Last night I was editing a couple of article on Louis Massignon and his influence on Vatican II's understanding of Islam and the Catholic Church's relationship to Muslims. His understanding of not just Islam but also of Arab Christianity was often met with blind incomprehension on the part of not a few:
What do you mean 'Arab Christians'? All Arabs are Muslims!
Even today, more than a half-century after Massignon's death, and with all the well-publicized turmoil in the Middle East, and significant advances in Eastern Christian scholarship, many people today--especially it seems North American Christians--still have no idea that Christianity has been present in the Arab peninsula since early in the first millennium. A wonderful new collection will surely go a long way in helping to remedy this ignorance: Samuel Noble and Alexander Treiger, eds.,
The Orthodox Church in the Arab World, 700 - 1700: An Anthology of Sources (Northern Illinois University Press, 2014), 355pp.
About this book, helpfully available in both an affordable paperback and even more affordable Kindle edition, the publisher tells us:
Arabic was among the first languages in which the Gospel was
preached. The Book of Acts mentions Arabs as being present at the first
Pentecost in Jerusalem, where they heard the Christian message in their
native tongue. Christian literature in Arabic is at least 1,300 years
old, the oldest surviving texts dating from the 8th century. Pre-modern
Arab Christian literature embraces such diverse genres as Arabic
translations of the Bible and the Church Fathers, biblical commentaries,
lives of the saints, theological and polemical treatises, devotional
poetry, philosophy, medicine, and history. Yet in the Western
historiography of Christianity, the Arab Christian Middle East is
treated only peripherally, if at all.
The first of its
kind, this anthology makes accessible in English representative
selections from major Arab Christian works written between the 8th and
18th centuries. The translations are idiomatic while preserving the
character of the original. The popular assumption is that in the wake of
the Islamic conquests, Christianity abandoned the Middle East to
flourish elsewhere, leaving its original heartland devoid of an
indigenous Christian presence. Until now, several of these important
texts have remained unpublished or unavailable in English. Translated by
leading scholars, these texts represent the major genres of Orthodox
literature in Arabic. Noble and Treiger provide an introduction that
helps form a comprehensive history of Christians within the Muslim
world. The collection marks an important contribution to the history of
medieval Christianity and the history of the medieval Near East.
I asked the editors for an interview, and here they are:
Tell us about your backgrounds.
 |
| Alexander Treiger |
AT:
I was born in St. Petersburg, Russia (then, of course, Leningrad,
USSR) in 1975, studied Arabic, Islam, and Eastern Christianity in
Jerusalem and at Yale, and am currently employed as associate
professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I
teach courses on the Abrahamic religions. I’m also an Orthodox
Christian deacon, serving at the St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Church
(OCA) in Halifax.
SN:
My
undergraduate degree was in linguistics from the University of
Georgia. After that I did a master’s degree in Middle East Studies
at the American University of Beirut and while living there I was
received into the Orthodox Church. Currently I’m ABD in Islamic
Studies at Yale, where Sasha and I met in 2005.
 |
| Samuel Noble |
What led to putting this collection together?
SN:
We felt a very real need for a book like this to exist. Many
people—including more than a few specialists in Orthodox
Christianity—have a false notion that Christianity disappeared in
the Middle East with the coming of Islam and that even if there were
a few Christians here or there, they did little that was noteworthy
for the wider Christian world. There’s also another common misconception that Arabic only very recently came into use in the
Orthodox Church, when in fact it has been a language of Orthodox
Christian liturgy and literature for longer even than Slavonic. So,
what we wanted to do was to provide a way that people who aren’t
specialists in Arabic might be able to access this centuries-old
tradition.
AT:
I
agree. The Arab Christian tradition remains largely unknown to the
general public, and even many scholars of Orthodox Christianity are
unfamiliar with it. The history of the Church in Byzantium, the
Slavic lands, and Europe has been extensively researched. But what
about those Christians who are direct descendants of the communities
established by the apostles in Christianity’s very birthplace and
ancient heartland—the Middle East? Sadly, their history is known
only to a handful of specialists. It is to make their rich and unduly
neglected heritage accessible to the wider public that we decided,
back in 2009, to put this volume together. I am very pleased that
after five years of extremely hard work—the contributors’, the
publisher’s, and our own—this volume has finally seen light.
Your introduction notes that “in the Western historiography of
Christianity, the Arab Christian Middle East is treated only
peripherally, if at all.” This, you note, is a common problem even
among scholars of Eastern Christianity. Why do you think that is?
