What was significant about this dual character of Christian activity in Arabia was how little Arabian Christians were inclined to identify with the imperial Church of Chalcedon: they set their sights on Semitic versions of the faith. The trade routes to Syria, southwards to Arabia and the Red Sea, which Ghassānid power kept open and secure, brought Syrian theology and worship into the peninsula. One paradoxical trace of that is the presence of a substantial number of Syriac loanwords in the text of Arabian Christianity’s nemesis, the Qur’an; these probably derive from Muhammad’s knowledge of
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