The Nestorians in Xinjiang

Central Asia has a turbulent, fascinating and overlooked history. Alexander the Great marched his Greek troops as far as Afghanistan in the 4th century BC. Greek cultural influences survived for centuries, affecting even the way the Buddha was portrayed.

Along the Silk Road, kingdoms rose and fell. Today eroded walls of mud-brick half-buried under the encroaching desert sands are all that remain of once mighty fortresses, gorgeous palaces and richly furbished temples.

Xinjiang was a crossroads for not only trade but also for religious ideas. Zoroastrianism arrived from Persia and lasted for a thousand years. Even today the origins of major folk festivals celebrated by the Uygurs and Tajiks can be traced back to the early fire-worshippers. By the 6th century AD Manichaeism with its strange gnostic teachings had also reached Xinjiang and many Manichaean manuscripts have been dug up in Turfan. Its influence, too, lingered for centuries.

But what of Christianity? The great Nestorian Tablet in Xi’an, erected in 781 AD, tells us clearly that the Nestorian monk Alopen was officially welcomed by the Tang Emperor Taizong in 635 AD. It hardly seems likely that the emperor would have welcomed some obscure monks with the dust of the Silk Road still on their sandals as soon as they turned up in Changan. It is probable that Alopen or other Nestorians arrived some years previously. As they came from Central Asia along the Silk Road, the likelihood that Nestorianism penetrated Xinjiang even earlier is very high. Some Chinese scholars believe it arrived by the middle of the 6th century AD—or nearly a century before Alopen was officially welcomed in Changan.

By the 6th century Nestorianism had already reached parts of Central Asia further west, and many Turks and Sogdians became believers. In the Turfan oasis, the great city of Gaochang (Khocha) was a thriving trade center. Manuscripts of Nestorian religious texts have been recovered there, due to the dry climate, written in Syriac, Sogdian and Uygur. Some may date back to as early as the middle of the 6th century AD. Thus, “before Nestorianism was preached at the Tang court, it was current in Gaochang, and its scriptures had been translated into Sogdian.”(1)

Unlike Buddhism and, later, Islam, the Nestorians did not appear to gain the support of local rulers but were a popular movement preached peacefully among ordinary people. Most of the believers in Xinjiang were probably Sogdian, Persian and Syrian merchants who had traveled along the Silk Road, and a minority of the local inhabitants who had converted to Christianity. The Christians appear to have lived quite peacefully alongside their Buddhist and Zoroastrian neighbors.

In 845 AD the Emperor Wuzong issued the infamous edict persecuting all foreign religions such as Buddhism and Nestorianism. Buddhism survived but Nestorianism did not. But the edict was never effective in the "Western regions" including Xinjiang. Nestorianism continued to spread. Further west, the Nestorians came under increasing pressure from the rise of militant Islam. Many Christians arrived in the regions north and south of the Tianshan Mountains where they found haven. Under the Song and Mongol dynasties (960-1368 AD), Nestorianism enjoyed a fresh period of growth in Xinjiang.

Many Nestorian relics have been unearthed from the city of Gaochang in the Turfan Basin, where a Nestorian monastery has been excavated. Parts of the Gospels and a History of the Martyrdom of St. George, dated to the 9-10th centuries AD, were found. Also a collection of hymns sung at weddings dating to the 11-12th centuries was unearthed. More excitingly, a beautiful wall-painting showing a Nestorian priest and three believers holding palm branches for Palm Sunday has been excavated. This evidence together with the numerous Nestorian manuscripts in various languages found at Tunhuang show that the faith had gained many adherents in Xinjiang and was deeply rooted.

Kashgar was also a Nestorian center. From about 1200-1300, it was the 19th diocese of the Nestorian church. In 1180, the name of the Bishop was John. Kashgar was largely Islamic by that time but the ruling Western Liao and Mongol dynasties had a policy of religious tolerance. Christianity was thus able to spread south of the Tianshan. The cities of Kashgar, Khotan, Shache (Yarkand), Kucha, Turfan and Hami all had Nestorian believers. In Khotan, there is still a folk memory of Islam being persecuted by Nestorian Christians, which dates back to about 1215 AD when the ruler of the Western Liao dynasty, for political reasons, tried to force the people of Khotan to give up Islam and adopt Nestorianism or Buddhism. A famous imam was hung on the gate of the Quranic school he had set up—a dark blot still not erased from local memory.

Marco Polo passed through Xinjiang and observed that there were Islamic, Buddhist and Nestorian places of worship along the Silk Road. Friar Rubruck, the Franciscan Catholic who was sent as the papal ambassador to the Mongols in 1253, noted that "in all the towns of the Uygurs there are both Nestorians and Saracens [i.e. Muslims] … In Cailac [a city north of the Yili River and south of Lake Balkhash] the Nestorians have three idol temples. [Rubruck was extremely dismissive of the Nestorians to say the least!] I visited them to see first-hand their ignorant ways. In the first, I came across a man with a black cross tattooed on his hand so I surmised he was a Christian. So I asked him: 'Why do you not have the Cross and the image of Jesus here?' He replied: 'That is not our custom.'" Rubruck then states that the Nestorians had probably been influenced by their Muslim neighbors in not using images in worship. Whatever the reason, it seems the Nestorians may have been purer in their religious worship than medieval Catholics.(2)

