In Syriac and Arabic sources, the standard issues in Christiandisputation texts of the eighth century are a) the Trinity and the Incarnation, b) whether or not Muhammad’s name appears in the New Testament/Muh}ammad’s status as a prophet, and c) the question of the Qur’an as a legitimate book of revelation. One late 8th‑/early 9th‑century Arabic conquest narrative includes a report of an elaborate exchange between a Muslim general named Mu‘adh ibn Jabal and the Byzantine general Bahan. Their conversation addresses these three issues and closely mirrors the dialogue between the catholicos Timothy I and the caliph al‑Mahdi, said to have taken place in 781 AD, and resonates with the disputation genre in contemporary Arabic and Syriac Christian sources.
Nancy Khalek is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University and specializes in Islam in the early classical period. She received her Ph.D. in history from Princeton University in 2006. In addition to her focus on the formative period of Islamic history, other interests include hagiography and historiography in the Byzantine and Islamic worlds, relic and saint veneration, Christian-Muslim dialogue, and the relationship of material culture to religious life. Professor Khalek has conducted field and survey work in Syria, Turkey, and Greece. She is currently working on a book on Damascus in the Umayyad era.