The World’s Religions
1,700 BCE – ongoing88 items
religionFounding, schisms and spread
Fifteen faiths, each drawn as a band from its emergence to today: Hinduism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Shinto, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, the Bábí and Baháʼí Faiths, Cao Đài and Rastafari, and one that did not survive: Manichaeism, which once reached from Roman North Africa to China. Each event sits inside its faith’s band, so the bands read as lanes of founders, texts, splits and journeys across the map.
Scholarly dates and traditional dates
Many of the oldest dates are argued over, and a tradition’s own date is often much earlier than the one historians defend. Here a band or event sits at the scholarly date, widened to a century or more where the evidence is thin, and the notes give the traditional date beside it and say which is which. The Buddha, Zarathustra, Mahavira, Laozi and the Vedas all come with a range, not a day.
Calendars
Early Islamic events are entered in the Hijri calendar, as the Arabic sources count them: the Hijra is 8 Rabīʿ I of year 1 and Karbala 10 Muharram 61. Christian dates before 1582 are in the Julian calendar, as their sources give them, like Luther’s theses on 31 October 1517. The app converts both, so open an event to see it in either calendar.
Threads
founders: the teachers and prophets each faith looks back to
scripture: when the texts were composed, written down or fixed
schisms: Sunni and Shia, 1054, Chalcedon, the Reformation and more
spread: missions, trade routes, conquest and exile
government: when a state adopted, imposed or cut loose a faith
pilgrimage: the journeys and sites that draw the faithful
The world in 2020
Pew Research Center’s 2025 count for 2020: 2.3 billion Christians, 2.0 billion Muslims, 1.9 billion people with no religion, 1.2 billion Hindus, 324 million Buddhists and 14.8 million Jews (Pew, 2025).
Items
The hymns of the Rigveda are composed
The Merneptah Stele names “Israel”
The earliest Upanishads
Babylon destroys the First Temple: the exile
Darius’s inscription at Behistun invokes Ahuramazda
Confucius dies in Lu
Mahavira’s nirvana at Pavapuri
Siddhartha Gautama’s awakening at Bodh Gaya
The Guodian tomb’s bamboo Laozi
Ashoka’s Rock Edict XIII: conquest by dharma
Mahinda brings Buddhism to Sri Lanka
Emperor Wu founds the Imperial Academy
The Bhagavad Gita
The Pali Canon is written down at Aluvihare
Jesus is crucified in Jerusalem
First record of Buddhists in China
Rome destroys the Second Temple
Zhang Daoling’s revelation: the Celestial Masters (traditional date)
Lokakṣema translates Mahāyāna sutras in Luoyang
Judah ha-Nasi edits the Mishnah
Mani dies in prison at Gundeshapur
Kartir’s inscription on the Kaʿba-ye Zartosht
The Council of Nicaea
King Ezana of Aksum turns Christian
The Council of Chalcedon
The Council of Valabhi writes down the Śvetāmbara canon
Buddhism reaches Japan from Baekje
Muhammad’s first revelation on Mount Hira
The Hijra: Muhammad reaches Quba
Muhammad dies and the succession divides his followers
Caliph ʿUthman fixes the text of the Qur’an
Husayn is killed at Karbala
Ise’s first rebuilding, by the shrine’s records
Arab armies take Sindh
The Kojiki is presented to the court
The Uyghur khagan adopts Manichaeism
Samye, Tibet’s first monastery
The Xi’an Stele: Christianity in Tang China
Borobudur is built
Zoroastrians settle at Sanjan: the Parsis
Prambanan is dedicated to Shiva
The Gommateshwara statue at Shravanabelagola
Rome and Constantinople excommunicate each other
Angkor Wat is built for Vishnu
Zhu Xi prints the Four Books
Sultan Malik al-Salih’s tombstone at Samudra Pasai
Mansa Musa passes through Cairo on the hajj
A statue of Mani at Cao’an
Sungkyunkwan opens in Seoul
The Ming Daoist canon is printed
Guru Nanak is born
The king of Kongo is baptised
The Alhambra Decree expels Spain’s Jews
Shah Ismaʿil makes Iran Shia
Luther’s Ninety-five Theses: the Reformation begins
The “Twelve” Franciscans reach Mexico
Francis Xavier lands at Kagoshima
The Adi Granth is installed in the Harmandir Sahib
Guru Gobind Singh founds the Khalsa
The scripture becomes the eternal Guru
The Hamburg Temple opens: Reform Judaism
Casa Branca, Candomblé’s oldest temple, in Salvador
The Báb declares his mission in Shiraz
The Báb is executed in Tabriz
Baháʼu’lláh declares his mission in the Garden of Riḍván
Baháʼu’lláh is imprisoned in ʿAkká
Vivekananda at the World’s Parliament of Religions
The Azusa Street Revival
Cao Đài
Rastafari
Haile Selassie is crowned in Addis Ababa
The Shinto Directive ends State Shinto
The Dalai Lama escapes from Lhasa
Haile Selassie lands in Jamaica
The world’s religions counted, 2020