Routes & Cities
Xi'an: The Eastern Starting Point of the Silk Road
Every overland Silk Road began at Chang’an, the modern city of Xi’an in Shaanxi province. For more than a millennium — from the second century BCE to the…
Every overland Silk Road began at Chang’an, the modern city of Xi’an in Shaanxi province. For more than a millennium — from the second century BCE to the tenth century CE — Chang’an served as the capital of the Han, Sui, and Tang dynasties, and as the political and economic anchor of the eastern end of the Silk Road. A merchant who set out from the gates of Chang’an in 700 CE could reach Samarkand in roughly six months, Antioch in another three, and Constantinople or Baghdad within a year. The wider geography of those routes is treated in the article on the routes and map of the Silk Road.
The Han capital
Chang’an was already a major city when the Han moved its capital there in the second century BCE, but it was the Han that made it the eastern terminus of an international trade system. The Han court was housed in palace complexes along the northern edge of the city, surrounded by a roughly rectangular wall of about twenty-five square kilometres (roughly 5.5 by 4.5 kilometres). To the south, the markets, foreign quarters, and craft workshops occupied a separate, densely populated area. The Sui and Tang dynasties rebuilt the capital on a much larger plan of around eighty-four square kilometres, making it one of the largest cities in the world at the time.
The Han capital was the political centre of the system described in the article on the Han dynasty and the Silk Road. The diplomatic missions that opened the western routes, the caravans that carried Chinese silk, and the imperial workshops that produced the silks and metalwork the trade moved were all concentrated in and around Chang’an.
The Tang capital
Chang’an reached its apogee under the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE). The Tang rebuilt the city on a regular grid of about eight by ten kilometres, making it, by most modern estimates, the largest city in the world in the eighth century. The rebuilt city was surrounded by a rammed-earth wall, with three great gates on each side, and was divided into a series of rectangular wards. The imperial palace and the government offices occupied the northern third; the eastern part contained the great state market and two large foreign quarters — the Anxi and the Guangfang — where foreign merchants were registered, taxed, and housed.
Xi’an is, in many ways, the most visited Silk Road site in the world.
The Tang capital was a cosmopolitan city. The Sogdian merchant community was large and well-organised, and Sogdian traders ran operations from the Oxus to the Pacific. Persian, Indian, Korean, Japanese, and Arab merchants were present in substantial numbers, and Buddhist monasteries, Nestorian churches, Zoroastrian fire temples, and Manichaean meeting houses stood within a few streets of one another. The city’s role as the cosmopolitan centre of the Tang Silk Road is described in the article on the Tang dynasty and the Silk Road.
A personal note
A reader who visits modern Xi’an should know that almost nothing of the Tang capital survives above ground. The Tang walls, the Tang palaces, and the Tang markets are all buried under the modern city. The visible Tang monuments are the two pagodas (Big Wild Goose and Small Wild Goose) and a few restored city walls. The archaeological record is rich, but the casual visitor sees the modern city first and the Tang second. Set expectations accordingly.
Further reading
- Hansen, The Silk Road: A New History (Oxford, 2012).
- Whitfield, Life Along the Silk Road, 2nd ed. (2015).
- The relevant Oxford Handbook or Cambridge History chapter for the region or period.