The twenty-two historical novels of Jurji Zaidan (1861-1914) never went out of style and continued to be republished in Arabic throughout the twentieth century. For the past thirty years, Thomas Philipp's scholarship provided an understanding of Zaidan's work to readers of English. Recent years, however, have seen a revitalized interest in this foundational nahda figure in the West. Anne-Laure Dupont published a major biography of Zaidan in 2006. Samah Selim won the University of Arkansas Arabic Translation prize in 2011 for her translation of Zaidan's _Shajarat al-Durr_. In addition, the Zaidan Foundation, recently established and based in Maryland, has commissioned English translations of five of Zaydan's novels. The first of these translations, Roger Allen's _The Conquest of Andalusia_, is currently available. I propose to analyze themes from five of Zaydan's novels that relate to the issue of Christian-Muslim relations. Zaydan was writing in the shadow of the 1860 sectarian violence in Mount Lebanon and Damascus, and his biography reveals that he personally experienced the effects of sectarian tension, especially in the rescinding of his appointment as the first professor of Islamic history at the Egyptian University before he had even begun to teach. I have selected five novels that depict conflict between Christians and Muslims: _Armanusa, the Egyptian_; _The Ghassanid Girl_; _The Conquest of Andalusia_; _Charles and Abd al-Rahman_; and _Ahmad bin Tulun_. I will show that Zaidan used potentially inflammatory narratives of the Muslim conquests in Syria, Egypt, and al-Andalus to suggest ways that Christian and Muslim Arabs could form a peaceful and tolerant community of mutual respect. My close reading of the texts identifies ways that Zaidan built an argument for Christian-Muslim unity through a common language, shared political interests, and theological compatibility. At the same time, I note tensions in that project, due to Zaidan's ambiguous depiction of outsiders (such as Berbers or Jews), the inequitable political position of Christians under Muslim rule, and the constraints that historical texts (such as treaties or speeches) could pose to Zaidan's purpose.