The CMR 1900 project is hosted in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham. The results are published by Brill online and in print as a part of the series The History of Christian-Muslim Relations. The first phase of the project, CMR 600, began in 2006 and comprises five volumes which cover the period 600-1500. The second phase, the CMR 1900 project, began in 2012 and will run until 2025 producing volumes which cover the period 1500-1914.
Christians and Muslims have lived together from the beginnings of Islam in the 7th century. For the first eight or nine hundred years they interacted together, and frequently opposed one another, in the relatively concentrated area that can be called the extended Mediterranean basin.
From the 15th century Muslims and Christians competed over much wider areas, until by the beginning of the 20th century there were communities of both in nearly all parts of the world. As they had done from the start, they debated together and reflected on one another’s beliefs, often employing age-old depictions of one another, and sometimes fashioning new.
This project is about the records of these continuing encounters, and the transmission of images and attitudes within them.