This volume comprises an edition and English translation of the response in Arabic made by the fourteenth century scholar Ibn Abī Ṭālib al-Dimashqī to a Letter sent to him by anonymous Christians from Cyprus. The Christian letter was also sent to al-Dimashqī's contemporary Ibn Taymiyya, and this response is thus a parallel to Ibn Taymiyya's Al-jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ. In their Letter the Christians subtly suggest that the Qur'an supports Christian doctrines. Al-Dimashqī replies with a comprehensive series of elaborate and wide-ranging...

This study applies sociological and philological analysis to the extraordinary thirteenth-century Coptic Martyrdom of John of Phanijōit. Zaborowski's research explains the identity-shaping function behind this text's portrayal of an Egyptian Christian's conversion to Islam and subsequent struggle to publicly reconvert to Christianity. The heart of this book is its edition and facing English translation of the only extant manuscript of the martyrdom. Interpretive chapters include: 1) a sociological inquiry into the narrative's depiction of Muslims; 2) a philological analysis of the Coptic...

The apologetical writings of the Jacobite Christian, Abū Rā'iṭah al-Takrītī (+ c. 835) have remained relatively unknown in Western scholarship. Yet his engagement with Muslim questions about Christianity provides a significant insight into the theological debate between the two communities in the early ʿAbbāsid period. Abū Rā'iṭah's treatises take up many of the topics that become standard for Christian-Muslim apologetics: proofs of the true religion, the Trinity, the Incarnation, and Christian practices. In each case, he provides his reader...

The contributions in this volume deal with crucial subjects of political and theological dialogue and controversy that characterized the varying responses of the Christian communities in the Byzantine Eastern provinces to the Islamic conquest and its subsequent impact on Byzantine society and history.

The contributions to this volume, which come from the Fifth Mingana Symposium, survey the use of the Bible and attitudes towards it in the early and classical Islamic periods. The authors explore such themes as early Christian translations of the Bible into Arabic, the use of verses from it to defend the truth of Christianity, to interpret the significance of Islam and to prove its error, Muslim accusations of corruption of the Bible, and the influences that affected production of Bibles in Muslims lands. The volume illustrates the centrality of the Bible to Arab Christians as a source of...

Christian-Muslim relations are one of the major issues in contemporary theology of religions. This book deals with the theological foundations that have been laid for these relations in the recent official documents (1966-2005) of the Secretariat for Non-Christians/the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. There is a continuous interrelationship in recent Roman Catholic thinking between philosophy (existentialism and personalism) and theology ("nouvelle theologie" and "kerygmatic theology"). This study shows that the doctrine of the Trinitarian nature of God is the cornerstone on...

Martin Luther (1483-1546) lived at an important juncture during the long and tortuous history of the conflict between Islam and Europe. Scholars have long focused on his apocalyptic interpretation of the rise of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, but only a few have probed deeper into his thought on Islam. As a result, one of the most influential thinkers in the western intellectual tradition has received very little attention in the history of Christian perceptions of and responses to Islam. Drawing upon a vast array of the Reformer's writings while also examining several key texts, this book...

By the tenth century Islamic theology had become an integrated system by which theologians constructed sophisticated accounts of the nature of the world and God's relationship with it. They also used it to establish proofs that Islam was the only rationally tenable form of belief, building these in part on proofs of the illogicalities in other faiths, including Christianity. Through excerpts from key works of the theologians al-Nashi' al-Akbar, al-Maturidi, al-Baqillani and ʿAbd al-Jabbar, this book shows how Muslim theologians in this period made use of Christian doctrines as examples...

From the eighth century onwards, Christians living under Islam have produced numerous apologetic and polemical works, aimed at proving the continuing validity of Christianity. Among these is the Legend of Sergius Baḥīrā, which survives in two Syriac and two Arabic versions, and appears here in edition and translation. Being a counterhistory of Islam, it reshapes early Muslim traditions about a monk recognizing Muḥammad as the final Prophet by turning this monk into Muhammad's tutor and co-author of the Qur'an. In response to Muslim triumphalist propaganda, it portrays...

No previous full-scale study has been undertaken so far to study the polemical writings of the Muslim reformist Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā (1865-1935) and his associates in his well-known journal al-Manār (The Lighthouse). The book focuses on the dynamics of Muslim understanding of Christianity during the late 19th and the early 20th century in the light of al-Manār's sources of knowledge, and its answers to the social, political and theological aspects of missionary movements in the Muslim World of Riḍā's age. The basis of the analysis encompasses the...