As Princeton historian Jack Tannous has pointed out, in the early medieval period, far more Christians lived in the Muslim Caliphate, which embraced the lands from the Pyrenees through North Africa and Egypt to Syria, Palestine, Iraq, and Iran, than under Byzantine or Latin rule. It did not take long before this vast Christian population became speakers of Arabic and participants in the dynamic culture of the Islamic world while remaining Christians for generations. This session will focus especially on how such Christians adopted some aspects of Muslim culture even as they rejected others as strategies for sectarian survival. Professor Burman will present a broad area of his expertise. This class is aimed especially at students and faculty of the University of Dallas; locals of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern heritage are also especially warmly invited.

Location: Gorman Lecture Center, Room C

Speaker: 

Professor Thomas E. Burman, Professor of History, Notre Dame

Professor Burman's research and teaching focus on the intellectual and cultural interactions between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the medieval Mediterranean world. He is author of Religious Polemic and the Intellectual History of the Mozarabs, c. 1050-1200 and Reading the Qur'an in Latin Christendom, 1140-1560, and co-author with Brian Catlos and Mark Meyerson of The Sea in the Middle: The Mediterranean World, 650-1650. Currently he is completing a book entitled Beyond the Mediterranean: The Intellectual Venture of Ramon Martí (fl. 1250-84).

An image of a page from the modern printed edition of Yahya ibn 'Adi's tenth-century Treatise on God's Unity, a very important Arab-Christian theological work.

Sponsored by UDallas Phi Beta Kappa, as part of the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar program.

Phi Beta Kappa was founded in 1776 and is a prestigious academic honor society that champions the liberal arts.

Since 1956, the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program has offered undergraduates the opportunity to spend time with some of America’s most distinguished scholars. The program’s main purpose is to contribute to the intellectual life of the campus by making possible an exchange of ideas between the Visiting Scholars and the resident faculty and students.

The University of Dallas’s PBK chapter will welcome PBK Visiting Scholar Thomas E. Burman to campus on Sept. 17 and 18. Professor Burman is a noted historian and is the Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He has served as Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (2009 to 2016) and the Director of the Medieval Institute at Notre Dame (2016 to 2025). His research has been supported by fellowships from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Reading the Qur’ān in Latin Christendom, 1140-1560 (2007) and, with Brian Catlos and Mark Meyerson, The Sea in the Middle: The Mediterranean World (650-1650) (2022).