An Interfaith Polemic of Medieval Anatolia

The sources for the study of the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims in medieval Anatolia are overwhelmingly Christian. The Muslim world of course had a rich tradition of writing about non-Muslims, through both specialised works like heresiographies and polemics as well as more general literature such as history and poetry. Indeed, such specialised works were often composed in areas which probably did not have much of a Christian population at all. For instance, ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s Tathbīt Dalāʾil al-Nubuwwa, produced in Buyid Rayy in the late tenth century, shows a profound knowledge of Christian doctrine, and discusses the Bible, church rituals and Christian claims to miracles. ¹ Naturally, works dealing with Christianity were also regularly produced in areas with a significant Christian population, such as Spain, as has been meticulously documented by David Thomas and Alex Mallet in their Bibliographical History of Christian–Muslim relations. ²