Muslim-Christian Polemics in Safavid Iran

On the whole Tiburcio provides a coherent analysis of Jadīd al-Islām’s writings, and his close attention to primary sources in non-European languages is commendable [...] Tiburcio is able to situate Jadīd al-Islām’s writings within the broader intellectual context of Muslim-Christian engagement in Safavid Iran.

A welcome addition to the small but growing literature on the role of European missionaries and the effect of their activities in Safavid Iran. It makes a particularly valuable contribution to the question of conversion and religious disputation at the time, with an eye to the question whether the originally European concept of confessionalism is applicable to early modern Iran.

A welcome addition to the literature on the polemical and sectarian milieu of the early modern empires, Tiburcio’s monograph demonstrates how polemical literature can shed light on the theological and philosophical debates of the period and draw attention to the exchange of ideas in a wider connected intellectual history of the period. At its heart it is a deep case study of what happened to a European Christian as he became vernacularized and transformed in a non-European context, and how the resources of confessional missionary activity were turned onto their proponents. A valuable contribution to Safavid intellectual history.