Unit 7 The Spread of Religions

Bridging World History - 55 - Unit 7

Unit 7

The Spread of Religions

Introduction to UnitThis unit explores how missionaries, pilgrims, and converts served as elements of change by facilitating the trans-mission of diverse beliefs and practices between the second and twelfth centuries CE. During that time, believersspread their faiths to rulers of diverse states as well as to merchants, travelers, and local communities whoadopted and promoted the new religions. As religions moved across space, they also changed. Some of thesechanges occurred when religious leaders interpreted doctrines differently in different historical contexts. Changecould also occur as a result of influence from indigenous religions.

Learning Objectives· Describe the historical origins of Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam.

· Explain how the beliefs and practices of Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam spread.

· Trace the changes and adaptations believers made in world religions because of diverse cultural circumstances.

· Analyze how believers in Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam interacted with, provided justification for, andconflicted with various states and empires in Afro-Eurasia.

Preparing for This SessionRead Unit 7 in the Bridging World History online text. You may also want to refer to some of the Suggested Readings and Materials. If you feel you need more background knowledge, refer to a college-level world historytextbook on this subject (look under the index for Buddhism, Christianity, Islam).

Unit 7 - 56 - Bridging World History

Before You Begin—30 minutesLook at the three maps below. Write titles for each of the maps. Check your answers at the end of this chapter.

Titles:

Map A: ______________________________________

Map B: ______________________________________

Map C: ______________________________________

What time periods do you think the maps span? What kindsof background knowledge did you use to guess or knowabout the time periods? Check your answers at the end ofthis chapter.

Time Periods:

Map A: _________ to _________

Map B: _________ to _________

Map C: _________ to _________

Watch the Video for “Unit 7: The Spread of Religions”—30 minutes

Unit Activities

Item #6851. Map A Item #6852. Map B

Item #6850. Map C


Activity 1: Spread of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam—30 minutesLook at the three maps showing the spread of Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam.

· Where did the religions originate?

· Where did they spread?

· Where did the spread of the three religions overlap? Why do some areas of the world have more than oneworld religion? What kinds of factors might cause only one religion to dominate?

· What kind of evidence do you think historians used to create these maps?

· What kind of new evidence might change the ways the arrows are drawn?

· Do the maps demonstrate why the religions spread? What other kinds of evidence do you need about thespread of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam?

Activity 2: Missionaries Spread Religions—60 minutesAs different as Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam were, there were certain common elements that helped toexplain why they all spread so widely and so successfully. All of them relied heavily on the services of missionariesand the work of pilgrims, for example. All of them made imaginative use of relics. All of them adopted elementsof previously existing cultural and religious traditions and incorporated them into a new faith. It’s easier totransmit something supportive rather than oppositional, so the incorporation of local gods, belief systems, andmethods of worship was very important.

Compare the experiences of the missionaries below:

· Frumentius—who later became Bishop of Axum—assisted Christian merchants, arranged for them to buildchurches, and translated the scriptures from Greek into the local language. By the sixth century, Europeandemand for relics was insatiable. For the pious, relics were manifestations of holy presence, credited withmiraculous cures; they were often magnificently enshrined. Ultimately, the widespread distribution of relicshelped to spread Christianity beyond the Roman Empire. Merchants carried the religion from port to portdown the African coast of the Red Sea to Axum, in what is now northern Ethiopia. Frumentius, a Christianfrom Constantinople, is credited with converting Ezana, the king of Axum, in the early fourth century.

· Helena, Constantine’s mother: At an advanced age, inspired by her faith, Helena journeyed to Palestine andhelped to identify various places in Jerusalem mentioned in the New Testament. She returned to Constantinople with many holy artifacts—which spawned an enormous traffic in relics associated withChrist, the saints, and martyrs.

· Charlemagne: At the end of the eighth century, Charlemagne expanded the political and religious frontiersof his realm through conquest. For example, having vanquished the Saxons, he offered them the choicebetween death and conversion to Christianity. Most chose the latter. Pope Leo III rewarded Charlemagnefor his efforts. On Christmas Day, 800 CE, Charlemagne was crowned Emperor, legitimizing his rule over theformer Roman Empire in Western Europe.

