Religions Of The Silk Road Globalization Summary

A common similarity in good books is the presence of themes within the books. Religions of The Silk Road: Premodern Patterns of Globalization by Richard Foltz is an example of one of such good books with themes. Throughout the book, there are many themes and the following are just a few examples of them. Religions and the spread of religion are themes that play a large part in making this book as successful as it is. Considering the book has the word religion in its title, it’s safe to assume religion is an important topic and theme in this book. There are many different religions mentioned in this book that make up the theme of religion along the Silk Road. There are even chapters in the book that are dedicated to the specifics to some

Every religion mentioned in this book managed to spread and expand along the Silk Road for a few reasons. The first and most important reason was trade. Traveling merchants played a large role in spreading the word for a religion as they traveled and traded. Sogdians are an example of this. They were a people setup perfectly in Transoxiana, modern day Uzbekistan, so that they were a link between the east and the west. They were the middlemen of important things like bring paper to the west from China. They also were literate and knew foreign languages. With all these advantages, the Sogdians were crucial for the spread of religions that they were influenced. First, Buddhism influenced some Sogdians who spread it through the trading colonies, and in turn spread Buddhism all across the Silk Road even to China. Later Sogdians were influenced by other religions like Manichaeism and Nestorian Christianity, and they spread those religions across the Silk Road just as they did with Buddhism. Another way they helped with these religions was by translating religious texts since they knew foreign languages and were literate as well, which was rare at that time. This ability of the Sogdians was important for spreading the religion to places with different languages. The Muslims also used trade to help spread their religion. The book says, “The gradual Islamization of the nomadic Turkic peoples of

Often when a religion was accepted by a government or king, benefits would come with being associated with that religion. For those who were dependent on the government, they found it advantageous to convert to the religion of their patrons. This was commonly seen with Muslims. Also commercial benefits for merchants came from being Muslim because of its wide spread. This helped facilitate contracts and cooperation with other Muslim merchants as well as favorable conditions given out by Muslim officials. In the book it says, “The gradual Islamization of the nomadic Turkic peoples of Central and Inner Asia was at first directly tied to their increasing participation in the oasis-based Silk Road trade in the tenth century, accelerated by the political activities of three Turkic Muslim dynasties.” Another political way that is stereotyped to the spread of Islam was the “convert or die” method seen used against local rulers who opposed the Muslims. There were many ways religions spread like wildfire across Silk Road and these are the main ones mentioned by the