Minov, S., and Kessel, G., “Recent Publications on Syriac Topics: 2021,” Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 25:1 (2022), 187-286. (original) (raw)
Related papers
While each Church present in Jerusalem has been studied individually, no analysis of the interactions between the various Churches, nor with the sovereign powers, has yet been carried out. This shortcoming in a well-established field of research can partly be explained by the wide range of written languages involved. Yet the academic compartmentalization of Eastern Christian and Islamic studies may have been the major factor. The ERC project ChrIs-cross will address this issue through a Connected History approach and a re-evaluation of Hodgson’s concept of the ‘Islamicate world.’ The unpublished archives of the Christian institutions of Jerusalem, which consist exclusively of Islamic legal documents, make it possible to study the ways in which non-Muslims were integrated into the Islamic(ate) world. Among these, the archives of the Armenian Patriarchate are particularly rich in information, not only on the Armenian communities, but also on other Miaphysite communities, especially the Ethiopians and the Copts, making it possible to reconstruct the networks that linked them in the wider context of Ayyubid and Mamluk societies.
[The Ties that Bind] Mechanisms of Social Dependency in the Early Islamic Empire. Editors: Petra Sijpesteijn and Edmund Hayes, CUP., 2024
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/mechanisms-of-social-dependency-in-the-early-islamic-empire/boundaries-that-bind-pagan-and-christian-arabs-between-syriac-and-islamic-strategies-of-distinction-late-first-century-ah/57914A5CCF563E1B29F180A6D887B1EC Comment fixait-on la limite interconfessionnelle au premier siècle de l’hégire et qui s’en chargeait ? Au Ier siècle de l’hégire se produit une séparation irréversible des courants syriaques chrétiens dans le contexte de l’effritement de l’idéal de l’empire chrétien universel et d’une Église orthodoxe œcuménique. La stabilisation des conquêtes médinoises dans un empire réunissant les territoires anciennement romains de Syrie et Ǧazīra et les provinces de l’Orient post-sassanides semble avoir à tout le moins favorisé ce processus de cristallisation. La différenciation de ce nouveau mouvement idéologique fut réciproquement le produit d’un besoin des autorités piétistes et intellectuelles du milieu muʾmin à repousser pratiques, dogmes et personnalités du christianisme hors du cercle islamique. Ainsi, parmi les documents les plus anciens démontrant une tentative de délimitation, nous trouvons les lettres de Ḥnan-Išōʿ (r. 686-693), catholicos nestorien de l’Orient et celle de son contemporain (et compatriote irakien) miaphysite, le patriarche d’Antioche (r. 64/684-68/687) Athanase de Balad . Moine et professeur de Qennešrē sur l’Euphrate, il produisit en outre une lettre pastorale condamnant les relations sociales et matrimoniales avec les païens (ḥanpē). Il est frappant que le tabou principale des victimes (dabāʾiḥ-dabḥē) et secondairement celui du mariage (tazawwaǧa/ezdawwag) des femmes soit absolument transparent des interdits de la lettre pastorale d’Athanase de Balad . Nous faisons l’hypothèse que ce fut avant tout leur excommunication de la part d’organisations ecclésiastiques chrétiennes cherchant à trouver leur place comme minorité politique et à compter leurs ouailles qui contribua à contraindre les mhaggrōyē à former leur propre organisation cultuelle et à s’affranchir de toute influence chrétienne. À ce titre, la littérature concernant les Arabes chrétiens, population hybride par excellence et témoin d’une troublante période de confusion permet de reconstituer ces deux moments d’immixtion et de séparation. Des Tanūḫ et des Ṭayy, au moins partiellement chrétiens jusqu’à la fin du VIIIe siècle étaient installés à proximité de la capitale du ǧund. Réciproquement, les naṣārā al-ʿarab devinrent l’objet d’une forme de répulsion spécifique de la part du « milieu sectaire » musulman. L’élite muḥammadienne marwānide et primo-abbasside construisit un discours tendant à les assimiler à des crypto-païens. Ils visaient à les bannir les nombreuses interrelations sociales qu’ils entretenaient avec les Arabes ayant choisi de n’être « que » musulmans : notamment en prohibant la consommation de leur nourriture et de leurs femmes. Cette exclusion des Arabes chrétiens de l’inclusivité fondamentale de l’islam naissant à l’égard des femmes et des viandes des « gens ayant reçus l’écriture (Coran V, 5) »fut cependant débattue et contestée durant tout le IIe siècle Il est frappant que le tabou principale des victimes (dabāʾiḥ-dabḥē) et secondairement celui du mariage (tazawwaǧa/ezdawwag) des femmes soit absolument transparent des interdits de la lettre pastorale d’Athanase de Balad.
HIS 339: The Central Islamic Lands 500-1700 (Fall 2019)
Course Overview This course will cover the regions where Islam was a significant presence either culturally or politically from its origins until the period of the "Gunpowder Empires" in the 16 th and 17 th centuries. The first half of the course will deal with the elaboration of Islamic doctrines and practices in the Middle Eastern imperial context, with close attention to the debates and issues surrounding the primary sources for the period. The second will focus on the way such doctrines and practices shaped and were shaped by the society, politics, and economy of later centuries, as well as the spread of Islam to new geographic regions. This course's contribution to an integrated history curriculum includes an awareness of issues in approaching premodern primary sources, the nature of premodern polities, and the way time periods and regions are often bounded in ways contingent on particular themes and questions.
