ABSTRACT
The rise of new types of religions in the centuries following the breakdown of the classical patterns of the universal empires was to have far-reaching significance for the history of civilizations in Asia. The startlingly rapid expansion of Islam in West Asia is conventionally dated from 622 a.d., the year that the prophet Muhammad left Mecca for the city of Medina, where his message was to gain new support. The Universal religions that emerged in Asia in the first millennium a.d. were in many crucial aspects a departure from the religious creeds and practices of earlier periods. These new religions shared with earlier moral reformers a belief in the universality of truth and claimed a message valid for all mankind. The concept of salvation in these new universal religions was formulated in far more concrete terms than common in older doctrines or ethical teachings.
