Nomads on Pilgrimage: Mongols on Wutaishan (China), 1800-1940 is a social history of the Mongols' pilgrimages to Wutaishan in late imperial and Republican times. In this period of economic crisis and rise of nationalism and anticlericalism in Mongolia and China, this great Buddhist mountain of China became a unique place of intercultural exchanges, mutual borrowings, and competition between different ethnic groups. Based on a variety of written and visual sources, including a rich corpus of more than 340 Mongolian stone inscriptions, it documents why and how Wutaishan became one of the...

This books reflects on sites such as shrines, monasteries or a revered mountain, cave or tree, shared by more than one religion in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Brazil. It explores how their multiple meanings, inherent ambiguity and shared rituals, transcending the confines of orthodoxy, may contribute to their power for the pilgrim.