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1 correction found
He was like a week from Syria
That understates the remaining distance. Sources place Gan Ying at the Persian Gulf; from there, routes to Roman territory took at least weeks overland or about two months by sea, not one week.
Full reasoning
The standard reconstruction of Gan Ying’s journey is that he reached Tiaozhi/Babylonia on the Persian Gulf, not the Syrian frontier. A major sourcebook on the Chinese texts says he "only reached T'iao-chih [Babylonia], on the coast of the Persian Gulf," and from there traffic went by sea to Aelana at the Gulf of Aqaba.
That matters because being on the Persian Gulf is not the same as being “a week from Syria.” In the same body of scholarship, the maritime leg from the Persian Gulf to Roman-controlled territory is given as about two months with favorable winds. Modern commentary on the Chinese records also notes that Gan Ying had reached the Persian Gulf and that a land route to the Roman border in Syria would have meant following the Euphrates northward—i.e., a journey of weeks, not a single week.
So the post compresses the geography too much: Gan Ying was near the Roman world in a broad sense, but the evidence does not support the specific claim that he was only about a week from Syria.
3 sources
- East Asian History Sourcebook: Chinese Accounts of Rome, Byzantium and the Middle East, c. 91 B.C.E. - 1643 C.E.
"Kan Ying ... only reached T'iao-chih [Babylonia], on the coast of the Persian Gulf, whence a regular traffic by sea was carried on to the Syrian port Aelana, in the Gulf of Aqaba."
- Section 10 - The Kingdom of Anxi 安息 (the Parthian Empire)
The notes state that Gan Ying had reached "the shores of the Persian Gulf" and that the estimated journey onward by sea to Roman territory was about "two months" with favorable winds.
- The Parthians between Rome and China: Gan Ying’s mission into the West (1st century AD)
The abstract says Gan Ying reached "Arsacid-controlled south Mesopotamia" and, although close to Roman territory, did not proceed farther.