ABSTRACT
UNDER the Omayyads a lively intellectual life was developed, and manifold must have been the relations between Muslim and Christian theologians. That religious discussions between them were very frequent we may be certain even though dialogues between Muslims and Christians have not been preserved in the writings of John of Damascus and Theodore Abucara. It was out of these theological discussions, in all probability, that sprang up the first religious sects of Islam, viz., those of the Murjiah and the Qadriyyah (Khuda Bukhsh, Islamic Civilization, p. 58). So favourable then was the position of the Christians that they were even suffered to enter the Mosques unmolested, and go about in public adorned with the golden cross. The toleration accorded by the Caliphs must, of necessity, have encouraged frequent intercourse with Muslims. By associating with Greek theologians, finely disciplined in the art of dialectic, the Arabs first learnt philosophical reasoning, which later on they prized so highly. It was from these Greek theologians again that they received their first lesson in dogmatic subtleties—an art in which Byzantine scholarship revelled. In this way alone is to be explained the remarkable similarity which we notice in the main features of Byzantine Christianity and Islamic dogmatics.
