From our forgotten history

This book examines the spread of Christianity in the Fertile Crescent, while also dedicating significant attention to Christianity among the Arabs—both within the Arabian Peninsula and beyond. The Christian peoples of the East documented and preserved their own histories for posterity; the Aramean Christians, the Syriac Christians, the Armenians, and the Copts all did so. However, the history of Christianity among the Arabs—specifically within the Arabian Peninsula and among the Bedouin Arab tribes—has been addressed by only a very small number of researchers and academics, to the point that it has been largely forgotten and nearly lost to oblivion. Since formal historical documentation among the Arabs began only in the second century of the Hijri era, the efforts of writers and historians were focused primarily on the new religion—compiling and interpreting the Quran, gathering the Hadith, and chronicling the early military campaigns (*maghazi*). By the second Hijri century, Christianity among the Arabs was in decline, giving way to Islam; consequently, Arab Muslim historians devoted no attention to this waning presence. In an effort to recover a portion of this history, this book presents historical information regarding Christian Arab states and principalities that existed both within and outside the Arabian Peninsula. It also explores the Christianity of various Bedouin tribes that traversed the deserts, drawing evidence from Arabic-Islamic sources as well as the poetry of the tribes themselves.

And God is the ultimate witness to this endeavor.