Silk Road

trade routes through Asia connecting China to the Mediterranean Sea

13 dated entries naming Silk Road, drawn from 13 separate years between 167 BCE and 875 CE. Nothing here is written by us: each line is the sentence a Wikipedia year article used, and the link beside it opens the exact revision.

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2nd century BC

167 BCEThe Parthians capture the key central Asian city of Herat. This victory effectively chokes off the movement of trade along the Silk Road to China and means that the Hellenic kingdom of Bactria is doomed.source
114 BCESilk Road routes opened to traders and merchants, exporting goods from east to west.source
108 BCEEmperor Wu of Han founds Jiuquan in the Hexi Corridor as a military outpost on the Silk Road to Central Asia. It serves to protect diplomats and merchants, and it cuts off the kings of the region from the Xiongnu. He also founds Xianlei in present-day Inner Mongolia, extending Han control further north than before.source

1st century

73Ban Chao (Pan-Ch’ao), competing with the Xiongnu, imposes a Chinese protectorate on the kings of Lop Nor and Khotan in the Tarim Basin, with the aim of controlling the Silk Road.source
94The Chinese General Ban Chao completes his conquest of the Tarim Basin by taking Yānqi, which is located on the strategic Silk Road.source

4th century

397The Xiongnu occupy the Gansu area, an economically important province situated along the Silk Road.source

5th century

458The city of Tbilisi (Georgia) on the Kura River is founded by King Vakhtang I of Iberia. Its location gives it control of the trade routes between western and eastern Transcaucasia.source

7th century

655Arab armies conquer Khurasan (Iran), and the Silk Road along Transoxiana (Central Asia).source
662Muslim Conquest: Arab forces of the Umayyad Caliphate resume the push to capture Persian lands, and begin to move towards the lands east and north of the plateau, towards Greater Khorasan (Iran) and the Silk Road along Transoxiana.source

8th century

751Muslim introduction of papermaking: The first paper mill in the Islamic world begins production at Samarkand. Captured craftsmen, taken at the Battle of Talas River, have by some accounts revealed the technique of papermaking (although paper may have arrived from China much earlier via the Silk Road). Arab scholars will use paper to produce translations of Ancient Greek and Roman writings.source
770Caliph al-Mansur orders the closing of the Canal of the Pharaohs (Egypt). The only remaining land routes to transship camel caravans' goods are from Alexandria to ports on the Red Sea, or the northern Byzantine termini of the Silk Road.source
793Arab traders make Baghdad a financial center of the Silk Road between China and Europe. Caravans carry little or no money on their long journeys; Chinese traders use what they call fei qian (zh) ("flying money") to avoid robbery. The Arabs have adopted a similar banking system known as hawala to transmit funds (approximate date).source

9th century

875The Samanid Dynasty establishes a court at Bukhara (modern Uzbekistan), which becomes a rival city to Baghdad on the strategic Silk Road.source