This article evaluates the first part of Alphonse Mingana’s seminal work ‘The Early Spread of Christianity in Central Asia and the Far East’, published 100 years ago. After a short introduction to Mingana and his place in the study of Syriac literature, the present author examines pages 297–343 of Mingana’s article, suggesting extensive corrections to factual errors either made or perpetuated by Mingana, as well as the need to supplement the many out-of-date sources he used. The article then reflects on Mingana’s contribution to the study of Syriac Christianity in Central Asia and China; although it has perhaps been helpful in the past, it cannot now be relied on as an authoritative source, given the amount of erroneous information it contains.

This article 1 sets out to reassess the idea, repeated by many scholars, that there was a bishop from the Central Asian city of Qumul (or Hami) who was present in Baghdad around the time when one patriarch of the Church of the East – Makkika II – was buried and another – Denḥa I – was consecrated. After an initial consideration of what we know about the city of Qumul/Hami, we examine the various authors who have held to this idea and the sources, both primary and secondary, which they invoke as proof that the idea is correct. Gradually moving back to the earliest witnesses, we eventually arrive at the Maronite scholar Joseph Assemani’s Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana and the fourteenth-century primary source, Ṣalībā ibn Yūḥannā. A suggestion is made for how the idea originated and developed, thanks in part to the account of Marco Polo, but more definitively to Michel Le Quien’s Oriens Christianus .

Before Islam arrived, Christians made up a significant religious minority in Persia. The faith presumably moved eastward from its Palestinian origins during the Parthian period and was already established when the Sasanian era began. The Church of the East developed as an independent body under the Sasanians, headed by a Catholicos‐patriarch and with a network of bishops and metropolitans. Periods of official persecution occurred from the fourth century on and the impact of the fifth‐century Christological controversies (Nestorianism and Monophysitism) was also felt. After the advent of Islam, Christians in Persia were subject to the jizya poll tax but also had protected dhimmi status. Whereas the Umayyads were less concerned with conversion than with tax revenues, their successors the Abbasids prioritized conversion, resulting in a gradual decline in the Christian population and an increase in the number of Muslims. Nonetheless, Christians continued to play key roles in the caliphate, as doctors, administrators, and translators from Greek to Arabic. After two centuries of Seljuk rule, the Mongols conquered Baghdad and Christians found themselves in favor initially. However, the rulers of the Ilkhanate eventually converted to Islam, shortly after which the state collapsed, to be succeeded by the Timurids and the Turkmen Federations (Qara Qoyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu), under whom Christianity shrank further in numerical strength and influence.

deserves a special mention: they are full of an incredible amount of bibliographical suggestions, data, and scientific discussion about the translated text. The translation itself is consistently accurate, considering that Youyang zazu is a rather obscure and difficult text. Chiara Bocci’s English translations are extremely well executed, always giving very convincing explanations in the footnotes to support her translation ideas, often reconstructing the numerous quotations contained in the original text. A text like the Youyang zazu cannot always be translated without a certain degree of doubt. But the author clearly discusses each point of the text and gives good interpretations, and considering the translatability and, sometimes, the untranslatability of this book, her work is very accurate. A note concerning a passage in the translation (p. 28): the sentence shi jie ying jie sheng hua 石劫應節生花 is translated “after a period of destruction (kalpa), a time of blossoming must follow.” Then, in the footnote, another translation is suggested “in the joints (or rather cracks) between stones, flowers must grow.” The term jie 劫 in Tang times could have the Buddhist meaning of kalpa, era, but maybe a less strict translation could be used. Moreover, the two terms ying jie 應節 could also have the meaning of “according to seasons, according to seasonal changes” Thus, I would perhaps suggest considering the translation of this passage in “[The Raven Head (the root of theAconitum) presents hair], since long time ago his plant blooms according to seasonal change,” or, alternatively, considering the given option in the footnote: “In the cracks between stones this plant blooms, according to the change of the seasons.” If one was to find a flaw in the work of Chiara Bocci, the only thing would be that the introduction could have been longer, presenting the book’s history and the author’s biography in more detail, and more in general the book’s genre, giving some account of the encyclopaedic collection in Chinese classical literature, on the history and description of Youyang zazu etc., but these and other aspects, in fact, have already been described in detail in many other researches, such as that of Carrie Elizabeth Reed, Edward Schafer and Berthold Laufer. Other scholars have produced valuable works about the Tang dynasty, which are consistently cited in the text and footnotes by Chiara Bocci. Therefore, I cannot find any other issues in this book, which is indeed a solid philological work, adding precious knowledge to some special aspects of Youyang zazu and giving us a great deal of information and inspiration about the vision of reality in Tang times.

