These fifteen original essays focus on unfamiliar texts that reflect the wide range of medieval Christianity's preoccupation with Islam.

John Tolan is one of the world's foremost scholars in the field of early Christian/Muslim interactions. These eleven essays explore, in greater depth than his previous books, a wide variety of topics.The Bible and Qur an agree that Arabs were the descendants of Ishmael, son of Abraham and Hagar. Ishmael is described in Genesis as "a wild man; his hand will be against every man and every man's hand against him." To many medieval Christians, this was a prophecy of the violence and enmity between Ishmael s progeny and the Christians--spiritual descendants of his half-brother Isaac.Yet Tolan also...

This collection will be welcomed by anyone working on the interactions of the Muslim and Christian worlds in the Middle Ages and the more casual reader will be struck by the persistence of stereotypes on both sides of the divide. Medium Aevum LXXIX

The essays explore what, from the ninth to the fourteenth century, Western Christian clerks and kings, monks and abbots, friars and bishops, and scholars and poets wrote about Muslims and Islam. . . . Tolan s book is among the best in the field. Journal of Religion

Considers such examples as portrayals of Muhammad in...