When Christians First Met Muslims: A Sourcebook of the Earliest Syriac Writings on Islam

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 i...