Samarkand at the Heart of the Silk Road, 700-900 CE | Calm Bedtime History

It is the year 780 of the Common Era. The muezzin has not yet called the fajr prayer, but lamps already flicker in the paper workshops beneath the citadel of Afrasiab. A merchant from Chang'an, having crossed the Pamirs with his pack animals, sleeps now in the courtyard of a caravanserai near the Oxus road. His bales of raw silk wait in the warehouse. By noon, Sogdian brokers will weigh them against silver dirhams minted in Baghdad. This is Samarkand, where the Tang frontier meets the Abbasid caliphate, where lapis from Badakhshan changes hands for porcelain from Xi'an, and where the old painted halls of Sogdian nobles still stand, their frescoes dim in the lamplight, even as new mosques rise in the suburbs beyond the walls.