Opening of the Silk Road

The opening of the Silk Road as a sustained trade and diplomatic route between Han China and Central Asia is conventionally dated to the mission of the Chinese envoy Zhang Qian, who was dispatched by Emperor Wu of Han around 138 BCE to seek a military alliance with the Yuezhi people against the nomadic Xiongnu confederation. Zhang Qian was captured and held by the Xiongnu for roughly a decade before escaping and continuing westward, eventually reaching the Yuezhi and other Central Asian kingdoms including Bactria and Ferghana, and though he failed in his original diplomatic mission, he returned to the Han court around 126 BCE with detailed geographic and political intelligence about the lands and peoples of Central Asia that had previously been almost unknown to China. His report prompted Emperor Wu to establish formal trade and diplomatic relations westward, and over the following decades the network of caravan routes connecting China, Central Asia, Persia, India and the Mediterranean world that came to be called the Silk Road developed into a sustained conduit for the exchange of silk, spices, precious goods, religious ideas including Buddhism, and technologies between East and West that endured for many centuries.