Professor David Thomas has been awarded an AHRC Research Grant, for the project ‘Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History 1800-1914’.
The history of relations between Islam and Christianity stretches over 1,400 years. Followers of the two faiths have lived together from the beginning, and while sometimes benefited one another greatly, they have more often defamed and attacked one another. This project seeks to discover what was actually said and to explore what was popularly accepted about the ‘other’.
Collaborating with Co-Investigator Professor Douglas Pratt (University of Waikato, New Zealand) and five international research teams, the project will compile a detailed history of all the known writing by Christians and Muslims, both about and against one another, from 1800 to 1914. The result will be a multi-volume history, in unprecedented detail, of the development of Christian-Muslim relations in this period. The project will also produce a short single-volume history of relations and an analysis of attitudes aimed at a general readership.
The two-year Christian-Muslim Relations Project (awarded £300,000) is a continuation of two earlier AHRC-funded projects that traced the history of relations from 600-1500 and from 1500-1800. The project started in December 2016.