Daniil I. Sachas

Daniel Sahas, Professor Emeritus at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, was born in Athens in 1940. He graduated from the School of Theology at the University of Athens in 1963 and pursued postgraduate studies in Sociology of Religion and doctoral studies in History of Religions with a focus on Islamic Studies in the United States from 1965 to 1969. In 1969, he was appointed by the University of Waterloo to establish an independent Department of Religious Studies, where he taught until 2002. At the same university, he also founded the Interdisciplinary Program of Middle Eastern Studies, which he directed for a decade from 1984 to 1993. He has taught as a visiting professor and delivered lectures at universities in Greece, Canada, the United States, and Latin America. His academic interests include the Middle East, monotheistic religions, and the history of Christian-Islamic relations, with a special research focus on the history and content of Byzantine anti-Islamic literature. Over fifty of his works and an equal number of book reviews on this specialized subject have been published in international academic journals such as Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik, Echos de l’Orient, Orientalia Christiana Analecta, The Muslim World, Abr-Nahrain, Byzantina, Byzantinoslavica, ARAM Periodical, The Catholic Historical Review, Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses, Speculum, International Journal of Middle East Studies, The Eastern European Quarterly, The Middle East Journal, al-Mushir, among others, as well as in collective volumes, specialized encyclopedias, and academic dictionaries. His independent monographs include "John of Damascus on Islam, the 'Heresy of the Ishmaelites'" (Leiden: Brill, 1972, under reissue), "Icon and Logos: Sources in Eighth Century Iconoclasm" (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 19882), and more general interest works such as "Hints of Orthodoxy" (Waterloo, 1994), "Orthodoxy and Life" (Waterloo, 1995), "Canadian Experiences" (Waterloo, 2002), and "Reflections on the Lord’s Prayer" (Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2004). His forthcoming works include "The Other Islam: Prayers of Praise and Submission," and he is currently working on an extensive comprehensive presentation of Byzantine anti-Islamic literature. He has been a member of international academic societies such as the American Oriental Society, Middle East Studies Association, Canadian Society for the Study of Religion/International Association of the History of Religions, Canadian Theological Society, North American Patristic Society, Canadian Society of Patristic Studies/Association internationale des études patristiques, Byzantine Studies Conference, Canadian Committee of Byzantinists/Association internationale des études byzantines, Orthodox Theological Society in America, among others, and a Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, the Byzantine Research Center of Harvard University. Since the end of 2002, he has been living with his family in Marousi, Attica.