Studies on the exchange between Western missionaries and China have proliferated in recent years, but comparatively few have dilated on missionaries from the Middle East who entered the Chinese imperium centuries before representatives of the Latin Church. Matteo Nicolini-Zani's recent study and translation of Chinese texts (on stone and paper) from Syriac Christians who first entered the Tang Empire in 635 CE is one of the finest contributions now filling in a large gap of missing scholarship on Sino-Sogdian and Sino-Syrian religious encounter. This work follows on the heels of other studies such as R. Todd Godwin's Persian Christians at the Chinese Court (2019), Michael Keevak's The Story of a Stele (2008), and From the Oxus River to the Chinese Shores (2013), edited by Li Tang and Dietmar Winkler. Among the qualities that distinguishes Nicolini-Zani's The Luminous Way to the East is the astute way it is structured. Part 1...
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