ABSTRACT
The Christian communities of Arabia were small and much more heavily concentrated on the boundaries of Arabia than in the Hijaz, which was obviously the crucial area for the establishment of Muslim community. Larger Christian communities, however, existed in other parts of Arabia such as the town of Najran to south of Mecca and Medina. The extent of Muslim encounter with Christians became much greater in the period after the death of Muhammad and the expansion of the Muslim community into the wider Middle East, particularly the Christian-majority provinces of Egypt and Syria, as well as Iraq and Iran. From around 1500 the political situation in World of Islam stabilised, with the three great states of the Early Modern period, the Ottoman, the Safavid and the Mughal, becoming firmly established at around that date. Muslim attitudes towards Christian beliefs in twenty-first century are no more immune from surrounding socio-political and economic context than they have been in previous centuries.
