This paper will address historical writing on conversion in the early Islamic era, and specifically the shift in religious identities and boundaries that occurred in seventh- and eighth-century Syria after the Muslim conquests. Instead of attempting to reconstruct sources that are not extant, this study traces the earliest and most local Syrian sources we do have, including chronicles, vitae of saints, sira and maghazi works, and martyrdom narratives. The extant record demonstrates transmission of some but not all such narratives into the present. Yet those extant still provide the modern reader with a robust array of styles, interpretive lenses, and depths of analysis and detail. These sources demonstrate a healthy variety in perspectives on conversion that no doubt also reflects the variety of perspectives maintained and documented in the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries CE. If, as most studies of conversion suggest, Syrians did not convert in large numbers during the first hijri century, then it is interesting to identify a change in attitudes among Muslim leaders towards Christian Syrian populations during this same time period. What little we have from Syrian historians such as John Bar Penkaye, Theophanes and various anonymous chroniclers and biographers over these time periods, writing mainly in Arabic, Syriac and Greek, reflects the construction of an understanding of the Muslim community in relation to its coreligionists, comments on the frequency (or lack thereof) of conversion from one religion to another, and a sense of the implications of identifying oneself as a partisan of a particular faith and sect in early Islamic Syria.