Seeing Islam as Others Saw It
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:" 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." Sources Greek sources A Christian Apologist of 634 John Moschus Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem Pope Martin I Maximus the Confessor Anti-Jewish Polemicists of the Seventh Century The Miracles of S. Demetrius and S. George