History of Central Asia

With an eye toward countering the growing Chinese presence and influence in the Central Asian Islamic Republics such as Uzbekistan, there has been a need to re-establish the historical links between the Tibetan, Mongolian and Central Asian Turkic peoples.

Kalachakra texts have molded their description of cycles of history, such as their containing a future Armageddon battle against non-Indic invaders and the dawning of a new golden age, to fit the structure of its meditation practice.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

Some people have misunderstood the intent of a Kalachakra initiation and tantra practice in general, thinking it propagates Buddhist domination. To avoid interfaith suspicion and mistrust, it is important to examine the issues in light of the historical and cultural contexts...

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.

The early period of the Abbasid Caliphate (750–840 CE) saw the translation of Buddhist texts into not only the languages of East Turkistan, but also into Turkic languages and even some into Arabic, as Islam slowly spread into West Turkistan.