Peter Golden’ın detaylı olarak hazırlanmış makale ve kitaplarında çok sık işaret ettiği gibi, Türk halklarının tarihi ve kültürü sadece Türkçe metin ve yazıtlardan değil, aralarında Arapça, Ermenice, Çince, Yunanca, Latince, çeşitli Ortaçağ İran dilleri, Farsça ve Rusçanın olduğu farklı dillerdeki birçok kaynaktan yararlanılarak yeniden oluşturulmalıdır. Burada, Türk tarihi tartışmalarında zaman zaman bahsi geçmesine rağmen, Türk halkları hakkındaki ayırt edici bilgi ve perspektifleri açısından henüz tam olarak kullanılmamış yazınsal külliyatın üstünde durmak istiyorum; yani Süryani kaynakları.

Item ВДсэ-524 in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg is an amulet scroll written in Syriac which was discovered by the Second German Turfan Expedition (19041905) and kept afterwards in the Museum of Ethnology (Museum fr Vlkerkunde) in Berlin. The artifact originates in the Turkic-speaking Christian milieu of the Turfan Oasis, probably from the Mongol period. The text, however, reflects a long tradition of magical literature that goes back to ancient Mesopotamia and can be categorised as a piece of apotropaic (protective) magic. The article contains an edition of the Syriac text with translation and a discussion of its place of discovery, its overall composition and specific words and expressions found in the text. The authors point out likely connections between the Hermitage amulet and the Turfan fragments SyrHT 274276 kept in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preuischer Kulturbesitz and briefly discuss its similarity with amulet H彩101 discovered in Qara Qoto by the 19831984 expedition of the Institute of Cultural Relics, Inner Mongolia Academy of Social Sciences.

This article presents several passages from the anonymous 17th c. commentary Heike monogatari hyōban hidenshō. This understudied commentary on the medieval Tale of the Heike shows the didactic aspect of this work’s reception in the Edo period. Based on comparison with similar texts, such as the commentary Teikanhyō, the claim is made that didactic works of this kind have group authorship and are related to group discussions (kaidoku) by warriors interested in matters of leadership and statecraft. Commentaries such as the Heike monogatari hyōban hidenshō were linked with educational settings throughout the Edo period: in the 17th c. they were used for lectures to daimyo lords, and in the 18th–19th cc. they were found in domain schools (hankō) since their content made them suitable for educating young warriors.

This article examines a fragmentary Christian text from Turfan written in Uyghur which contains an embedded Syriac magical text intended to be used for corralling a horse. Aft er giving a transcription and translation of the Syriac passage and setting it in its literary context, including the role of amulets and other magical texts in the history of Syriac Christianity, the article discusses the angelic name Saraqael found in the Syriac extract, in an effort to trace the origins of the text. Excurses are given on the book of I Enoch and the Book of Giants, the first because the angelic name is found in it, the second because of its connections with the Aramaic and Central Asian cultural zones. The article then examines another text where the angelic name occurs, the Pishra de-Rabbi Ḥanina ben Dosa , before discussing possible links to other Syriac amulets and incantation bowls.

This chapter discusses textual and archaeological evidence for Syriac Christianity in Central Asia (late second to fifteenth centuries). After relating the early expansion of Syriac Christianity into Khorasan and Bactria, followed by Sogdian and Turkic territory, it examines Central Asian Christianity under Arab-Muslim rule (Umayyads and early 'Abbasids), various non-Arab polities (Samanids, Qarakhanids, and Ghaznavids), and the non-Muslim Uyghur Kingdom of Qocho (Turfan). The extension of Syriac Christianity northward to the Qipchaq Steppe and eastward to the Tarim Basin under Seljük and Qarakhitai rule is followed by a discussion of Central Asian Christianity under the Mongols and Timurids, including multiple references in textual sources and archaeological evidence like gravestones in Syriac script.

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This article examines the corpus of Syro-Turkic Christian gravestones found in Inner Mongolia, with the overall purpose of placing them within a broader context of both Öngüt Turkic Christianity and other Christian gravestones found elsewhere in Central Asia and China. The text, translation, and a brief commentary are given for each Turkic inscription in Syriac script from the Inner Mongolian corpus for which the authors have legible images and/or rubbings, with a focus on the names and titles found on the gravestones. Special attention is given to Wangmuliang gravestone no. 33, which appears to mention the place where the deceased came from.