AT:
In part, the pervasive misidentification of Arabic and the Middle
East exclusively with Islam is to blame. Most scholars of
Christianity tend to “write off” the Middle East after the Muslim
conquest, because they imagine—needless to say, incorrectly—that
in the seventh
century Islam simply replaced Christianity in this region. For that
same reason, scholars of Christianity do not consider it necessary to
learn Arabic, failing to realize that Arabic—much like Greek,
Latin, Syriac, Armenian, or Slavonic—is an essential language for
the history of the Church.
Another
reason for this neglect is the equally pervasive Eurocentrism: the
spread of Christianity westward is treated with the utmost attention,
while its continuous flourishing in the place of its origin and
remarkable spread eastward (in the seventh
century Christianity reached as far East as China!) is regarded as an
unimportant side story. The study of Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic,
Armenian, Georgian, and other linguistic and cultural variations of
Eastern Christianity has also suffered tremendously from this kind of
Eurocentric bias.
SN:
I
think that to some degree the existence of Middle Eastern—and
particularly Arab—Christianity is inconvenient for a lot of lazy
narratives of Christian history. It does not fit comfortably with
popular notions of Christendom, in the sense of Christianity as tied
to a particular European cultural-political sphere. It complicates
narratives of Christian-Muslim relations, making monochrome images of
convivencia
or dhimmitude impossible. The fact that the three fifths of the
ancient pentarchy—Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem—lived most
of their history under Muslim rule and were speaking Arabic makes it much
harder to center Orthodoxy’s story as being synonymous with the
story of the Byzantine Empire…. and so on. So, in a way, dealing
with the reality of Arab Christianity requires historians to do more
work and step out of their comfort zones.
AT:
I would add that it’s equally true for Middle Eastern history.
There too it’s convenient to disregard Middle Eastern Christians
and other non-Muslim communities. Most histories of the Middle East
make practically no attempt to do justice to the experience of
non-Muslim communities. (Moshe Gil’s A History of Palestine, 634-1099 is one notable exception.) Once, however, you take into account
non-Muslim historical sources and their experience and try to
integrate accounts of the various communities into a single picture,
things inevitably become more complicated—but ultimately much more
rewarding.
SN:
Interest in Arabic Christianity seems to be growing slowly but
noticeably, to some degree riding the coattails of growing interest
in Eastern Christianity in general and the need to better understand
Muslim-Christian relations. A lingering problem, however, is the lack
of a real academic home—is it a subfield of Islamic Studies? Church
History? Byzantine or Syriac Studies? This is an issue that will
continue to be a problem for some time, especially in terms of which
conferences and journals should host scholars of Arabic Christianity.
Another
factor that is having a positive influence on Arabic Christian
studies (as well as Syriac and other fields) is the revolution caused
by the digitization of manuscripts. Projects like the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library in Collegeville, MN, and the Saint Joseph of Damascus Manuscript Conservation Center at Balamand Monastery in Lebanon mean that pre-modern Arabic
Christian texts are more easily and widely available than they have
ever been in history—and scholars seeking to produce editions of
texts are significantly less hindered by trouble obtaining access to
manuscripts. Materials, access to which less than a century ago required scholars to travel great distances and suffer many hardships can now be simply stored on my laptop to browse at leisure. So this means
that now the harvest is great but the laborers few.
AT:
I should add that there is now also an excellent mailing list and
online forum for scholars of Arab Christianity: the North American Society for Christian Arabic Studies (NASCAS),
which currently has more than 250 participants worldwide. While
previously scholars of Arab Christianity had been working in relative
isolation from one another, NASCAS has allowed them to communicate
more freely and intensively, to ask each other questions, exchange
ideas, etc. This has had, I think, a galvanizing effect on the entire
field. Additionally, NASCAS has attracted a fair number of graduate
students working in neighboring fields—Islamic Studies, Syriac
Studies, Byzantine Studies, and others. They are becoming aware of
and interested in what we do. This way, the study of Arab
Christianity is getting much-needed publicity—an important step
towards eventual institutionalization within western academia.
I was staggered by your noting that “close to 90 percent of the
vast corpus of Arab Christian literature has not yet been edited or
translated, let alone adequately studied.” What explains such an
enormous neglect? It seems to me that it must be more than the
difficulty of learning Arabic (which I tried a few years ago and gave
up!). Are there other factors explaining this neglect?
AT:
Once
again, this boils down to the common misperception that Arabic is
somehow an exclusively “Islamic” language. As a result, students
of Classical Arabic, of which there are of course many, gravitate
towards Islamic Studies simply by default, often unaware that
non-Muslims (Christians, Jews, and others) have used Arabic as
extensively and for as long as Muslims, and even longer. Besides,
serious study of Arab Christianity requires familiarity with the
Christian tradition (Christian theology, Church councils, liturgy,
canon law, etc.). Nowadays, as church attendance in the West
declines, these skills are harder to come by, while those westerners
who do have them rarely know Arabic.
