The presented publication is a type of bibliographic dictionary, compiled by an interdisciplinary team of authors (Byzantynists and Paleoslavists), containing an overview of medieval texts referring to the person of Muhammad, the Arabs, and the circumstances of the birth of Islam, which were known in the Slavia Orthodoxa area (especially in its eastern part, i.e. in Rus'). Therefore, it presents the works written in the Church Slavic language between the 9th and the mid-16th centuries. As the Old Rus' discourse on Islam was shaped under the overwhelming influence of Byzantine literature, the majority of the presented sources are Byzantine texts from the 6th-14th centuries, translated into the literary language of the Orthodox Slavs. The reader will also find here a discussion on several relics, originally created in other languages of the Christian East (Syriac, Arabic) and the West (Latin), which - through the Greek - were assimilated on the Slavic ground. This book aims to fill a gap in previous studies on inter-religious polemics in the Middle Ages, which has usually focused on Christian-Muslim cultural relations, analyzing Greek and Latin texts or the works written in one of the Middle Eastern languages, almost completely ignoring the Church Slavic heritage. It is worth noting that a number of the texts presented here (as well as Slavic translations of Byzantine sources) have not been published so far. The information on them, provided in this monograph, is therefore the result of research conducted directly on the manuscript material.

Tsar Peter (927-969), this book's protagonist, is all too frequently presented in modern scholarship as a weak ruler, devoid of any grander political aspirations, and focused on religious matters-pious, but neglecting the vital interests of his subjects. It was said that during his reign both his court and state became Byzantinized, that central authority was completely helpless in the face of Hungarian raids, and saw the spread of the Bogomilist heresy. According to the Tsar's critics, it was as a result of his ineffectual rule that Boris II, his son and successor, was unable to defend Bulgaria's sovereignty in 971. This book-the first monograph devoted to Peter-was written by Bulgarian (Miliana Kaymakamova, Georgi N. Nikolov, Angel Nikolov, and Nikolay Hrissimov) and Polish medievalists (Zofia A. Brzozowska, Miroslaw J. Leszka, Kiril Marinow, and Jan M. Wolski). Thanks to a thorough analysis of the sources and an in-depth knowledge of the literature of the subject, they have constructed a comprehensive and balanced image of the reign of their protagonist and the role he played in the history of medieval Bulgaria.