1. Syriac churches, especially the Church of the East, were strongly evangelistic and carried the gospel beyond the Mediterranean world in an expansion unparalleled in either antiquity or the Middle Ages. This effort is all the more remarkable as these churches were not supported by a state that could sponsor or sustain their mission. Syriac missionaries did not arrive as part of an army or invading power, but rather in merchant caravans and among refugees. The Syriac churches were thus in contact with all kinds of peoples, languages, and cultures. Bound together by the same religion, Syriac churches included not only those who spoke various vernacular forms of Aramaic but also those who spoke Persian, Arabic, Sogdian, Uighur, Turkic, and myriad languages from Central Asia, China, and India. As a result, Syriac could not be identifi ed with a single people, ethnicity, or state, as was the case with Copts and Armenians. Instead, Syriac culture was truly international. Bordered to the west by the Greek Christian world and to the north by the Armenians, the Syriac missions mainly focused on the south and the east (page 113).
2. Toward Armenia
3. The expansion of Christianity toward the north resulted in Syriac infl uence on southern Armenia, which was evangelized by Syriac ascetics and holy men. The fi rst missionary efforts are attributed to the apostle Addai, known by the name T’addeos in Armenia, who was martyred by the Armenian king Sanatruq. In the Armenian version, he was not directly associated with Edessa, but according to the Buzandaran, a 5th-century Armenian history, Edessa was considered to have been founded by Armenian kings, and Abgar himself to be Armenian. The bishop Jacob of Nisibis, known as “the Persian Sage” in the Armenian tradition, would go in search of Noah’s ark on Mount Ararat and would be associated with the son of Gregory the Illuminator, the missionary who converted Armenia. Just as Greek infl uence predominated in the west of Armenia, Syriac was dominant in the south. It would be a Syriac bishop who would make the fi rst attempt at creating Armenian letters, although it would be an Armenian, Mesrop Mashtots, who would invent both the Armenian and Georgian alphabets. Mashtots would send his disciples to the Greek world and to Edessa to make translations of indispensable ecclesiastical works. Several important translations from Syriac into Armenian were made in the 5th century, including Greek works like the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea and the Hexaemeron of Basil, which were translated partially from Greek and largely from Syriac. Additionally, a substantial amount of ecclesiastical vocabulary in Armenian was borrowed directly from Syriac.

1. A School of the Armenians is mentioned in Edessa alongside the famous School of the Persians, and the controversial Miaphysite movement of Julian of Halicarnassus was very active in Armenia, creating multiple early links to West Syrian culture. Armenians were present in Amida and in Edessa from at least the 5th century, but it was in the medieval period when their presence grew. The taking of Edessa from the Seljuks by King T’oros of Armenia in 1095 marked the beginning of a strong Armenian community in the city. The chronicle of Michael the Syrian was translated into Armenian, and the chronicler Matthew of Edessa (d. 1144) wrote a local chronicle in Armenian during the time of the Crusades. In fact, the communities of Amida, Melitene, and Edessa became more Armenian than Syriac from the Middle Ages onward.
2. Towards the South (Arabia)

Around 524, a Jewish king from H. imyar in southeast Arabia (Yemen and southeastern Saudi Arabia) massacred the Ethiopian garrison that was occupying the country in the name of the king of Axum and demanded that all the Christians in his kingdom convert to Judaism. He besieged and captured a great city in the north, Najran, and slaughtered the priests, the consecrated religious (“Sons and Daughters of the Covenant”), and prominent members of the Christian community who refused to convert to Judaism. This episode was very quickly recorded as a martyrdom and had an enormous impact in the eastern Christian world. Carried in a letter by the Miaphysite bishop Simeon of Beth Arsham (see chapter 6) on his way to monasteries in northern Syria, it became the subject of hagiographies in Syriac and then in Greek, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Armenian. This episode is also of interest to modern scholars because it attests the existence of Christianity in southern Arabia, which has otherwise left very few traces, with the exception of column capitals adorned with crosses from the cathedral of Sanaʿa (modern-day Yemen), which were reused for the construction of the great mosque. Arabic inscriptions in Arabic writing have very recently been found in the south of Saudi Arabia, of which the earliest, dating to 470, also bears witness to the presence of Christianity. New texts and inscriptions also contribute to a clearer picture of Judaism in the region.

