Silk Roads

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Cultural Encounters and Integration The Silk Road The Spread of Salvation Religions Classical Collapse and Hard Times Population Decline Weather or Not? Southernization Southern Sanctuaries Himalayas and Horses Iran: Between Two Worlds Iranian Society Iranian Religions India and Southeast Asia The Kushan Prelude Monsoon Winds Malay Sails Tropical Crops Wet Rice Gupta India Hinduism in Southeast Asia Buddhism beyond India Mahayana Buddhism Buddhism in Central Asia and China The Way of the Way The Uses of Magic Monks, Missionaries, and Monarchs

Pilgrims and Writings Temple and State Christianity beyond Palestine Hellenization Paul versus Peter Healing and Miracles Jews and Christians Conversion of the Roman Empire The Eastern Roman Empire and Beyond Soldiers and Emperors The Tribes of Europe Orthodoxy, Heresy, and Assimilation Christianity in Europe and China The Rise of Islam: The Making of a World Civilization Salvation: Endings and Beginnings The Prophet: Trade and Religion Islam beyond Arabia Islamic Expansion to 750 Islamic Expansion after 750 The First World Civilization Abbasid Baghdad A Cultural Empire Conclusion

The Spread of New Ways in Eurasia 200 CE–1000 CE

Reilly, Kevin. The Human Journey : A Concise Introduction to World History, Prehistory to 1450, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nu/detail.action?docID=5328388. Created from nu on 2021-11-07 02:45:38.

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Figure 4.1 Time line.

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Cultural Encounters and Integration

ZHANG QIAN (pronounced “jang chee-an”) must have known it was a mission impossible. Han Emperor Wu in 139 BCE needed someone to find the nomadic Yuezhi (“you-way-juh”) and try to negotiate an alliance between them and the Chinese Han dynasty. The emperor needed an ally against an even more troublesome no- madic people, the Xiongnu (“shee-ong-new”) also called Huns, a traditional enemy. It was the old Chinese policy of pitting “barbarians against barbarians.” Everyone at the Chinese court knew it would be an extremely dan- gerous journey since virtually nothing was known of the lands west of the Great Wall. Consequently, none of the high-ranking of- ficials came forward. Zhang Qian was only a low-level official, but he volunteered, and so he was chosen.

Almost as soon as he left the protec- tion of Chinese territory, he was captured by the Xiongnu. Unaware of his assignment but treating him like a captive, the Xiongnu forced Zhang Qian to join their campaigns against the Yuezhi. Zhang remained in Xiongnu cus- tody for 10 years, eventually taking a Xiongnu wife and raising a family. He never lost sight of his mission, however. In 129 BCE, he es- caped a Xiongnu camp and found his way to the Yuezhi court in Fergana (in modern-day Uzbekistan). During the 10 years of fighting, the Yuezhi had been dispersed, their chief lay dead, and the survivors had migrated west to Bactria (near modern Afghanistan), where Zhang finally found them and the chief’s son. Zhang spent the next year trying to convince the new Yuezhi chief to join China in an alli- ance against the Xiongnu, but he did not suc- ceed and began his return trip empty handed.

On the way home, he was again captured by the Xiongnu and held as prisoner for another year. Finally, when the Xiongnu chief died, a civil war broke out, and Zhang Qian was able to escape with his wife and family. He returned to China 13 years after he left to a warm recep- tion by the emperor.

The Silk Road

When Zhang Qian finally made his way back to China in 126 BCE, he had a lot of stories to tell. Emperor Wu was particularly interested in Zhang’s tales of “blood-sweating horses.” For almost 1,000 years, Chinese prosperity depended on their ability to learn from and protect themselves from sudden storms of nomadic horseback-riding archers who could blight the countryside faster than a cloud of locusts. The earliest Chinese states protected themselves with high stone walls that horses could not jump, but an effective defense re- quired the creation of Chinese horsemen to counter the nomads, an innovation begun by the king Wuling (325–299 BCE) of the early state of Zhou, who, in the process, revolution- ized Chinese fashion by having his horsemen wear nomad’s trousers instead of Chinese robes. But when Zhang Qian told Emperor Wu of the large horses of Fergana, Chinese and no- mad cavalries were pretty evenly matched on what we might today call ponies. The horses of Fergana were larger than those of the sparse central Asian grasslands, which shriveled on winter pasture, because Fergana horses were raised on alfalfa that was harvested for hay in the winter. Whether or not they actually sweated blood1 to do it, Fergana horses ate year-round. Emperor Wu wanted to know how he could get his hands on such animals.

Zhang Qian had another story that sug- gested an answer. When he followed the

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Yuezhi westward from Fergana to Bactria, he met many merchants who had traveled to In- dia and the Mediterranean. One of their most prized commodities was a silk that Bactrian merchants thought to be Indian but Zhang recognized as Chinese.2 Zhang realized that Chinese silks doubled their value in India and then doubled it again when they reached Bactria. On hearing Zhang’s account, Emperor Wu resolved to take control of the silk trade and exchange silk for horses. He sent another envoy to the Yuezhi chief, who rebuffed the offer, then sent an army that was repelled and retreated. But Wu gave orders barring his defeated army from reentering China, forc- ing them to fight another day. This time they defeated the Yuezhi and brought back the first 3,000 of many Fergana horses.

The Silk Road may have begun as a trade of silk for horses, as this old story suggests; but it soon included many other commodities. In

addition to silk, Chinese lacquerware, bronzes, and ceramics traveled west. In addition to horses, central Asian jade, the deep blue stone lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, and Mediter- ranean wools and glassware traveled to China. The northerly route from China to the Medi- terranean ran north of the Himalayas and south of the deserts of Mongolia. Near Bactria, a southerly route crossed the Himalayas into India, introducing scented woods, spices, and tropical products. At every stop, traders added local products like the rock crystal and peaches of Samarkand, the date palms and tapestries of Persia, and the almonds and slaves of Mon- golia. Yet the importance of silk cannot be overestimated. The luster and smoothness of silk clothing was an indulgence of the rich, sometimes forbidden to others. Rolls of silk were an economic measure of value, equal to so many slaves, paid as ransom or stipulated in treaties. Silk had been prized by women in

Map 4.1 The trade route normally called the “Silk Road” extended from the Chinese capital at Chang’an westward, around the great Takla Makan Desert to Kashgar and Bactria to the Roman Empire. But, as this and the map of India in the previous chapter show, there were many land and sea routes that connected east and west.

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ancient Egypt as early as 1000 BCE. A thou- sand years later, silk gowns were favored by Cleopatra. A Roman emperor was said to wear nothing but silk clothing. Roman senators complained that their wives’ preference for silk was bankrupting both personal fortunes and the public treasury.

The heyday of the ancient Silk Road lasted as long as China was able to maintain a monop- oly on silk production and keep the secret of how the cocoons of silkworms, fed on mulberry leaves, could be fashioned into precious threads. In 550 CE, two Nestorian Christian monks traveling from China to Byzantium smuggled the eggs of silkworms in bamboo shafts and the Byzantine government began to make its own silk, as did the Persians. The northern Silk Road lost its monopoly. Water “silk roads” in the southern oceans proved cheaper and safer as new generations of nomadic peoples moved across the northern steppe.

The Spread of Salvation Religions

The routes that carried precious commodi- ties from one side of Eurasia to the other, by land and sea, also carried new ideas. At the end of the classical age (around 200 CE), reli- gions swept over the walls that had separated the great classical civilizations. It was as if suddenly religion replaced older systems of identity and meaning. People who had been Greeks or Indians or Romans or Chinese be- came Christians and Buddhists. It was not as if religion itself was entirely new. All the classical civilizations had priests, temples, and religious festivals. All worshiped the appropriate deities, paid tribute to the gods, and celebrated their feast days. Chinese sons worshipped at the altars of their fathers, Indian Brahmins su- pervised age-old rites, and Greek and Roman priests made offerings and interpreted oracles.

But during the classical age—in fact, during most of the previous thousands of years of ur- ban civilization—religion was a matter for the specialists, and the role of the common person was limited. Further, most people rarely took their religions beyond their own clan or town.

The new religions leapt old boundaries and entered people’s hearts. And it was not just the hearts of officials and priests that turned toward the new gods but the hearts of people who had previously given little thought to such matters—poor people, lower castes, women, and merchants. The appeal of these new religions was so powerful that the fol- lowers established new networks. Monasteries sprouted over vast areas, connecting pilgrim- age routes to holy sites but paying little regard to the boundaries of territorial states.

Governments ignored these new forces at their peril. Only those that seized the initia- tive and supported the new religions survived. Even then, their people often thought of them- selves as Christians or Buddhists rather than Romans, Greeks, Indians, or Chinese. We call these new religions “universal” and “salvation” religions. Christianity and Buddhism offered salvation to anyone who chose to participate, regardless of caste, class, birth, or background. The ministers and monastics of these new religions counseled the sick, poor, and dispos- sessed. They nursed the suffering, gave alms to the needy, and offered an alternative to the world of sin and illusion. The Christian heaven and the Buddhist nirvana promised a more satisfying future than an ailing world could deliver.

Classical Collapse and Hard Times

Signs of an ailing world were abundant in the centuries after 200 CE. Nomadic tribes from the grasslands of central Asia toppled both the

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Chinese and Western Roman empires between 200 and 500 CE. Depleted cities were looted and left for dead. Epidemic diseases took their toll on the survivors.