That is certainly the impression given by Li Jinxin. In his magisterial History of Religious Developments in Xinjiang (see Note 1), he gives ten distinctives of Nestorianism wherein it differed from supposedly more "orthodox" Roman Catholic teaching:
1) As they did not believe Mary to be the "Mother of God" they did not worship her.
2) They did not use images in worship but kept the cross.
3) They did not believe in purgatory after death but allowed Christians to honor their ancestors.
4) They opposed transubstantiation but acknowledged that Christ was truly present in the Lord’s Supper.
5) They had eight ranks of church government: metropolitan archbishop, archbishop, bishop (priest), assistant priest (deacon), accolyte, asst. accolyte and scripture reader. The last five grades were allowed to marry. In China even the metropolitans were allowed to marry.
6) Christians must keep their beards, shave their heads, not own slaves, not seek material wealth, and aid the poor.
7) They kept numerous fasts at Lent, Pentecost, the Annunciation of Gabriel etc.
8) They prayed eight times a day.
9) The metropolitan had to be a vegetarian.
10) The metropolitans were elected by the churches. (See Note 3)
Although it would be anachronistic to read back into their practices the teachings of the Reformation and subsequent evangelicalism, it can be seen that on points 1-4, at least, they appear to have preserved New Testament simplicity better than the Roman Catholic or eastern Orthodox churches.

By the 13th century, Nestorianism had spread to the northern side of the Tianshan Mountains. At Luntai (SW of modern Urumqi) and at Alimali and other places there were large Nestorian churches with their own bishops. They gained many adherents among the Turkish and Mongol nomadic tribes such as the Keraites and Naimans. Some high nobility became Christians. Marco Polo called the head of the Keraites "Presbyter John" which fostered the legend in medieval Europe of "Prester John"—a powerful Christian monarch in the remote East—and also encouraged the popes to send out envoys such as Rubruck mentioned above. In the Yili district of northern Xinjiang, many stones inscribed with crosses have been found proving the prevalence of Nestorianism among the tribes during the Mongol period.

In fact, this was the golden age for Nestorianism so far as power and influence are concerned. The king of the Naimans was definitely a Christian. One of the Nestorian patriarchs, Mar Jabalaha III, was born in China. Rabban Sauma, who became bishop and a kind of Nestorian roving ambassador for the Mongols visiting Rome, Paris and London, was a Uygur. Tatatongah, who created a script for the Mongols (based on the ancient Syriac script which is closely related to Aramaic, the language of Jesus), was also a Uygur Nestorian.(4) Moffett comments: "[This] was the last high plateau in the history of Nestorians in Asia. Their Mongol patriarch, Mark (Yaballaha III) exercised eccesiastical sovereignty over more of the earth’s surface than even the pontiff in Rome… The 13th century can be called the years when Christians spread the faith more widely in Asia than at any time in the first millennium and a half of church history."(5)
This was the high watermark. In 1368, the resurgent Ming dynasty drove out the Mongols and Nestorianism soon after vanished from "China Proper." It lingered in Xinjiang but came under increasing pressure from Islam. In 1349 a list of 25 Nestorian dioceses omits mention of Kashgar. By the end of the 14th century, Turfan had become completely Islamicized. The local Mongol khan had converted to Islam and conducted a jihad against other religions. Christianity vanished south of the Tianshan mountains. But in northern Xinjiang it lingered among the nomads alongside Islam and Lama Buddhism. In Yili and in Jimsar, north of Turfan, a small number of Nestorians survived still using Syriac in their worship.

When Tsarist Russians invaded Yili in the mid-19th century, they came across 300-400 Nestorian believers still living there. The Russians tried to convert them to Russian Orthodoxy but they refused. Nothing is said of their fate afterwards.(6) In 2004, a Xinjiang house-church believer related that in 1998 or 1999 a group of 80 religious believers in Shufu County, southwest of Kashgar, petitioned the local government for permission to build—not a mosque—but a church. They said their ancestors were from time immemorial Christians. Their request was turned down. Our informant denied they were the fruit of the Swedish Mission which had worked in the Kashgar region but stated she believed they were a remnant of the Nestorians. Normally, one would be highly skeptical of such a report, but in view of the fact the Russians came across Nestorians as late as 1850, who had survived some 450 years since it had supposedly totally disappeared from China, is it just possible a small group might have survived a further 150 years down to the present?

If readers have any further evidence please contact me.

NOTES

1. Yu Tianheng: Xiyu Wenhua Shi (Cultural History of the Western Regions), Xinjiang People’s Publishing House, 1981. Quoted in Li Jinxin’s Xinjiang Zongjiao Yenbian Shi (History of Religious Developments in Xinjiang), Xinjiang People’s Publishing House, 2003. I have drawn extensively from Li’s massive and scholarly work for this edition of China Insight.
2. Li Jinxin, pp. 179-80. See also M. Huc, Le Christianisme en Chine, en Tartarie et Thibet, Paris: 1857. Vol. 1. pp. 227-271.
3. Li Jinxin, pp. 174-75.
4. The learned sources do not always agree about the racial origins of our Nestorian heroes. Moule in Christians in China Before the Year 1550, London: SPCK, 1930 gives evidence both Jabalaha and Rabban Sauma were eastern Turks or Uygurs although another source says Jabalaha was an Ongut. Li Jinxin says both were Uygurs. Moffett (see below) who may be the most reliable source states: "Sauma was a Uygur born in Beijing; Mark [Jaballaha] was probably an Ongut." What is not in doubt that they were both Nestorian Christians born in China.
5. Samuel H. Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia. Volume 1. Harper: 1992. I thoroughly recommend this book’s treatment of the Nestorians.
6. Li Jixin, p.182 quoting Feng Chenggou, Jingjiao Bei Kao (Research into the Nestorian Tablet), Commercial Press, 1931.

Copyright by OMF International, 2004