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

by Richard C. Foltz

Book Overview

Drawing on the latest research and scholarship, this newly revised and updated edition of Religions of the Silk Road explores the majestically fabled cities and exotic peoples that make up the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312233388
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Length: 212 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.0" x 1.0" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

First-Rate World History

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

Wonderful introduction to important history and religions

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

Where Major Religions First Met

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

A fascinating introduction

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