Melkites, Mutakallimun and al-Ma’mun

Depicting the Religious Other in Medieval Arabic Dialogues

Authors

  • David Bertaina University of Illinois at Springfield

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/cis.v4i4.1-4.2.17

Keywords:

al-Ma'mun, Theodore Abu Qurra, Melkites, Dialogue, Debate, Religious Identity

Abstract

The article describes a literary dialogue said to have occurred in 829/214 between the Arab Melkite Christian bishop Theodore Abu Qurra, several Muslim scholars, and the caliph al-Ma’mun. The text contains two types of dialogue: Abu Qurra versus the Muslim scholars and Abu Qurra with al-Ma’mun. The former is distinguished by its antagonism on both sides, while the latter is noted for its polite discourse. The evidence indicates that the Muslim caliph al-Ma’mun held an admired place in the Melkite Christian community’s memory. The author’s analysis concludes that the dialogue presupposes Christian Arab identity was integrated into the dominant Islamic culture in a symbiotic relationship that recognized the reality of religious pluralism and disparate truth claims. The author also argues that the text placed value on the dialogical approach as a process of identity formation by constructing boundaries with religious others while simultaneously internalizing these other religious worldviews.

Author Biography

  • David Bertaina, University of Illinois at Springfield
    David Bertaina is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Religion in the History Department at the University of Illinois at Springfield. His areas of research interest include the intellectual, social and religious history of the late antique and medieval Middle East.

References

‘Abd al-Jabbar b. Ahmad al-Asadabadi, al-Mughni fi abwab al-tawhid wa-l-‘adl, ed. Taha Husayn. Cairo: Wizarat al-Thaqafa wa-l-Irshad al-Qawmi, al-Idara al-‘Amma lil-Thaqafa, 1958.

Accad, Martin. “The Ultimate Proof-Text: The Interpretation of John 20.17 in Muslim-Christian Dialogue (second/eighth-eighth/fourteenth centuries).” In Christians at the Heart of Islamic Rule: Church Life and Scholarship in ‘Abbasid Iraq, ed. David Thomas, 199–215. Leiden: Brill, 2003.

Bacha, Constantin (Qustantin al-Basha), ed. Mayamir Thawudurus Abi Qurra usquf Harran. Beirut: Matba‘a al-Fawa’id, 1904.

Bertaina, David. “The Development of Testimony Collections in Early Christian Apologetics with Islam.” In The Bible in Arab Christianity, ed. David Thomas, 151–173. Leiden: Brill, 2007. doi:10.1163/ej.9789004155589.i-421.37

Brock, Sebastian. “The ‘Nestorian’ Church: A Lamentable Misnomer.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 78 (1996): 23–35.

Caspar, Robert, et al. “Bibliographie du dialogue islamo-chrétien.” Islamochristiana 1 (1975): 125–181; 2 (1976): 187–249; 3 (1977): 255–286; 4 (1978): 247–267; 5 (1979): 299–317; 6 (1980): 259–299; 7 (1981): 299–307.

Chabot, Jean-Baptiste. Anonymi auctoris Chronicon ad annum Christi 1234 pertinens. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, vol. 82. Paris: E. Typographeo Reipublicae, 1916.

Chabot, Jean-Baptiste ed. Chronique de Michel le Syrien, patriarche jacobite d’Antioche (1166–1199), 5 vols. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1899–1924.

Charon (Korolevsky), Cyril. History of the Melkite Patriarchates, ed. Nicholas Samra, trans. John Collorafi, 3 vols. Fairfax, VA: Eastern Christian Publications, 1998–2000.

Cheikho, Louis “al-Muhawara al-diniya allati jarat bayna al-khalifa al-Mahdi wa Timotheus al-jathaliq.” al-Machriq 19 (1921): 359–374, 408–418.

Cooperson, Michael. Classical Arabic Biography: The Heirs of the Prophets in the Age of al-Ma’mun. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511497469

Dick, Ignace. “La Discussion d’Abu Qurra avec les Ulémas musulmans devant le Calife al-Ma’mun.” Parole de l’Orient 16 (1990–1991): 107–113.

———. Théodore Abuqurra: Traité du culte des icons. Jounieh, 1986.

