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Collectanea Christiana Orientalia, 2006

El autor intenta averiguar el procedimiento y el ritual de aceptación de calcedonianos y nestorianos en el rito copto, indagando diversos escritos patrísticos y editando un texto árabe tardío.

Springer , 2023

A Brief History of the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Church (Article)

The Orthodox Church in the Arab World 700-1700: An Anthology of Sources, 2015

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2008

From the sixteenth century onwards, the Syriac Jacobites living in the Ottoman empire were confronted by the propaganda o f Catholic missionaries. As a result o f this propa­ ganda, a Syriac Catholic patriarchate was established in the late eighteenth century, and the Syriac community was divided into two. A merciless conflict ensued between Orthodox Syriacs, aligned with the main Church, and the Catholic Syriacs. While this conflict occurred in all places where Syriacs lived, it was most intense in the city o f Mardin, the location o f the patriarchal centre o f Syriac Jacobites. The Jacobites struggled to prevent both the Catholicization o f their community, and also the Catholic takeover o f their churches, monasteries and cemeteries. At various times and for various reasons, the Ottoman empire and certain European states felt the need to intervene in this conflict. Continuing almost uninterrupted throughout the nineteenth century, this conflict adversely affected the Syriacs, and also precipitated their modernization.

MIDEO , 2019

Diego Sarrió Cucarella, « Schadler, Peter, John of Damascus and Islam: Christian Heresiology and the Intellectual Background to Earliest Christian-Muslim Relations », MIDÉO, 34 | 2019, 390-394. Diego Sarrió Cucarella, « Schadler, Peter, John of Damascus and Islam: Christian Heresiology and the Intellectual Background to Earliest Christian-Muslim Relations », MIDÉO [En ligne], 34 | 2019, mis en ligne le 10 juin 2019, consulté le 07 septembre 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/mideo/4659

A major survival from the Roman Near East that endured within the ca-liphate was the episcopal and monastic networks making up the different Christian denominations. This article draws on the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian to illustrate how the caliphate became an increasingly hostile environment for Christian landed lay elites, incentivizing powerful families to take roles in the state's administration or within the church. Using examples from the Jacobite church, I argue that the state became increasingly involved in church gover-nance, by publicly endorsing the patriarch and his ability to raise revenues from Christians, and by supporting him with state troops against rival clerics.

Church History and Religious Culture, 2022

2018

For nearly two centuries after the First Crusade, a Latin-Christian elite controlled significant parts of the eastern Mediterranean, home to a diverse array of Christians, Muslims, and Jews. While seemingly a rich context for inter-religious cultural exchange, the dominant historical narrative has called this society a form of “proto-Apartheid,” with Frankish rulers successfully erecting impermeable boundaries between themselves and their largely Arabic-speaking subjects. This dissertation challenges this narrative through an investigation of the life and work of William of Tripoli, a thirteenth-century Dominican born in modern Lebanon, who spent his career evangelizing Muslims from a priory in Akko (Acre, Israel). William wrote two treatises on Islam that have been called “peculiar,” because of their positive portrayal of both the Qurʾān and the Prophet Muḥammad, but have not otherwise been integrated into our understanding of the cultural milieu of the Latin East. I argue that the...

Islamochristiana , 2017

Daniel J. JANOSIK. John of Damascus, First Apologist to the Muslims: The Trinity and Christian Apologetics in the Early Islamic Period (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016). Islamochristiana 43 (2017) 430-432.

North American Syriac Society, 2023

John of Sedrē (r. 631-648) was the leader of the Syrian Miaphysite church during the turmoiled transition between the Sasanian occupation and the Medinese conquests. Among his important heritage, he is said to have sent an epistle about his meeting with an anonymous amīrō, dealing with theological as well as legal issues. Since François Nau’s edition, it has been regarded as the first Christian-Muslim controversy of history, until recent scholarship tends to rather consider it as reflecting later concerns of the eighth cent. However, the unusual features of this letter (inheritance focus, mhaggrō as “islam”, unanswered questions…) as well as the very identity of ʿAmrū bar Saʿd, as the “emir” is called in early Syriac historiography, suggest this dossier might have been more historical – if not authentic – than many of the documents in the volume (penqītō) where it was later copied. Indeed, Arab-Muslim material allows a reconstruction of the history of this pre-Umayyad governor of Northern Syria and Mesopotamia, the jund of Homs (ca. 640-657). The most striking coincidence is the letter’s underlined mention of (ps)-tribal Christian (ʿammē) of Iraqi origin when Muslim historiography also associates “Little ʿAmr the son of Saʿd, the Medinese (al-anṣārī)” with the management of Christian Arab tribes. Thus, as ʿUmayr is almost entirely forgotten in (post)-Umayyad Arab literature, the attachment of these three successive Syriac testimonies about both this figure and this event suggest they are the remnant of seventh cent. memories.

