During the fourth and fifth centuries the east Syrians reached out beyond the Sassanian Empire and established Christian outposts among the peoples of Central Asia, and over the next centuries they moved steadily onwards in their activities, which means that in such unexpected places as the mountains and plains around Samarqand, so long the territory of Islam, it is possible to have the shock of encountering the sight of carved medieval crosses or inscriptions in Syriac.41 One of the Syrians’ earliest extensions of the Christian faith was to India.
