One by one, Inner Asian peoples and practices introduced to scholars a century ago or more through inscriptions or vague material evidence have become more deeply understood through excavated remains. Today we write confidently about Sogdians and their practice of Zoroastrianism, for example. Yet in spite of references to them in Chinese records since the seventh century, the Manichaeans and their religious art have remained elusive. They are just one of the subjects in this carefully researched and beautifully produced book. The others are remains of the Church of the East (Nestorian Christians) and Quanzhou, formerly known as Zayton, the city in China where some of the most extensive remains of both religions and others survive. Described by Marco Polo as “one of the two greatest havens in the world of commerce”,Footnote ¹ Buddhists, Hindus, Daoists, Muslims, and Jews lived, worshiped, engaged in mercantilism, and died in this city alongside Manichaeans and Christians. In Medieval Christian and Manichaean Remains from Quanzhou (Zayton), Samuel Lieu, Iain Gardner, Ken Parry, other members of the research team at Macquarie and other universities in Australia, and researchers in Quanzhou detail and contextualise the remains of two of Quanzhou's most significant foreign populations. Each member of the research team individually and in groups already has a successful record of significant publications on Quanzhou's populations and their remains. This book, reported in the Foreword as the final production of this international collaborative project, is no exception. Each chapter of the book is packed with careful research, original translations, analysis, and extensive illustrations.

Chapter One summarises background about Quanzhou and its history through records of thirteenth-fourteenth-century merchants, travellers, and missionaries and twentieth-century scholars. Setting a standard for the rest of the book, writings of Marco Polo and Franciscans are provided in Latin alongside English translations. Chapter Two turns to the history of the discovery of Christian and Manichaean remains in the city. Unlike Manichaeanism, the history of Christianity in China has been richly documented through dated material remains beginning in the Tang dynasty. Most famous is the co-called Nestorian Monument in Xi'an, known since 1625.Footnote ² Shortly after its discovery, the Jesuit Emmanuel Diaz, Jr., observed similarities between cross-on-lotus motifs on Christian tombstones in Quanzhou and the Xi'an Monument. Many more of these stones are now known thanks to Wu Wenliang (1903–1969) whose role in the recovery and preservation of lithic evidence of Quanzhou's history is recounted in Chapter Two. A lone pioneer in the preservation of evidence of foreign religions in his city through decades of national and international turmoil, Wu gathered stones with Arabic, Persian, Syriac, Latin, Phagspa, and Chinese inscriptions in his backyard beginning in the 1920s. Wu's greatest discovery in Quanzhou was the remains of a Manichaean temple of the period of Mongolian rule described in Minshu (Book of Min) in a passage studied by Chen Yuan and translated by Paul Pelliot. This book is appropriately dedicated to Wu's memory. By the conclusion of Chapter Two, the key occurrences in the histories of Christians and Manichaeans in Quanzhou have been reviewed, exemplary monuments of Nestorianism and Manichaeanism have been highlighted, and the reader is aware that some of the greatest Sinologists of the twentieth century worked on inscriptions or material remains that are subjects in this book. One more point of background, the locations of Quanzhou's gates and six sites in the city where important remains have been found, is provided. The chapter ends with a chronology of discoveries in Quanzhou beginning with headstones with crucifixes in 1638 and continuing through the flood of finds from 1905 throuth 2002.

Chapter Three offers a clear, accurate, and succinct discussion of the Church of the East and its path in China enroute to Quanzhou, documented so as to introduce more than one hundred bibliographic references for the study of Nestorianisn. Also introduced are vocabulary such as Da Qin (the Roman empire as opposed to Syria), [Da Qin] Jingjiao (Church of the East), and Yelikewen, the word for Christians beginning in the Yuan dynasty (1267–1368). Discussion then turns to Christians among the Mongol ruling family and their patronage of Christianity in Quanzhou. One result of this activity was the appearance of Byzantine motifs in Christian funerary monuments in Quanzhou. Another was the use of the Turkic language of Central Asia, rather than Syriac, as the ecclesistical language of the Church of the East. An intriguing mention is made of buildings with stone foundations that have the ubiquitous cross-on-lotus motif. Such foundations would be typical of the Mongolian period, but unfortunately the site is not illustrated nor is there consensus about what it might have been. Points of research integrated into this chapter are: that the Church of the East may not have been brought to China by the Sogdians, but they were instrumental in its dissemination along the Silk Routes and that Christians of the Yuan period many not have known that the religion had come to Chna in the Tang dynasty. A translation of the section of Marco Polo that describes his meeting with Christians hiding in southeastern China ends the chapter. The brief fourth chapter focuses on the highly important period of Mongolian rule in the history of Christianity in China and in Quanzhou. The Franciscan missions of John of Plano Carpini and William of Rubruck are summarised, as are those of men who spent time in or passed through the diocese of Quanzhou including John of Montecorvino, Peregrine of Castello, Andrew of Perugia, Odoric of Pordenone, and John of Marignolli.

