Dear Colleagues,

We are thrilled to announce that this past summer’s Ilibalik excavations were extraordinary. There are over one hundred Christian graves discovered, some with Christian jewelry, all pointing to a significant Christian presence as well as advanced cultural development. This is great news for Kazakhstan!

As Kazakhstan seeks to become one of the top thirty economies in the world as well as serve as a prime mover for the revival of Silk Road commerce, it is very committed to investigating its history and cultural heritage. In his address to the Nur Otan Party in 2015, President Nursultan Nazarbayev affirmed Kazakhstan’s policy recognizing the important role religion plays in the affairs of a nation when he stated: “We are entering a period of our development, when spiritual development is no less important than economic and material interests.”

This vision is expressed as well in the new program Course Ahead: Spiritual Renewal. In discussions on economic development, particularly as it relates to the One Belt One Road project, Kazakhstan understands the significant role religions of the Silk Road played in trade and commerce.

The Department for Nestorian Studies was created to investigate the Nestorian aspect of this history, and is a positive step to facilitate the investigation of the role Nestorianism played in the territories of what is to today Kazakhstan and other Central Asian nations. As Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev succinctly stated: “We need to look into the past in order to understand the present and foresee the future.”

Indeed Christianity had a significant presence in Central Asia, particularly between the 8th and 12th centuries. In his book The Church of the East, Christoph Baumer records, that of the two dozen Turko-Mongol tribes which Genghis Khan united in 1206 to form the Mongolian Empire, at least seven of them had significant populations of Nestorian Christianity. The Flemish explorer William of Rubruck recorded in the 13 th century that the Kerait, which is one of the significant clans of modern Kazakhs, had 200,000 Nestorian Christians. In addition to the Kerait, other tribes which had significant Nestorian Christian populations include the Merkit, Naiman, Ongut, Uighurs, Uriyan-gakit, Kangli, and Manchurian.

To give some perspective to the extent of Nestorian development, Philip Jenkins in his book The Lost History of Christianity, notes that in 8th century – before Christianity was accepted in German, Dutch, and Russian territories – the Eastern Church patriarch Timothy already presided over 19 metropolitan sees (regional archbishops) which oversaw eighty five bishops along the Silk Road. The city of Merv – modern Mari, Turkmenistan – had a bishop by 420. By 500, Merv as a major Christian center to Central Asian Turkish tribes, translating important books from Greek and Syriac into the Central Asian and Eastern Asian languages.

The primary goal of the Department of Nestorian Studies is to create infrastructure which will facilitate the research and development of the Nestorian history of Kazakhstan and Central Asia, recruit the top experts in the field as well as promising young Kazakhstan students, and creating the best possible atmosphere for them to conduct  research and publish findings.

We welcome university archaeology departments to partner in this developing field, just beginning to be rediscovered. In addition to inviting interested archaelogy departments, the Department of Nestorian Studies would like to invite other school, university and other interested groups to come to Kazakhstan to participate in ongoing archaeological projects. Teams can assist as volunteers assisting with excavations under the supervision of professional archaeologists.

Please see our Salzburg Conference report, which was an extraordinary event. Please contact us if you have any questions. We’d be delighted to meet and share of the great things coming to light.