Medieval Encounters

The study of medieval Christian Arabic texts interacting with Islam is a steadily growing scholarly field. Numerous unedited Christian Arabic texts, covering a variety of fascinating topics, await deeper analysis and study. How did early Arabic-speaking Christians respond to the Islamic claims against the Bible, the Trinity, and the incarnation? How did these Christians view Islam, Muḥammad, and the Qur’ān? How did these theologians employ Arabic to defend their faith and its tenets? To what extent were Christians able to advance the Christian belief of a Triune God in opposition to the Islamic view of strict monotheism? Can today’s Church, particularly in the West, benefit in any way from the earliest arguments articulated, developed, and advanced by these medieval Arabic-speaking Christians? These questions, and many more, are at the heart of this important volume. This volume examines nine key medieval Arabic-speaking Christian figures. It discusses their responses to Islamic criticisms, aiming to provide interested students—both undergraduate and graduate—with an accessible resource that includes historical background for each figure, major arguments they posed, and partial translations of their works. This volume is decidedly easy to read. It aims to provide an entry point for students interested in the history of Christian-Muslim encounters and in Middle Eastern Christianity more generally. Our hope is that the reading of this book will make some of the most important voices of medieval Arabic-speaking Christianity—and their contributions to the Christian-Muslim theological encounter—more easily and widely accessible in the English-speaking university context.