Population Decline. World population had grown at a healthy pace during the classi- cal era. A world of about 50 million people in 1000 BCE doubled to 100 million by 500 BCE and then at least doubled again to 200 million or more by the year 1 CE. But by 200 CE, global population numbered only about 250 million. After the collapse of the Han dy- nasty in 220, Chinese population declined pre- cipitously. By 500, when the Western Roman Empire had also been overrun by nomadic tribes, world population had fallen back to fewer than 200 million. Despite the recovery of China after 600 and the continuation of the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire at Constantinople, world population recovered very slowly. Not until 900 or perhaps even 1000 did world population surpass the level of 200 CE. This 700- to 800-year period was the longest era of population stagnation since be- fore the urban revolution. Nothing like it has happened since.3

Weather or Not? Was the decline of 200– 900 part of a global environmental change or merely the impact of the nomads of central Asia? We do not know. Global temperatures seem to have cooled during this period after warming during the classical age, but the data are not complete enough for a conclusion. It is interesting that some areas of the Americas experienced prosperity in this period. In fact, the centuries between 200 and 800 were the golden age of the Maya in Mexico and Guate- mala, decline setting in after 800. In addition, in Mexico during this period, the Toltec city of Teotihuacan prospered, becoming one of the largest cities in the world before its collapse in 750. Even in Eurasia, some civilizations

prospered during these centuries. The Eur- asian population gainers between 200 and 800, in addition to northerly Korea and Japan, were mainly in the south. Iran, India, South Asia, and Southeast Asia grew in size and prosper- ity, leading one historian to label the period as one of “Southernization.”4

Southernization

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have sometimes been described as an age of “west- ernization.” The term refers to the impact of the many peoples, ideas, and institutions that were exported from western Europe to the rest of the world in this recent “age of West- ern expansion.” By analogy, we might define the period between 200 and 800 as an age of “southernization” since so many new ways of doing things spread from South Asia north- ward to the rest of Eurasia.

Southern Sanctuaries

Why did India, South Asia, and Southeast Asia grow and prosper between 200 and 800 while northern Europe and Asia were overrun by nomadic armies of Goths and Huns? One an- swer may be the relatively warmer weather of South Asia, but better answers would be “the Himalayas” and “large horses.”

Himalayas and Horses. The Himalayan Mountains shielded India and Southeast Asia from the nomadic “barbarians” who traveled east and west across the grasslands. Waves of nomadic archers swept through settled cities on the swift small horses that thrived in the grasslands. Just south of the central grasslands, in Iran, marauding tribes preyed on farmers and city dwellers until these settled people learned to raise larger horses on the richer diet

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of the grasses and grains of the agricultural belt. These horses were descended from the large animals that had been discovered by Zhang Qian in Fergana.

Iran: Between Two Worlds

Iran was the successor of classical Persia. The change in name signifies a shift in power from the classical empire centered on the city of Fars (or Pers) in the southwest near the Per- sian Gulf to the postclassical empire centered on the great Iranian plateau in the northeast that stretched to Fergana and Afghanistan. This northern empire combined characteris- tics of the grasslands that stretched in every direction but south and the older Persian em- pire that faced south toward the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Indian Ocean. Iran was a land in between.

Iranian Society. In Iran, the kings of the Parthian Empire (247 BCE–224 CE) gave large tracts of land to nobles who raised large horses for armed cavalries. They planted al- falfa, which added nutrients to the soil and provided enough hay to feed the large horses in the winter. With the use of underground irrigation tunnels called qanats, these nobles could raise thirsty alfalfa on relatively dry land. The large horses of Iran were able to support heavy suits of armor that protected Iranian horsemen from the arrows of the nomadic cavalry.

Large horses and armored knights were to become the medieval missile shield against the periodic invasions of nomadic horsemen. Thanks to the use of stirrups, probably in- vented by northern Chinese nomads about the fourth century, armored horsemen could also go on the offensive, wielding battering rams or lances that might otherwise throw them off their mounts.

The Iranian deterrent to nomadic inva- sions came at a cost. Since Iranian nobles raised their own horses and equipped their own armies, they, rather than the king, held the reins of power. The Parthian Empire and the succeeding Sassanid Empire (247–642) were almost feudal societies where power was ultimately local and tribal, the king a subordi- nate to his nobles. The same drawbacks later hindered western Europe when it adopted the Iranian system of feudal armies of armed knights.

Iranian Religions. Iranian religions were the first to spread across the large region of South- west Asia. In the classical age of Achaemenid Persia, that religion was Zoroastrianism. The religion of Zoroaster was an important step toward universal religion. Zoroastrians were not strictly monotheistic since they believed in both Ahura Mazda, the god of light, and Angra Mainyu, the god of darkness. But key Zoroas- trian ideas of a final conflict (between light and dark), the end of the world, the last judgment, the resurrection of the dead, personal salvation, and eternal life gained a wide following among non-Zoroastrians of Southwest Asia, including Jews and Christians. The spread of religious ideas from Persia can be seen in the names of the Parsees of India and the Pharisees of ancient Israel.

In Parthian and Sassanid times, however, Zoroastrianism answered Persian and Iranian national interests. While many of its ideas circulated widely, the teachings of Zoroaster and his priests remained Iranian. This was not the case with the reformulated version of Zo- roastrian dualism presented by a later Persian, the prophet Mani (216–272), who actively sought converts of all nations. Believing his Manichaeism was a synthesis of the teach- ings of Jesus and the Buddha, Mani created a universal salvation religion that, during his

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lifetime, was more successful than the Bud- dhism and Christianity from which it sprung. Combining the roles of both Jesus and Paul in his own person, Mani traveled from his na- tive Babylon throughout the Sassanid Empire to establish cells of followers from India to North Africa. St. Augustine (354–430) was a Manichaean before he converted to Chris- tianity, as were many others in the Roman Empire in the fourth century. Manichaeism, like the Zoroastrianism from which it derived, provided consolation in a dangerous world by explaining the power of evil. Especially to young searching minds, like Augustine’s in his student days at Carthage, the idea of life as constant struggle between the forces of good- ness and evil supplied a drama that matched the rhythms of youth as well as the threats of a hostile world. Manichaeism was to later spread to central Asia and China, and philoso- phies that paid tribute to darkness were never entirely extirpated by the monotheistic and universal salvation religions—Christianity, Is- lam, and Buddhism—that swept Eurasia in the following centuries.

Thus, Iran, with its empires of large horses, served as a protective buffer between the grass- lands of invaders and the Indian subcontinent. As a middle ground between the pastoral grasslands of nomad confederacies and the lands that pointed to tropical seas, Iran also prepared the way for universal faiths and new ways of life that were carried, sometimes with monsoon force, by winds from the south.

India and Southeast Asia

The Himalayan Mountains, the highest in the world, also protected India and Southeast Asia from the sort of massive nomadic inva- sions that undermined classical China and the Western Roman Empire. South Asia did not

Figure 4.2 This first-century CE statue of the Buddha from Gandhara during the Kushan Empire shows Greek artistic influence in the depiction of the Buddha, who had been marked in early Indian art by his absence—an empty throne or footprint. Here the Buddha takes on the form of a Greek god with Mediterranean curly hair and topknot, draped clothing, stance, and serious demeanor of the realistic Greek style. With the Greek halo, this Buddha, like the human gods of Greek mythology, became an object of worship in the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism that spread into central Asia. bpk, Berlin/Art Resource, NY. Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany.

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escape incursions completely, but, in general, the more threatening peoples, like the Xion- gnu (Huns), pushed the more settled ones, like the Yuezhi, before them. The Yuezhi, already settled in the area of Bactria by the time of Zhang Qian’s visit, adopted elements of Greek and Indian culture in forming the Kushan state, which protected India from the Huns.

The Kushan Prelude. If the winds of hemi- spheric integration blew from the south, per- haps the first gusts came from the Kushan state. During the most intensive period of nomadic pressure from the Eurasian grass- lands (200–400), the Kushan kingdom was one of the most sophisticated states in the entire world. Under Kanishka, who ruled around 100, the Kushans governed what is today Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northern India.5 The combination of Indian and Greek tradi- tions, the legacy of Alexander the Great, was a heady brew in Kushan culture. The Kushans evolved Ayurvedic medicine from Indian Ve- dic knowledge of botany and Greek science. Similarly, the collision of the two languages— Greek and Sanskrit—led Kushan thinkers to the first analysis of grammar and language structure in any language. And the different artistic traditions of Greece and India inspired Kushan artists to devise the first images of the Buddha and Boddhisatvas (Buddhist saints) as well as images of halos that were adopted by early Christians. In the end, the Kushanas gave India not only a respite from northern nomads but also a leg up when Indian political revival came after 320. And even before a new dy- nasty of Indian kings reunified the territories of the Mauryans, Indian merchant guilds and families were creating one of the most vibrant economies of their age. In sum, the forces of southernization between 200 and 1000 came from India even more than Iran, and they were as material as they were spiritual.

Monsoon Winds. One engine of Indian ex- pansion was the seasonally variable winds. The principle is simple: oceans moderate air tem- peratures, cooling in the summer and warm- ing in the winter. That is why the temperature of coastal areas is always more moderate than inland areas. Lands that are far from oceans become especially cold in winter and unbear- ably hot in summer. The area on the planet farthest from oceans is central Asia. Cold air is heavy and dense, warm air light and porous, so, as warm light air rises, cooler air pushes its way in and under. As the land area of central Asia cools in the winter, its dense air expands, displacing the warmer air over the southern oceans. This process is reversed in the summer when the hot air of central Asia rises and cre- ates a vacuum that pulls in the cooler ocean air from the south. Consequently, from December to March, the prevailing winds blow south from cold central Asia across India and South- east Asia to the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Thailand, and the South China Sea. From May to August, the cooler winds flow north from the southern oceans toward the hot interior.

