Conversion and Continuity: Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands, Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries.

The 28 papers in this volume grew out of a symposium held at the University of Toronto in 1986. There is no common thread or theme binding the papers together, but instead, each author was free to address whatever problems attracted his or her scholarly attention. Consequently, there is some overlap and repetition, but on the whole, the coverage is comprehensive. Most of the papers concern the early Christian communities that came under Muslim rule within the first hundred years after the establishment of Islam, including nearly all of Spain and the islands of the Mediterranean, while a smaller number deal with the Christian lands lost to the Saljuqs and then the Ottomans after the twelfth century. In his thoughtful introductory essay, Richard Bulliet suggests several different ways of looking at conversion, including the notions of "process and status," terms having a slightly different emphasis than "conversion and continuity." In addition to a bibliography appended to each article, there are maps, a gazeteer, and an index to the whole volume.

The contributions are grouped in four parts. Part 1 takes up the rationale and polemics of conversion, and includes "The First Summa Theologiae in Arabic: Christian Kalam in Ninth-Century Palestine" (Sidney H. Griffith); "Continuity and Change in Religious Adherence: Ninth-Century Baghdad" (Wadi Z. Haddad); "The Art and Non-Art of Byzantine Polemics: Patterns of Refutation in Byzantine Anti-Islamic Literature" (Daniel J. Sahas); "The Context of Spanish Adoptionism: A Review" (Joanne E. McWilliam); "The Earliest Latin Lives of Muhammad" (Kenneth B. Wolf); "Fakhr al-Din al-Razi on ayat al-jizyah and ayat al-sayf" (Jane Dammen McAuliffe).

Part 2 broadly considers the process of conversion, and the contributions are "Conversion Stories in Early Islam" (Richard W. Bulliet); "The Age of Conversions: A Reassessment" (Michael G. Morony); "Roots of Conflict: Aspects of Christian-Muslim Confrontation in Eleventh-Century Spain" (Hanna E. Kassis); "Natives and Franks in Palestine: Perceptions and Interaction" (Hadia Dajani-Shakeel); "The Experience of Christians under Seljuk and Ottoman Domination, Eleventh to Sixteenth Century" (Speros...