Saladin, 16th c. (Wikimedia Commons) In my very first blog post, “A Primer on the Crusades”, I stated that, “Saladin…seems to have been largely forgotten about in the Muslim sources until more recent times.” While recently reading Paul Cobb’s book on the Crusades from an Islamic perspective, I discovered that this view has been challenged.[1] In a footnote on the topic, Cobb writes: “The notion that modern Muslims had to be ‘reminded’ of Saladin has deep roots in the modern... Read more
(Image from Amazon.com) Rudolph Peters. Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam (Second Edition.) Princeton. Markus Wiener Publishers, 2008. vii – 183 pgs. Bibliography. This work serves as an introduction to the Islamic doctrine of jihad (“struggle”), showing how the doctrine has been understood and explained by Muslims throughout the ages (vii.) It is composed as a reader, consisting of a number of essays by the author as well as primary sources on the topic by Muslim authors. For the most... Read more
(Photo from Amazon.com) Robert G. Hoyland. In God’s Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire. New York. Oxford University Press, 2015. 1-230 pgs. 3 Maps, 1 Appendix, 1 Timeline, Dramatis Personae, 2 Genealogical Tables, Bibliography, Index. The main objective of this work is to give a more balanced account of the Arab conquests than that given by 9th century Arab historians. These are faulted not so much for what they do say, but rather for what... Read more
(Wikimedia Commons) Originating in Bulgaria in the 10th century A.D., Bogomilism was a dualist heresy that spread from the Balkans to Western Europe, before finally fading away in the 14th century.[1] Its adherents believed that matter was evil, that the material world was created by the devil, which in turn lead them to deny that matter could act as a vehicle for Divine Grace in the Sacraments.[2] The heresy made its way into the Byzantine Empire by the 11th century,... Read more
Symbols of the Four Evangelists, Book of Kells, (Wikimedia Commons) This article will explore the state of the development of the Canon of the New Testament in the 4th century. In this context, the word “Canon” signifies “the catalogue of inspired writings known as the Old and New Testaments, identified as such by the Church.”[1] The Canon of the New Testament, defined by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent (1545-1563), includes the 27 Books that all Christians contain in their... Read more
Icon of St. Peter, St. Catherine’s Monastery, 6th c. (Wikimedia Commons) Theodore Abu Qurrah was the Melkite Bishop of Haran (Upper Mesopotamia) who lived in the 9th century A.D. As such, he found himself living under Muslim rule. Besides being one of the first Christian authors to write in Arabic, he was also one of the first of these to defend Christianity from Islamic writers who sought to disprove it.[1] In the East, the three largest groups of Christians were... Read more
Urban II Preaching the First Crusade (Wikimedia Commons) The Historical Context In the wake of the rise of Islam in the 7th century, the Byzantine Empire lost a lot of territory to Muslim conquests over the following centuries. Not too long after the conversion of the Seljuk Turks in the 10th century to Islam, came their victory over the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert in A.D. 1071. In 1074 Pope St. Gregory VII appealed to Western Christians to... Read more
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