How did trade influence the spread of Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity across Eurasia?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

A. Influence of trade on the spread of religions
1. trade was probably at least as important as war for spreading religion
2. Buddhism
a. Silk Roads instrumental in spreading Buddhism
b. networks of monasteries accommodated merchants as well as pilgrims who traveled the roads from China to seek sacred texts and teachings in Buddhist shrines in India
c. Buddhism met rival religions along the Silk Roads but ultimately replaced religions such as Manichaeanism
3. Christianity
a. Christianity was only moderately successful along the Silk Roads
b. Relatively few Christians, especially from Western Europe, engaged in long-range trade
c. some Christian peoples did have strong vocations for commerce
1. Armenians kept to themselves and avoided trying to convert others so as not to invite persecution by non-Christian rulers
d. Nestorians had a network of monasteries and communities that reached China and spread the faith among adherents who came to number millions
1. did not believe in the divinity of Jesus
2. remained a thin and patchy presence across a vast area
4. Islam
a. Islam spread almost equally effectively by trade along the sea routes of maritime Asia and across the Sahara
b. Muslim merchant communitiesdispersed, founded mosques, elected or imported preachers, and sometimes attracted local people to join them
c. Muhammad's commands for peaceful conversion were at least as strong as those for jihad
d. thousands of Muslims constituted the biggest of the foreign merchant communities who perished in what is now Guangzhou in a rebel massacre
e. Muslim communities developed as East African ports became integrated into the trade routes of the Indian Ocean
f. immigration and the spread of Arabic along the Saharan trade routes prepared the way for Islamization