Dick, Ignace ed., Mujadalat Abi Qurra ma‘a al-mutakallimin al-muslimin fi majlis al-khalifa al-Ma’mun. Jounieh: Matba‘at al-Kathulikiyya, 1999.

El-Hibri, Tayeb. Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography: Harun al-Rashid and the Narrative of the ‘Abbasid Caliphate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511497476

Glei, Reinhold and Adel Theodor Khoury. Schriften zum Islam: Johannes Damaskenos und Theodor Abu Qurra. Corpus Islamo-Christianum, Series Graeca 3. Würzburg: Echter and Altenberge: Oros, 1995.

Graf, Georg. Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, 5 vols. Vatican City: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1944–1953.

———. “Christliche Polemik gegen den Islam.” Gelbe Hefte: historisch und politische Blätter für das katholische Deutschland 2 (1926): 825–842.

Graf, Georg ed., Die Arabischen Schriften Des Theodor Abu Qurra, Bischofs Von Harran (Ca. 740-820): Literarhistorische Untersuchungen Und Ubersetzung. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1910.

Griffith, Sidney. The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.

———. “The Church of Jerusalem and the ‘Melkites’: The Making of an ‘Arab Orthodox’ Christian Identity in the World of Islam, 750-1050 CE.” In Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land: From the Origins to the Latin Kingdoms, ed. Ora Limor and G. G. Stroumsa, 173–202. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006.

———. “‘Melkites’, ‘Jacobites’ and the Christological Controversies in Arabic in Third/Ninth Century Syria.” In Syrian Christians under Islam: The First Thousand Years, ed. David Thomas, 9–55. Leiden: Brill, 2001.

———. “The Life of Theodore of Edessa: History, Hagiography, and Religious Apologetics in Mar Saba Monastery in Early Abbasid Times.” In The Sabaite Heritage in the Orthodox Church from the Fifth Century to the Present, ed. J. Patrich, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 98, 147–169. Louvain: Peeters, 2001.

———. “The Qur’an in Arab Christian Texts; The Development of an Apologetical Argument: Abu Qurrah in the Maglis of al-Ma’mun.” Parole de l’Orient 24 (1999): 203-233.

———. “The Monk in the Emir’s Majlis: Reflections on a Popular Genre of Christian Literary Apologetics in Arabic in the Early Islamic Period.” In The Majlis: Interreligious Encounters in Medieval Islam, ed. Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, et al., 13–65. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999.

———. Theodore Abu Qurrah: the intellectual profile of an Arab Christian writer of the first Abbasid century. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1992.

———. “Bashir/Beser: Boon Companion of the Byzantine Emperor Leo III; the Islamic Recension of His Story in Leiden Oriental Ms 951 (2).” Le Muséon 103 (1990): 293–327. doi:10.2143/MUS.103.3.2006097

———. “Some unpublished Arabic sayings attributed to Theodore Abu Qurrah.” Le Muséon 92 (1979): 29–35.

Griffith, Sidney ed., A Treatise on the Veneration of the Holy Icons; Written in Arabic by Theodore Abu Qurrah. Louvain: Peeters, 1997.

Guillaume, Alfred. “Theodore Abu Qurra as Apologist.” Moslem World 15 (1925): 42–51. doi:10.1111/j.1478–1913.1925.tb00548.x

———. “A Debate between Christian and Moslem Doctors.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (Centenary supplement 1924): 233–244.

Horn, Cornelia. “Theodoros Abu Qurrah, d. 820.” In Syrische Kirchenväter, ed. Wassilios Klein, 83–101. Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer-Verlag, 2004.

Ibn al-Nadim, Kitab al-Fihrist li-l-Nadim, ed. M. Rida-Tajaddud. Tehran: Yutlabu min Maktabat al-Asadi wa-Maktabat al-Ja‘fari al-Tabrizi, 1971.

Keating, Sandra Toenies. Defending the “People of Truth” In the Early Islamic Period: The Christian Apologies of Abu Ra’itah. Leiden: Brill, 2006.

Kellermann, Mechtild ed. and trans., “Ein pseudo-aristotelischer Traktat über die Tugend. Edition und Übersetzung der arabischen Fassungen des Abu Qurra und des Ibn at-Tayyib.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, 1965.

Lamoreaux, John. “The Biography of Theodore Abu Qurrah Revisited.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 56 (2002): 25–40.

