This book is dedicated to what is the most momentous work of Theodore Abu Qurra, an author synonymous with the epochal swift move from Greek to Arabic in the Byzantine Orthodox (so-called Melkite) literature, and communities, of early Abbasid Syro-Palestine. In this treatise Theodore engages an Iconoclast tendency that was then on the rise among his co-religionists of the Northern Mesopotamian city of Edessa, home to the greatest Byzantine Orthodox community beyond Euphrates. It is to the Orthodox of Edessa that Theodore primarily addresses this treatise, written in response to a call by a certain Edessene named Abu Yanna. But at the same time this treatise has a potentially universal scope. For it takes a very clear stance in a debate that was then not only shaking the Byzantine Empire but had also brought into the arena Charlemagne's Frankish Empire, the pope, and both churchmen and people of the Byzantine Orthodox communities all over the Abbasid Fertile Crescent. For them, taking stances vis-à-vis the Iconoclast movement was all the more critical as it implied taking stances vis-à-vis the Islamic Aniconism, or Iconophobia, then holding sway in their homelands. So, the Iconoclast issue divided the Caliphate's Byzantine Orthodox elites into an implicitly or explicitly Iconoclast party and another, staunchly anti-Iconoclast one, the party of Theodore Abu Qurra and of the Patriarch Thomas of Jerusalem. Indeed, Theodore's ‘Treatise on the veneration of the holy icons’ is one of the most eloquent sources available on the Iconoclast conflict among Christian elites of the Abbasid Empire. By situating this treatise in Theodore's cultural, intellectual and religious setting, Vasile-Octavian Mihoc has therefore made a step forward towards a better understanding not just of the treatise, but of its turbulent times as well.

The author's main contribution consists in describing and contextualising Theodore's modes of arguing in the pro-icon treatise. By comparing Theodore with the respective arguments of John of Damascus, Mihoc underscores a major difference: while John of Damaskus, though living in the Caliphate, was primarily engaging Byzantine imperial iconoclasm and could thus make ample use both of patristic authority and of dogmatical arguments that make sense only from within a Christian frame of reference, Theodore Abu Qurra prefers to argue with Old Testament verses that should be respected by a Muslim interlocutor too, and with common-sense logic. So, Theodore appears to have had in mind not just his Edessene co-religionists turning to Iconoclasm, but also the Muslim majority society. This is made even more clear by the author's comparisons between Theodore's arguments and certain relevant positions of roughly contemporary Muslim scholars. Theodore not only directly answers, as demonstrated in previous scholarship, a hadith that threatened with post-mortal chastisement those who make pictures of living things; he also touches on the problem of anthropomorphism that was then a critical issue for Muslim writers confronted with anthropomorphic qur'anic verses in an age when the Bilderverbot had only shortly before been established. In doing so, Theodore often comments on biblical scenes discussed by his Muslim contemporaries as well, like Moses's encounter with God on Mount Sinai and the difficult question of whether Moses could have really spoken with the imperceptible God. Highlighting such allusions to Islamic theological discussions, Mihoc points up an issue that invites further research.

This main part of Mihoc's book is preceded by a circumspect historical introduction that makes broad use of previous scholarship, and rightly upholds the authenticity of the ‘Treatise on the veneration of the holy icons’. On the whole Mihoc has made considerable progress towards understanding Theodore Abu Qurra's pro-icon treatise and its extraordinary place in intellectual history.