Persian Missionaries Had Reached the End of the World

Before the end of the first century the Christian faith broke out across the borders of Rome into “Asian” Asia. Its first roots may have been as far away as India or as near as Edessa in the tiny semi-independent principality of Osrhoene just across the Euphrates. From Edessa, according to tradition, the faith spread to another small kingdom three hundred miles farther east across the Tigris river, the kingdom of Adiabene, with its capital at Arbela, near ancient Nineveh. By the end of the second century, missionary expansion had carried the church as far east as Bactria in what is now northern Afghanistan, and mass conversions of Huns and Turks in central Asia were reported from the fifth century onward. By the end of the seventh century Persian missionaries had reached the “end of the world,” the capital of T’ang-dynasty China.

Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia, vol. 1, pp. xiv-xv

If you want to look up these locations on a map, their contemporary names are as follows:

Edessa, capital of Osrhoene – Şanliurfa, Turkey

Arbela, captial of Adiabene – Erbil, Iraq

Bactria – Region including Kunduz, Afghanistan, Dushanbe, Tajikistan, and Samarkand, Uzbekistan

Chang’an, Capital of the T’ang dynasty – Xian, China

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