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1346-1353 CEReputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

The Black Death Travels the Silk Road's Open Lanes

The same Mongol-secured routes that made trade safe make plague nearly unstoppable

On the timeline · around 1346-1353 CE · The Pax Mongolica and the Road's DeclineThe Pax Mongolica and the Road's DeclineThe Black Death Travels the Silk Road's Open Lanes110011501200125013001350140014501500

Quick facts

Believed origin
Central Asia
Key entry point to Europe
Kaffa (Feodosia), Crimean Black Sea port
Primary spread wave
1346-1347 CE
Effect on Mongols
Killed Mongol elites, weakened armies and economies

What happened

The bubonic plague, later called the Black Death, is believed to have originated in Central Asia and spread west along the same trade corridors the Pax Mongolica had made fast and secure, carried by fleas that traveled in the fur of rodents, camels, and the humans who handled them. According to HISTORY's account of the outbreak, the port of Kaffa in Crimea, now Feodosia, was the jumping-off point for the primary wave of the disease's spread from Asia to Europe in 1346 to 1347: Genoese or Venetian traders left Kaffa by ship, and the disease reached Constantinople, Athens, Sicily, Venice, and Genoa within roughly a year. One well-known account from the period claimed the plague reached Kaffa deliberately, through a Mongol force catapulting infected corpses over the city's walls during a siege, though historians treat that story with some caution. The plague did not spare the Mongol world either: it killed off Mongol elites and weakened Mongol armies and economies just as it devastated Europe.

Why it matters

The plague is the darkest possible proof of how thoroughly Eurasia had become one connected system by the fourteenth century: the same roads, ports, and merchant networks that had carried silk, paper, and Buddhist scripture for a thousand years carried a disease that killed a substantial share of the population of Europe and Asia within a few years, and in doing so helped weaken the very Mongol khanates that had made those roads safe.

How we know

HISTORY's account draws on the research of scholars including Christopher I. Beckwith and other historians of the Mongol Empire and the plague's spread, tracing the outbreak's path through Kaffa and its documented arrival dates in Mediterranean port cities via Genoese and Venetian shipping records and period chronicles.

Sources

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