ABSTRACT
Determining when, where and why Christian populations converted to Islam and how diverse they were, particularly during the medieval period, is extremely complex and often contested. Conversion to Islam involved a complex and dynamic relationship between Islamisation, Arabicisation, Arabisation, immigration and emigration, intermarriage, birth rates, conquest and reconquest, enslavement, coercion, taxation, depopulation and repopulation, as well as missionary activity. It is equally important to recognise that conversion was not only multicausal but ‘temporally and geographically sensitive as well’ (Mikhail 2014: 80). Moreover, the conversion process to Islam demonstrated minimal uniformity regardless of the languages, cultures, races and ethnicities of the converted populations.