This rhythm has a profound impact on South Asian growing patterns. The summer winds from the oceans are laden with mois- ture, which they dump on land as far as the Himalayas (also creating the deserts on the northern “rain shadow” side of the moun- tains). In India and mainland Southeast Asia, this “monsoon season” is one of frequent and heavy rains. The winter winds are cool and dry as they cross the Himalayas and India, but over the oceans they pick up moisture to bring another monsoon season to coastal Southeast Asia and the islands. The heavy rain provides lush vegetation and allows a rice-based agri- culture that can support a dense population. The predictability of the monsoons punctu- ates the growing seasons (since planting must

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be accomplished before or after the rains) and allows two or even three crops a year in some areas. But in the rare years when the rains fail, drought and famine are particularly disastrous.

Another consequence of the monsoons was that once sailors had mastered the winds, they were able to take advantage of an enormous natural energy source for travel and trade. These were the winds of southernization.

Malay Sails. The sailors of the Malay Pen- insula learned to navigate the monsoon winds sometime in the first millennium BCE. Malay

and Malay-Polynesian peoples were the first in the world to navigate the open seas, and they did so long before the invention of the com- pass. They were able to sail the vast Pacific by careful observation of the stars, ocean waves and swells, cloud patterns, bird movements, and the fish and plant life in the water. Able to sense islands 30 miles away, they settled the islands of the Pacific from the coasts of South- east Asia to Easter Island. Others charted the Indian Ocean to the coast of East Africa.

The earliest sailing ships were fairly sim- ple. Egyptian sailors on the Nile needed only

Figure 4.3 This relief is from the eighth-century Buddhist stupa at Borobudur, Indonesia. These ships used Polynesian double outrigger hulls (side supports) for stability and Malay tilted rectangular sails designed to swivel and tack against the wind. Such sails probably inspired the triangular lateen sails of later Arab ships. Indonesian ships like this one could have sailed the Indian Ocean to West Africa. Werner Forman/Art Resource, NY. Borobudur, Magelang, Java, Indonesia.

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to raise a square sail to catch the north winds to travel south against the current; to return, they needed only to lower the sail and follow the current north to the Mediterranean. Meso- potamian sailors clung close to the riverbanks of the Tigris and Euphrates and the ports of the Arabian Sea. Malay sailors were the first to sail the open seas. In their epic voyages across the Pacific, they invented double-hulled outrigger canoes (the ancestor of the modern catamaran) for stability in ocean swells. To tack or zigzag against the wind, they invented the balanced lug sail, a sail that looked like a blunted arrow pointed forward, the mast near the point, with the bulk of the sail rigged to a boom that could be swung out over the water so the wind could push the craft sideways. Malay sails may have inspired the Arab sailors who developed similar triangular lateen sails.

Malay sailors also pioneered the earliest water routes between India and China. Even in the classical age of the land Silk Road, Malay sailors had discovered how to ride the monsoon winds from southern India to China by way of the Strait of Malacca. From India or Sri Lanka, they would take the winter winds south through the Strait of Malacca, where they would wait for the summer winds to take them north to China, reversing the process on the return. Malay sailors also connected the products of East Africa and the Indonesian Spice Islands to the trade of the Indian Ocean, and they introduced the spices of the Molucca Islands east of Java to an international market. There—and nowhere else—grew mace, cloves, and nutmeg.

Tropical Crops. Imagine a world without oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruits, mangos, melons, and the dozens of other fruits that originated in India and Southeast Asia. Imag- ine no sugar to sweeten your tea; imagine no tea. Imagine no cotton, no pepper, no

cinnamon, or no spices. That was the world of northern Eurasia before these tropical crops came from South Asia. Most of them were brought by Malay, Indian, and Iranian and other South Asian traders in the first thousand years CE.

Malay and Indian sailors brought the trop- ical plants of Indonesia—bananas, coconuts, taro, and yams—to the island of Madagascar, from where they entered East Africa and be- came staples of the African diet. Not only did these new crops fuel a population rise in Af- rica, but the timing coincided with and aided the great migration of Bantu speakers from their origins in western Africa throughout the continent.

Wet Rice. South Asian populations also grew thanks to the new crops. The most im- portant agricultural innovation was the ex- pansion of wet rice cultivation: transplanting young rice shoots to paddies filled with water. Wet rice yields were double those of dry rice. Planters cut down the trees of wet tropical for- est areas and built dikes, canals, and paddies. Wet rice supported huge peasant societies and required their labor. As a result, wet rice spread throughout Southeast Asia as planters in areas like Thailand and Cambodia realized the potential return. Huge tax-paying peasant societies supported the ambitions of kings and priests in Cambodia, Java, Sumatra, as well as India. A kind of wet rice also spread to southern China, enabling a large increase in population growth.

Gupta India. The vibrant economy of the age of the Gupta dynasty (320–535) sup- ported a political and cultural renaissance in India. The Gupta kings consolidated their rule of northern India and kept the nomads at bay for almost 300 years. While the Gupta kingdom was not quite as large as the earlier Mauryan dynasty, it was more prosperous and

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sophisticated. The court of one of the greatest of the Gupta rulers, Chadragupta II (375–414; also known as Vikramaditya), can serve as an example. It patronized the greatest of Indian poets and playwrights, Kalidasa, as well as astronomers and mathematicians who were the first to show the advantages of using a zero and a 10-digit decimal system. (We call our number system “Arabic,” but the Arabs called it “Hindi” since they got it from India.) The Chinese visitor Faxian wrote of the great pal- aces and charity hospitals of Chandragupta’s city of Nalanda. More recent visitors still admire a remnant pillar from Chandragupta’s palace made of such a high grade of iron that it shows no rust after 1,600 years.

Hinduism in Southeast Asia. During the Gupta period, Indian culture spread through- out Southeast Asia. Indian customs traveled the trade routes of the Indian Ocean, following the shifting winds of the monsoons. Gupta cul- ture was Hindu and tolerant. Merchants trans- planted their caste values as they settled in tiny trading communities throughout South Asia. In general, they kept to themselves and did not try to convert non-Indians. But expansive, seemingly successful cultures always attract converts, and Indian Hindu culture was no exception. Those who traded with the Indian merchants adopted Indian culture with its innovations in mathematics, accounting, and trading practices. At the same time, the tradi- tional rulers of Southeast Asia were attracted to Indian ideas that kingship was the divinely instituted prerogative of Brahmins. New dy- nasties in Sumatra, Java, and Cambodia based themselves on these Hindu traditions of divine kingship and separate merchant communities.

The founding story of the rice-rich king- dom of Funan (ca. 100–613) on the border of modern Cambodia and Vietnam expressed a common Southeast Asian theme. According to

the tale, the first king of Funan was the child of an Indian Brahmin priest who sailed east and the beautiful woman who paddled out to meet him. She turned out to be Queen Willow Leaf, the daughter of the Cambodian serpent god. Funan peaked under King Jayavarman I (478–518), after which it was challenged by kingdoms centered on the islands of Sumatra and Java. In 802, a Cambodian prince raised at the Javanese court declared an independent Cambodia. He was crowned as Jayavarman II Devaraja (god king) by a Brahmin priest. The remains of the temple complex of the kingdom can still be seen at Angkor Wat. Dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu, devotees also wor- shipped Shiva. Indian Brahmin priests were invited to the royal courts to serve as advisers. In addition to teaching Brahmin religion, they taught the engineering skills used to create the irrigation system and the art of stone carving in the Indian architectural style. Hinduism spread as far east as the island of Bali, where it is still practiced today, and as far west as the east coast of Africa, where the descendants of Indian merchant families still live and work. But Hinduism was not the only Indian religion to integrate large areas of the world in the first millennium.

Buddhism beyond India

Buddhist monks sailed the same winds as Brah- min priests. Some of the rulers of Hindu states in Southeast Asia converted to the worship of the Buddha, in some cases, like Java, only temporarily and in some cases more perma- nently. In Khymer Cambodia, Jayavarman VII (r. 1181–1219) changed Angkor from a Hindu to a Buddhist state, vastly expanding its ter- ritory. In addition, he created Angkor Thom and other new temple complexes and built

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more than 100 hospitals and another 100 guesthouses for missionaries and travelers, a common Buddhist undertaking.

Buddhist monks founded one of the first Buddhist states on the island of Sri Lanka (Ceylon), just south of India. From there they traveled to Thailand (Siam) and Burma, where they established Buddhist societies that reflected their orthodox beliefs, principally a strict adherence to the ascetic life for all devotees. Until today in such orthodox, or “Theravada,” countries, every young man was expected to don the saffron robes of the monk, carry the begging bowl for his daily rice, and live with other monks in a monastery or simi- lar institution for at least the two or three years of early adulthood. Some men (and even some women) continue to live the monastic life into old age, and in Burma and Thailand one sees many men of varying ages in bright saffron. In a modern city like Bangkok, monasteries are

dwarfed by high-rises, and monks’ robes are drowned in a sea of business suits, but the re- mains of a traditional Buddhist capital can still evoke a world in which spiritual matters were preeminent. Twelfth-century Pagan, on a bend of the Irrawaddy River in northern Burma, still shelters hundreds of white stone pagodas and little else. In its prime almost 1,000 years ago, one would have been overcome by the lines of men in deep orange, the sounds of their chant- ing, the heady smell of incense, and—the only sound one still hears today after the oxcarts have returned the tourists for the night—the music of temple bells tinkling in the wind.

Mahayana Buddhism

Most of the monks who brought Buddhism to Southeast Asia called themselves orthodox, or Theravada, Buddhists, and most Southeast Asian societies followed the orthodox path

Map 4.2 Between 200 BCE and 400 CE, Buddhism and Christianity spread throughout Eurasia. Hinduism spread into Southeast Asia. By 700 CE, Christianity had reached the Chinese capital at Chang’an, and Buddhism had spread to Korea and Japan.