———. “Theodore Abu Qurrah and John the Deacon.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 42 (2001): 1–26.

Lamoreaux, John ed., Theodore Abu Qurrah. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005. doi:10.2307/1291852

Lazarus-Yafeh, Hava. Intertwined Worlds: Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Lazarus-Yafeh, Hava, Mark R. Cohen, Sasson Somekh and Sidney Griffith, ed. The Majlis: Interreligious Encounters in Medieval Islam. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999.

Leeming, Kate. “The Adoption of Arabic as a Liturgical Language by the Palestinian Melkites.” ARAM 15 (2003): 239–246. doi:10.2143/ARAM.15.0.504537

Mingana, Alphonse. “The Apology of Timothy the Patriarch before the Caliph Mahdi.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 12 (1), (1928): 137–298.

Monferrer-Sala, Juan Pedro. “Una muestra de kalam cristiano: Abu Qurra en la sección novena del Kitab mugadalat ma‘ al-mutakallimin al-muslimin fi maglis al-jalifa al-Ma’mun.” Revista Española de Filosofia Medieval 10 (2003): 75–86.

Penn, Michael. “Syriac sources for the study of early Christian-Muslim relations.” Islamochristiana 28 (2003): 87–107.

Putman, Hans. L’église et l’islam sous Timothée I (780-823): étude sur l’église nestorienne au temps des premiers ‘Abbasides; avec nouvelle édition et traduction du Dialogue entre Timothée et al-Mahdi. Beirut: Dar el-Machreq [distribution, Librairie orientale], 1975.

Reinink, Gerrit J. and H.L.J. Vanstiphout, ed. Dispute Poems and Dialogues in the Ancient and Mediaeval Near East: Forms and Types of Literary Debates in Semitic and Related Literatures. Louvain: Department Oriëntalistiek, 1991.

Rippin, Andrew. “Interpreting the Bible through the Qur’an.” In Approaches to the Qur’an, ed. G.R. Hawting and Abdulkader A. Shareef, 249–259. London: Routledge, 1993.

Sahas, Daniel. “The Art and Non-Art of Byzantine Polemics: Patterns of Refutation in Byzantine Anti-Islamic Literature.” In Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands, Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Michael Gervers and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi, 55–73. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990.

Samir, Samir Khalil and Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala, ed. Abú Qurrah: vida, bibliografía y obras. Córdoba: Universidad de Córdoba, 2005.

Sbath, Paul. Bibliothèque de manuscrits Paul Sbath ... Catalogue, 3 vols. Cairo: H. Friedrich and Co., 1928–1934.

Stroumsa, Sarah. “Ibn al-Rawandi’s su adab al-mujadala: The Role of Bad Manners in Medieval Disputations.” In The Majlis: Interreligious Encounters in Medieval Islam, ed. Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, et al., 66–83. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999.

Suermann, Harald. “Timothy and His Dialogue with Muslims.” The Harp 8/9 (1995–1996): 263–275.

Swanson, Mark. “The Christian al-Ma’mun Tradition.” In Christians at the heart of Islamic Rule, Church Life and scholarship in ‘Abbasid Iraq, ed. David Thomas, 63–92. Leiden: Brill, 2003.

Thomas, David. “The Bible in early Muslim anti-Christian polemic.” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 7 (1996): 29–38. doi:10.1080/09596419608721065

———. “Two Muslim-Christian Debates from the Early Shi‘ite Tradition.” Journal of Semitic Studies 33 (1988): 53–80.

Troupeau, Gerard. “Karshuni.” In Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, 4: 671–672. Leiden: Brill, 1978.

Wasserstein, David. “The Majlis of al-Rida: A Religious Debate in the Court of the Caliph al-Ma’mun as Represented in a Shi‘i Hagiographical Work about the Eighth Imam ‘Ali ibn Musa al-Rida.” In The Majlis: Interreligious Encounters in Medieval Islam, ed. Hava Lazarus-Yafeh et al., 108–119. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999.

Published

2010-06-09

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Bertaina, D. (2010). Melkites, Mutakallimun and al-Ma’mun: Depicting the Religious Other in Medieval Arabic Dialogues. Comparative Islamic Studies, 4(1-2), 17-36. https://doi.org/10.1558/cis.v4i4.1-4.2.17