Description
Book SynopsisThis book explores the widespread mass conversions to Christianity and Islam that took place in Europe and Asia in the ninth to eleventh centuries. Taking a comparative perspective, contributors explore the processes at work in these conversions. Focusing on Christianity and Islam, it contrasts religious conversion in the period with earlier conversions, including those of Manichaeism in central Asia; Buddhism in east Asia; and Judaism in Khazaria, exploring why conversions to Christianity and Islam led to centralized political structures.
Table of Contents1. Introduction - Tsvetelin Stepanov and Osman Karatay2. Approaching Salvation: Early Process of Christianisation in Viking-Age Denmark and Sweden - Władysław Duczko3. The Christianisations in Scandinavia - Henrik Janson4. Bruno of Querfurt and the Practice of Mission - Ian Wood5. Who Converted the Poles? - Przemysław Urbańczyk6. Great Moravia: The Uneasy Beginnings of Slavic Christendom - Alexandar Nikolov7. The Christianisation of the Kingdom of Hungary - Nora Berend8. Choice of Faith in Early Medieval Eastern Europe: Individual and Mass Conversion - Vladimir Petrukhin9. The Times of St. Tsar Boris-Michael of Bulgaria (852-889; † 907): Between the Real Historical Facts of the Ninth Century and the 'Facts' of Selective Memory - Tsvetelin Stepanov10. The Conversion of the Volga Bulgars to Islam - István Zimonyi11. Islamization of the Turks: A Process of Mental Change - Osman Karatay12. Establishment of Islam in Central Asia: Geo-Cultural Patterns and Geographical Realities - Erkan Göksu13. Islam in India: Acceleration under the Ghaznavids (10th–11th Centuries) - M. Hanefi Palabıyık14. Postscript: Conversion as History - Vladimir Gradev
