Machine summary:
The author, however, in giving the history of every one of the Eastern Christian community has shown the benefits enjoyed by them, with the epilogue while giving the "causes of survival of the most ancient Christianity," he writes: "When we regard the expanding majority of Muslims against a shrinking minority of Christians, it is not inconceivable to envisage the possibility that, at many critical moments in the past, the majority might have exterminated the minority in an age addicted to violence.
" Speaking of the conquest of Egypt by Arabs during the reign of Caliph Umar, the author writes: "The coming of the Arabs to Egypt like that of St. Mark," the writer of the second Gospel, the founder of the Coptic Church, "was an event of imme• diate consequence in the shaping of the history" of Egypt.
"The Jacobite Church at first has its brilliant moments of progress and prosperity during the early centuries of Arab rule, until the Crusade which was possibly the decisive factor in the alienation of the Muslim from the old spirit of fellowship with his Christian neighbour" ( p, 194 ).
Regarding the theological value of the author's work, it must be said that it is a very useful contribution to the history of Christians who largely were living in Islamic countries.
This is another scholarly edition of al• Waqidi's Kitab lll-Maghazi prepared this time by Dr. Marsden Jones, Professor of Arabic Studies at the American University, Cairo.