Nestorian Christianity (Church of the East) in Asia: Survival and Decline (1070s)

Timeline

1. 1071–1080Seleucia-Ctesiphon · IraqThe supreme patriarch of the Church of the East resided at Seleucia-Ctesiphon, surviving as dhimmi under Abbasid and Seljuk Islamic rule. In the 1070s the church still sent bishops and maintained Syriac-language worship and monasteries, but its political influence was far below its zenith, and theological differences with the churches of Rome and Constantinople persisted.
2. 1071–1080Transoxiana and the Land of Seven Rivers · Central AsiaThe Seljuk conquests and deepening Islamization reduced Nestorian strongholds in Central Asia. Kashgar, Turfan, and other places may still have had descendants of Christians and merchant believers, but lacked large-scale official missionizing and Chinese-language Nestorian documents as in the Tang dynasty; church organization became fragmented and localized.
3. 1071–1080Northern and northwestern China · ChinaThe heyday witnessed by the Tang dynasty's Nestorian Stele had long passed; during the Northern Song, no open Nestorian establishment was seen in the Central Plains or the northwest. Overseas trade ports such as Quanzhou may have had individual Syrian Christian merchants active, but by the 1070s Nestorian Christianity in China was no longer an active religious force, appearing more as historical relics and remnants at the Silk Road's terminus.