· Prince Vladimir was impressed by Byzantium’s wealth and power. Recognizing the political advantages ofan alliance, he converted to the Christian Orthodox Church and married a sister of the Byzantine EmperorBasil II. Then, on a single day in 988 CE, he marched the entire population of Kiev into the Dnieper River tobe baptized.

Unit Activities, cont’d.


· Xuanzang: As a young monk, Xuanzang quickly exhausted the Buddhist texts that were available to him. In627, he set out for India in order to master the faith. Imagine his journey: For two years he traveled by foot,horse, and elephant along the Silk Roads to reach India. His journey began in the Chinese capital ofChangan and continued to Turfan, Samarkand, Kanchipuram, and Nalanda, where, according to his writ-ings, he encountered hundreds of monasteries and thousands of brethren. It was nearly 20 years beforeXuanzang returned from India to China, where, in 645, he arrived with a great collection of texts and arti-facts. The emperor of the Tang Dynasty gave him a hero’s welcome. His pilgrimage had such an impact onChinese culture that his travels inspired one of the great classics of Chinese fiction: Journey to the West,written in the sixteenth century.

· Sufis: Some of the most effective Islamic missionaries were the mystics known as Sufis. Sufism developedout of an ascetic movement that appeared in the seventh century, and it became a major force in thespread of the faith. By the tenth century, Sufism was the most popular form of Islam. One of the specialaspects of Sufism that made it accessible to new people was its use of local languages; legalistic Islam wasbound to Arabic. A second aspect was Sufism’s ability to accommodate local traditions of piety with its ownforms of ritual. A third component of Sufism’s popularity is the fact that Sufis worked at street level; theymet and operated as ordinary people, not as agents of government or officials of a church.

Why is the distribution of examples weighted in favor of Christianity? To what extent do you find the sourcesabout missionaries reliable? What other examples of missionaries do you think could be included here?

Bibliography for Activity 2Bentley, Jerry H. Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times. New York:Oxford University Press, 1993.

Bentley, Jerry H., and Herbert F. Ziegler. Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past. San Francisco:McGraw Hill, 2003.

Bulliet, R.W., P.K. Crossley, D.R. Headrick, S.W. Hirsh, L.L. Johnson, and D. Northrup. The Earth and Its Peoples: A GlobalHistory. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997.

Goucher, Candice L., Charles A. LeGuin, and Linda A. Walton. In The Balance: Themes in Global History. San Francisco:McGraw Hill, 1998.

Guangda, Zhang and Rong Xinjiang. “A Concise History of the Turfan Oasis and Its Exploration,” Asia Major 3, vol.11, part 2 (1998).

Hansen, Valerie. The Open Empire: A History of China to 1600. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000.

Hansen, Valerie. “Introduction: Turfan as a Silk Road Community.” Asia Major 3, vol. 11, part 2 (1998).

Hansen, Valerie. “The Path of Buddhism Into China: The View From Turfan.” Asia Major 3, vol. 11, part 2 (1998).

Sheng, Angela.“Innovations in Textile Techniques on China’s Northwest Frontier, 500-700 AD.”Asia Major 3, vol. 11,part 2 (1998).

Skaff, Jonathon K., “Sasanian and Arab-Sasanian Silver Coins From Turfan: Their Relationship to International Tradeand the Local Economy.” Asia Major 3, vol. 11, part 2 (1998).



Activity 3: Syncretism of Diasporas—65 minutesReligious syncretism—the combining of practices from previously distinct traditions—is one of the keys to under-standing religions that move by diasporas as well as religions carried by missionaries and pilgrims. After analyzingthe individual examples of syncretism, compare the evidence of the effects of the Jewish and Afro-Brazilian cultural diasporas.

One of the earliest diasporas—or dispersals—of people who carried their religion with them was that of the Jews,who were forced to scatter throughout the Roman Empire after the destruction of their holy temple in the year70 CE. In later centuries, pushed and pulled by many different historical forces, Jews settled in communities fromChina to the Americas, spreading Judaism by building synagogues and schools, and by practicing their faith.

