Peter Schadler, John of Damascus and Islam: Christian Heresiology and the Intellectual Background to Earliest Christian-Muslim Relations. History of Christian-Muslim Relations, 34. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018, IX, 264 pp.

John of Damascus (d. ca. 750) is well known among the earliest Christian authors who wrote on Islam. Chapter 100 of John’s On Heresies (Π ε ρ Α ρ έ σ ε ω ν) is the object of investigation of Peter Schadler’s monograph. Although several studies have already been devoted to John of Damascus and his dealings with Islam, these studies, according to Schadler, “have neither attempted to understand John’s position in (or dissonance with) the theological tradition of heresiological discourse, nor have efforts yet been made to place him in his historical context with reference to the more recent scholarship in the rapidly growing field of Islamic Studies” (p. 3). Schadler’s book is a contribution to fill these gaps in the research on John of Damascus’s positioning toward Islam.