Persia, which controlled the trans-Arabian commerce that crossed from Mesopotamia to Arabia Felix: Christianity would have most likely come to Najran by a merchant returning from al-H.¯ra. This tradition ı connects part of the Christian community of Najran to the Church of the East and the patriarchate of Seleucia-Ctesiphon. The texts also indicate direct links to northern Syria. In one of the early episodes of the persecution, the persecuting king killed a leading priest who had been trained in the monastic life in Tella, to the east of Edessa. He also dug up the remains of the fi rst bishop of the city, who had been consecrated and sent by Philoxenus of Mabbug (see chapter 6). This suggests a community that adhered to a Miaphysite, non-Chalcedonian faith, of which Philoxenus was a champion, and a link between Arabia and Mabbug, Edessa, and Callinicum, all of which were leading centers of Miaphysitism. Other documents show that Arabia sometimes served as a refuge for persecuted Miaphysites, especially partisans of the most extreme sects, known as Julianists or “Phantasiasts” (see chapter 6). Their way of under standing the question of the divinity and humanity of Jesus at the moment of his crucifi xion potentially had an influence on how the subject appears in the Qur’an, which suggests that Jesus only appeared to be crucified. Thus, in the 5th century, the two principal Syriac churches each had a foothold in southern Arabia, which was one of the few places where they lived in harmony.

Christian communities would develop on the western shore of the Gulf as well, in the region called Beth Qat.raye in Syriac. This area covered much more territory than the modern country of Qatar, which has inherited its name, and applied to virtually the entire western side of the Arabian Peninsula and the islands that neighbored it. Our knowledge of the Christian communities in these regions is based on two kinds of documents: Syriac literature on the one hand, which includes the canons of various councils of the Church of the East mentioning which bishops were present and their dioceses as well as the seats elevated to the metropolitanate, local monastic chronicles, and the letters of the catholicos Ishoʿyahb, who had to resolve a crisis that emerged in the 6th century when the local hierarchy of the Gulf wanted to free itself from his leadership; and archaeology on the other hand, which has revealed religious buildings, churches, and monasteries. The Life of Mar Yonan, 7th or 8th century:

1. The last substantial mentions of the communities of Beth Qat.raye in written sources appear in the 7th century, but it is unknown when or how they disappeared. However, their disappearance in literary sources is probably not due to the prohibition of non-Muslims on the Arabian peninsula by Muhammad or ʿUmar as stated in the Islamic tradition, since a bishopric is mentioned at Sanaʽa in the 9th century and Christians appear to have been present at Soqotra in the 13th century. In fact, the period when Islam appeared was counterintuitively a time of flourishing for the Christian communities of Beth Qatraye: in the fi rst half of the 7th century, Rabban Bar Sahde, originally a merchant from Beth Qat.raye who traded with India, founded a monastery near al-H.¯ra. And monastic writers from Beth Qat ı .raye, most notably Isaac of Nineveh, left their mark on Syriac literature and thought (see chapter 3). Archaeological traces recovered from this Christian presence in the Gulf have multiplied over the past half century. Near the eastern shore, the island site of Kharg (Iran) was excavated in the years 1959 – 1960 to prepare for the installation of an oil terminal. It was a stopping point for merchant ships on their way to India, most likely in the early centuries of the Common Era, and the remnants of an East Syrian monastery were uncovered.
2. South India
3. Missionaries of the Church of the East reached South India by the Persian Gulf, where they founded communities that still fl ourish today. When and where those missionaries arrived is unclear, however. The local tradition revolves around the evangelization by the apostle Thomas (though likely unhistorical). Passing through Ceylon, Thomas then journeyed to southeastern India, where he underwent martyrdom at Mylapore (Mailapuram), near Madras, where his remains are still venerated. However, the Acts of Thomas (see chapter 2), a third-century legend account of Thomas’s voyage to India, mentions nothing of this: the only historical element that it contains is the name of the king Gondophares, which is similar to the king Gudnaphar, a ruler whose appearance is known from coins minted in the 1st century AD and whose place of origin was west of modern-day Pakistan, under Parthian rule. The text does not establish a fi rm historical link to South India. Local tradition goes on to mention the arrival, in 345, of a man named Thomas of Cana who came from Edessa with a small group of Jewish-Christian believers and founded a community of Christians. A community still exists that claims descent from them and has carved out their own church in the religious landscape of Kerala. The first verifiably historical mention of Christians in India is found in Christian Topography by the traveler Cosmas Indicopleustes, at the beginning of the 6th century, which mentions a diocese in Kalliana whose bishop was consecrated in Persia. The location of Kalliana has been discussed as either being Quilon, north of Cochin in Kerala, or just south of Bombay. Wherever the site might have been, this mention implies a community structured enough to have its own bishop.(edited)
4. Cosmas Indicopleustes:

No monastery is known to us from India, nor is any Syriac author originally from there. No Syriac manuscript from before the arrival of the Portuguese survives in India itself. Local tradition says that the Portuguese destroyed massive numbers of manuscripts, and the acts of the Synod of Diamper in 1599 (see page 219) ordered the burning of heretical books. But it is not certain that there were many manuscripts to burn in the fi rst place.

