In this essay, I provide an exegetical analysis of representations of the Virgin Mary within early Syriac Christian and Muslim texts in an effort to explore the shared history and geography of Christians and Muslims in the Middle East from the first through eighth centuries. In this analysis, I focus on the Syriac Christian Protevangelium of James and the third and nineteenth surahs of the Qur’an. These texts provide surprisingly similar descriptions of Mary and her role in the life of Jesus, a reality which challenges what we as a society have deemed “Western” Christianity – the Christianity which has been canonized in the Christian Bible and has defined as orthodox at the hands of white, male church fathers. I argue that, as the Syriac Christians of the first century developed a distinct focus on Mary’s purity, so too did the Muslim community. The portrayals of Mary in the Protevangelium and the Qur’an overlap as a result of these respective traditions’ shared geographies and histories. I suggest that Mary is a site, sometimes one apart from Christ, which must continue to be explored to better understand the shared traditions and identities of Christians and Muslims living in the Middle East.