Period 1 SAQs

In the twelfth year of his reign, to regulate foreign trade, Song Emperor Taizu [972 c.e.] decided to appoint a superintendent of maritime trade in the southern port city of Guangzhou, and afterward other superintendents in the ports of Hangzhou and Mingzhou as well. The emperor then appointed another superintendent to oversee the activities of all Arab, Sumatran, Javanese, Bornean, Philippine, and mainland Southeast Asian barbarians whose trade passed through China. These maritime merchants, both Chinese and barbarian, would usually take from China the following goods: gold, silver, strings of coins, lead, tin, many-colored silk, and porcelain. They would usually bring into China spices and aromatics, rhinoceros horn, ivory, coral, embers, pearls, fine steel, sea-turtle leather, tortoise shell, gemstones, foreign cloth, ebony wood, and other such things.

“On Wednesday we entered the great city of Tabriz in Persia. Commerce flourishes here. Today, there must be at least 200,000 householders within the city limits. From Tabriz all the way to Samarqand, the prince Timur has established relays of horses kept ready at command so that his messengers may ride on his missions night and day without hindrance. The posthouses have been built at intervals of a day’s or half a day’s journey apart.

We then stopped at a caravanserai in a local village for the accommodation of travelers and merchants on the road, before proceeding to the capital city of Samarqand in Central Asia, which Timur has lavishly adorned. The richness and abundance of this great capital and its district is indeed a wonder to behold. It is not only rich in agriculture but also in manufactures, as silk and other crafts are all produced here in abundance. Turks, Arabs, Christians of all sects, and Hindus all reside here. The markets of Samarqand are filled with merchandise imported from distant and foreign countries. From Russia and Central Asia come leathers and linens and from China silks that are the finest in the whole world. The goods that are imported to Samarqand from China are the most precious of all those brought from any foreign land, for the craftsmen of China are said to be far more skillful than those of any other nation.”