Customer Reviews

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

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A fascinating book which proposes how the flow of religious ideas along the Silk Road can be viewed as a consequence of commerce along the same route (in perhaps the same way that insurance salesmen make it a practice of going to church on Sunday). While this central assertion is perhaps not compelling enough to justify a book, Prof. Foltz does deliver an interesting work as he mines the complex history of this region. He gives us heretics, syncretists, linguists and horse traders as well as a broad sampling of the history of this border land which is neither Middle East nor East, but a blend of the two. Occasionally Prof. Foltz drops down into term-paper-speak ("Human groups tend to hasten towards self-definition mainly when challenged by something they could conceivably be, but, for fear of losing their identity, must demonstrate they are not") but more often than not he is a capable story teller. I particularly enjoyed his account of Christians, Muslims and Buddhists vying for favor in the Mongol court.

The interesting thing about the Silk Road for someone interested in the history of religions, is that along its length is where Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Chinese thought had a prolonged encounter. Where national borders tended to keep them apart elsewhere, here traders and soldiers carried these views back and forth across the spine of Asia. This is their story, though one told in crammed detail over too short a book. Foltz surveys the Jews and Zoroastrians at the Western end of the Road, then follows historically as the Buddhists, then Christians travel its length to China in the East, only to be finally submerged in the tide of an Islamic crusade. He traces the moves of each of the faiths, how it developed into a gigantic melting pot with verging and joined syncretism, and how it all came to an end. I only wish it had been a longer book, particularly since I paid so much for the hardcover! For those who feel the same, however, there is an extensive bibliography of other works covering this area of the world.

I came around this book because it is often cited in books on Central Asia, the Silk Road, Buddhism and also in the last book I read on Xuanzang. The Authors that use it as a citation do not want to explore more deeply some concepts they are treating at the moment so they indicate this text with such an encompassing title as the ultimate resource for omitted information. So when you finally see the book, the small dimensions dampen a little the enthusiasm.

Certainly, the subject is large and the chronological time interval extends from the first millenium BCE to the fifteenth centure CE, while the geographical boundaries go from China to Persia and from North India to Russia considering all the Silk Road extensions. Simplification of such a vast panorama is evidently necessary and this is precisely what the Author has done. He has succeeded in condensing the history of well known and less well known religions into a comprehensive didactic text.

The first chapter states the epistemiological guidelines utilized: the importance of trade for diffusion of religion, the supposed role of women in the transmission of faiths, the division between proselytizing and non proselytizing religions and the difference in acceptance of new beliefs from the center to the periphery, the consideration of the practicality and belonging to the dominant social class as the main drive to acceptance of new forms of faith.

In the following chapters Zoroastrism, Buddhism, Judaism, Nestorian Christianity and Islam are all described and a brief story of their expansion and fortunes is delineated. The book makes two really good points in these chapters one is on the syncretism of all these religions in time and space on the Silk Roads and the other is the concept of Central Asia as a refuge for heretics. Another interesting aspect for non accademics is the description of less well known sects such as the Radanites (merchant Jews from France that practically converted the Khazars)and the description of the Kushan reign that disappeared forever in the sands of history.

Finally there is a wide overview on the religious conquest by Islam of the entire Central Asia and the fading away of all other religious beliefs. The role of sufis is emphatized more than that of the sword. There is one chapter called "Ecumenical mischief" that seems like a small essay inserted in this otherwise schematic text, that dwells on the attempts of missionaries of all faiths to convert the Mongols and on the intestine quarrels between Nestorians and Muslims in the Il-Khan lands. The indepth outlook of these episodes makes one desire the whole book were written with such a research detail since the bird view approach is one of its defects.

Accademic reviewers affirm Prof. Folz makes a few mistakes in dates and historical interpretations and that he has utilized exclusively English sources. The general reader, naturally, does not capture these subtle details. However, since this book is really very cited and has the great advantage of covering such a wide time and space span, a new and revised edition would be welcomed.

The reading is fluent and sometimes it is necessary to reread in order to fully appreciate all the information. The Notes and the Bibliography are rich, so this text can be of help to students, entertain historical fans even if it does fall short of completeness and real satisfaction.

This is a wonderful story of the religious and other cultual interchanges in central Asia a thousand years ago. Unfortunately, Mr. Foltz does not have the ability to tell that story in an engaging manner. Foltz, he admits this, digests a huge amount of information in order to tell this story. The result is that it is not enough for the academic specialist and not well enough told for the generalist. Thus the text suffers. Still, as a short text that introduces the whole realm of the religious history of central Asia, there is much to be learned. This text is only a small taste of the variagated history of the area.

Photos and personalities might provide greater interest but, in fairness, this book is still one of the best introductions to thousands of years of history and many great world religions. Especially for Eurocentric or American readers it is well worth reading. If interested in the religions follow up with Huston Smith; to broaden the history (despite the title) McNeil's Rise of the West is still rewarding.

This is a short introduction to how major world religions interacted and changed along the Silk Road. The book assumes a certain amount of background in middle and far eastern history (and a background will make the reading far more comprehensible), because in a 144-page monograph an in-depth discussion of religious and political histories of Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam is simply not possible.

