This book covers the history of the Syrian church of India from its founding by the apostle Thomas in 52 A.D., until the first half of the twentieth century. The relations of the Church of India with the See of Antioch were interrupted by the rise of the Nestorian teaching. The coming of the Portuguese at the end of the fifteenth century, followed by the Dutch and then the British and their efforts to convert the Syrian Indians to their own persuasions, is discussed with fairness and objectivity. The several delegations of the Apostolic See of Antioch to India from the seventeenth to the...

Barsoum's wrote many historical essays which he published in now hard-to-find journals, mainly al-?ikmah and al-Majalla al-Ba?riyarkiyya al-Suryaniyya (Jerusalem). This collection of articles, published in the original Arabic with an English translation by Matti Moosa, forms the core of Barsoum's historical writings.

The History of the Za'faran Monastery is for the first time offered in English translation to the readers. It was written in 1917 by Patriarch Ignatius Aphram Barsoum (d. 1957) when he was still a monk at the monastery. The book details the history of the monastery from its inception until modern times. It deals with with everything, from construction to its significance as a center of Syriac learning and learned men. Without this small book, the first of its kind, a great and significant page of the history of the Syrian Church of Antioch would have been lamentably lost.

This book sheds light on the first three Crusades (1097-1191) by introducing material from several medieval Syriac and Arabic sources and reconciling their accounts with those provided by Western sources. It presents the Crusades as an extension of the conflict between Christianity and Islam, which began with the Arabs’ first incursions into Christian territory in the seventh century and continued with their conquest of the Iberian peninsula.