The Conversion from Islam to Christianity as viewed by the Author of Digenes Akrites

Abstract

The author of Digenes Akrites aimed to present Christianity as the superior religion and he presented three patterns of conversions from Islam to it. This polemical piece, which is found in Digenes Akrites, is very interesting, since it moves between the Byzantine polemical traditional thought and the literary sense. The present paper deals with those cases of conversions from Islam to Christianity as viewed by the author of Digenes Akrites with the aim of investigating what the author of the work knew about Islam.