~1800 BCE — Abraham and the covenant with God (according to tradition)
Description: Abraham is regarded as the ancestor of the three Abrahamic religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and East Asian traditions — from the earliest covenants to the twenty-first century. Each of the 200 events opens on click. All lanes are on by default. Click a chip to hide a tradition; click again to bring it back. “All traditions” turns every lane on. Zoom in (the + / − buttons, or Ctrl + mouse wheel) and event names appear on the lanes.
Description: Abraham is regarded as the ancestor of the three Abrahamic religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Description: The Exodus is commemorated each year at Passover — one of the oldest continuously observed festivals in history.
Description: The Ten Commandments later became a foundation for the legal systems of many cultures.
Description: From this moment, Jerusalem remained the religious center of Judaism for three millennia.
Description: The First Temple stood for about four centuries before it was destroyed by the Babylonians.
Description: The ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom are regarded as “lost” — their fate remains the stuff of legend.
Description: It was during the Babylonian exile that a substantial part of the texts later included in the Hebrew canon took shape.
Description: Cyrus’s edict is one of the oldest surviving examples of state religious tolerance.
Description: The Second Temple stood for nearly 600 years — longer than the First.
Description: Canonization fixed the text of the Torah, which remains unchanged in Judaism to this day.
Description: According to tradition, the Buddha’s birth was accompanied by many miraculous signs.
Description: Gautama’s enlightenment is regarded as the central event of the entire Buddhist tradition.
Description: The traditional Buddhist calendar is counted from the Buddha’s parinirvana.
Description: The Rigveda is the oldest surviving text in the Indo-European language family.
Description: From the Shramana movement grew not only Buddhism and Jainism, but also many Hindu ascetic schools.
Description: The Upanishads established the concepts of karma and moksha, which became central to all Indian religions.
Description: Whether Laozi existed as a historical person remains a matter of scholarly debate.
Description: In his lifetime Confucius was not regarded as especially successful — his fame came after his death.
Description: The Maccabees’ victory is commemorated at Hanukkah.
Description: Judea’s status as a client state lasted nearly a century before direct Roman rule.
Description: With the destruction of the Second Temple, sacrificial worship in Judaism ceased for good.
Description: The calendar used today in nearly the entire world is counted from the birth of Jesus.
Description: The cross became the principal symbol of Christianity after this event.
Description: The letters of Paul make up nearly half the books of the New Testament.
Description: Nero’s persecutions were the first in a series of Roman persecutions of Christians that lasted nearly 300 years.
Description: The destruction of the Temple deepened the split between emerging Christianity and Judaism.
Description: The final New Testament canon took about three more centuries to form after these texts.
Description: The First Council was convened soon after the Buddha’s death to fix his teaching from the monks’ memory.
Description: Ashoka sent Buddhist missionaries as far as the Hellenistic Mediterranean.
Description: According to tradition, Sri Lanka preserves a branch of the very Bodhi tree under which the Buddha meditated.
Description: The Pali Canon is the oldest fully preserved collection of Buddhist texts.
Description: The split into Theravada and Mahayana largely determined whether personal or universal salvation would stand at the center.
Description: Over time, Buddhism in China blended with local Daoist and Confucian traditions.
Description: Over time the varna system hardened into a far more rigid and ramified caste system.
Description: The Mahabharata is one of the longest epics in world literature.
Description: The Bhagavad Gita remains one of the most widely read philosophical texts of Hinduism in the world.
Description: British colonial authorities used the Laws of Manu for centuries as a basis for legal practice among Hindus.
Description: The story of Rama and Sita became the basis of many theatrical and dance traditions in South and Southeast Asia.
Description: Confucius’s teaching was written down not by him but by his disciples after his death.
Description: Mencius held that human nature is originally good — in opposition to other schools of his time.
Description: The Daodejing is one of the most translated philosophical texts in the world.
Description: Passing an examination on the Confucian Five Classics was for centuries a condition of an official career in China.
Description: According to tradition, during the “burning of books” many Confucian scholars were also buried alive.
Description: Confucianism remained China’s official ideology for nearly two millennia after the Han era.
Description: After crushing the Bar Kokhba revolt, the Romans renamed the province Syria Palaestina.
Description: The Mishnah was written down after the oral tradition had been transmitted from memory for centuries.
Description: The Babylonian Talmud became the principal source of religious law (halakha) for most streams of Judaism.