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pioneered in Sri Lanka. It was an austere and demanding tradition in which a period of mo- nastic life was expected and each monk or nun relived the original quest of the Buddha. By contrast, a different kind of Buddhism traveled north to central Asia and later to Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan. Called by its followers “Ma- hayana,” or “the greater vehicle,” it taught of a Buddha as savior for all. Its universalism may have been shaped by contact with Zoroastrian, Greek, and possibly even Christian ideas en- countered in northern India and Kushana. For Mahayana Buddhists, the Buddha offered more than a model path to enlightenment. They believed that the Buddha and numer- ous Buddhist saints, called Bodhisattvas, post- poned their own entrances into nirvana in order to help others achieve it. Thus, anyone could achieve salvation by appealing to one of the Bodhisattvas. There is help in achieving enlightenment. One need not do it alone.

The idea of salvation was not entirely new to Mahayana Buddhism. After all, the core message of the Buddha had been the need to escape the veil of illusions that ensnared one in the world. That the root of suffering was desire, that one overcame suffering by relin- quishing the world, went without saying. But Theravada Buddhists, in all likelihood Gau- tama Siddhartha, who became “the Buddha,” and many Hindu holy men before and since sought peace in meditation, ascetic practices, and renunciation, not in the worship of a god or goddess. It was the Mahayana followers who turned the guru into the god and then prayed to him—and his Bodhisattvas—for salvation.

Buddhism in Central Asia and China. The Buddhist conversion of China is an unlikely story. “It is difficult to understand,” a modern historian writes, “why Chinese would find any attraction in an alien faith that espoused

strange ideas in an unfamiliar language.”6 The family and the state were the central institu- tions of Chinese society and Confucian belief. The Buddha abandoned his family, and his fol- lowers practiced celibacy in monastic commu- nities independent of family or state. Buddhist missionaries were mendicant monks, while Chinese culture valued productive farmers. Buddhists taught that life was suffering; the Chinese taught that life was to be enjoyed.

We can almost hear this debate in the instructions of The Disposition of Error (450– 589), a manual for Buddhist missionaries in China that resembles a modern “frequently asked questions” format:

The Chinese questioner will ask: Of those who live in the world, there is none who does not like wealth and position and hate poverty and baseness, none who does not enjoy pleasure and idleness and shrink from labor and fatigue. . . . But now the [Buddhist] monks wear red cloth, they eat one meal a day, they bottle up the six emo- tions, and thus they live out their lives. What value is there in such an existence?7

The Buddhist manual’s answer to this question is equally revealing: people desire rank and wealth most of all, but if they can- not obtain them in a moral way, they should not enjoy them at all. People hate poverty and meanness, but if they can avoid them only by departing from the Way, they should not avoid them at all. Laozi (Lao Tze) has said that “the five colors make men’s eyes blind, the five sounds make men’s ears deaf, the five flavors dull the palate.”

The Way of the Way. Buddhist mission- aries drew on a non-Confucian tradition of Chinese thought: the teachings of Laozi about “the Way,” the natural path, or Dao. Laozi was a Chinese contemporary of the Buddha who

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also disparaged worldly struggle and coun- seled a passive acceptance of nature’s “way.” Like Buddhism, Daoism reversed the ethics of active engagement with the world. “The way is like an empty vessel that yet may be drawn from, without ever having to be refilled,” Laozi wrote in the Dao De Ching.8

Buddhism was most successful at winning Chinese converts in the centuries of instabil- ity that followed the fall of the Han dynasty. At the beginning of the Six Dynasties Period of Division (220–589), Buddhism was limited to communities of foreign merchants and monasteries mainly along long-distance trade routes. In the second century, all the monks in the monastery at the capital city of Luoy- ang were foreigners from India, central Asia, and Parthian Persia. But by 600, China was a Buddhist country with thousands of monas- teries. Luoyang alone constructed 1,000 new monasteries within 40 years of its rebuilding in 494. What accounted for such a change? Certainly the salvation message of Buddhism fell on more willing ears in this period of political instability, population decline, and social disorder. Temple and cave inscriptions from the period decry lost families, suggesting the breakdown of the Confucian faith. Mon- asteries that in times of prosperity had linked chains of merchants became, in times of need, lifelines of support for the surrounding popu- lation, providing food and consolation. Ma- hayana Buddhism offered a hope of salvation from the trying world of suffering between the third and seventh centuries, between the col- lapse of the Han around 220 and the rise of the Sui (589–618) and Tang (618–907) dynasties.

The Uses of Magic. In addition to translat- ing a foreign creed into Chinese characters by way of Daoism, Buddhist monks practiced an age-old technique for winning converts: magic. The very influential Buddhist monk

from central Asia, Fotudeng, recognized the difficulty of conveying foreign philosophical ideas to his Chinese audience, and so, it is said, he took a monk’s begging bowl full of water, burned incense over it, and chanted a few words, and suddenly there appeared a water lily in blinding blue and white.

The traditional story of the victory of Bud- dhism in Japan is a similar testament to the power of association with the supernatural. Accordingly, in the early sixth century, a Ko- rean king sent a present of a Buddhist image to the emperor of Japan. The emperor decided to set up an experiment in which he gave the

Figure 4.4 Buddhist deity Guanyin (bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara). The spread of Buddhism in China was aided by Guanyin, a feminine version of the male Indian Bodhisatva Avalokiteshvara. Goddesses were rare in China. How would a figure like this increase the appeal of Buddhism? What figure played a similar role in the spread of Christianity?. The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Rogers Fund, 1913.

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image of the Buddha to a willing clan chief to see what happened. The clan chief set the image in a temple and worshipped it. Shortly afterward, however, a pestilence broke out in the land, and many people died. Deducing that the native Shinto deities were offended, the emperor took the image, threw it into the river, and burned down the temple. The Bud- dhist experiment had failed. In 584, however, another Korean image of the Buddha arrived in Japan. This time a monk tried to break the statue with an iron sledgehammer but broke the sledgehammer instead. Then he threw the stone in water, but it floated. In response, the monk built another temple, and Buddhism grew in Japan.

Monks, Missionaries, and Monarchs. These stories follow the route of Buddhist expansion from central Asia to China, Korea, and then Japan. Buddhism always entered a kingdom as a foreign religion, but it always entered from nearby. Consequently, Buddhism often first attracted those who were drawn to foreign ideas. Before Buddhism swept through China, it won over some of the nomadic peoples in central Asia and the kings and religious lead- ers of the northern kingdoms who were only marginally part of Chinese culture. The rulers of the Northern Wei dynasties (386–354) de- clared each new dynasty to be an incarnation of the Buddha. Within China, Buddhism first attracted foreign merchants, immigrant com- munities, and people out of power.

Buddhism brought different things to different people. The early monasteries in Silk Road oasis towns brought agricultural produce, trade goods, and urban culture to nomadic peoples. For rulers of nomadic dy- nasties, such as the Toda, Buddhism offered a common ground with their Chinese subjects. To the tribal leaders and minor monarchs of northern China, Buddhism conferred spiritual

legitimacy and provided literate advisers and luxury markets. For illiterate Confucian Chi- nese peasants, Buddhist festivals, like the pop- ular Feast of All Souls, included ancestor cults. Chinese Daoists added the Buddha to their pantheon of protectors. In times of political instability or famine, all benefited from the refuge and reserves of the monasteries.

Pilgrims and Writings. While most Bud- dhists, like most people in any premodern religion, were illiterate, the spread of Bud- dhism owed much to the travels of literate missionaries and pilgrims. Stories about the Buddha, reported sermons and sayings of the Buddha, and stories and theological texts writ- ten by the Buddha’s followers all played an im- portant role in the development of Buddhism. Buddhism became increasingly bookish in China, the land that invented paper in the first century and printing in the eighth to ninth centuries. In fact, the spread of Buddhism to Korea may have generated the world’s first ex- ample of printing as early as the ninth century. Earlier Theravada Buddhists in Southeast Asia spread their stories in stone monuments at places like Borobudur on the island of Java and Angkor in the Khmer kingdom of Cambodia. By contrast, the Mahayana monks in China built less graphic if often larger Buddhas,9 and they more often studied manuscripts for liter- ary meanings. This may reflect different levels of literacy or differences in classical Indian and Chinese culture—the Indian more tactile and plastic, the Chinese more visual and literate. It is interesting, in any case, that of the thou- sands of Buddhist missionaries and pilgrims who traveled between India and China, the only extant written accounts come to us from the Chinese pilgrims to India.

Indian missionaries first went to central Asia and China to bring the word orally, to establish communities, and to trade. Later,

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Chinese pilgrims traveled to India to read and copy the sacred texts and visit the sacred sites where the Buddha lived and his early followers built monasteries, schools, and hospitals. The first Chinese pilgrim whose story we have was Faxian (334–420), who traveled to India in 399 and returned 15 years later with copies of numerous texts that he translated from San- skrit to Chinese. In 645, the Chinese Buddhist Xuanzang (596–664) returned from India after nineteen years with 22 horses loaded down with texts, relics, and statues. The monk Yijing (635–713), after almost 25 years in India and Southeast Asia, translated 230 volumes of texts and wrote biographical sketches of 56 other Chinese pilgrims in India. In addition to the scriptures, the Chinese monks also brought back stories of Buddhist communities from northern India to Java. This Chinese attention to the sacred writings kept Chinese Buddhism close to the original Sanskrit meanings. In- dian Buddhism was translated into Chinese through the language of Daoism, but it re- mained distinct from Daoism.