The book is not presented in a strictly chronological fashion. The first chapter is a (sometimes disjointed) introduction of general historiographical issues. Chapters 2 through 5 cover Iranian/Jewish religions, Buddhism, Christianity/Manichaeism and Islam respectively. Chapter 6 covers religious competition during the Mongol period, and Chapter 7 discusses the modern predominance of Islam in Central Asia. As a result, chapter 3 (on Buddhism) can be a bit confusing when it refers to the impact of Islamic history, which is not presented until Chapter 5 -- and then only superficially.

This arrangement can be very helpful for a reader who wants to concentrate on a specific religion, and the book is very well-sourced, so that a serious student knows where to look for more detail. But it is probably not helpful for the beginner.

I would recommend this book for a student who has taken a few classes on Middle or Far Eastern history, and who has at least some background in Islam, Christianity and/or Buddhism. I would also recommend it to anyone who needs a general introduction before a more in-depth study.

This is a lovely book. Artfully written and insightfully presented, Foltz does an outstanding job of covering a variety of complex topics in a relatively short space. I first got a copy via interlibrary loan while doing research, but liked the book so much I ordered a copy just to have it handy.

Central Asian history runs like an hour glass, with Genghis Khan at the center. Under Khan, the Silk Road reached it's world-historical pinnacle, and thereafter went into decline. The "centrality" of Central Asia in world history is a subject poorly understood in the West for a variety of reasons: inaccessibility of locations, lack of written texts and general lack of interest among the public. I tell you, it shows- just trying to locate reasonably priced books about the history of Central Asia, let alone specialized subjects like archeology or linguistics, is near impossible.

This book, on the other hand, was reasonably priced, though my hopes of finding a reservoir of reasonably priced tomes on the subject was dashed by bibliographical sources like the Bulletin of the Asia Institute.

A big part of Central Asian history BEFORE Genghis Khan is the subject of this book, "religions of the silk road." Central Asia was poly-ethnic, religious and linguistic from Ancient times. The two main ethnic/linguistic groupings of Central Asia are Iranian and Turkic, with the Iranian speakers being more likely to be farmers, and the Turks more likely to be herders/nomads.

At the beginning of the historic period- i.e. the Persian Empire, you can imagine a game board with two rows of three space each, different types of Iranians fill in the bottom spaces, and then a mix of Iranian speaking nomads and Turkic speaking nomads fill the top spaces- the northern part of Central Asia- modern Kazakhstan more or less.

The Persians pushed their state sponsored version of Zoroastrianism out to the non Persian Iranian speaking people with some success, then Alexander came along, conquered the Persian Empire and wound up leaving Indo-Greek successor states among areas occupied by Iranian-speaking, non-Persian pastoralists. Around the same time, Buddhist missionaries made a concerted effort to convert the people of Central Asia, and they met with great success in the Oasis of the Tarim Basin.

After Alexander's Empire dissipated, Zorastrianism reasserted itself in the new Persian Empire. This was a fertile land for the spread of Christianity, as well as the spawning ground for the weird faith of Manicheanism ("Mani-ism") of which most Authors of Central Asia find fascinating. All this interesting history sets the stage for the Muslim/Islamic conquering of Persia/Iran and the Central Asian littoral. The Muslim invasion of Persian in the 8th century is a topic that is not discussed enough. Talk about a traumatic defeat! After Islam established it's control in the heart of the Persian Empire, the non-Muslim people pushed out along the silk road to the East, so that pockets of pre-Muslim religions maintained their existence as far East as China into the modern period.

My sense is that the author has some inclination to say something important about the transmission of culture across time and distance, but he stops short on the threshold, and the entire book is barely 150 pages long.

The Islamizing Process did not end with Genghis Khan, indeed, the Khanate was a tolerant place, but the remaining non converted tribes, mostly Turkic speaking people, either adopted Islam as a conquerers religion (Tamerlane) or because they were late to the party and "everyone else was doing it." (the Khazaks and Kyrgyz in the 16th and 17th centuries.)

Central Asia becomes less interesting as history moves past the 14th-15th century. It's significantly less interesting in the 16th century, and actually in relative and actual decline by the 17th, all the way up to today, where the situation shows little hope of improvement.

One interesting note is that Central Asia was in ferment in the 7th, 8th and 9th century- a time of absolute darkness in Europe- and there were traders who went all the way from Gaul to Central Asia in pursuit of Slaves for European markets. Even after the Muslim conquest of Persia, Central Asia served as a sort of repository for people "on the run" and it's not hard to imagine some of them heading west, like the barbarian tribesmen who had come west five centuries earlier as part of the Hunnic Horde. Europe in the Ninth century might have been pretty sedate for a Nestorian Christian monk from Mesopotamia. It's hard to imagine that there WASN'T a whole lot of cultural transmission going on between one place and the other.

I read this book for my History of Asia class. As far as I know no one was impressed with it and had many problems with it.
First, Foltz starts out speaking of religons that hardly anyone in the class had heard of as if we are supposed to know all about them. He does explain them later, but in the first chapters he refrences them without giving any backround information. Most of us were relativly inteligant and felt as if Fotlz were making fools of us. I also felt as if he were stating assumtions rather than facts. It was alot of information in a small amount of time and therefor had to follow.