Abstract
The Silk Road is usually described through trade in silk, horses, spices, metals, and religions. That picture is accurate, but incomplete. Across the routes linking Xi’an to Central Asia, Persia, the Arab lands, and North Africa, sport also moved with merchants, envoys, pilgrims, soldiers, and court elites. This paper argues that sport helped create cultural connections on the Silk Road in four linked ways. First, it provided shared social practices that could be understood across linguistic and religious boundaries. Second, it traveled through the same institutions that carried trade and diplomacy, especially courts, cities, and caravanserais. Third, it encouraged adaptation, as games such as polo, mounted archery, wrestling, and equestrian display were reshaped by local conditions while retaining recognizable forms. Fourth, it served political purposes, allowing rulers to display prestige, military skill, and openness to foreign customs. Using examples from Tang China, Central Asia, Persianate courts, and Moroccan equestrian traditions, this paper shows that sport was not a decorative side note to Silk Road history. It was one of the practical ways people met, watched, copied, admired, and reworked each other’s cultures. The result was not a single Silk Road sporting culture, but a chain of connected practices that made distant societies more legible to one another.
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