About the Author

Mark N. Swanson is the Harold S. Vogelaar Professor of Christian - Muslim Studies and Interfaith Relations at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. He taught in Cairo between 1984 and 1998, and has written numerous articles and chapters in the fields of Arabic Christian literature, early Christian-Muslim encounter, and the history of the Egyptian Christian community in the Middle Ages. He recently co-edited The Encounter of Eastern Christianity with Early Islam.