The Making of the Medieval Middle East

This book by Jack Tannous is a remarkable achievement that energetically articulates a little-studied research field: the fate of the Christian population in the era of Muslim conquests and the beginning of the formation of Muslim civilization in the Middle East. The book is a very long-awaited study seeking to reconstruct society in all its complexity and look at the problem of Islamization, not only in its individual aspects (which, of course, has been done in scholarship), but in its totality. The plan of the research and the argumentation of the author are very clear and consistent, often supported by a masterly analysis of primary sources. Moreover, the book captivates a reader with the author’s energetic force and enthusiasm. Tannous convincingly problematizes the predominance of simple people in the society who were alien to deep religious reflection, as well as profound intellectual and cultural consequences arising from this. He shows the complexity and even chaos of the intellectual and spiritual life of the Christian Middle East after the Chalcedon Council and attempts by intellectuals to abate the chaos through vigorous development of religious education. The author postulates a gap between the Christianity of simple people and the Christianity of intellectuals who may have belonged to different Christian creeds (chapters 1–9). Further, Tannous applies the tested approach to describing the early Muslim society in the time of the Islamic conquest of Syria, showing the prevalence of “simple Muslims” in the society (chapters 10–13). He convincingly shows that Muslims for many centuries were a minority in the Middle East, before discussing the implications of the Muslim minority status, demonstrating how the local Christian cultural substrate influenced Muslims. The author vividly illustrates the fundamental continuity of the Muslim culture of the Middle East in relation to the preceding Christian culture (chapter 14).

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