Temple and State. The ideal philosophy for ensuring the legitimacy of and popular support for the emperor was certainly Con- fucianism. It celebrated hierarchy, monarchy, patriarchy, rituals, and the status quo. Ac- cording to Confucian doctrine, the emperor ruled with the Mandate of Heaven. Espe- cially in times of prosperity or stability, that mandate was unquestionable. Nevertheless, Chinese Buddhists were well placed, when politics became more stabilized, to serve the interests of monarchs and dynastic officials as well as merchants, intellectuals, and the poor. The emperor Wu (502–549) of the Liang dynasty took the unusual step of ransoming himself to a Buddhist monastery, much to the chagrin of the Confucians, but in return the monks treated the emperor as a being to

be obeyed and venerated. The founder of the Sui dynasty, Sui Wendi, was a Buddhist, even though the official ideology of the government was Confucianism.

Under the more stable conditions of the Tang dynasty (618–907), Buddhism received waves of imperial support. The empress Wu Zetian (625–705), who seized power for herself late in life after the death of her son, endowed numerous Buddhist temples and cave statues in addition to practicing Daoist rituals.

Just as Buddhism had succeeded in India as an economic power that eschewed politics, so in China Buddhist monasteries became depositories of wealth that transcended politi- cal alliances. The landholdings of Buddhism constituted about a third of Chinese farmland. Buddhist wealth was created not only through the trading networks and pawn shops at mon- asteries but also through the donation of gold and treasures that were converted to statues of the Buddha and richly appointed temples. One Chinese critic of Buddhism estimated that Buddhists controlled seven-eighths of the wealth of the empire, even though the number of followers was low.

In 845, Chinese protests against “foreign religions” led to the expulsion of all imported faiths. Even Buddhism came under attack. The emperor Wuzong of Tang declared,

We have heard that the Buddha was never spoken of before the Han dynasty; from then on the religion of idols gradually came to prominence. So in this later age Buddhism has transmitted its strange ways and has spread like a luxuriant vine until it has poisoned the customs of our nation, Buddhism has spread to all the nine provinces of China; each day finds its monks and followers growing more nu- merous and its temples loftier. Buddhism wears out the people’s strength, pilfers

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their wealth, causes people to abandon their lords and parents for company of teachers, and severs man and wife with its monastic decrees. In destroying law and injuring mankind indeed nothing surpasses this doctrine.

Now if even one man fails to work the fields, someone must go hungry; if one woman does not tend her silkworms, someone will go cold. At present there are an inestimable number of monks and nuns in the empire, all of them waiting for the farmers to feed them and the silk- worms to clothe them while the Buddhist public temples and private chapels have reached boundless numbers, sufficient to outshine the imperial palace itself.

Having thoroughly examined all ear- lier reports and consulted public opinion on all sides, there no longer remains the slightest doubt in our mind that this evil should be eradicated.

But Buddhism was not eradicated. Rather, its political power was crushed. Buddhism was the only “foreign” religion not to be ex- pelled from China. Under the Song dynasty (960–1279), Buddhism contributed to the trappings of the emperor’s authority, turning some emperors into venerated Bodhisattvas. In addition, the neo-Confucianism of Zhu Xi (1130–1200) and others integrated Buddhist ideas into the Confucian tradition.

More than Hinduism, perhaps even more than Indian textiles, tropical fruits, and wet rice, Indian Buddhism—in two varieties—conquered the world of South and East Asia in the centuries between 200 and 1000. For the first time, people from the islands of Ceylon and Java shared a common faith with desert nomads in central Asia and the princes and peasants of China, Japan, and Korea. For the first time in world history, entire societies directed their affairs according to sacred books. And though their

interpretations might differ, they were united in the conviction that these writings could save them from the travails of a shifting world.

Christianity beyond Palestine

Christianity, the other great salvation religion of the age of instability, spread across the Med- iterranean, Europe, and the Middle East, while Buddhism spread through central, eastern, and southeastern Asia. Some early Christians traveled to India and China and established small Christian communities in East Asia, but Christianity did not take hold in China until after a second wave of missionaries arrived 1,000 years later.

Hellenization

Hellenization is a shorthand for the spread of the Greek language and Greek mythology and philosophy, especially science, reason, cosmo- politanism, and universal values. If the spread of Buddhism throughout Asia was prepared by the monsoon winds and merchant sailors of the Indian Ocean, the spread of Christianity was prepared by Hellenization.

In fact, one might argue that Hellenization was the source of universalism in both Europe and Asia 2,000 years ago. Neither Hinduism nor Judaism was a universal religion: neither claimed allegiance beyond the tribe or tradi- tion, neither attracted or encouraged con- verts, and neither offered salvation beyond this world. It was not Theravada Buddhism that offered the world salvation but the Mahayana Buddhism that developed north of India in the Hellenized Kushan area. Similarly, it was not the apostles of Jesus in Jerusalem who called Jesus the savior of mankind but the Helle- nized Jew, Paul of Tarsus (in modern Turkey).

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Hellenism was a universal outlook before Bud- dhism and Christianity.

Paul versus Peter. The letters of Paul in the New Testament detail the conflict among the early followers of Jesus. Peter and the Jews of Jerusalem expected only observant Jews to join their community. Paul, an outsider, was con- scious of preaching a different faith: to Jews and Gentiles, open to all regardless of their ancestry. His faith in Jesus as the Christ, his belief that Jesus died for the sins of mankind, and his conviction that anyone could be saved by believing in Jesus—these ideas were all more Greek than Jewish, and they mobilized Gentile communities as well as synagogues from Syria to Rome. History is full of “ifs,” but one of the biggest is this: if Paul had not universalized the importance of Jesus, would there have been Christianity? There would have been a group of Jewish followers, many of whom perished by the time of the Roman conquest and destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE. But Paul’s insistence that Je- sus was more than a Jewish rabbi, that one did not have to be Jewish to accept Jesus, and that faith in Jesus offered salvation to all humanity was a prerequisite to success beyond the Jew- ish community. In addition, Paul traveled the Mediterranean visiting Gentile groups as well as synagogues to create the religious commu- nities that became the first Christians. From his first Christian church in Antioch, Syria, he planted churches in Cyprus, Greece, and throughout what is today Turkey.

Healing and Miracles. Like Buddhist monks, Christians provided healing in this world as well as salvation beyond. The Gospels told of Jesus healing the sick and reviving the dead. Similarly, early Christians were often called to heal the afflicted.

Most Greeks and Romans did not bela- bor distinctions between mere healing and

working miracles. Gods and their representa- tives were expected to show their power by various demonstrations of medicine, magic, or miracles. A typical account of this mix was given by the apostle John. At Ephesus, John converted unbelievers by healing the sick. He then claimed that he entered the temple of Ar- temis, where he called on God to cast out the Greek god. Immediately, the altar of Artemis split into pieces, and half the temple fell down, killing the priest. In response, the assembled Ephesians declared, “There is only one God: the God of John. We are converted.”10

Jews and Christians. Jews had a compli- cated relationship with their Roman occupi- ers. In Judea, Jews were largely left to their own devices, a policy that Romans practiced with most of their colonies. Jews outside Judea posed more difficult problems. Like Chris- tians, they did not worship Roman gods, but because Romans recognized that Jews had their own religion, Jewish separateness was generally accepted. At times, Jews were ad- mired; at times, they were banned from living in certain areas, like the city of Rome. From the Roman perspective, the Christians were much more problematic because they did not seem to accept Jewish or Roman religion, they worshipped a convicted Jewish troublemaker from a minor Roman province, they refused to participate in Roman civic functions, and they constantly tried to convert others to their subversive beliefs. This made them politically dangerous in Roman eyes.

As a consequence, Christians often found themselves on the wrong side of Roman law and tradition. Sometimes Roman governors were as confused as Christians about what their proper relationship should be. Pliny, governor of the Roman province of Bithynia, wrote to the emperor Trajan (98–117) to ask if it was proper to seek out Christians for

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persecution or respond only when they were brought to trial. Trajan urged restraint, but other emperors did not. Nero (54–68) stocked the gladiatorial slaughters with willing mar- tyrs. “Sometimes they were killed with the axe,” the Christian historian Eusebius wrote. “Sometimes they were hung up by the feet over a slow fire.”11 The story of young Perpetua of Carthage may not have been uncommon. Having survived the attack of a wild animal and the unsteady sword of the executioner,

she grabbed the blade herself and directed it to her throat.12 The example of Christian martyrs would be a memory with which others might build the faith, and their blood would fortify the soil in which the Christian community would be raised.

Conversion of the Roman Empire

It would be interesting to know if Christianity spread rapidly under the relatively tolerant

Figure 4.5 The Coptic Christians of Ethiopia carved their churches out of the living rock of cliffs and mountains. Approached from the land above, they were literally underground. Werner Forman/Art Resource, NY. Lalibela, Ethiopia.

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policies of Trajan and his successors from 90 to 160. Or did Christianity thrive more in the harsh years that began with Marcus Aurelius in 161, when the “barbarian” attacks and war with the Parthian Empire brought an end to the century of peace? The years of war, eco- nomic crisis, and plague could have increased the following for all religious cults, includ- ing Christianity, but their prominence likely increased the popular reaction against them. These were years in which Marcus Aurelius sought refuge in his Meditations in Stoicism (a philosophy not unlike Christianity in that it counseled acceptance, even surrender to adversity). But the years after the plague of 165 also witnessed an increase in Christian per- secutions, even demonstrations where mobs chanted, “Christians to the lions,” a scapegoat- ing that might also indicate a greater promi- nence for the new faith.

The fact is that we know little about how quickly Christianity grew. The historian Gib- bon estimated that about 5 percent of the Ro- man population was Christian in 250; modern historians think the percentage was much less. Constantine’s biographer, the historian Eusibius, saw three surges in Christian conver- sions: the early period of Paul and the apostles, the era of the great theologians in the 180s, and the period just before Constantine’s conver- sion in 312. But like us, he had no records or statistics and may have been more impressed by the proliferation of theological works in these periods.

