In Xuanzang’s lifetime Muslims would set foot in China, traders who came on the maritime route to Canton where Arabs and Persians had long been in residence. At this time, too, the first Christian mission came to China from the Byzantine world of the Eastern Mediterranean and Syria. There had already been Nestorian Christians from Persia and Central Asia living along the Silk Road. However, the first formal mission to China is described in extraordinary, indeed mesmerising detail on one of the country’s greatest treasures, a stone stele preserved today in Xi’an.
