Cover of Penn, When Christians First Met Muslims (University of California, 2015); http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520284944.
The first Christians to meet Muslims were not Latin-speaking Christians from the western Mediterranean or Greek-speaking Christians from Constantinople but rather Christians from northern Mesopotamia who spoke the Aramaic dialect of Syriac. Living under Muslim rule from the seventh century to the present, Syriac Christians wrote the first and most extensive accounts of Islam, describing a complicated set of religious and cultural exchanges not reducible to the solely antagonistic.
Through critical introductions and new translations of dozens of invaluable historical materials, Michael Philip Penn’s When Christians First Met Muslims allows scholars, students, and the general public to explore the earliest interactions between what eventually became the world’s two largest religions, shedding new light on Islamic history and Christian-Muslim relations.
* Description and cover image from publisher product page: http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520284944
© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2015. All rights reserved.