Description: The Edict of Milan was the first time in Roman history that the principle of religious tolerance was established.
Description: The Creed formulated at the Council of Nicaea is still recited at liturgies today.
Description: In half a century Christianity went from a persecuted community to the state religion of the Roman Empire.
Description: The Latin Bible (the Vulgate) remained the official text of the Catholic Church for more than 1,500 years.
Description: The Nestorian schism gave rise to the Church of the East, which traveled the Silk Road as far as China.
Description: The Council of Chalcedon produced the non-Chalcedonian churches — Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopian — that still exist today.
Description: Clovis’s baptism made the Franks the only major Germanic people of their time who were Catholic.
Description: The Benedictine Rule became the model for almost all Western monasticism in the centuries that followed.
Description: Augustine’s mission led to the conversion of Anglo-Saxon Britain to Christianity.
Description: Muhammad was born in the year that Islamic tradition calls the Year of the Elephant.
Description: According to tradition, the first revelation was received in the Cave of Hira near Mecca.
Description: The Islamic lunar calendar is counted from the Hijra.
Description: The conquest of Mecca took place with almost no bloodshed.
Description: Sunnis regard the first four caliphs of the Rashidun Caliphate as model rulers.
Description: The Sunni–Shia split after the First Fitna remains the largest schism in the history of Islam.
Description: The Umayyads turned the caliphate from an elective into a hereditary monarchy.
Description: Husayn’s death at Karbala is mourned each year on Ashura.
Description: The Dome of the Rock is one of the oldest surviving monuments of Islamic architecture.
Description: Buddhism became the state religion of several Korean kingdoms.
Description: The arrival of Buddhism in Japan sparked sharp disputes between clans that supported and rejected the new religion.
Description: The Gupta period is often called the “golden age” of classical Indian culture and science.
Description: The Puranas made the complex philosophy of Hinduism accessible through mythological stories.
Description: The Way of the Five Pecks of Rice required followers to donate grain.
Description: The syncretism of the three teachings produced the formula “three teachings, one family,” widespread in Chinese culture.
Description: In Korea the Confucian examination system for official posts lasted until the early twentieth century.
Description: Karaites rejected the Talmud, recognizing only the text of the Tanakh.
Description: Saadia Gaon was the first to translate the Tanakh into Arabic.
Description: The dispute over the veneration of icons lasted more than a century and ended with its restoration.
Description: Charlemagne’s coronation is regarded as the symbolic revival of the Western Roman Empire.
Description: The script created by Cyril and Methodius became the basis of modern Cyrillic alphabets.
Description: The Baptism of Rus' set the cultural and religious orientation of the East Slavs for a millennium to come.
Description: Arab-Berber forces advanced from Gibraltar to the Pyrenees in less than a decade.
Description: The Abbasid Revolution was accompanied by one of the first mass social movements in history under Islamic slogans.
Description: At its height Baghdad became the largest city in the world outside China.
Description: At the House of Wisdom, works of Greek philosophers were translated into Arabic, later returning to Europe.
Description: The four Sunni schools of law (madhhabs) recognize one another as mutually legitimate.
Description: Sunnis regard al-Bukhari’s hadith collection as the second most authoritative source after the Quran.
Description: The Fatimids were the only major Shia dynasty to rule in their own name as caliphs rather than emirs.
Description: Xuanzang’s journey became the basis of the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West.
Description: In Tibet, Buddhism merged with the local Bon religion, producing a distinctive Tibetan tradition.
Description: Padmasambhava is venerated in Tibetan Buddhism as a “second Buddha.”
Description: The Tendai school trained many future founders of other branches of Japanese Buddhism.
Description: The Shingon school brought esoteric tantric practices to Japan.
Description: According to tradition, Adi Shankara lived only 32 years, yet founded four monasteries at opposite ends of India.
Description: The Seventeen-Article Constitution is one of the oldest codes of state principles in East Asia.
Description: The Kojiki is the oldest surviving Japanese chronicle of myth and history.
Description: The Nihon Shoki is regarded as a more official and detailed version of Japanese history than the Kojiki.
Description: The persecution of Buddhism was accompanied by the destruction of thousands of monasteries across China.
Description: Rashi’s commentaries are still printed in the margins of traditional editions of the Talmud.
Description: The pogroms of 1096 are regarded as one of the first large waves of anti-Jewish violence in medieval Europe.
Description: Maimonides formulated 13 principles of faith that are still recited in synagogues today.