2. Syriac on the road to Central Asia
3. Among the oldest references to an eastward expansion of Christianity is an allusion to Bactria (part of modern-day Afghanistan) in the early-3rd-century work The Book of the Laws of Countries (see chapter 2). A little later, there were conversions among the Hephthalite Huns and Turkic populations. The Church of the East was increasingly organizing itself in Central Asia during the same era that it was consolidating its hold on the Persian Gulf. A bishop of Merw (modern-day Turkmenistan) and another from Herat (in Afghanistan) were present at the Synod of Dadisho in 424. These two bishoprics, especially Merw, fueled the expansion to the East. They would become metropolitanates, along with Samarkand, and a metropolitanate was later created in China. The church thus adapted itself for far-fl ung missions abroad. Special rules, for example, allowed offi cials in “exterior” ecclesiastical provinces to ordain bishops without the presence of a patriarch or metropolitan, which was normally required. The sudden emergence of Arab power in this period did not disrupt missionary efforts; on the contrary, the East Syrian catholicos Timothy I (r. 780 – 823), who was the head of the Church of the East during the fi rst century of ʿAbbasid rule and who moved the see from Seleucia-Ctesiphon to the newly created capital of Baghdad, was particularly active in sending out missionaries. One of his letters mentions the conversion of a Turkish ruler and assigns a metropolitan for that region. He also proposed consecrating a metropolitan for the Tibetans.
4. The first phase of Christianity in China extends evenly before and after the Arab Conquest. The arrival of Christianity in the heart of the Chinese Empire, under the Tang dynasty, is documented by an exceptional piece of evidence, a stele discovered at Xi’an, at that time the capital of the Tang kingdom. It was uncovered in 1625, and its discovery had a tremendous effect on the European world by showing that Christianity had spread in China almost a thousand years before the arrival of Latin missionaries. The East Syrian dimension was minimized, since at that time Catholics considered the Church of the East to be heretical. Voltaire even suspected that it was a Jesuit fake. Playing off on the discovery of the stele, he wrote a satirical story called “The White Bull,” also supposedly translated from Syriac, which showcased anti-religion themes.
5. Letter of Patriarch Timothy I (780–822) to the Monks of Mar Maron:

X’ian Stele:

The collection of sources seems to indicate that early Christianity in China was essentially supported by the Sogdians, a merchant people whose language belongs to the Iranian family and who lived in Central Asia. They were neither Chinese nor people who came from the Syriac heartland in Mesopotamia. This means that the East Asian mission was carried out by people who had themselves been missionized, and that by the 7th century previous missionary zones had started to send out missionaries of their own. The sources also give us a sense of a structured community: the stele mentions a bishopric at Xi’an and another at Luoyang, and a slightly later source mentions a metropolitan of China. The community had priests, deacons, archdeacons, and several monasteries, concentrated in the two capitals. This phase of the history of Christianity in China came to an end in 845 with an edict that was aimed particularly at proscribing Buddhism but which forbade all foreign religions in China. In an empire that controlled everything, the Christian community was able to exist thanks only to imperial approval. Once that was withdrawn, it disappeared.

1. Christianity in the Mongol Empire
2. Marco Polo:

1. During this time, western travelers circulated along the Silk Road. The most famous, of course, is Marco Polo (1254 –1324), a young Venetian who in 1271 accompanied his father and his uncle, both merchants, from Italy to Khanbaliq, modern-day Beijing and the seat of Kublai Khan. He remained in the emperor’s service for fi fteen years, eventually returning to Europe by the sea route that curves around Southeast Asia: all told, a voyage of twenty-four thousand kilometers and an absence which lasted twenty-four years. Imprisoned for several years upon his return, Marco Polo had ample time to compose an account of his journey, The Book of the Marvels of the World, in which he mentions the Christian communities that he encountered during his stops in Central Asia, mostly East Syrian but also some Syriac Orthodox. Other European voyagers, generally religious, such as the Franciscans John of Plano Carpini and William of Rubruck or the Dominican André of Longjumeau were sent by popes or by Louis IX to try to convert the Mongol rulers and to suggest an alliance to them. Their travel accounts are an irreplaceable source for the history of the Mongol Empire.
2. History of Mar Yahballaha: