Christian C. Sahner

About the Author

Christian C. Sahner is a distinguished historian and scholar of the Middle East, specializing in the intersections of religion, violence, and cultural transformation in the early Islamic world. With a PhD from Princeton University and fellowships at prestigious institutions such as Oxford and the University of Chicago, Sahner has dedicated his career to uncovering the human stories behind pivotal historical shifts. His groundbreaking research draws on diverse sources, from Arabic chronicles to Syriac manuscripts, to illuminate how religious communities navigated conquest and coexistence. In his acclaimed work, Christian Martyrs under Islam: Religious Violence and the Making of the Muslim World, Sahner explores the experiences of Christian communities amid the rise of Islam, challenging conventional narratives of conflict and revealing a more nuanced tapestry of adaptation and resilience. A fluent speaker of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, he continues to contribute insightful analyses to academic and public discourse on the region's enduring legacies.