The Manichaean remains in Quanzhou are the subject of Chapter Five, the focus of which is a shrine on Huabiao Hill. Practitioners of Manichaeanism fled to Quanzhou during the 840s when there was widespread persecution of Buddhism and other religions in the Tang capital Chang'an. Lieu makes the point that knowledge of Manichaeanism has survived in part because some of its scriptures were absorbed into the Daoist canon, and, as a popular religion, aspects of it were absorbed by Buddhism and Daoism. The shrine where worship of the god Mani took place in Quanzhou is the most important relic. Before 1980 it had been photographed only by Wu Wenliang. The modern history of the shrine, including its transformation into a popular Buddhist temple, is recounted in this chapter and colour photographs of it are published.

The remaining two-thirds of the book are a catalogue of remains and inscriptions. Chapter Six includes a photograph, description, iconographic identification, and other standard catalogue information such as dimensions and places where the object has been published for 76 Christian tombstones, sarcophaguses, and other decorated stones and fifteen Manichaean objects. Inscribed objects are the subject of Chapter Seven. Again each one is illustrated with the full inscription published along with an English translation and commentary. The two chapters are laid out so that every stone and its inscription can be carefully studied. The pictures make clearer than any text that no matter the language of the inscription, Christian tombstones and sarcophaguses share imagery and forms with those of other religions whose deceased were buried in Quanzhou.

Chapters Eight and Nine take the Syro-Turkic inscriptions as their subject. Outside Quanzhou the majority of them come from Kyrghyzstan and Mongolia and most of them date to the Yuan period. Chapter Nine begins with a bilingual Chinese-Syro-Turkic inscription on a wife's tombstone from Yangzhou. It continues with newly discovered inscriptions from Quanzhou through which the authors are able to correct a misreading associated with one of the stones since 1952. The more one knows about the subject, the more apparent it is what has been accomplished. Even though the authors occasionally state that one of their readings is tentative, Majella Fransmann and Samuel Lieu have taken the study of Syro-Turkic to a new level.

Chapter Ten is a bonus chapter in terms of subject matter. It summarises the Brahmanical remains in Quanzhou. Readers who were aware of the Manichaean or Christian remains in the city before turning to this volume probably also know about Indian relief sculpture embedded into columns at Quanzhou's famous monastery Kaiyuansi or about al-Ashab Mosque and the numerous Islamic tombstones in the city. Here the purpose is to relate Brahmanical remains to Manichaean ones and to re-examine the question of Mani's travel in India in the 240s, and further to question the presence of a Manichaean community in India. The text then turns to the early presence of Christianity in India. The authors conclude that the evidence of a significant Manichaean population in India is so slim that it is unlikely Manichaeanism came to Quanzhou from India. As for the Church of the East, the point made is that it wanes in China after the period of Mongolian rule, and begins to flourish in India around that time.

The final chapter continues discussion of whether Christianity was on the wane, to the extent that it has seemed, between the Tang and Yuan dynasties. The 2006 discovery of an octagonal stone pillar with a Nestorian inscription dated to 829 in the secondary Tang capital Luoyang reopened the question, for the Luoyang find can be studied alongside the above-mentioned Nestorian Monument in the primary Tang capital at Xi'an. The discussion broadens to perceptions of religion by Jesuits who came during the period of Mongolian rule and to the iconography of Christianity at this time. The authors show shared iconography on funerary art in Quanzhou and Istanbul, and more examples of the cross on lotus in the southeastern Chinese port of Yangzhou.

The authors’ modest conclusion is that the eclectic nature of remains reflects the multiculturalism and acculturation in Quanzhou. A reader's conclusions at the end of this book will be bolder. This is a significant publication on medieval China's most international city. It not only is a model of scholarship and scholarly collaboration, it is the only thorough record of material remains and inscriptions from two of Quanzhou's foreign populations. Any researcher of Christian or Manichaean art or history of China's Song and Yuan dynasties will read this book carefully cover to cover.nssteinh@sas.upenn.edu