Conrad Brennan was born in County Clare and studied history at University College Dublin, where his interest in the religious conflicts of the late antique Mediterranean world took root. He has written extensively on the Byzantine Empire's encounter with the non-Christian communities of the Levant, with particular attention to the ways in which imperial religious policy shaped - and ultimately undermined - the provincial economies of the eastern provinces. The Broken Mountain draws on two decades of engagement with the Samaritan source tradition, Byzantine chronicles, and the growing body of archaeological evidence from the Samarian highlands, and represents his most sustained attempt to give the Samaritan community its proper place in the history of Late Antiquity.