SOURCE: "Byzantine Views of Islam," in Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 18, 1964, pp. 113-32.

In the following essay, originally delivered as a lecture in 1963, Meyendorff contends that although there was some sophisticated understanding on each side of the Christian-Moslem confrontation, the two realms generally "remained impenetrable" in terms of real influence. The critic also discusses the superficiality of the interpretations of Islam that were instituted largely by John of Damascus.

No knowledge of the Islamic teachings is evident in Byzantine literature before the beginning of the eighth century. We know that the spiritual and intellectual encounter of Muhammad and the first generations of his followers with Christianity involved not the imperial Orthodox Church, but the Monophysite and Nestorian communities which made up the majority of the Christian population in Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia. Until the end of the Umayyad period, these Syrian or Coptic Christians were the chief, and...