Echoes of a Forgotten Presence: Reconstructing the History of the Church of the East in Central Asia

by Mark Dickens

This volume is a collection of ten articles published between 2009 and 2016 by Mark Dickens on the Assyrian Church of the East in Central Asia, along with a new article on Mar Yahbalaha III, the only Turkic patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East. Most articles deal with the textual evidence for Syriac Christianity in Central Asia, including six on Christian manuscript fragments from Turfan (China) and two on gravestone inscriptions from Semirechye (Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan). As the volume title indicates, these articles remind us of the centuries-long presence of the Assyrian Church of the East at the centre of the Asian continent, now all but forgotten due to the general scarcity of sources from which this history can be reconstructed.

288 pages, Paperback

Published January 27, 2021

Reviews

[Nakhati Jon]

I have read several articles by Mark Dickens, and each one is filled with well-researched information. I appreciate his approach to uncovering hidden aspects of Christian history while connecting them to regional history.

He previously lived in Central Asia and conducted extensive firsthand research there. I would love to read his book sometime and hope to do so in the near future.