[1] It is a limestone block 279 centimetres (9 ft 2 in) high with text in both Chinese and Syriac describing the existence of Christian communities in several cities in northern China.

It reveals that the initial Church of the East had met recognition by the Tang Emperor Taizong, due to efforts of the Christian missionary Alopen in 635.

[2] According to the stele, Alopen and his fellow Syriac missionaries came to China from Daqin (the Eastern Roman Empire) in the ninth year of Emperor Taizong (Tai Tsung) (635), bringing sacred books and images.

[7] According to the account by the Jesuit Alvaro Semedo, the workers who found the stele immediately reported the find to the governor, who soon visited the monument, and had it installed on a pedestal, under a protective roof, requesting the nearby Buddhist monastery to care for it.

China Illustrata edited by Kircher (1667) included a reproduction of the original inscription in Chinese characters,[12] romanization of the text, and a Latin translation.

A sophisticated romanization system, reflecting Chinese tones, used to transcribe the text, was the one developed earlier by Matteo Ricci's collaborator Lazzaro Cattaneo (1560–1640).

[18] The name of the stele can also be translated as A Monument Commemorating the Propagation of the Ta-Chin Luminous Religion in the Middle Kingdom (the church referred to itself as "The Luminous Religion of Daqin", Daqin being the Chinese language term for the Roman Empire in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD,[19] and in later eras also used to refer to the Syriac Christian churches).

[20] The stele was erected on January 7, 781 ("Year of the Greeks 1092" in the inscription), at the imperial capital city of Chang'an (modern-day Xi'an), or at nearby Zhouzhi County.

[24][25][26][27][28] The Xi'an Stele attracted the attention of some anti-Christian, Protestant anti-Catholic, or Catholic anti-Jesuit groups in the 17th century, who argued that the stone was a fake or that the inscriptions had been modified by the Jesuits who served in the Ming Court.

[10][30] Ernest Renan initially had "grave doubts", but eventually changed his mind in the light of later scholarship, in favor of the stele's genuineness.

[34] Since the late 19th century a number of European scholars opined in favor of somehow getting the stele out of China and into the British Museum or some other "suitable" location (e.g., Frederic H. Balfour in his letter published in The Times in early 1886[35]).

[36] Eventually, in 1917 some Mrs. George Leary, a wealthy New Yorker, purchased the replica stele from Holm and sent it to Rome, as a gift to the Pope.

Other copies of the stele and its tortoise can be found near Xi'an Daqin Pagoda,[41] on Mount Kōya in Japan,[42] and, in Tianhe Church, Guangzhou.

There are also two much later stelae (from 960 and 1365) presenting a curious mix of Christian and Buddhist aspects, which are preserved at the site of the former Monastery of the Cross in the Fangshan District, near Beijing.

Erected and engraved in 815, the inscriptions give partial details surrounding the background of a Sogdian Christian community living in Luoyang.