The Maydan, 2021
https://themaydan.com/2021/10/book-review-the-making-of-the-medieval-middle-east-by-jack-tannous-reviewed-by-abdullah-ridvan-gokbel/ The history of relations between Christians and Muslims in the Middle East -particularly in Bilād al-Shām– is older than that in almost any other part of the Islamic World. So it should come as no surprise that these encounters have given both the early Islamic period and the Middle Eastern region pride of place in the comparative studies of these religions. In the last several decades, it has become increasingly common for scholars to attempt to think together the late antique and early Islamic worlds. Jack Tannous’ The Making of the Medieval Middle East: Religion, Society, and Simple Believers is thus a fresh contribution to the already-populated set of works attempting to discover the origins of Islam in the late antiquity authored by scholars such as Aziz Al-Azmeh, Robert G. Hoyland, Antoine Borrut and Gabriel Said Reynolds.
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 2002
over many centuries in dialogue and controversy. The former and, to a degree, the latter, were particularly important and fruitful during the early centuries of Islam and during the days of the latter's expansion, geographical, scholastic and theological. It is precisely these issues which are clarified in this book, a selection of papers from the Third Woodbrooke-Mingana Symposium on Arab Christianity and Islam (September 1998) on the theme of 'Arab Christianity in Bila : d al-Sha : m (Greater Syria) in the pre-Ottoman Period'. The content focuses on aspects of Syrian Christian life and thought during the first millennium of Islamic rule. The series of Symposiums was held in Woodbrooke College, Selly Oak, Birmingham, a most appropriate venue, since the Iraqi priest Dr Alphonse Mingana (1878-1937), who had brought to Woodbrooke College an important collection of Syrian and Arabic Christian manuscripts, had temporarily lived there. His collection is referred to on p. 191 in a chapter by Lucy-Anne Hunt on leaves from an illustrated Syriac lectionary of the seventh/thirteenth century (pp. 185-202, including 12 figures). The helpful introduction by the editor, David Thomas, gives an overall comment upon the content of the volume, serves to make a comprehensive assessment of what each contribution offers to the themes and goals of the Symposiums, and indicates those which are most relevant to specialists in Oriental Christianity in the Fertile Crescent, and to Islamists. The Foreword, by Mor Gregorios Yuhanna Ibrahim, Syrian Orthodox Archbishop of Aleppo, makes an impassioned plea on behalf of Middle Eastern Christians. The eight essays within the volume can be divided into those which concentrate upon the structure, divisions and missions of the Oriental Christian churches of Syria during the Abbasid age and those which are immediately concerned with the problems which Islam, as a religion and a community of believers, presented to those Christians who, for centuries, had been established, widely accepted and were the fount of so much of the finest thought and culture which the Syrians had contributed over many centuries. Sidney Griffith's chapter on the sectarian and Christological controversies in Arabic, in third/ninth century Syria, succinctly summarizes, yet at the same time adds to, a number of his articles which were published in his Arabic Christianity in the monasteries of ninth-century Palestine, Aldershot, 1992. In the latter work, about the Arabic account of "Abd al-Ması : h 1 al-Najra : nı : al-Ghassa : nı : , is further examined, here, by a chapter devoted to the martyrdom of this superior of Mount Sinai, written by Mark W. Swanson (pp. 107-30). Seta B. Dadoyan's chapter on the Armenians in Syria between the fourth/tenth and sixth/twelfth centuries (pp. 159-83) adds enormously to the general picture conveyed by Edmund Schü tz in his 'Armenia: a Christian enclave in the Islamic Near East in the Middle Ages', in Michael Gervers and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi (ed.) Conversion and continuity: indigenous Christian communities in Islamic lands, Toronto, 1990, pp. 217-36, reviewed in BSOAS /1, 128). The contributions to the study of the relationships between Islamic and Christian dialogue and controversy are at the heart of this collection. The reality of this controversy, in this age, was highlighted by Sir T. W. Arnold in his The preaching of Islam (London, 1935). Speaking of the controversial dialogues with 'Muhammadans' undertaken by St. John of Damascus and by Bishop Theodore Abu : Qurrah, Arnold quotes the bishop as saying, 'The thoughts of the Agarenes and all their zeal, are directed towards the denial of the divinity of God the Word and they strain every effort to this end'. This, and related controversies and major differences, are thoroughly debated and clarified in Barbara Roggema's, 'A Christian reading of the Qur'an: the Legend of Sergius-Bah 1 ı : ra : and its use of Qur'an and Sı : ra' (pp. 57-74) and Samir K. Samir's examination of the Prophet, as perceived by Timothy 1 and other Arab Christian authors (pp. 75-106). Relations at a personal level are examined by Lawrence Conrad on the writings of Ibn But 1la : n (pp. 131-58) and by David Thomas on Paul of Antioch's Letter to a Muslim friend and the Risa : la al-Qubrusiyya (pp. 203-22). All these contributions have a direct bearing on quranic studies. These contributions supplement, to a small degree, the general picture as is conveyed in such works as J. Spencer Trimingham's Christianity among the Arabs in pre-Islamic times, (London and Beirut: Longman, 1979). The interpretation of the Quran in the light of the scriptures of the earlier 'Peoples of the Book' is a subject which occurs on numerous pages and quotations in this volume. The publication is exemplary, crowned by a bibliography of eleven pages, including books and articles, on every aspect of the debates, citing examples from a wide range of European journals and also others published in Beirut, Cairo and Jerusalem, as well as in the United States. The index includes references from the Bible and the Quran. The spelling of proper names is consistent and carefully transliterated. Footnotes are printed at the foot of each page.