History of Central Asia

Buddhism was practiced by several groups of Turkic people in Central Asia, from the mid-3rd to the 14th century CE. The Tuvinians in Siberia have followed Buddhism from the 18th century until today.

A detailed analysis of the cultural and historical contexts of the Kalachakra list of the prophets of the future non-Indic invaders, together with some arguments for and against the varied interpretations concerning debatable points about them.

Buddhism flourished along the Silk Route in East Turkistan (present-day Xinjiang in the People’s Republic of China) from the 1st century BCE until the 14th century CE and is present even today among the Kalmyk Mongols in the north of the province.

People know of the Muslim concept of jihad or holy war or the Crusades of Christianity, but do not usually view Buddhism as having anything similar. A careful examination of the Buddhist texts, however, particularly “The Kalachakra Tantra” literature, reveals both external and...

The Umayyad Caliphate (661–750 CE) was the first Arab empire in the Middle East. It was the first Muslim empire to interact with Buddhists in parts of Central Asia and the western regions of the Indian subcontinent.

A survey of the history of Buddhist-Muslim interaction during the first millennium after the Prophet, focusing on the level of knowledge that the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition had of Islam, as found in the Kalachakra literature, and the points that it had identified as being...

During the later Abbasid period (840–1258 CE), Islam slowly spread to West and East Turkistan and took a strong foothold on the Indian subcontinent.

During the first millennium CE, Muslims were interested to learn of the beliefs of the peoples they had conquered and now ruled, including Buddhism, while Buddhists were interested in other beliefs only when they were vying with them in debate for royal patronage and that...

The Kalachakra depiction of the non-Indic prophets and its prophecies of a future war with their followers must be understood in its historical and cultural context.

Although Muslim scholars of the past have shown repeated interest in gaining knowledge of Buddhism, while Buddhist scholars have shown comparatively less interest in learning about Islam, this situation is slowly changing at present.