ABSTRACT
In the mid-eighth century three major empires abutted each other: the abbasid empire, founded in 750, which established its new capital at baghdad in 762 and embraced the culture of Persia; the Tibetan empire, which reached its height in the early ninth century; and Tang china (618-907) in the east, with its capital of chang-an (Xi’an), spilling out into the Tarim basin (east Turkistan, now Xinjiang). cutting across these political regions were two powerful religious movements: buddhism, which from its origins in northern India, challenged and eventually displaced local religions in china and Tibet, and Islam, which spread from the West over the Indian subcontinent and south east asia, reaching china and the Tibetan borderlands. These political and religious movements of the eighth century were to shape the development of central asian civilizations for many centuries to come, and can still be discerned in the societies of the region today. It is to the ways in which the Islamic empire, in particular, impinged on Tibet (and vice versa), and to the role of muslims in Tibetan society that this book is devoted.
