300 BCE to 700 CE · Africanspan
Ezana of Aksum became Christian centuries before most of Europe
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Buddhism, Christianity and later Islam became world religions by travelling the trade routes. Buddhism spread across southern and eastern Asia along the paths of expanding commerce. Manicheism, proclaimed by Mani in Sassanian Persia in the middle of the third century, went west to the Roman empire and east through interior Asia as far as China. Judaism took hold in southern Arabia in the early first millennium CE along the land and sea routes of the peninsula. Christianity was in the Horn of Africa and in India before the fourth century CE, usually brought by merchants. Hinduism travelled the Indian Ocean links into what is now Indonesia. Islam later crossed the Sahara to West Africa and sailed to Indonesia, again mostly through trading believers. Aksum is the case worth naming. King Ezana converted in the fourth century CE, and Coptic Christianity is still the faith of millions of Ethiopians and Eritreans. Augustine of Canterbury landed in Kent in 597 to begin converting the Anglo-Saxons.
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