Syriac Christian Responses to the Islamic Conquests

FAIN: FB-53148-07

Michael Philip Penn
Mount Holyoke College (South Hadley, MA 01075-1423)

Syriac Christians were the first Christians to encounter Muslims and they wrote most of our earliest references to Islam. Because few modern scholars read the Aramaic dialect of Syriac, these witnesses to the initial strata of Christian/Muslim relations remain virtually unanalyzed. "Imaging Islam" will provide the first comprehensive investigation of these sources and help document the earliest interactions of the modern world’s two largest religions. "Imaging Islam" explores how Syriac descriptions of Arab military victory and subsequent Muslim rule constructed ideologically charged depictions of Islam and it analyzes how these images of a perceived other helped forge a new Christian identity during an age of increasing religious pluralism.

Associated Products

Envisioning Islam: Syriac Christians and the Early Muslim World (Book)
Title: Envisioning Islam: Syriac Christians and the Early Muslim World
Author: Michael Philip Penn
Abstract: The earliest and largest corpus of Christian writings on Islam was written in the Aramaic dialect of Syriac. Envisioning Islam shows how these previously neglected texts problematize modern perceptions of an exclusively hostile Christian reaction to Islam and revolutionize our understanding of the early Islamic world.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/envisioning-islam-syriac-christianity-and-early-muslim-world/oclc/911211337&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780812247220
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

When Christians First Met Muslims: A Sourcebook of the Earliest Syriac Writings on Islam (Book)
Title: When Christians First Met Muslims: A Sourcebook of the Earliest Syriac Writings on Islam
Author: Michael Philip Penn
Abstract: 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 in what constitutes modern-day Iran, Iraq, Syria, and eastern Turkey, these Syriac Christians were under Muslim rule from the seventh century to the present, wrote the earliest and most extensive accounts of Islam, and described a complicated set of religious and cultural exchanges not reducible to the solely antagonistic. Through its critical introductions and new translations of this material, When Christians First Met Muslims allows scholars, students, and the general public to explore the earliest interactions of what eventually became the world's two largest religions.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/when-christians-first-met-muslims-a-sourcebook-of-the-earliest-syriac-writings-on-islam/oclc/890310380&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry
Publisher: University of California Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780520284944
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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