The Eastern Roman Empire and Beyond. Christians were more numerous in the East- ern Roman Empire. This might be surprising because Americans and western Europeans usually envision a map of Christianity cen- tered on Rome. But such a map would include only Roman or Latin Christianity. Before the rise of Islam, there were numerous Christian

traditions. Greek, Syrian (Nestorian), and Armenian Christian churches prospered throughout eastern Europe and Asia. Egyptian (Coptic) and Ethiopian Christianity spread in Africa before Europe. A map of early Christi- anity might best be centered in Syria, where it began, and from where adherents established churches in Mesopotamia, Persia, central Asia, India, and even China, as well as the Mediter- ranean, North Africa, and Europe.

East of Rome, even east of Athens, lay all the Hellenistic cities with their ancient Jew- ish communities as well as legions of soldiers. From Syria to Persia, great cities attracted peo- ples from Rome to India. Christianity thrived in this land of cities; Christians used the word pagans, for “country people”—to designate non-Christians. The cities of the Middle East were cauldrons of changing faiths and newly forged sects. A modern historian describes one group of ancient Christians near modern Basra, Iraq, that demonstrates their variety:

During the second and third centuries, groups of Baptists [Christians] could be found in the district between the mouth of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, where they lived under the nominal control of the Parthians. They acknowledged Chris- tian teachings among severe beliefs which had the stamp of Jewish influence. Here, they had presumably begun as a splinter group from Jewish settlers and we have come to know only recently how they combined a respect for Jesus with a strong stamp of Jewish practice and an hon- our for their original leader, the prophet Elchesai, who had taught in Mesopotamia c. 100–110 A.D.13

From a community like this came the prophet Mani, whose Manichaeism com- bined elements of Christianity and Persian

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Zoroastrianism. From here, missionaries sailed out the Persian Gulf to India, where Christian communities traced their origins back to a first- or early second-century apostle called Judas Thomas. In the middle of the sec- ond century, Christians in India wrote to Syria asking for a bishop since their previous one had died. The early Christian world was one of great diversity.

Soldiers and Emperors. Like Buddhism, Christianity was ultimately successful thanks to the support of important political leaders: kings and emperors. Even before the Roman emperor Constantine supported Christianity in 312, kings in Syria had converted, contrib- uting legitimacy and numerous followers.

We do not know precisely why Constan- tine supported Christianity after 312. Prob- ably no more than 10 percent of the empire’s inhabitants were Christians when Constantine embraced the faith. Many were no doubt women, his mother among them. But soldiers also converted to Christianity, especially in the eastern and African provinces. The story is told of Constantine’s predecessor, the em- peror Maximian, relying on a legion from Upper Egypt to conquer the tribes of the Alps. To celebrate their success, Maximian asked them to execute some Christian captives. But all the 6,600 men of the Theban legion were also Christians. Under their leader Maurice, they refused and offered their own necks to Roman swords. To commemorate the sacrifice of this Egyptian legion, the town of Aquanum (in modern Switzerland) changed its name to St. Maurice, or St. Moritz. For Maximian’s successor, the loyalty of Roman troops would have been a matter of great importance.

In 312, the historian Eusibius tells us, on the night before Constantine was forced to do battle with Maximian’s son to secure the crown, Constantine saw a flaming cross in the

sky inscribed with the words, “In this sign thou shalt conquer.” Subsequently, he embraced Christianity and won the battle. The following year (313), Constantine issued an edict mak- ing Christianity an officially tolerated religion throughout the Roman Empire. Less than a century later, Christianity was proclaimed the official religion of the Roman Empire.

The Tribes of Europe. An emperor may be wise to take the religion of his soldiers, and anyone who seeks the favor of the em- peror would be wise to share his religion, but what of the common people of the empire? The various tribes of Europe—the Helvitii in the Alps and the Germans, Gauls, Celts, and Saxons—had their own tribal gods, fes- tivals, and celebrations. What did they need of the emperor’s religion, especially after the empire had vanished? How did the tribes of Europe become Christian? Some, no doubt, were persuaded by the idea of a single god; some embraced the Christian promise of life after death. But the language of the Christian scriptures was as Greek to the tribes of Eu- rope as Indian Buddhism was Sanskrit to the Chinese. To make the message intelligible, Christian missionaries molded it to European tribal traditions. They adopted pagan feast days, setting, for instance, the birthday of Jesus at the time of the winter solstice and northern fire festivals that marked the returning sun. They set a place for tribal deities at the table of Christ as saints and angels, integrating their stories, attributes, and holidays. Pope Gregory the Great instructed Augustine, his missionary to England, not to destroy the pagan temples. “Only remove their idols. Then sprinkle them with holy water and build altars. Pagans will be more willing to worship the true God in familiar surroundings.”14

Sometimes, however, tribal deities had to be confronted rather than accommodated.

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After converting to Christianity, the Hessians of Germany reverted to their pagan ways. Around 719, the pope sent Boniface to bring the Hessians back to the true faith. According to the saint’s disciple and biographer, Boniface gathered the people around a large oak tree, known from antiquity as the Oak of Jupiter. He then raised an ax and brought it down into the tree, slicing into the bark. Just as he did so, a great wind blew from the heavens, knocking the tree down, cutting it into four equal pieces. “At the sight of this extraordinary spectacle, the heathens who had been cursing ceased to revile and began, on the contrary, to believe and bless the Lord.”15 In gratitude, they split the logs into lumber and built a church to St. Peter, we are told. Like Buddhism, Christianity spread amid tales of miracles.

Orthodoxy, Heresy, and Assimilation. In or- der to be successful, a new religion must choose its fights carefully. Missionaries must know where to bend and where to resist. Churches must distinguish what is important from what is inconsequential. For Christians, pagan feast days, holy sites, and physical buildings were secondary. The word of God was important: the holy writ, ideas, theology, and beliefs. We have seen that Buddhists also worked to keep their sacred writings. But for Buddhists, the sacred writings constituted more of an archive than commandments. They provided continuity of tradition, not the demands of God. Chinese Buddhists continued to honor their parents and ancestors and even visit Confucian and Daoist shrines and temples.

Because Christians believed that they pos- sessed the word of God, correct ideas were crucial. The right doctrine was everything. Especially since Christians after Paul believed that faith or belief was sufficient for salvation, what one believed was a matter of eternal life or death.

But there were many different Christian beliefs during the first Christian centuries. A basic matter like the nature of Christ was hotly debated. Some said that Jesus was a human prophet, much like John the Baptist. Others said that Christ had two natures: human and divine. Some believed that Christ was all di- vine. Still others said that Christ was part of a trinity that included God the Father and the Holy Ghost. In general, particular interpreta- tions tended to hold sway in particular sees or bishops’ cities. Antioch, for instance, was a hotbed for believers in a human Christ. The bishops of the great cosmopolitan cities of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, and Constan- tinople generally heard wider-ranging debates than did the bishops of Rome, but all sought to achieve some uniformity of belief.

The bishops called councils of church lead- ers together to determine which beliefs were proper and which were not. A series of these councils, many of their locations testifying to the importance of Eastern cities (Nicea, Con- stantinople, and Chalcedon), finally led to the designation of certain beliefs as orthodox and others as heresies.

Orthodoxy defined and fought heresy, but it also prevented assimilation. The problem is that by underlining the differences between proper and improper ideas, orthodoxy also created heresies. Some heresies had staying power, but most eventually died out, their ad- herents eventually assimilating or waiting for the next orthodoxy.

Christianity in Europe and China. We often think of Christianity as a European religion despite its obvious Middle Eastern origins. But in the early centuries, before the rise of Islam, Christianity also spread widely in Egypt and North Africa. The Egyptian and Syrian churches sent missionaries to Ethiopia, Yemen, India, and central Asia. Ethiopia to

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this day hosts a large Christian population. In central Asia and China, Christians congre- gated in oasis towns and market cities. But Christianity, unlike Buddhism, failed to put down deep roots in China.

One historian, Jerry H. Bentley, argued that the failure of Nestorian Christianity to win China was due to the tendency of its missionaries to assimilate too thoroughly. They not only translated Christianity through Daoism but also eventually became Daoists. Bentley points to an early eighth-century doc- ument attributed to a Persian missionary who was head of the Nestorian Christian church in the Chinese capital of Chang’an:

The treatise portrays Jesus teaching Si- mon Peter and other disciples, but the doctrines advanced there are specifically and almost exclusively Daoist. To attain rest and joy, according to the Jesus of this sutra, an individual must avoid striving and desire but cultivate the virtues of non- assertion and non-action. These qualities allow an individual to become pure and serene, a condition that leads to illumi- nation and understanding. Much of the treatise explains four chief ethical values: non-desire, or the elimination of personal ambition; non-action, the refusal to strive for wealth and worldly success; non-vir- tue, the avoidance of self-promotion; and non-demonstration, the shunning of an artificial in favor of a natural observance of these virtues. The treatise in fact does not offer a single recognizably Christian doctrine but offers instead moral and ethi- cal guidance of the sort that Daoist sages had taught for a millennium.16

Were all Nestorians as indifferent to ortho- doxy or as willing to assimilate? Probably not. Earlier Nestorians taught monotheism—God as creator of all things, Jesus Christ as savior—and related many of the stories of the life of Jesus presented in the New Testament. Nestorian Christians in India maintained Christian be- liefs and practices as they lived as a separate community although treated by Hindus as a

Figure 4.6 Virgin and Child. Like Guanyin in Buddhism, the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, was central to Christianity, but became more visible in the Middle Ages. Both offered salvation, for women as well as men. Both Buddhism and Christianity had nunneries for women as well as monasteries for men, but Christian religious nuns and secular female religious communities were more numerous than the Buddhist. This statue was purchased by a women’s community (called a beginage) in the Netherlands in 1345. The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Fletcher Fund, 1924

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separate caste. Nestorian missionaries along the Silk Road won converts among the Turkic- speaking tribes of the great grasslands. Many Mongols married into Nestorian families in fact. Only among the Mongols were Nestorian traders able to gain preferential treatment, and that provoked a Muslim reaction.17 Elsewhere, the Nestorians lacked the close bond of mer- chants and political leaders that benefited the spread of Buddhism and Islam. Nowhere east of Syria did Nestorians win the exclusive political backing of a monarch or major tribal chieftain.