An
additional factor is that Middle Eastern Christians today wield
little political power. Lebanon is the only notable exception, but
even there the political impact of Christian communities is in
decline. All other things being equal, most people, quite naturally
perhaps, tend to disregard and downplay those communities that are
relatively politically insignificant, and focus instead on those that
influence (or are perceived as influencing) world affairs. One can’t
blame them, of course. After all, this is where the majority of jobs
are. Education always depends on market forces that dictate which
things are “worth” studying and which aren’t. Some fields,
while intrinsically no less important than others, suffer as a
result.
Apart from your own work, are there others—individual scholars,
perhaps, or academic centres—where some of this work of editing and
translating is now being started or continued?
SN:
In North America, Christian Arabic studies have been centered at the
Catholic University of America, where Fr Sidney Griffith has trained
an entire generation of specialists in the field. In Europe and the
Middle East, Fr Samir Khalil has had a similar role, simultaneously
at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and Université
Saint-Joseph in Beirut.
AT:
I
have already mentioned NASCAS. There are more and more people taking
interest in Arab Christianity. Gradually, this kind of interest and
awareness will hopefully become more “mainstream” in western
academia. We need of course additional efforts aimed at
institutionalization—such as establishing a journal for Arab
Christian Studies and a regular academic conference in North America
(there is currently only one conference on Christian Arabic in
Europe, meeting every four years). Most importantly, scholars working
in the field need to do more to establish stronger connections with
Arabic-speaking Christian communities both in the Middle East and in
the diaspora. Only by joining forces will we be able to carry out the
task of editing, translating, and studying the unduly neglected
heritage of Arabic-speaking Middle Eastern Christianity. We are very
fortunate that Arabic-speaking Orthodox Christians are quite
supportive of our scholarly efforts. It is particularly significant
in this connection that His Eminence Metropolitan Ephrem Kyriakos of
Tripoli in Lebanon has written a foreword to our Anthology, stressing
its importance for the study of the Orthodox Christian heritage in
the Middle East.
You note (p. 9) that “in the wake of Chalcedon, the Miaphysite
church proved to be extremely successful among the Arabs” and you
also speak of the “appeal that Christianity held even for the Arabs
of Mecca.” What factors help us to understand that appeal and its
success?
SN:
A good place to start in looking into the appeal of the Miaphysite
cause for people along the Byzantine-Persian borderlands is Volker
Menze’s book Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church. However, the intricate web of theology, ideology, and culture that
led to the success of Miaphysite missionaries around the Byzantine
periphery is very complicated and needs a great deal more research.
We know, for example, that Justinian himself (and even more so his
wife Theodora) promoted Miaphysite missionary activities among pagans
in Asia Minor and Nubia. One should also not discount the more
intangible factor of missionary zeal on the part of Miaphysites who
undertook missions among the Arabs apparently of their own
initiative. However, prior to the coming of Islam, the Christological
identities of the various communities had not yet completely
solidified, and political loyalty to the empire and opposition to
Chalcedon were by no means yet mutually exclusive. So in a sense,
adopting a Miaphysite theology could also be a way for a group to
take a bit of distance from Byzantine authority while still remaining
broadly within the Byzantine (as opposed to Persian) sphere. Of
course, those Arabs within the Persian sphere of influence in what is
now southern Iraq and the Gulf region belonged to the Church of the
East and in many parts of Arabia, especially Yemen, there was
missionary competition between Miaphysites and the Church of the
East.
In
terms of the appeal of Christianity in general to the pagan Arabs of
Late Antiquity, this is a bit of a no-brainer. Christianity was the
vehicle for the creation and transmission of high culture—it meant
not only importing a deeply meaningful and immediate narrative of
salvation, but also the possibility of creating a literary language
and opening up to the religious and intellectual currents of the
wider Near East and Mediterranean. In the period between Christ and
Muhammad, Christianity was able to create new literary cultures among
speakers of Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Caucasian
Albanian, etc… Arabic, being a culture that placed much higher value
on orality than writing, was slower to develop a Christian literature
in the vernacular, but this process had begun in earnest in the
century prior to Muhammad at the latest, and was especially helped
along by the Arabs’ exceedingly great respect for the ascetics of
the Syrian desert.
It’s often assumed, as you note, that following Islamic conquests
of Christians in Syria, Egypt and elsewhere in the seventh century
that Christians basically disappeared, or were otherwise reduced to
dhimmis. But you note that with the rise of Baghdad as the new
capital of the caliphate “Christians of all communities were able
to maintain a significant degree of social prestige” and set about,
inter alia, translating many Greek and Syriac works into Arabic. What
explains this change of status for the Christians, and this
burgeoning interest in having philosophical and scientific works
rendered into Arabic?
