Religions of the Silk Road: Overland Trade and Cultural Exchange from Antiquity to the Fifteenth Century

by Foltz, Richard C.

• ISBN13: 9780312214081
• ISBN10: 0312214081
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-10-01
• Publisher: Palgrave-Macmillan

Summary

Foltz, who holds a PhD in history from Harvard and has taught at Brown, Columbia, and Gettysburgh College, looks behind the romantic notions of the colonial era and tells the story of how cultural traditions, especially in the form of religious ideas, accompanied merchants and their goods along the overland Asian trade routes in pre-modern times. In telling how Hebraic and Iranian religious ideas and practices traveled eastward (to be followed later by the great missionary traditions of Buddhism, Christianity, Manichaeism, and Islam), he reveals how the silk Road was a formative and transformative rite of passage.

Author Biography

Richard C. Foltz holds a Ph.D. in History from Harvard University and has taught at Brown, Columbia, and Gettysburg College.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Chinese Transliterations	ix
Maps	x
The Silk Road and Its Travelers	1	(22)
Religion and Trade in Ancient Eurasia	23	(14)
Buddhism and the Silk Road	37	(24)
A Refuge of Heretics: Nestorians and Manichaeans on the Silk Road	61	(28)
The Islamization of the Silk Road	89	(22)
Ecumenical Mischief	111	(24)
A Melting Pot No More	135	(10)
Notes	145	(18)
Bibliography	163	(16)
Index	179