Find examples of syncretism in Yiddish, one of the languages spoken by Jews.

Yiddish is a Germanic language written in Hebrew characters. It developed between the ninth and twelfth cen-turies in southwestern Germany as an adaptation of Middle High German dialects for Jews living in centralEurope. When Jews were encouraged to settle in Eastern European areas occupied predominantly by Slavic-speaking peoples, Yiddish adapted some Slavic language influences.

Examples of Yiddish words in English: chutzpah (has a lot of nerve), spiel (long story), shtick (eccentricity), nosh(snack), oy (sound of disappointment or disapproval), schmooze (chat), maven (expert), klutz (clumsy person),kvetch (complain), and drek (worthless stuff ).

African religions moved with the African diaspora to the Americas, through the transport and enslavement of mil-lions of Africans. Santeria in Cuba today is a popular Afro-Cuban religion that combines Spanish Catholicism withthe Yoruba and other traditions of West Africa. Candomble, in Brazil, is an Afro-Brazilian religion born of slavesbrought to Brazil to work the sugar plantations. Candomble fuses orishas—Yoruba gods—with Catholic saints. Forexample, in the modern Brazilian state of Bahia, the coastal city of Salvador looks to an orisha as its patron saint:Yemanja, the goddess of the sea, is also likened to the Virgin Mary.

Find elements of syncretism in the photographs of Santeria below.

As a whole class, discuss the similarities and differences between the effects of religions spread from a centralpoint outward with the effects of religious diasporas.


Item #5676. Alejandro Ernesto, CUBAN MUSICIANS PER-FORM OLD SANTERIA RITUAL CHANTS WHILE PLAYING ABATA DRUM (2004). Courtesy of AP/Wide World Photos.

Item #5677. Cristobal Herrera, SANTERIA FOLLOWERS CARRY A STATUE OFSAINT LAZARUS (2001). Courtesy of AP/Wide World Photos.


Read Unit 7 in the online text, Section 3, Reading 3: Liu Xinru, “Silks and Religions in Eurasia, c. A.D. 600–1200,”Journal of World History 6, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 25–48 and answer the following questions.

Reading QuestionsFor more than a thousand years, long-distance trade in silk flourished over trade routes passing through some ofthe most inhospitable terrain on earth.

· How did commerce in silk rely on political demand? Silk became a status symbol in several important states.Both China during the Sui and Tang Dynasties and the Byzantine Empire established dress codes in whichsilk indicated high status in bureaucratic and ecclesiastical hierarchies. These states also enacted sump-tuary laws banning the wearing of silk and other unwarranted clothing by commoners.

· How was demand for silk maintained by religious groups? Silk became a sacred object and a token ofsacred objects among both Buddhists and Christians. Buddhist monks and merchants carried silk to Indiaout of devotion. Meanwhile, silk costumes became necessary regalia for Christian priests in the West, andsilk fabrics served as ceremonial covers for the relics of saints.

· How did sericulture (silk-making) spread? Beginning in the eighth century, Islamic rulers brought seri-culture and filature to the vast area from India to the Mediterranean basin. The Islamic textile industry pro-duced large quantities of silk fabrics and made silk available in much of Eurasia.

Optional: Visit the Web SiteExplore this topic further on the Bridging World History Web site. Browse the Archive, look up terms in the AudioGlossary, review related units, or use the World History Traveler to examine different thematic perspectives.

Homework


Check Your Answers: Before You Begin

Titles:Map A—Spread of Buddhism in Asia

Map B—Spread of Christianity in Eurasia

Map C—Spread of Islam in Afro-Eurasia

Time Periods (the dates are debatable):Map A—Spread of Buddhism in Asia, 500 BCE to 600 CE

Map B—Spread of Christianity in Eurasia, 70 CE to 1000 CE

Map C—Spread of Islam in Afro-Eurasia, 610 CE to 1100 CE

Item #6851. Map A Item #6852. Map B

Item #6850. Map C


Notes

Documents

Unit 7 The Spread of Religions