The Polemical Works of Ali Al-abari

Acknowledged as a leading medical expert in his day, and secretary to a succession of caliphs in the mid-ninth century, the Nestorian Christian ʿAlī ibn Rabban al-Ṭabarī converted to Islam around the age of 70. He then wrote Radd ʿalā l-Naṣārā, a recantation of his former faith, and Kitāb al-dīn wa-l-dawla, a defence of the Prophet Muḥammad based substantially on biblical proof-texts. The range of arguments he produced against the soundness of his former faith in these two works influenced sections of Islamic scholarship for many centuries.
These new editions and translations of his works are based on all the available evidence for the texts, accompanied by extensive introductions and studies of their place in Islamic thought.

David Thomas, PhD (1983) in Islamic Studies, University of Lancaster, is Professor of Christianity and Islam and Nadir Dinshaw Professor of Inter Religious Relations at the University of Birmingham. Among his most recent works are Understanding Interreligious Relations (OUP 2013) and CMR vols 1-7 (Brill, 2009-15).

Rifaat Ebied is Emeritus Professor of Semitic Studies at the University of Sydney and an Adjunct Professor of the Australian Catholic University. He has published extensively in the field of Semitic Studies generally and on Christian Arabic and Syriac Studies as well as Christian-Muslim relations in particular, most recently Muslim-Christian Polemic during the Crusades (with David Thomas) (Brill, 2005).