The Nestorian church was cut off from its political foundations in Antioch by charges of heresy and the imposition of Roman and Byzantine orthodoxy. Nestorian monasteries in central Asia and China floated in alien seas with neither local moorings nor distant, safe harbors. They breathed an atmosphere of ac- ceptance of (or indifference to) new religious ideas. Orthodoxy seemed far away.

Christianity in Europe enjoyed the back- ing of the state in both Rome and Constanti- nople. With one exception, the emperors after Constantine were Christian. By the end of the fourth century, Christianity was the religion of the empire, east and west. Orthodoxy was enforced by the Roman emperor in the fourth century as well as by the Roman pope. After the breakdown of imperial authority in the west, the Roman pope alone held the reins of orthodoxy over the tribes of western Europe. While the Roman pope had a say with the pa- triarchs of other sees in doctrinal disputes east of Italy, the Roman church had a free hand in the west. Thus, even after there was no longer an emperor in Rome, the doctrines of the Ro- man church were taught from Ireland to Italy.

Increasingly after the eighth century, how- ever, the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alex- andria, Jerusalem, and Antioch declined to take direction from Rome. A final break came

between Rome and Constantinople in 1054, but by then centuries of separate language (Latin vs. Greek), culture, and development had cre- ated a schism that has lasted to the present day. Eastern orthodox churches tended to be more tied to national governments. The first officially Christian nation was declared by King Tira- dates of Armenia in 301, 12 years before Con- stantine’s conversion. In the Byzantine Empire, centered in Constantinople after the sixth cen- tury, the emperor often played a forceful role in the church (a political dominance that came to be known as Caesaro-Papism). But the mission- aries from Constantinople brought the same doctrine to Russia that they brought to Bul- garia. Despite national differences, Orthodox churches tended to bring a similar kind of piety throughout the newly Christianized domains of the later medieval period. In piety, liturgy, and beliefs, these churches were not very different from those that spread from Rome.18

In summary, Christianity spread a com- mon culture from Ireland to central Asia. Despite differences in dogma or institutional loyalties, a common identity as Christians was strong enough to encourage pilgrimages, mis- sionaries, and (after 1095) crusades on behalf of the shared faith. In Jerusalem, Egypt, or central Asia, Christians met not only fellow Christians but also representatives of the other increasingly global cultures—the missionaries of southernization, of Buddhism, and, begin- ning in the seventh century, the bearers of a new universal faith called Islam.

The Rise of Islam: The Making of a Modern World Civilization

The Islamic world was the third universal cultural system to spread across Eurasia in the first millennium CE. In many ways, it

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was the successor of the universal religious systems that preceded it. Islam, the religion of Muslims, was (and is) a continuation of the monotheistic salvation religion that sprang from the scriptures of Jews and Christians. For Muslims, Muhammad was the last of a line of prophets that included Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. But for Muslims, the most recent of God’s revelations was received by the last and greatest of the prophets, Muhammad. The Quran (or Koran), Muslims believe, was dic- tated to Muhammad by the archangel Gabriel in the early seventh century CE. Muhammad recited the words, which were later compiled into the present book.

Salvation, Endings, and Beginnings

The Quran continued to stress many of the themes of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity. Prominent among these were the ideas of a cosmic struggle, a last judgment, and the prospect of heaven for the righteous. But the Islamic idea of salvation was much more optimistic than the Christian. Christian salvation (like Buddhist) held out a balm for a suffering world. Christians and Buddhists ap- pealed generally to the less prosperous classes of the Roman and Chinese empires, and they entered the mainstream during the empires’ decline after the second century CE.

Christianity offered salvation from a world that seemed to be ending; Islamic salvation seemed to beckon to a world just beginning. Islam sprang from a world on the move, the southern part of Eurasia that was untouched by the widespread population dislocations of the Eurasian grasslands. Between 200 and 700, a period of global population decline, the population of the Arabian Peninsula actually doubled.19 This vitality was probably a reflec- tion of a rising economy, resulting in part

from the redirection of trade along the “water silk road” of the Indian Ocean. Arab trade prospered from new technologies of transpor- tation by water and land. Arab traders used Malay triangular sails to navigate the mon- soon winds of the Indian Ocean. The Chinese compass allowed them to sail the open seas. Camels, the ships of the desert, had been do- mesticated for more than 1,000 years, but they too became more useful with the invention of a camel saddle that held a considerable array of baggage or riders with swords.

The Prophet: Trade and Religion

Muhammad (570–632) was born into a mer- chant family. Orphaned at an early age, he learned the trade of a camel driver and mer- chant under the tutelage of a wealthy widow whom he later married. On caravan trips across Arabia, he came into contact with Jews and Christians and was drawn to the simplic- ity of their faith in a single God of both local and global significance. The God of Abraham was the deity of ancient nomadic pastoralists who brought their herds and people along the same routes that connected Mesopotamia and Egypt. He was also the creator of the world and of all mankind. Some Arabs recognized this and professed adherence to the faith of Moses or Jesus, but most Arabs worshipped other tribal fathers, forces of nature, and spir- its called jinns (or genies). Muhammad was appalled by such local tribal religions and the continuous wars they engendered.

The revelation of the Quran transformed tribal conflict into a powerful force for Arab unity and expansion. Muhammad himself gal- vanized many of the Arabs of his native Mecca into an army of God opposed to idol worship, social inequality, political injustice, and cor- ruption. His success threatened the ruling elite

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of Mecca, particularly the powerful leaders of the Quraish tribe who benefited from the many religious shrines of the city.

In 622, Muhammad and his followers escaped assassination by fleeing north to the city that became Medina. The flight, hijra, and the creation of the first Muslim community, umma, marked 622 as the first year of the Muslim calendar. In Medina, Islam evolved as a distinct religion, separate from Judaism and Christianity: a more robust monotheism than Christianity but attuned to Arab traditions. The “five pillars” of Islam that developed in Medina—profession of faith, prayer, fasting, charity, and pilgrimage—were unique to Islam only in the form they took. The profession of faith was not only “there is no god but God” but also “and Muhammad is his Messenger.” Prayer was performed five times a day—ini- tially facing Jerusalem but, as Muhammad in Medina separated Islam from Judaism, toward Mecca. Fasting (during the month of

Ramadan) and pilgrimage (to Mecca) also gave these practices an Arab stamp. By center- ing Islam (literally “submission” to God) at Mecca, Muhammad also built on traditional Arab pilgrimages to the black stone called the Kaba and took advantage of the useful influ- ence of the Quraish tribe, which controlled the holy site and the city.

Islam beyond Arabia

Islamic Expansion to 750. Religious fer- vor fired the initial campaigns that brought Islam to all of the Arabs of Arabia. But what happened next had as much to do with Arab armies as with religious belief. There are few historical parallels for such rapid expansion. Perhaps only the Macedonian armies of Alex- ander the Great (and later the Mongols) car- ried out a similar range of conquests in such a short period of time. Between the time of the death of Muhammad in 632 and 750, a period

Map 4.3 Islam was the most rapidly expanding religion between 634 and 1250, changing the identity of what had previously been a largely Christian region with many Persian Zoroastrians as well as Jews, Hindus, and animists.

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of little more than 100 years, the Arab armies conquered most of the territory of two of the world’s great empires—the east Roman Byzan- tine Empire and the Persian Empire—and the peoples from Morocco and Spain in the west to the margins of India and China in the east.

It would be a mistake, however, to see the rapid expansion of Islam beyond Arabia as a religious jihad or crusade. This is because the conquest of Byzantine and Persian empires had more to do with luck and military success than the preaching of a new religion. Further, Muslims saw little need and had little reason to convert non-Arabs. They viewed Islam as

Arab monotheism, akin to the monotheism of Christians and Jews. The Greek Christians of the Byzantine Empire, even the Zoroastrians of the Persian Empire, were to the Muslims fellow monotheists and “people of the Book.” Like other ancient empires, Muslims also de- termined a system of taxation for subject peo- ples—at a slightly higher level for non-Muslims than Muslims. Like taxation, the enslavement of conquered peoples was also a common op- tion of ancient empires. Muslims, however, thought it inappropriate to enslave fellow Mus- lims, and that too provided a reason to conquer and administer rather than convert.

Figure 4.7 Jenne and nearby Timbuktu at the southern end of the trans- Saharan salt-for-gold trade were the first and most important cities in Sudanic West Africa to become centers of Islam. Werner Forman/Art Resource, NY. Great Mosque, Djenne, Mali.