Religious Inquiries, Jacobite Explanation of the Trinity in the Context of Muʿtazilite Theology: Abu Raʾitah al-Takriti, 2019

The Melkites, Jacobites, and Nestorians were the main Christian communities under Muslim rule. Several pre-Islamic Arab Christian authors wrote treatises concerning their beliefs in Arabic, some of which date back to the early Islamic centuries. The multiplicity of such polemical works suggests an intellectually open society and a degree of tolerance shown by Muslim leaders. Abu Raʾitah al-Takriti (d. 835) was one of the most influential Jacobite authors, who wrote treatises on the Trinity and Incarnation. His era shows the new challenges raised by Muslim surroundings, some of which were unprecedented in the Christian world. As such, Arab Christians like Abu Raʾitah were compelled to use new methods and respond to novel objections. Abu Raʾitah tried to explain the Trinity in the framework of Islamic theology (kalam). Therefore, he introduced the hypostases as God's attributes. According to him, Knowledge (Speech) and Life are two substantial and eternal divine attributes. Abu Raʾitah also referred to the Bible and the Quran and used various analogies in order to defend the doctrine of the Trinity.

Studia Patristica CXXX (130), 2021

During the early Islamic era, Christian communities both inside and outside of Islamic territory responded to Islam in various ways. Christian responses toward Islam went through a series of changes during that time. The initial response of non-Chalcedonian Christians such as Nestorians and Monophysites were quite positive and welcoming, while Chalcedonian Byzantine Christians’ view of Islam was more negative. Among Byzantine Christians, the first prominent figure who responded to Islam was John of Damascus, the last Eastern Church Father. His view of Islam as “Christian heresy” became an orthodox tenet among Byzantine Christians and succeeding western Christians. Meanwhile, the non-Chalcedonian communities such as the Nestorians and Monophysites survived many years of Muslim rule and eventually evolved their own distinctive view of Islam. Patriarch Timothy was a prominent figure who engaged a dialogue with his Muslim ruler, Caliph Mahdi. His response to Islam was more respectful and conciliatory than that of John of Damascus. The time span between John of Damascus and Mar Timothy was about half a century, and there were significant differences between their geographic and political contexts. John of Damascus was under Umayyad in Damascus, while Mar Timothy was a Patriarch of the Eastern Church in Bagdad under Abbasid rule. These geographical and political transitions were reflected in Christian responses to Islam. Whereas John of Damascus’s response to Islam was more “confrontational,” Mar Timothy’s was more “conciliatory.” This paper is to trace the change of Christian response toward Islam from the early stage to Patriarch Timothy I. The primary research concern is a comparative study of the Christian understanding of Islam between John of Damascus and Mar Timothy of Baghdad and examination of its significance for the modern Christian-Muslim relations.

Review of Qurʾanic Research, vol. 8, no. 2, 2022

Theological Reactions in Syriac Written Texts from the Seventh to the Ninth Century) analyzes a wide range of Syriac sources in exploring Christian theological responses to early Islam. Jakob focuses on the developments of the theological positions of East and West Syrian writers as well as on the connections of the relevant Syriac texts with contemporary Islamic theology. This comprehensive book is essential reading not only for scholars of Syriac Christianity, but also for those interested in interreligious encounters and Christian-Muslim relations more broadly. Jakob's book examines a largely unexplored topic-the theological reactions of East and West Syrian Christian religious elites to Islam. While there is a considerable number of studies

Aram, 30:2, 2018

Abstract - As the evangelization of nomadic populations appears to have occurred later than the history of the East Syrians, we assume that it goes hand in hand with the process of the constitution of the Church of the East. Looking closer, we can find quite early signs of Christianity among the Arabs regarding the chronology of Christianity in Sasanian Empire. The topic raises three main questions: the connections of the Arab tribes and their circulations during Late Antiquity, the Christianization of the nomadic populations and the link between Christianity and loyalty to the Roman Empire which is a sore point in the Persian Empire. Al-Ḥīra (Ḥirta in Syriac) was the capital of an ally and a principality independent from the Persians, known as the “Laḫmid” kingdom: regarding the Ecclesiastical hierarchy, it was part of the Church of the East. It was the main target of an original policy of the patriarch of the Church of Persia (called catholicos since the 5th century) aimed at the nomadic populations at the edge of the Empire extending to al-Anbar and the Jazīra.