Description: England remained without a legal Jewish population for about 350 years after the expulsion.
Description: The split between Catholicism and Orthodoxy has still not been formally healed.
Description: The Crusades lasted nearly two centuries and involved millions of people.
Description: Becket’s murder made Canterbury one of the chief pilgrimage sites of medieval Europe.
Description: The vow of poverty made the Franciscans one of the most numerous orders in the history of the Church.
Description: The papal Inquisition lasted in various forms until the nineteenth century.
Description: The Crusaders’ capture of Jerusalem was accompanied by large-scale killing of the city’s inhabitants.
Description: When he took Jerusalem, Saladin spared the city’s inhabitants.
Description: The Mamluk state was governed by a military caste of former slave-soldiers.
Description: When they took Baghdad, the Mongols destroyed the city’s famous libraries.
Description: From a modest frontier principality the Ottomans grew into an empire that lasted more than 600 years.
Description: Rinzai Zen placed the emphasis on meditation rather than on the study of texts.
Description: According to tradition, the library of Nalanda monastery burned for several months.
Description: Nichiren taught that salvation is attained by repeatedly reciting the name of the Lotus Sutra.
Description: Ramanuja opposed his philosophy to Shankara’s strict monism, insisting on a personal relationship with the deity.
Description: The Somnath temple was destroyed and rebuilt several times over the centuries.
Description: The temples of Khajuraho are famous for the explicit erotic sculptures on their walls.
Description: The destruction of Bihar’s centers is regarded as one reason for the decline of Buddhism in its historic Indian homeland.
Description: Neo-Confucianism became the official ideology of China, Korea, and Vietnam for centuries afterward.
Description: The typhoons that scattered the Mongol fleet gave rise to the idea of Japan’s divine protection.
Description: The edict of expulsion from Spain was not formally revoked until 1968.
Description: At the height of the Western Schism, three popes claimed the throne of St. Peter at the same time.
Description: Jan Hus was burned despite an imperial safe-conduct.
Description: The fall of Constantinople is regarded as one of the conventional boundaries of the end of the Middle Ages.
Description: In Thailand, monastic life became part of the traditional path to manhood.
Description: Chaitanya’s movement became the basis of the tradition later brought to the West by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
Description: The restoration of Ming rule was accompanied by a revival of traditional rituals after Mongol rule.
Description: The word “ghetto” itself probably comes from the name of this Venetian district.
Description: The Shulchan Aruch remains the operative code of Orthodox Judaism.
Description: The Khmelnytsky Uprising, by various estimates, claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Jews in Eastern Europe.
Description: Legend has it that Luther’s theses were nailed to a church door, though historians debate the details of the episode.
Description: The formal pretext for the Anglican schism was the pope’s refusal to annul the king’s marriage.
Description: Calvin’s teaching became the basis of the Presbyterian and Reformed traditions.
Description: The Council of Trent sat, with interruptions, for 18 years.
Description: The Thirty Years’ War is regarded as one of the most destructive religious conflicts in European history.
Description: The Safavids made Persia the only major Shia power in the region.
Description: At the height of its power the Mughal Empire controlled about a quarter of the world’s population.
Description: The title “Dalai Lama” means “ocean [of wisdom]” in Mongolian.
Description: The Fifth Dalai Lama built the Potala Palace, which became a symbol of Tibet.
Description: Under the Muslim Mughal rulers, Hindu culture nonetheless saw a flowering of the arts.
Description: The bhakti poets wrote not in Sanskrit but in the vernaculars, making religious poetry accessible to ordinary people.
Description: The East India Company began as a trading organization but grew into the de facto ruler of the subcontinent.
Description: Unlike many of his predecessors, Aurangzeb pursued a religious policy that heightened tension with Hindus.
Description: The Jesuits were initially received favorably in Japan, before Christianity was banned.
Description: Confucian hierarchy under the Tokugawa shogunate locked in a rigid class division of Japanese society.
Description: The Manchus, outsiders to China, used Chinese ideology to legitimize their own power.
Description: The Sabbatai Zevi movement collapsed when its leader converted to Islam under pressure from the Ottoman authorities.
Description: Hasidism grew from a small circle into one of the largest streams of Orthodox Judaism.
Description: The Pale of Settlement lasted in Russia until 1917.
Description: The Great Awakening laid the foundations of American evangelical Protestantism.
Description: The Wahhabi alliance with the House of Saud laid the foundation of the modern Saudi state.
