This book covers the history of the Syrian church of India from its founding by the apostle Thomas in 52 A.D., until the first half of the 20th century. During which, the author explains the various obstacles the Indian Church faced in therms of theology and colonialism. The several delegations of the Apostolic See of Antioch to India from the 17th to the 20th centuries form an indispensable account of the vicissitudes of a struggling native Indian Church trying to preserve its Antiochene identity.

The History of the Za'faran Monastery is for the first time offered in English translation to the readers. It was written in 1917 by Patriarch Ignatius Aphram Barsoum (d. 1957) when he was still a monk at the monastery. The book details the history of the monastery from its inception until modern times. It deals with with everything, from construction to its significance as a center of Syriac learning and learned men. Without this small book, the first of its kind, a great and significant page of the history of the Syrian Church of Antioch would have been lamentably lost.

Barsoum's wrote many historical essays which he published in now hard-to-find journals, mainly al-Hikmah and al-Majalla al-Batriyarkiyya al-Suryaniyya (Jerusalem). This collection of articles, published in the original Arabic with an English translation by Matti Moosa, forms the core of Barsoum's historical writings.

Little is known in the West about the division of the Islamic world into Shiites and Sunnites and even less about the stratification of these two groups, with most of the attention going to the Sunnites. Moosa's comprehensive study of the origins and cultural aspects of the different extremist, or Ghulat, Shiite sects in the Middle East is a ground-breaking work. These sects whose 'extremism' is essentially religious are generally a peaceful people and, except for the Nusayris of Syria, are not political activists.

Little is known in the West about the division of the Islamic world into Shiites and Sunnites and even less about the stratification of these two groups, with most of the attention going to the Sunnites. Moosa's comprehensive study of the origins and cultural aspects of the different extremist, or Ghulat, Shiite sects in the Middle East is a ground-breaking work. These sects whose 'extremism' is essentially religious are generally a peaceful people and, except for the Nusayris of Syria, are not political activists.