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Arab armies dealt a significant defeat to the Byzantine Empire in 636. In 637, the Persian Sassanian Empire capitulated to Arab forces. Byzantine and Persian armies had been weak- ened by continual conflicts between them- selves, and they faced in the Arab armies a potent and determined adversary. The fall of old empires did not have to mean a radical change in the daily lives of ordinary people, however. In Syria, Palestine, and Persia, Arab governors often used the same administrators and tax collectors who had served the Byzan- tine and Persian empires. Most people lived their lives as they had before. The conquering Arabs were, compared to Alexander’s Mace- donians, particularly insular. Arab armies sta- tioned themselves in forts separated from the cities they had conquered. Initially, they mixed very little with the local population, using each fort as a stepping-stone to further expansion. As late as 750, only 10 percent of the non- Arab population of the Dar al-Islam (House of Islam) was Muslim, a level that testifies to the lack of religious coercion by the Arab con- querors or the disinterest of the new subjects in what they may have perceived as Arab religion.

Gradually, however, the conquered learned to appreciate the ways of the new conquerors and accept the legitimacy of the government of the caliphate. Muslims became more in- terested in converting their subjects to Islam, and non-Muslims found advantage in doing so. To make a contract with the new governor, perhaps to supply the troops or collect taxes, a Muslim name would be a definite advantage. Conversions began slowly but quickened in pace. The choice of a Muslim name was a clear indicator of conversion to the new faith. The historian Richard Bulliet gathered the data of name changes in Persia and discovered that Muslims grew from 10 percent to 90 percent of the Persian population between 750 and 900.20

Bulliet points out that this conversion rate fol- lowed a typical “S,” or bell, curve where some- thing rises slowly, gathers momentum, surges, peaks, and levels off. He remarks that the same curve would chart the popularity of a new tech- nological innovation, such as high-definition television today. But not every innovation or new idea succeeds, and few sweep away all predecessors so stunningly. So we need to ask “why?”—or, more modestly, “how?”

Islamic Expansion after 750. The spread of Islam from 10 percent to 90 percent of the Persian population between 750 and 900 owed much to the power and prestige of the Abbasid caliphate that replaced the Um- mayad after 750. With the Abbasids, Islam shifted its geographic center only slightly far- ther east, from Damascus to Baghdad. But the builders of the new city on the Tigris brought in tribes from the Iranian plateau and central Asian nomads to join with Arabs in the new faith. Under the Abbasid caliphate, Islam re- alized a universalism that was only potential in Arab monotheism. In opposition to the Arab favoritism of the Ummayad caliphate, the Abbasid caliphate encouraged a larger range of ethnic groups and tribes to become Muslims. In their new capital at Baghdad, the Abbasids created a cosmopolitan government and culture.

Like the other monotheistic religions, Is- lam included everyone from theocrats, who believed the government should institute God’s will, to those who believed that spiritual matters were none of the government’s busi- ness. Because of the example of Muhammad’s government in Medina, perhaps more Mus- lims than Christians were theocrats, but Islam was a less hierarchical religion than Christian- ity became. In Islam, there was no equivalent of the pope or College of Cardinals. Nor were there bishops or church councils to determine

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orthodoxy or impose discipline. There were ulama (learned scholars) and judges, and well-respected religious leaders could issue pronouncements that their followers found binding. But a fatwa, or religious edict, rarely had the force of political law. Politically, Islam was a decentralized religion. While some of the early Abbasid caliphs thought of them- selves as religious leaders, Islam spread more widely, paradoxically, under those caliphs who were more political than religious.

Ultimately, Islam’s appeal was more politi- cal and cultural. It was the sophisticated urban civilization of Islam that attracted cultural converts: to the Arabic language, schools of filosophia, high moral standards, and the rich culture of Islam.

The First World Civilization

Islam created the first civilization to encom- pass multiple states, governments, and peo- ples. By 750, the religion of Islam, the Quran, and the Arabic language shaped the beliefs and behavior of Berbers in North Africa and the descendants of Egyptians, Syrians, Mesopota- mians, Persians, central Asians, and Indians. In the next 750 years, Islam spread to the Turks, Africans, and East Asians. A single cul- ture united peoples across Eurasia from Spain to Indonesia. Even Jews, Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists who lived in the Dar al-Islam benefited from learning the language of the new global culture.

Abbasid Baghdad. The Abbasid caliph- ates of Harun al-Rashid (786–809) and of his son al-Mamun (813–833) were the first world cosmopolitan age. A world civilization may have been implicit in the message of Islam, but as long as that message was identified with a single ethnic group, the Arabs, its univer- sality was muted. Al-Rashid and al-Mamun

changed the balance of Islam so that it was no longer an Arab religion ruled by sons of Ara- bia. Al-Rashid brought ministers (viziers) and advisers to Baghdad from throughout central Asia. The first and best known of these, from the Persian Barmakid family, were descended from Buddhist priests who converted to Islam.

The Persians and other non-Arabs of the Abbasid court turned an Arab empire into a Muslim one. Ironically, the new synthesis of Arab and Persian culture also brought the traditional trappings of Persian hierarchy and royal pomp to the palace. Some Abba- sid caliphs were like divine kings. Al-Rashid turned Baghdad into a world of opulence and dramatic indulgence: extravagant gifts one moment, a brutal punishment the next. He was the prototype for the later Thousand and One Nights, the tale of Queen Scheherazade’s nightly storytelling to curtail her evil hus- band’s plan to execute her.

Al-Mamun, who had to defeat his brother in a civil war for the caliphate, brought a cul- tural renaissance to Baghdad. He created a complex called the “House of Wisdom,” which included an enormous library, one of the old- est and largest universities of the world, and a center for translations from Greek, Latin, and other non-Arab and non-Persian litera- ture. Al-Mamun’s efforts saved many classical Greek works, including those of Plato and Aristotle, from oblivion.

Abbasid Baghdad also became a center of scientific and mathematical research. Ar- abs adopted Indian numerical notation and the Indian zero-based decimal system, which were far more flexible than Roman numer- als or older Mesopotamian 12- and 60-based systems. The House of Wisdom contained an astronomical observatory, introduced the compass from China, and developed the as- trolabe or sextant. Astronomers calculated the

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length of the solar year, the distance around the earth, and the rhythm of lunar tides. The translation center preserved the science of Greece: the astronomical writings of Ptolemy, Euclid’s Geometry, the early medical works of Hippocrates, and the medical texts of Galen, including the first study of asthma. Scholars wrote medical encyclopedias and volumes on diseases like smallpox and measles, practiced dissection, and wrote on the optics of the eye. Indian, Persian, and Greek pharmaco- logical knowledge led to the creation of the world’s first pharmacies. Baghdad had 800 registered pharmacists. The great mathemati- cian al-Khwarizmi introduced the study of algebra. The three Banu Musa brothers built on Greek geometry and mathematics. Geog- raphers compiled an encyclopedia of places visited by Islamic merchants from East Africa to the Spice Islands of Indonesia.

A Cultural Empire. Islam was the first global civilization not because of its political empire. The Abbasid caliphate at Baghdad lasted beyond the ninth century in name only. Its top-heavy, Persian imperial court ill fitted early Muslim ideas of the equality of believers. Alternate “caliphs” challenged the authority of the Abbasids, including members of the Umayyad family who established their capital at Cordoba. Other dynasties were created by Muslims of various ethnic backgrounds and religious beliefs from Fez in Morocco to Delhi in India. The early vision of a single Muslim caliphate ceased to exist in fact. But its failure enabled the success of a cultural empire—a single civilization that embraced many people and many governments.

The cultural empire was based on a shared language and a single book. The Quran was the one authority that all Muslims shared. But the importance of the book created a culture of literacy and libraries. In addition to the

Quran, Muslims gathered the hadiths, the sayings of the Prophet reported by those who knew him. They wrote volumes on each chap- ter of the Quran, interpretations, analyses, and explanations. But they also continued to translate, transcribe, and build on the works of the Greeks, Byzantines, Persians, and Indians. Like the Chinese, Muslims turned calligraphy and bookmaking into art forms. By the ninth century, they had borrowed Chinese paper- making techniques, substituting linen (for mulberry bark) to make a longer-lasting cloth paper.

Writing had always been the glue that bound civilizations. Libraries not only cre- ated literate elites and cultures but also shared memories and uniform speech. Before the existence of paper, libraries the size of Bagh- dad’s under al-Mamun were rare if they ex- isted at all. The greatest library of the classical world was the library of Alexandria, which had probably contained between 40,000 and 70,000 scrolls (where each scroll contains a few chapters).21 A large library in Ephesus that was burned by the Goths in 262 contained 12,000 scrolls. The library of Charlemagne, who also led a cultural renaissance in the early ninth century, numbered 256 volumes.22 It is said that the library in Cordoba under the caliph Al-Hakem II (971–976) contained 400,000 volumes. Such numbers are hard to verify, but it is certain that the Muslim world retained and built on the literary and scientific heritage of the classical world. It is also certain that such a literary empire united Muslims and their non-Muslim residents across the largest span of land and seas and the largest number of peoples in the history of the world until that time. In the centuries that followed 1000, that Dar al-Islam expanded even farther into Africa and Southeast Asia and in the centuries after 1500 into a new world as well.

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Conclusion

The period from 200 to 1000 used to be called the Dark Ages. From the perspective of Eu- ropean history, especially western European history, this made a certain degree of sense. We have noted the disruptions of nomadic tribes in both western Europe and China from 200 to 600 and the accompanying popula- tion declines and loss of cities and traditional cultures. But from the perspective of southern Eurasia, this period was one of growth and expansion, both material and cultural.

The first 1,000 years of the Common Era was also a millennium of mixing. New reli- gious and commercial relationships stretched across the borders of identity that had been forged in the previous age of classical civiliza- tions. In many ways, the first millennium was the first global age, the first age of globaliza- tion, the first age when people became more alike rather than more different.

We have concentrated our attention on Eurasia, where these developments were most marked. Not until after 1500 did the entire world begin to become one. It remains for us to see how other parts of the world moved closer together in these and later years. Nevertheless, this world where everything is more than 1,000 years old might strike us as very familiar.