3 results
Tajikistan
- Edited by Kenneth R. Ross, Daniel Jeyaraj, Todd M. Johnson
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- Book:
- Christianity in South and Central Asia
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 30 April 2020
- Print publication:
- 18 April 2019, pp 65-69
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Summary
Tajikistan is one of the five Muslim-majority countries of the former Soviet Union, sharing borders with Afghanistan in the south, Uzbekistan in the north and north-west and also Kyrgyzstan and China. The prehistory of the country is connected with many local semi-autonomous states, such as Sogdiana and Bactria, and also the centralised state of the Persian Empire. The majority Muslim population of the country follows the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam, with a small minority of Ismaili Muslims who are highly concentrated in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO).
The history of Christianity in the area of modern Tajikistan goes back at least to the late fourth century and is closely connected to the missionary movement of the Church of the East in the Central Asian landmass. The archaeological material evidence, including textual and epigraphic monuments, shows that the Sogdians (an Iranian ethnic group whose habitation area encompassed the northern territories of what is now Tajikistan) were one of the most Christianised nations in the region.
The periodisation of the Christian presence in Tajikistan follows broadly the same chronology as that of the history of Christianity in Central Asia as a whole. This can be approximated as follows. The ‘ancient period’ occurred during the fifth to seventh centuries, when Christianity was represented by the Syriac-speaking Church of the East. The eighth to fourteenth centuries can be considered the ‘medieval period’, when Christianity was represented by the Church of the East and the Latin-speaking Catholic Church. Finally, the ‘modern period’ began in the nineteenth century, with Christianity represented by the Russian Orthodox and various Protestant denominations. Today, Christians are the smallest minority religious group in the country, mainly present in the large cities. Traces of ancient Christianity in the various regions survive only in historical artefacts. The main living Christian tradition present is the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), introduced from the 1860s during the Russian tsarist regime but later repressed under the Soviets. Today it is flourishing primarily among the ethnic Russians and other European ethnic groups who claim Orthodoxy as their historic faith.
Turkmenistan
- Edited by Kenneth R. Ross, Daniel Jeyaraj, Todd M. Johnson
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- Book:
- Christianity in South and Central Asia
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 30 April 2020
- Print publication:
- 18 April 2019, pp 61-64
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- Chapter
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Summary
Turkmenistan is the southernmost of the countries in Central Asia that were formerly Soviet republics. It borders the Caspian Sea to the west, Iran and Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the north-east and Kazakhstan to the north-west. It is mostly desert. Turkmenistan is the second-largest country in Central Asia but has the smallest population. Although the ancient population consisted of Iranian ethnic groups, the modern indigenous population is largely Turkmen and the principal language is Turkmen. Due to its geopolitical situation it was one of the first areas in Central Asia to which Islam spread, from the 650s. Today, the majority of the country's population professes Sunni Islam.
The earliest material evidence of the Christian presence in Central Asia, from the third and fourth centuries, derives from Turkmenistan. The city of Mary (ancient Merv and earlier Achaemenid Satrapy of Margiana) was the missionary gateway of the Church of the East. The literary evidence of the evangelisation of Merv is known from the ‘Life of Baršabbā’, extant in two manuscripts unearthed at Turfan, in the Sogdian and Syriac languages. In particular, the Sogdian fragment credits the pioneering bishop Baršabbā with the foundation of monasteries in the areas of Fārs, Gorgān, Tūs, Abaršahr, Saraks, Marvrud, Balkh, Herat and Sīstān, which indicates the cultural significance and strategic influence of Christianity in the region. The activity of Baršabbā is also known from the accounts of the Muslim polymath al-Bīrūnī in the eleventh century, who, in his text on the calendars of Christians, mentions the commemoration day of Baršabbā as a founder of Christianity in the region and indicates that Christianity was spreading in the area 200 years after Christ.
In modern Turkmenistan, Christianity is a minority religion. The largest non-Muslim minority faith is Russian Orthodox Christianity, professed mainly by ethnic Russians and a very small number of other Slavonic peoples (Ukrainians and Belarusians). There is also a small Armenian community belonging to the Armenian Apostolic Church. As regards Protestants, the main denominations are Evangelical Baptists, Seventh-day Adventists and Evangelical Lutherans. There are also smaller denominations such as Greater Grace Church, which is part of the Greater Grace World Outreach and is found in Ashgabat and Mary cities.
‘Sogdian Christianity’: Evidence from architecture and material culture
- BARAKATULLO ASHUROV
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- Journal:
- Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society / Volume 29 / Issue 1 / January 2019
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 08 November 2018, pp. 127-168
- Print publication:
- January 2019
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This article aims to discuss the question of the inculturation of Syriac Christianity in Central Asia, based on archaeological examples including architectural evidence from a particular ethnocultural area: Sogdiana. It questions to what extent the Eastern Syriac Church has become rooted in local culture, thus enabling Christian communities to express their faith in both material and artistic ways. This article is divided into two sections which present a comprehensive study of the medieval sources relevant to the spread and establishment of Christianity in the Central Asian landmass by considering and analyzing existing tangible evidence. In doing so, it provides assessment of comparable evidence, which demonstrates both the “extended” and an “immediate” context in which Eastern Syriac Christianity was accepted, adapted and transformed into a localised expression of Christian faith.