Description: Napoleon’s campaign first introduced the Islamic Middle East to modern European printing technology.
Description: India became the “jewel” of the British Empire — its largest colony.
Description: Reform Judaism was the first to set aside many ritual prescriptions in favor of the ethical content of the faith.
Description: Herzl wrote in his diary that he would create a Jewish state in 50 years — and almost guessed the date.
Description: The dogma of infallibility applies only to the pope’s official doctrinal statements (ex cathedra).
Description: The Mahdist movement united disparate Sudanese tribes under a religious banner against colonial rule.
Description: The council in Burma was convened to codify the canon after decades of colonial rule.
Description: The Parliament of Religions in Chicago was the first major gathering of representatives of the world’s religions in the West.
Description: Brahmo Samaj campaigned against sati (widow burning) and child marriage.
Description: Arya Samaj called for a return to “pure” Vedic Hinduism, rejecting later practices.
Description: Vivekananda’s speech in Chicago is regarded as the moment when Hinduism presented itself as a world religion.
Description: State Shinto was used to give ideological justification to Japanese nationalism and expansion.
Description: The ban on Christianity in Japan was lifted under pressure from the Western powers.
Description: Participants in the Yihetuan uprising were called “Boxers” in the West because of their martial-arts practice.
Description: About six million European Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
Description: The State of Israel was proclaimed only three years after the end of the Holocaust.
Description: Vatican II for the first time allowed the Mass to be celebrated in vernacular languages instead of Latin.
Description: The abolition of the caliphate left the Islamic world without a generally recognized caliph for the first time in nearly 1,300 years.
Description: The Muslim Brotherhood became one of the most influential Islamist movements of the twentieth century.
Description: The Iranian Revolution overthrew a monarchy that traced back to more than 2,500 years of Persian royal tradition.
Description: The siege of the Grand Mosque in Mecca lasted two weeks in Islam’s holiest place.
Description: In the following decades many monasteries were closed or destroyed.
Description: The Sixth Council was the first Buddhist council in history to be recorded on magnetic tape.
Description: In a single day, by estimates, about half a million Indian Dalits converted to Buddhism.
Description: The Dalai Lama has lived in exile ever since in the Indian city of Dharamshala.
Description: Zen strongly influenced the counterculture of the 1960s and the later popularity of mindfulness practices.
Description: The Nobel Prize was awarded for his commitment to a nonviolent resolution of the Tibetan question.
Description: Gandhi called his movement satyagraha — “holding firmly to truth.”
Description: The RSS remains one of the largest volunteer organizations in the world.
Description: The Partition of India was accompanied by one of the largest migrations in human history.
Description: Gandhi was killed by a Hindu nationalist opposed to his stance on the partition of the country.
Description: ISKCON made the Hare Krishna mantra recognizable around the world.
Description: The demolition of the Babri Masjid triggered some of the largest communal clashes in independent India.
Description: The coalition that suppressed the rebellion included European countries as well as Japan and the United States.
Description: In a single year China lost a system that had determined elite careers for nearly 1,300 years.
Description: The end of state Confucianism coincided with the fall of China’s last imperial dynasty.
Description: State Shinto was abolished by the U.S. occupation administration after Japan’s surrender.
Description: Persecution in Maoist China involved the closing of temples and the targeting of clergy of all religions.
Description: During the Cultural Revolution, many monuments of religious architecture and art were destroyed.
Description: The revival of traditional teachings began almost immediately after Mao Zedong’s death and the start of economic reforms.
Description: Shinto shrines became some of Japan’s most visited tourist sites.
Description: September 11 became the largest terrorist attack in modern history.
Description: The group controlled parts of Iraq and Syria; it is banned in Russia and most countries.
Description: The Saffron Revolution is named for the color of the robes of the Buddhist monks who took to the streets.
Description: Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya left the country; assessments of the events remain internationally contested.
Description: Mindfulness practices, rooted in Buddhist meditation, entered secular stress-reduction programs worldwide.
Description: The BJP is India’s largest political party by number of seats in parliament.
Description: Kashmir has been the subject of a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947.
Description: Construction of the Rama temple became possible after decades of litigation over the disputed site.
Description: Confucius Institutes are a network of Chinese cultural centers abroad, named after the philosopher.
Description: The enshrinement at Yasukuni of the war dead, including convicted war criminals, regularly sparks diplomatic disputes with China and Korea.