Published in Markus Groß and Karl-Heinz Ohlig, eds., Die Entstehung einer Weltreligion III. Die heilige Stadt Mekka -eine literarische Fiktion, Inârah, Schriften zur frühen Islamgeschichte und zum Koran, 7 (Berlin: Verlag Hans Schiler, 2014), 255-285. The building of the Umayyad Dome of the Rock in 691/692 as a monument for the declaration of an Arab Christology is increasingly recognized in scholarship as a crucial event in the formation of Islam. As a basilica with its 20-meter high cupola on the Temple Mound in Jerusalem, the Dome can be seen as the counter monument to the two most famous Byzantine basilicas, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Hagia Sophia, with their 35-m and 50-m high domes. The inscriptions inside and outside the Dome proclaim a Christology that was not only different from those of the late Roman Empire 1 but also incompatible with the Christologies of Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. The inscriptions can be seen as proclamations of a new Arab imperial state theology within a wider Christian ecumenical context which John Wansbrough pertinently called the "sectarian milieu." 2 Why the builder of the Dome, Caliph `Abd al-Malik (685-705), chose to elevate his administration's Christology into the central doctrine of a fledgling state religion is a question

John of Damascus and Islam Christian Heresiology and the Intellectual Background in Early Christian &Muslim Relation Peter Schadler العلاقات الاسلامية المسيحية المبكرة رؤية نقدية

David Bertaina, Sandra Toenies Keating, Mark N. Swanson and Alexander Treiger (eds.), Heirs of the Apostles: Studies on Arabic Christianity in Honor of Sidney H. Griffith, Leiden: Brill, 2019

Heirs of the Apostles: Studies on Arabic Christianity in Honor of Sidney H. Griffith Editors: David Bertaina, Sandra Toenies Keating, Mark N. Swanson and Alexander Treiger Heirs of the Apostles offers a panoramic survey of Arabic-speaking Christians—descendants of the Christian communities established in the Middle East by the apostles—and their history, religion, and culture in the early Islamic and medieval periods. The subjects range from Arabic translations of the Bible, to the status of Christians in the Muslim-governed lands, Muslim-Christian polemic, and Christian- Muslim and Christian-Jewish relations. The volume is offered as a Festschrift to Sidney H. Griffith, the doyen of Christian Arabic Studies in North America, on his eightieth birthday. Contributors are: David Bertaina, Elie Dannaoui, Stephen Davis, Nathan P. Gibson, Cornelia Horn, Sandra Toenies Keating, Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala, Johannes Pahlitzsch, Andrew Platt, Thomas W. Ricks, Barbara Roggema, Harald Suermann, Mark N. Swanson, Shawqi Talia, Jack Tannous, David Thomas, Jennifer Tobkin, Alexander Treiger, Ronny Vollandt, Clare Wilde, and Jason Zaborowski.

Published in: “Rassypannoe” i “sobrannoe”: strategii organizacii smyslovogo prostranstva v arabo-musul'manskoi kul'ture / ed. by A.V.Smirnov. Moscow: Sadra [etc.], 2015, pp. 122-135. Uṣūl wa-furuʿ (‘roots and branches’) is one of the basic concepts of the Arabic thought that was developed in grammar, religious and philosophical discourses (Uṣūl ad-Dīn, Uṣūl al-Ḥadīṯ), and the Muslim law (Uṣūl al-Fiqh). It was also used in the traditional Arabic Muslim religious studies concerning the origins of various Christian denominations. For example, Šihāb ad-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Idrīs aṣ-Ṣanhāǧī called al-Qarāfī (1228–1285), a Mālikī jurist of Berber origin who lived in Ayyūbid and Mamlūk Egypt, while discussing Christian divisions in his work Superb answers to shameful questions in refutation of the unbelieving religion (al-Aǧwiba al-fāḫira ʿan al-asʾila al-fāǧira fī-r-radd ʿalā-l-milla al-kāfira), formulates his polemical remark as follows: “Each of them wants a right denomination to branch out from an impossible root, but there is no branch, if the root is spoiled (kullan minhum yurīd tafrīʿ maḏhab ṣaḥīḥ ʿalā aṣl mustaḥīl, wa-lā farʿ iḏā fasad al-aṣl).” Along with the division of Christianity in ‘three main denominations’, the concept of the ‘roots and branches’ is also present in the survey of Christian divisions in the aforementioned Book of the Concordance of Faith. Its author says: “They [i.e. Christians] split into many divisions of which one could speak for long. But even if they do, all their multiplicity aside, agree in opinions and differ from each other in passions, they are reducible to three divisions (firaq), for they ascend to three denominations (maḏāhib) as their roots, namely the division of the Nestorians, the division of the Melkites, and the division of the Jacobites; everything that exists apart from these three communities (al-milal) are [in fact] divisions which originate from them and are reducible to them.”