The first Christians to meet Muslims were not Latin-speaking Christians from the western Mediterranean or Greek-speaking Christians from Constantinople but rather Christians from northern Mesopotamia who spoke the Aramaic dialect of Syriac Living under Muslim rule from the seventh century to the present Syriac Christians wrote the first & most extensive accounts of Islam describing a complicated set of religious & cultural exchanges not reducible to the solely antagonistic Through its critical introductions & new translations of this invaluable historical material When Christians First Met Muslims allows scholars students & the general public to explore the earliest interactions between what eventually became the world's two largest religions shedding new light on Islamic history & Christian-Muslim relations