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Book
Review |
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Foltz, Richard C., Religions of the Silk Road: Overland Trade and Cultural
Exchange from Antiquity to the Fifteenth Century (St. Martin's Griffin,
2000). 200 pp., $17.95
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In this short world history monograph, Richard
Foltz uses the Silk Road as the geographic construct in which to examine
"the movement and transformation" of all the religions that inhabited this
vast region for some two thousand years. He attempts, fortunately,
to investigate this immense body of material thematically: "Taking as its
theme the specific example of the spread of religious ideas, this book tells
the story of how religions accompanied merchants and their goods along the
overland Asian trade routes of pre-modern times" (7). He defines the
Silk Road as not one road but rather a network of many roads from East to
West, with "spurs" dipping into the Indian subcontinent, southern Iran,
and the northern Eurasian steppe. The book highlights linkages among the
various peoples who inhabited this region until 1500 and overall provides
a good, brief account of the history and interactions of Zoroastrians, Manichaeans,
Nestorian Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and Muslims. Because the book
condenses so much information into so few pages, undergraduates who lack
a background in Near, Central, and East Asian history might get lost it
the multitude of Asian, Turkic, Persian and Islamic terms and names rapidly
introduced. Therefore, this book is best suited as supplemental lecture
material for instructors on topics and themes, such as Islamization, raised
in the world history survey. |
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For instance, Foltz raises an interesting
question in the preface. He succinctly points out that for centuries
Central Asia was one of the most religiously diverse areas in the world
and that it also served as safe refuge for unorthodox beliefs, such as Nestorian
Christianity. Yet despite this fact, this pluralistic territory became
one of the "most uniformly Muslim regions" (6). How? Foltz argues
in later chapters that this phenomenon was most likely the result of early
and steady contact with Muslim traders. This argument is consistent
with other studies in world history such as Jerry Bentley's Old World
Encounters (1993), Janet Abu-Lughod's Before European Hegemony
(1989), and Patricia Risso's Merchants and Faith (1995). Like
these earlier works, Foltz argues that Islam attracted many converts due
to its commercial appeal and this, in part, explains "the 'failure' of Christianity
along the Silk Road" (137). By the sixteenth century, Islam became
the dominant religion throughout Central Asia. |
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Teachers and college instructors who are seeking
to improve their understanding of the above mentioned religions, especially
with respect to their relation with each other, will find several other
useful examples in this book. An excellent discussion of the Jewish
merchants known as Radanites (101-102) reveals that their privileged status
in the Muslim period allowed them to move back and forth quite freely along
the Silk Road between the Muslim and Christian worlds. The Radanites
came into frequent contact with the Khazars, a shamanistic Turkic people
north of the Caspian who controlled a northern trade "spur" to the Silk
Road. Foltz points out that, "Perceiving the commercial benefits associated
with the Radanites' neutral religious status, the Khazar elite eventually
embraced Judaism." (p. 102). As active participants along the trade routes,
the Jewish Radanites maintained vibrant diaspora communities which strengthened
their religious loyalties. |
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Yet Foltz not only links the spread of religions
to trade, but also to diplomatic missions, religious pilgrimages, and missionary
activity. Sufis, for example, frequently attached themselves to trade
caravans and helped to carry Islam into Inner Asia and China. The
shamanistic steppe peoples frequently believed that the Sufi masters possessed
magical powers and, "like Christians and other before them, often assumed
a role traditionally filled by the shamans. Like shamans, they were
sometimes believed to be able to fly" (142). Other examples of religious
syncretism emerge in this book. Foltz suggests that the Muslims who
took over Buddhist lands in Central Asia borrowed architectural designs
such as the four-way arch plan of the Muslim religious schools, the madrasas.
Even the madrasas themselves may have been adopted from Buddhist
schools. The reader is certain to gain an appreciation for the considerable
degree of religious syncretism that occurred along the Silk Road as a result
of cross-cultural contact and encounter, and Foltz provides plenty of specific
examples that could add to a lecture on religious syncretism among the various
religions in the pre-modern world. |
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Religions of the Silk Road is the result
of several separate articles previously published by the author and reworked
into a single monograph. As a result, certain chapters such as chapter
six, Ecumenical Mischief -- a political history of relations between
Catholic and Nestorian Christians -- appear out of place. Two of the three
maps in the book are also extremely difficult to read because the type is
difficult to decipher against the physical background. Nonetheless, Foltz
has synthesized an impressive body of secondary sources as evidence for
this book, and teachers and scholars will find his bibliography extremely
useful for future research topics. Moreover, the overarching theme that
trade linked together the various religions along the Silk Road offers world
historians yet another useful tool in constructing an analytical framework
for presenting such a daunting topic. |
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| Mary Jane Maxwell
Washington State University |
| Reviewer:
Mary Jane Maxwell received her PhD in World History at Washington State
University in 2004. |
