Christian's works on the Quran in the early Islamic period

This study, which focuses on Arab Christian writers who lived in Syria, Palestine, and Iraq in the first three centuries of the Hijra and on the Qur'an verses they used in their works, aims to show how the Qur'an was understood by these authors, i.e. how and why the Qur'an was used in their texts. With the spread of Islam outside the Arabian Peninsula, Christians' relations with Muslim groups uninterruptedly continued. Looking at the texts written by Arab Christian writers, it is possible to say that the mutual links increased during the Umayyad and Abbasid periods and Christians began to be closely acquainted with Muslims and the Qur'an. It appears that, in terms of Muslim-Christian relations, the rise of the Muslim political power coincided with the increase of the theological discussions between Muslim and Christians. In this study, we have identified nine prominent Arab Christian scholars who had discussions with Muslims in the first three centuries of the Hijra. By focusing on the Qur'anic references in the works of these writers, this research aims to reveal in what context and for what purpose the Qur'an was presented by them. The majority of these works, which are the first examples of the raddiya (refutation) literature against Islam, were written in Greek, Syriac, and Arabic. We have discovered that the verses of the Qur'an were used in this genre for different purposes, such as criticizing Islam and the Qur'an and even for supporting the authors' own beliefs. Keywords: The Qur'ān, John of Damascus, Theodore Abū Qurrah, Patriarch John, Habīb ibn Khidma Abū Rāʾita al-Takrītī, Yahya ibn Adī, I. Timothy, Hunayn ibn ʾIshāq, Abd al-Masīh ibn ʾIshāq al-Kindī, ʿAmmār al-Basrī, Qur'anic Polemics, Religious Polemics, Arab Christians.