ABSTRACT
Serious scholarship has long abandoned “all or nothing” models in which Paul of Tarsos’ conversion on the road to Damascus – the story of sudden and total transformation – is applied to whole communities and peoples. Social conversion is, in fact, a dynamic, long-term process often transcending conventional cultural, political and economic boundaries.1 Conversion necessarily entails change, but change is rarely a one-way street: both the receptors and the faith are altered, though rarely equally. At one end of the spectrum, a group embraces or is coerced to accept new ideas and practices that replace older ones or that remedy an inadequacy, real or perceived. At the other end, the religion, which itself may be heterogeneous, is adapted to the social matrix of the host. Conversion thus involves considerable give and take. While observers are frequently drawn to dramatic introductions of the new and innovative, it is the middle ground2 – the site of vigorous cross-cultural adaptation, synthesis and syncretism – that tends to be the best predictor of success and longevity. The middle ground is one of the dynamos driving regional, Eurasian and even world and global history.3 Within Eurasia, the Caucasian crossroads was an especially energetic middle ground throughout pre-modern times.
