Christian Arabs as cultural mediators: al-Makīn Ibn al-ʿAmīd and his Universal History

When the 13th-century Coptic official Ibn al-ʿAmīd was thrown into prison by Sultan Baybars, he set out to compile a summary of universal history from the creation to his own days. His work was to become one of the major instances of Christian-Muslim intellectual exchange in the pre-modern era.