Person
An eighth-century Christian theologian (d. around 749) who wrote one of the first Christian descriptions of Islam.
What it means
John of Damascus served in the early Umayyad court before becoming a monk, and he wrote of Islam as a Christian heresy in his work On Heresies. His text shows how Christians of the time first understood the new faith and which questions they raised: the nature of Christ, free will, and the Quran’s origin.
What the sources say
Muslims answer that the Quran presents itself as a confirmation of the earlier prophets’ message and a correction of what was changed (5:48), not as a Christian sect. Scholars note that John’s picture of the Quran contains errors about its content.