Tieszen focuses on Christian apologetic literature from this time in the Arabic, Syriac, Greek, and Coptic languages; he ultimately paints a detailed, nuanced and insightful portrait of an exciting but little known subject. The book achieves, in fact, more than its stated goals by first exploring both the pagan and Jewish contexts of cross veneration in Byzantine lands between the 4th-6th centuries CE.

Charles Tieszen. Cross Veneration in the Medieval Islamic World: Christian Identity and Practice Under Muslim Rule. The Early and Medieval Islamic World. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2017.

From The Medieval Review (TMR). Review by Emran El-Badawi, University of Houston