War and diplomacy -- The Persians in Asia Minor and the end of antiquity / Clive Foss -- Arab wars with the Byzantines in the umayyad period / Julius Welhausen -- Arab-Byzantine relations under the umayyad caliphate / H.A.R. Gibb -- Byzantine-Arab diplomacy in the Near East from the Islamic conquests to the mid eleventh century / Hugh Kennedy -- Frontiers and military organization -- Seventh-century continuities: the Ajnād and the "thematic myth" / John Haldon -- The Arab-Byzantine frontier in the eighth and ninth centuries: Military organisation and society in the borderlands / J.F. Haldon and H. Kennedy -- Polemics and images of the "other" -- Apocalyptic and other materials on Early Muslim-Byzantine wars: a review of Arabic sources / Suliman Bashear -- Byzantine views of Islam / John Meyendorff -- Byzantium and the Arabs: the image of the Byzantines as mirrored in Arabic literature / Ahmad M.H. Shboul -- Exchange, influence and confluence -- Islamic art and Byzantium / Oleg Grabar -- Parallelism, convergence and influence in the relations of Arab and Byzantine philosophy, literature and piety / Gustave E. von Grunebaum -- Theophanes and the Arabic historical tradition: some indications of intercultural transmission / Lawrence I. Conrad -- Islam, Judeo-Christianity and Byzantine Iconoclasm / Patricia Crone -- Martyrdom, Jihād, Holy war -- Some observations concerning the early development of Jihad on the Arab-Byzantine frontier / Michael Bonner -- The 60 martyrs of Gaza and the martyrdom of Bishop Sophronius of Jerusalem / David Woods.
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Surrounded on all sides by hostile nations and peoples, Islam began life as a religion in a wary manner. This collection begins and ends with war and considers the uneasy relationship between the Arabs and the Byzantine civilization from which they learned a great deal during uneasy periods of peace.