Seeing Islam As Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam from the Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam series is a book by scholar of the Middle East Robert G. Hoyland.
The book contains an extensive collection of Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Latin, Jewish, Persian, and Chinese primary sources written between 620 and 780 AD in the Middle East, which provides a survey of eyewitness accounts of historical events during the formative period of Islam.
The book presents the evidentiary text of over 120 seventh-century sources, one of which (Thomas the Presbyter) contains what Hoyland believes is the "first explicit reference to Muhammad in a non-Muslim source:"[1]
In the year 945, indiction 7, on Friday 7 February (634) at the ninth hour, there was a battle between the Romans and the Arabs of Muhammad (tayyaye d-Mhmt) in Palestine twelve miles [19km] east of Gaza. The Romans fled, leaving behind the patrician Bryrdn,[2] whom the Arabs killed. Some 4000 poor villagers of Palestine were killed there, Christians, Jews and Samaritans. The Arabs ravaged the whole region.
According to Michael G. Morony, Hoyland emphasizes the parallels between Muslim and non-Muslim accounts of history emphasizing that non-Muslim texts often explain the same history as the Muslim ones even though they were recorded earlier. He concludes "Hoyland's treatment of the materials is judicious, honest, complex, and extremely useful."[3]
The Coptic Orthodox Church, also known as the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria, is an Oriental Orthodox Christian church based in Egypt, serving Africa and the Middle East. The head of the church and the See of Alexandria is the pope of Alexandria on the Holy Apostolic See of Saint Mark, who also carries the title of Father of fathers, Shepherd of shepherds, Ecumenical Judge and the 13th among the Apostles. The See of Alexandria is titular. The Coptic pope presides from Saint Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in the Abbassia District in Cairo. The church follows the Coptic Rite for its liturgy, prayer and devotional patrimony. Christians in Egypt total about four million people, and Coptic Christians make up Egypt's largest and most significant minority population, and the largest population of Christians in the Middle East.
Dionysius I Telmaharoyo, also known as Dionysius of Tel Mahre, was the Patriarch of Antioch, and head of the Syriac Orthodox Church from 818 until his death in 845.
Written in Syriac in the late seventh century, the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius shaped and influenced Christian eschatological thinking in the Middle Ages. Falsely attributed to Methodius of Olympus, a fourth century Church Father, the work attempts to make sense of the Islamic conquest of the Near East.
The Patrologia Graeca is an edited collection of writings by the Christian Church Fathers and various secular writers, in the Greek language. It consists of 161 volumes produced in 1857–1866 by J.P. Migne's Imprimerie Catholique, Paris.
The Arab conquest of Egypt, led by the army of 'Amr ibn al-'As, took place between 639 and 642 AD and was overseen by the Rashidun Caliphate. It ended the seven-century-long Roman period in Egypt that began in 30 BC, and widely speaking Greco-Roman period for about a millennium. Byzantine rule in the country had been shaken, as Egypt had been conquered and occupied for a decade by the Sasanian Empire in 618–629, before being recovered by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius. The caliphate took advantage of Byzantines' exhaustion and captured Egypt ten years after its reconquest by Heraclius.
The History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria is a major historical work of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. It is written in Arabic, but draws extensively on Greek and Coptic sources.
Athanasius II Baldoyo, also known as Athanasius of Balad, and Athanasius of Nisibis, was the Patriarch of Antioch and head of the Syriac Orthodox Church from 684 until his death in 687.
Coptic literature is the body of writings in the Coptic language of Egypt, the last stage of the indigenous Egyptian language. It is written in the Coptic alphabet. The study of the Coptic language and literature is called Coptology.
Forces of the Rashidun Caliphate seized the major Mediterranean port of Alexandria away from the Eastern Roman Empire in the middle of the 7th century AD. Alexandria had been the capital of the Byzantine province of Egypt. This ended Eastern Roman maritime control and economic dominance of the Eastern Mediterranean and thus continued to shift geopolitical power further in favor of the Rashidun Caliphate.
The Greek Apocalypse of Daniel is a Christian pseudepigraphic text attributed to the Biblical Daniel and so associated with the Hebrew Bible. However, no Jewish or Christian groups regard this text as canonical or indeed as authoritative scripture. The canonical Book of Daniel has much apocalyptic imagery, and this apocalyptic-style text deals with a similar subject, describing one particular vision of Daniel regarding the appearance and activities of the Antichrist before the Day of Judgement.
Qenneshre was a large West Syriac monastery between the 6th and 13th centuries. It was a centre for the study of ancient Greek literature and the Greek Fathers, and through its Syriac translations it transmitted Greek works to the Islamic world. It was "the most important intellectual centre of the Syriac Orthodox ... from the 6th to the early 9th century", when it was sacked and went into decline.
John the Stylite, also known as John of Litharb, was a Syriac Orthodox monk and author. He was a stylite attached to the monastery of Atarib and part of a circle of Syriac intellectuals active in northern Syria under the Umayyad dynasty.
The Chronicle of 846 is a fragmentary universal chronicle written in Syriac by an anonymous author sometime between 846 and 873. Its focus for the later centuries, where it is most valuable, is ecclesiastical history. It is written from a Syriac Orthodox perspective.
The Apocalypse of John the Little is an apocalyptic text supposedly given to John the Apostle by revelation. It is dated to the eighth-century AD and pertains to the rise of Islam. The title includes "the Little" which is in reference to John being the younger brother of James the Great. The text models itself from that of the Book of Revelation and the Book of Daniel and provides some of the cruelest surviving Syriac representations of Islamic dominance. It is also one of the earliest text alluding to Muhammad by Christians and possibly one of the earliest accounts of Christians converting to Islam.
The Apocalypse of Pseudo-Athanasius is an apocalyptic sermon authored between 715 and 744 during the Umayyad Caliphate. Very popular, the work was found in multiple Coptic manuscripts and in Arabic translations. The text most likely served as an influence for both Coptic and Copto-Arabic writings and is also a rare witness to the reaction of Copts towards the Muslim conquest of Egypt. Though Islamic practices of faith are absent from the text, it still provides the author's Coptic perspective to the fundamental historic changes in their country and the everyday-lives of the inhabitants.
The Edessene Apocalypse or Edessene Fragment is an apocalyptic text. The original title has not been preserved due to missing pages; the conventional title was coined by modern scholars because the content heavily focuses on Edessa. The text is a revised and an abridged version of the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius with modified schema. It is a witness to the crisis Syriac Christians were experiencing due to the political success of Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr and the intensified pressure on non-Muslim communities in his reign.
Leontius of Damascus was a Syrian monk who wrote a biography in Greek of his teacher, Stephen of Mar Saba. It emphasises Stephen's asceticism and thaumaturgy (miracle-working), but is also a rich source for the history of Palestine in the eighth century. It has been translated into English.
Tultusceptru de libro domni Metobii is a short Latin biography of Muḥammad written in the 9th or 10th century in the Iberian Peninsula. It is a polemical text designed to show that Islam is a false religion and Muḥammad the unwitting dupe of the devil. It is known from a single copy in the Codex of Roda. Although the codex was compiled in the late 10th century, the Tultusceptru was added between about 1030 and 1060.
Copto-Arabic literature is the literature of the Copts written in Arabic. It is distinct from Coptic literature, which is literature written in the Coptic language.
The Apocalypse of Pseudo-Ezra is a set of visions of the end times composed in the Syriac language sometime between the 7th and 12th centuries and attributed to Ezra. It is a short text of about seven manuscript pages. It recapitulates history in the form of prophecy using obscure animal imagery. Written to console Christians living under Islamic rule, it predicts the end of such rule in the Near East.
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