| Date | November 2019 | Marks available | 15 | Reference code | 19N.3op3.HL.TZ0.2 |
| Level | Higher level only | Paper | Paper 3 (History of Asia and Oceania) | Time zone | TZ0 |
| Command term | Discuss | Question number | 2 | Adapted from | N/A |
Question
Section 1: Trade and exchange: The Silk Road in the medieval world (750–1500)
Discuss the impact of the Silk Road on the transmission of religious ideas.
Markscheme
The question requires that candidates offer a considered and balanced review of the impact of the Silk Road on the transmission of religious ideas. Candidates may refer to how traders built shrines and temples of their own faiths along the Silk Road to practise their own beliefs. Missionaries also accompanied the caravans on the Silk Road and would spread their own religious beliefs and make converts. Buddhism was the first of the faiths to use the Silk Road to extend its reach from India to China. The Silk Road also increased conversions to Islam with Muslim traders spreading their faith. Eastern Christians succeeded in major conversions between the 7th and 11th centuries and were seen as a faith of foreign travelling merchants.
