A History of Christian-Muslim Relations

This is a revised second edition of Professor Hugh Goddard’s History of Christian- Muslim Relations, first published in 2000. This new edition adds a chapter on the intervening years of the 21st century which covers the third and fourth decades of the 15th century of the Hijrah in the Islamic calendar. The two forms of dating, carefully maintained throughout the book, serve constantly to remind us of the need for a dual vision implied in the title. Seeing things from the two perspectives is difficult enough in the centuries before our own, when the lines of demarcation between the Christian and Muslim worlds initially appeared to be sharper than a closer examination reveals. In our own time, incompatible terms like ‘the West’ and ‘The World of Islam’ are proposed as rival cultures. This may intrigue observers of the Islamic world and societies. It is an eirenic challenge before those whose impression of Muslims is dominated by the terror attacks to establish caliphal suzerainties. Such groups as ISIS and Boko Haram and their ideologies hide the pro-social and self-sacrificial service of Muslims for the common good in myriads of contexts, not least in the UK with the dedication of NHS Muslim medical and hospital staff in the

current pandemic.

Goddard’s work is a particularly valuable corrective for those without personal experience of Muslim society or friendship, and many readers may be surprised at how intermingled ‘Muslim’ and ‘Christian’ initiatives, culture and civilising processes have been and continue to be. The first mosque in Constantinople was established not, as might have been expected, on the capture of the city by Mehmed II in 1453, but 700 years earlier in the reign of Leo III (pp. 52–53) between 717 and 741. Mehmed himself could be said to have defied expectations by having his portrait painted by the Italian artist Bellini, contrary to Sunni law which forbids portraits of living beings. Byzantine Emperor Justinian II (669–711) had earlier sent craftsmen to help with the decoration of the Great Mosque in Damascus and the Mosque of the Prophet in Madinah (p. 42).