The Representations of the Paulicians in Early Islamic Sources The area stretching from Anatolia to Armenia in the east witnessed interesting cultural and political interactions between Muslims and other religious sects. One of these groups, the Paulicians, caught the attention of early Muslim historians and heresiographers. Their name occurs in Islamic sources usually as Baylaqani or Bauliya which seems to have been derived from the Greek word Paulikianoi. The Paulicians were an active Christian religious and political movement in the region between Antioch and Armenia during the 6th- 12th centuries, but they were viewed by the Byzantine Orthodox Church as a heresy. Hence, Muslims and Paulicians had military cooperation against their common enemy—Byzantium. Since almost nothing of the Paulicians’ records reached us, our only information on this group is based on sources that are hostile to them. Most of the information about the Paulicians can be found primarily in Greek and Armenian sources. This proposed paper examines the representations of Paulicians in early Islamic sources. An emphasis will be placed on religious views of the Paulicians and the reasons behind Muslims’ interest in their doctrines. The paper particularly investigates the way in which Muslim scholars employed Paulician religious views, regarding the Divinity of Jesus and the Trinity, in their polemic argumentation against Christians. The Paulicians’ claim that “Christ was not born of Mary, but He brought His body from heaven and passed through Mary as through pipe,” therefore, functions as an important facet of the Islamic arguments that Jesus is devoid of divine attributes. Additionally, this paper investigates the extent to which certain Islamic sects, such as the Mu‘tazalites, incorporated certain Paulician ideas into their theological ideology. Such is the case with the Mu‘tazalite scholar, Ahmad ibn Ha’it, whom some Islamic scholars attack vehemently accusing him for the incorporation of some Christian dualistic views into Mu‘tazilite theology.