Dr. Anna Chrysostomides

Anna is a historian of late Antiquity and early Islam in the eastern Mediterranean and the territories beyond towards Iran, with a focus on Christian-Muslim relations and conversion to Islam. She holds a full time position as Lecturer in Islamic History at Queen Mary, University of London. Her primary research interests cover the social dynamics of conversion between Christianity and Islam from the 8th through the 10th centuries CE as well as shared practices and beliefs between these two faiths. She is particularly interested in people who vacillated between Christianity and Islam, and social situations which would have engendered people identifying with both religions, such as inter-religious marriages, children of those unions, Christian mawālī of Muslims, and Christian slaves of Muslims. Recently her research has turned towards sexuality and gender in the late antique and medieval Middle East.

Select publications: 

‘“There is no god but God”: Islamisation, and Religious Code Switching, eighth to tenth centuries’, in Islamisation: Comparative Perspectives from History, ed. A.C.S. Peacock (Edinburgh University Press, 2017).

‘Creating a theology of icons in Umayyad Palestine: John of Damascus’ Three treatises on the divine images’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History (January, 2021).

‘John of Damascus’ Theology of Icons in the Context of 8th century Abrahamic Iconoclasm’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers (November, 2021).

‘“There’s no Harm in it’: Muslim attendance of Christian festivals (700-900 CE)’, al-Masaq, (May, 2021).