ABSTRACT
When did Syriac-speaking Christians begin to compose apologetic treatises to defend the Christian doctrines against Islam? 1 If the answer to this question would simply be: shortly after the Arab conquests of Syria and Palestine, then the historical implications of such a statement would be rather sweeping. It would mean that among the Christians at a very early stage after the Arab invasions there was an awareness not only that a new political power had arisen in the Near East, but also that the conquerors had introduced a new religious faith against which it was necessary to define the tenets of Christian belief. And that again would mean that nascent Islam already in the first decade after the Arab invasions manifested itself or was at least recognizable as a religious system which could clearly be distinguished from both Judaism and Christianity, the other two monotheistic religions of the Near East.
