The chapters in this volume, which come from the Fourth Woodbrooke-Mingana Symposium, cover aspects of Christian life in and around Baghdad in the early centuries of 'Abbasid rule. The authors explore both broad themes, such as the place of monasteries in Muslim cultural life, accusations of Islam as crypto-idolatry, and Muslim responses to Christian apologetic arguments, and also specific topics, such as a Nestorian's explanation of the Incarnation, a Jacobite's purpose in composing his guide to moral improvement, and the development of Christian legends about the caliph al-Ma'mun. The volume illustrates the vigour of Iraqi Christian life in 'Abbasid times, and helps show that relations between Christians and Muslims, although strained at times, were often beneficial to followers of both faiths.

Acknowledged as a leading medical expert in his day, and secretary to a succession of caliphs in the mid-ninth century, the Nestorian Christian ʿAlī ibn Rabban al-Ṭabarī converted to Islam around the age of 70. He then wrote Radd ʿalā l-Naṣārā, a recantation of his former faith, and Kitāb al-dīn wa-l-dawla, a defence of the Prophet Muḥammad based substantially on biblical proof-texts. The range of arguments he produced against the soundness of his former faith in these two works influenced sections of Islamic scholarship for many centuries. These new editions and translations of his works are based on all the available evidence for the texts, accompanied by extensive introductions and studies of their place in Islamic thought.