ABSTRACT
A historical narrative on dialogical tone is discernible from the sources covered above, but must be understood to be hypothetical. It is unreasonable to claim to know the minds of these authors, some of whose very existence remains in question. Certainly these authors, varied in location, language, and separated by decades, did not often converse with one another, and yet their materials which have survived allow for some educated speculation on the possible development of the Christian—Muslim dialogue in both topic and tone. It is our aim here to introduce, as W. C. Smith encourages, “new concepts that will be adequate to our rich and subtle material — that will both penetrate and make coherent, will analyse and synthesize”, 1 and so the following narrative on tone is based on the information from above.
