees
Pliny the Elder knew better, describing the silk moth weaving 'webs, like spiders'.
Q 12Why did the Roman Senate repeatedly, and vainly, try to ban the wearing of silk?
It drained gold and was thought immoral
Seneca complained that silk dresses hid neither the body nor decency.
Q 13Per Chinese histories, in what year did the first Roman embassy reach China?
166 CE
Roman glassware has been found in Han tombs and as far away as Silla Korea.
Q 21Which city did the Abbasids build that became the most important on the Silk Road?
Baghdad
It overtook Damascus, which had itself overtaken Ctesiphon under the Umayyads.
Q 22Which Mongol ruler had Bukhara and Samarkand burned to the ground in the early 13th century?
Genghis Khan
Samarkand rose again in 1370 as the capital of a new empire.
Q 23Which ruler made Samarkand his capital in 1370 and filled it with forcibly moved artisans?
Timur
The Registan, Gur-e-Amir and Bibi-Khanym Mosque date from his dynasty and its successors.
Between which years did Marco Polo travel through Asia along the Silk Road?
Q 14According to Strabo, how many ships a year sailed from Roman Egypt to India by the time of Augustus?
Up to 120
A Greek 'travel guide' to the route, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, was written around 60 CE.
Q 15Which Byzantine emperor sent monks to smuggle silkworm eggs out of the East in the 6th century?
Justinian I
The monks hid eggs or tiny larvae in their bamboo canes, and Byzantium won a European silk monopoly.
Q 16How did the two monks carry the silkworm eggs back to Constantinople?
Hidden inside their bamboo canes
Adult silkworms were too fragile to move, so eggs and young larvae were smuggled instead.
Q 17Which Central Asian people dominated Silk Road trade from the 4th to the 8th century?
The Sogdians
A Sogdian embassy reached Justin II in 568 to set up direct silk trade bypassing Persia.
Q 18What did the Tang dynasty do to the Silk Road in 639?
Reopened it by conquering the Western Regions
The Tibetans took it in 678 and the Tang won it back in 699 under Empress Wu.
Q 19At which battle in 751 did the Abbasid Caliphate halt Chinese westward expansion?
Talas
Legend says Chinese prisoners from the battle brought a valuable craft to Samarkand.
Q 20Which craft is said to have reached the Islamic world through Chinese prisoners taken at a battle in 751?
Papermaking
The first paper mill in the Islamic world was reputedly founded at Samarkand.
1271–1295
He spent 17 years in Kublai Khan's service and never once used the phrase 'Silk Road'.
Q 25Which Moroccan traveller crossed the Silk Road from Tabriz between 1325 and 1354?
Ibn Battuta
A Christian diplomat went the other way, from Beijing to the courts of Europe in 1287–88.
Q 26Which Christian diplomat left Beijing in the 1280s to seek alliances with Edward I, Philip IV and the Pope?
Rabban Bar Sauma
He was a Uyghur Christian of the Church of the East, representing the Ilkhan Arghun.
Q 27The Black Death is thought to have reached Europe from Central Asia via which animal reservoir?
Marmots
One theory has Genoese traders carrying it west from Trebizond on the Black Sea.
Q 28Whose control of the overland routes from 1453 pushed Europeans to seek sea routes to Asia?
The Ottoman Empire
The article credits this with helping start the Age of Discovery.
Q 29Which people held a near-monopoly on Persian silk exports between 1700 and 1765?
Armenians
The trade collapsed with the Safavid Empire in the 1720s.
Q 30Which religion's monasteries offered havens for travellers and spread most notably along the Silk Road?
Buddhism
Merchants funded monasteries and in return got somewhere to stay from city to city.