The Silk Road during the Mongol period was the network of overland trade routes that connected China to the Mediterranean under the protection of the Mongol Empire. The period from the early 1220s to the mid-fourteenth century is sometimes called the “Golden Age of the Silk Road,” and the trade routes of this period carried more goods and more travelers than at any other time before the modern era.
The Silk Road during the Mongol period was not a single road but a network of routes that ran across the Eurasian landmass, with multiple branches and feeder routes connecting the major cities of the ancient and medieval worlds. The main trunk of the Silk Road ran from Chang’an (modern Xi’an) in China, through the Hexi Corridor to Dunhuang, then through the Tarim Basin (with branches to the north and south of the Taklamakan Desert) to Kashgar, then across the Pamir Mountains to Samarkand and Bukhara, then to Merv, then to Hamadan and Baghdad, then to Antioch or Constantinople.
The Goods of the Silk Road
The Silk Road carried a wide variety of goods in both directions. The most important of the westward-bound goods was Chinese silk, which gave the route its name. Chinese silk was a luxury item in the Roman world, and it continued to be a major export throughout the medieval period. Other important westward-bound goods included Chinese porcelain, lacquerware, and metalwork; Indian spices, precious stones, and textiles; and Persian carpets, ceramics, and glassware.
The eastward-bound goods included European furs, slaves, and amber; Central Asian horses, falcons, and textiles; Persian carpets, ceramics, and metalwork; and a wide variety of luxury goods from the Mediterranean world. The trade in horses was particularly important: the Mongols and the other steppe peoples were always in need of good horses, and the Iranian and Central Asian breeds were highly prized. The trade in slaves was also significant: the European slave trade, which was a major source of labor for the Islamic world, was carried in part along the Silk Road.
The Cities of the Silk Road
The Silk Road was a network of major cities, each of which served as a center of trade, manufacturing, and culture. The most important of the Chinese cities was Chang’an (modern Xi’an), which was the eastern terminus of the route and a major center of trade, manufacturing, and culture. Chang’an was the capital of the Tang Dynasty and the largest city in the world in the eighth and ninth centuries, and it continued to be a major center of trade and culture in the Mongol period.
The Central Asian cities of the Silk Road were also major centers of trade and culture. The most important of these were Samarkand, Bukhara, and Merv, which were the major cities of the Chagatai Khanate and the Khwarezmian Empire before the Mongol conquest. These cities were major centers of manufacturing, particularly of textiles, metalwork, and ceramics, and they were also major centers of Islamic learning and culture.
The Middle Eastern cities of the Silk Road included Baghdad, Damascus, and Antioch. Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, was the largest city in the Middle East and one of the major centers of the Islamic world. The city was a major center of trade, manufacturing, and culture, and it was a major terminus of the Silk Road. Damascus and Antioch were also major centers of trade, and they served as the western termini of the route.
The Travelers of the Silk Road
The Silk Road carried a wide variety of travelers in addition to the merchants who made their living from the trade. The most famous of these travelers was Marco Polo, the Venetian merchant who spent more than two decades at the court of Kublai Khan and who wrote an influential account of his experiences. Marco Polo’s account was widely read in Europe and was one of the main sources of European knowledge of China and the Mongol world for several centuries.
Other famous travelers of the Silk Road included the Franciscan missionaries John of Plano Carpini and William of Rubruck, who traveled from Europe to the Mongol heartland in the 1240s and 1250s. The Italian merchant Pegolotti wrote a merchant’s handbook that described the trade routes of the Mongol world in remarkable detail. The Moroccan scholar Ibn Battuta, who traveled in the early fourteenth century, left an account of his journeys that is one of the most important sources for the history of the medieval Islamic world.
The Mongol Administration of the Silk Road
The Mongols took a number of specific measures to administer the Silk Road and to protect the trade. The most important of these was the yam postal system, which provided a network of way stations along the route. The yam was originally designed for military and administrative purposes, but it was also made available to merchants and other travelers who carried the appropriate imperial passport.
The Mongols also issued passports (the paiza or gerege) that exempted the bearer from local tolls and that required local officials to provide food, lodging, and transport. The paiza was a valuable document, and it was widely recognized throughout the empire. A merchant or missionary who carried a paiza could travel from Beijing to the Crimea or from Tabriz to the Indus with a degree of safety that was remarkable for the time.
The Yassa code of law established severe penalties for robbery on the trade routes, and the imperial government maintained a network of inspectors to oversee the major markets and to enforce the law. The result was a system of trade protection that was more comprehensive and more effective than anything that had existed before, and it was a major factor in the success of the Silk Road during the Mongol period.
The Decline of the Silk Road
The Silk Road entered a long period of decline in the mid-fourteenth century. The Black Death, which swept across Eurasia in the 1340s, killed millions of people and disrupted the trade routes that had made the Pax Mongolica possible. The collapse of the Ilkhanate in 1335 and the Yuan Dynasty in 1368 removed the two khanates that had been the principal guarantors of the peace. The rise of the Ming Dynasty in China, the Timurid Empire in Central Asia, and the Grand Duchy of Moscow in Russia created new political configurations that were less favorable to long-distance trade.
The decline of the Silk Road was a major turning point in the history of Eurasia. The overland trade routes of the continent became more dangerous and less heavily used, and the center of economic gravity shifted from the interior of the continent to the maritime periphery. The age of exploration that began in the fifteenth century was, in a sense, a response to the breakdown of the overland trade routes: the European voyages of discovery were attempts to find new routes to the east that did not depend on the Silk Road that had been disrupted by the collapse of the Mongol peace.
Sources
- David Morgan, The Mongols (2nd ed., Oxford, 2007).
- Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410 (London, 2005).
- Timothy May, The Mongol Conquests in World History (London, 2012).