The Silk Roads, the Turkic Peoples and the Spread of Sunni Islam

- by Daniel Jones

Traders withstood the desert heat, narrow mountainous paths in snowy conditions, deadly bandits, and thousands of miles of desert wastelands for silk. For a time, Roman traders gave it the same value as gold. Romans, Egyptians, Indians, and Arabs traded their best goods with the Chinese for their silk. In 1877, a German geologist and geographer coined the term "Silk Roads" in describing the silk trade routes that led through what are now the Turkic-speaking nations to China. This silk trade allowed for the extension of the Turkic peoples into Central Asia, and even Siberia. Secondly, it provided a key route for Islam to spread East.

The silk trade routes allowed for the exchange of religious ideas. Pious Muslim Arab traders brought their faith with them, as did zealous Arab warriors. Buddhist monks brought their belief system to millions, and Nestorian Christians sent believers eastward from Syria to as far as China. These Nestorian believers established churches in villages along the Silk Road. Nestorian Christianity remains today, but only as a small presence in Syria. Ultimately Sunni Islam prevailed over all the other religions.

The Turkic Peoples Emerge
The Turks stem from nomads in the Altai Mountains, which straddle China and northeastern Kazakhstan. The riches of the Silk Route enticed them out of their mountains. Raiding parties left the Altai Mountains during the Silk Road era. Turkic people groups now line Asia from Urumxi and Kashgar in Sinkiang Province of northwest China to Istanbul in modern Turkey, a remnant of the former Ottoman Empire defeated in World War I. After they settled into the plains, nearly all these Turkic groups encountered Islam and converted.

In the 11th century, a people known as the Seljuks swept into present-day Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Anatolia (the central plain of modern Turkey). Later the Osmanli Turks displaced them and captured Constantinople around 1480. The Osmanli Turks later began a new dynasty, the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish Ottomans captured North Africa, much of the Middle East, the Balkans, and even threatened Vienna. The Turks intermarried with the peoples under their vast rule, including those in the earlier raids along the Silk Roads. It is common to see blond-haired, blue-eyed Turks. A contemporary Turk could travel overland from Istanbul to Kashgar in northwestern China and be generally understood!

During the age of European colonialism, the Turkic-speaking world was largely gobbled up by Russia. After Russia became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the following Turkic-speaking nations began Soviet republics: Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan.

The Turkic World Today
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Turkey seemed eager to fill the political and economic void along a sizable portion of the Silk Road, from Azerbaijan to the Chinese border. Political analysts speculated that Turkey had grand schemes with these former Soviet republics. With the untimely 1993 death of the visionary Turkish Prime Minister Ozal, speculation about "Pan-Turkism" fizzled. Nevertheless, the 10,000 scholarships granted to students from these nations to study in Turkey will influence the region in Turkey's favor.

As we saw last November in the Global Prayer Digest, most of these nations have oil reserves, but poverty and unemployment are rampant. Such economic problems leave the region vulnerable to radical elements.

As communist ideology gives way, we are seeing a re-emergence of Islamic fervor, especially in Uzbekistan. For many, this is a way to express their ethnic identity. For others, Islam is a way to political power.

The Lord has promised in His Word that there will someday be some from every tribe, worshiping before His throne (see Rev. 5:9/7:9). Since the demise of the Soviet Union, we have already seen amazing things happen in this region. Who would have dreamed 20 years ago that there would be thousands of Uzbek and Kazakh believers? There are still only a few hundred believers among the Tajiks, the Turkmen, and the Azerbaijanis. But the first fruits are sometimes meager, as they once were with the Uzbeks. We have prayed for these peoples a number of times before, starting with our June 1989 issue, and we will continue to do so this month. Will you pray this month for a complete harvest so that there will be many from each Turkic people bowing before the throne?

The Persian World: Bastion of Shi'ite Islam
Iran, once known as Persia, is a land that rarely has known peace. Sometimes Persia has been the conqueror, other times the conquered.

The gradual union of two peoples, the Persians and the Medes, formed the Persian peoples that we know of today.

From Greek accounts we know that Persia emerged as a world power in 612 B.C. when King Cyaxares conquered the Kingdom of Assyria. In 550 B.C. one of his successors, Cyrus the Great, conquered Babylon. By 521 B.C. the Persian Empire ruled lands from the Indus River Valley to modern day Egypt and Turkey.

The Persian Empire respected cultural and religious diversity. As indicated in the Bible, it was Cyrus the Great who allowed the Jewish captives in Babylon to return to the Promised Land. In those early days there was a godly witness within Persia. The prophet Daniel served in the bureaucracy of the Persian Empire. Daniel and others like him won respect for the God of All Peoples, but there were no self-reproducing groups of believers among these Gentiles to show for it.

Persia Eclipsed by the Greeks and Romans
In a dramatic reversal, Persia went from being the conqueror to being the conquered in 323 B.C. when Greeks, led by Alexander the Great, conquered them. But when the Greek Empire began to weaken Persia was one of the first provinces to break free of their control. What followed was a series of weak and not-so-weak kingdoms in Persia. In A.D.208 the Persian-based Sassanian Empire emerged. During the Sassanian Empire, many Persians became Nestorian Christians. This lasted until Christianity became accepted by the Roman government, at which time many Christians were martyred in Persia.

Sassania was Rome's most dangerous enemy. The two nations fought frequent border wars, even after the Roman Empire split into eastern and western halves. The constant need to defend the Sassanian frontier stopped Rome's expansion in Europe. Frequent wars weakened Sassania and the Greek-based Eastern Roman Empire, making them both vulnerable to conquerors.

The Emergence of Islam Among the Persians
In A.D.632 Mohammed began consolidating the various tribes of nearby Arabia, forging them into a conquering empire that burst out of the desert. By A.D.651 the Arabs had conquered Persia, and Mohammed's new religion, Islam, took root there. Perhaps as a way to maintain their own separate identity, the Persians followed Mohammed's grandson as the true successor of the Islamic faith. Thus they became, and are still, the world's guardians of the Shi'ite sect of Islam. The Arab and Turkic peoples tend to be part of the majority Sunni sect.

European Colonialism
Britain and Russia competed for control of Persia during the 1800s. In 1906, the two great powers divided Persia into spheres of influence. Russia would control the north and Britain the south.

Western ideas, such as democracy, began taking root in Persia during the period of European domination. In 1908, a revolution turned Persia into a constitutional monarchy, with an elected parliament. Shortly after that, the country was renamed Iran. But democracy failed to take hold in Iran. In 1925, an army officer named Reza Shah seized power and began westernizing Iran at an even faster pace. His reforms would create the tensions that would lead to a new revolution 50 years later.

The pent-up anger exploded in 1979, and the monarchy gave way to an Islamic government. The Ayatollah Khomeini, a Muslim cleric exiled by Shah Mohammad, returned to become Iran's new ruler, and Islamic law became the new order.