AT:
While
it is true that non-Muslims in traditional Muslim societies held a
subordinate status (as, in fact, non-Christians did in traditional
Christian societies at the same time), in practice their conditions
varied depending on the time and place, the social and political
circumstances, and the good will of the rulers. It is thus important
not to generalize, but to consider each society on a case-by-case
basis. In the Abbasid capital Baghdad, for example, the status of
Christians was relatively high, and most of the restrictions imposed
on the dhimmis seem not to have been regularly enforced (the reign of
the caliph al-Mutawakkil in the mid-ninth century being a notable exception).
The
Muslim writer al-Jahiz even complains that Christians in Baghdad
“have stopped wearing their belts [a legal requirement for the
Christians], while others wear them beneath their clothes; many of
the powerful people among them refrain from paying the poll tax,
jizya [imposed on non-Muslims], and although they have the means refuse to
give it. They insult those who insult them, and hit those who hit
them. And why should they not do this or even more, when our judges,
or the majority, consider the blood of a patriarch, metropolitan or
bishop to be equivalent to the blood of Ja‘far, Ali, Abbas or Hamza [typical Muslim names]?” (trans. David Thomas). In other words,
al-Jahiz complains that Muslim courts treated Christians as being
equal (or semi-equal) to the Muslims and allowed them to get away
with non-compliance to legal restrictions imposed on dhimmis. It was
also at this time also that Christian scholars—under powerful
Muslim patronage—played a prominent role in translating Greek and
Syriac philosophical and scientific works into Arabic.
SN:
One
major reason for Christians’ high social status in the first few
centuries of Muslim rule was that they had skills and education that
were in high demand. For the first century of Muslim rule in the
Middle East, the language of bureaucracy in Syria and Egypt was
Greek, and since only Christians had Greek education they were able
to maintain their social position by continuing to hold secretarial
positions. The family of St. John of Damascus is illustrative of this
pattern, as they had held administrative positions under the
Byzantines and continued to do so under the Umayyad Caliphate.
Similarly, because of very long traditions of monastic education and
of translation from Greek into Syriac (a language very similar to
Arabic), Christians were very well positioned to dominate the field
of translating Greek and Syriac into Arabic—that is, to be the
intermediary by which Arabic culture “caught up,” so to speak,
with the intellectual currents of the Mediterranean world. Of course,
it should be remembered that Christians were not merely translators,
but often were philosophers and physicians in their own right.
At the same time you note that Arabic seems in this period and
context to have started to emerge as a liturgical and theological
language for Christians. Why? Was it for business purposes? As a
means of conversing with, and ultimately converting, Muslims? As an
expression of a newly self-confident Arab Christian community
increasingly comfortable in its own identity?
SN:
The first Christians to start regularly using Arabic as their
liturgical and theological language were the Orthodox of Palestine,
and while it would be rash to offer any sure explanation for this, we
can maybe identify a few possible contributing factors. For one
thing, the linguistic situation in Palestine prior to Islam seems to
have been conducive to a transition to Arabic. Before the Arab
conquest, Greek was the predominant local liturgical and literary
language, due to the international character of the monasteries and
the importance of pilgrimage to the liturgical life of the Holy Land.
It does not seem, however, to have been the language of daily life
for very many people at all, nor was it the marker of a particular
ethnic identity, even as it was a marker of elite status. Most local
people would have spoken a dialect of Aramaic whose literary form,
called Christian Palestinian Aramaic, only gained moderate traction
as a vehicle for biblical and patristic translations. It seems that
in general, translations of biblical lessons and homilies for the
locals’ understanding were done on the fly, like the earliest
Jewish targumim. So, with the Arab conquest there was initially a
period where Greek was maintained as the Umayyad Caliphate’s
language of administration, and in fact this period up through the
middle of the eighth century saw a great number of new liturgical and theological works
being written in Greek in Palestinian monasteries—St. John of
Damascus, of course, is the most famous example of this. During St.
John’s lifetime, however, the language of administration switched
over to Arabic and so there ceased to be much of an incentive for
laypeople to cultivate knowledge of Greek. This coincided with a
change in the makeup of the Palestinian monasteries—Sidney Griffith
has shown that by the early ninth century all the Palestinian monks whose background we know came from
within Muslim territory and would have been Arabic or Aramaic
speakers, while before this these monasteries had been home to monks
from throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. So it probably made a
great deal of practical sense for Christians in Palestine who
would’ve almost all spoken Aramaic but who are starting to slowly
transition to Arabic in daily life to switch their literary and
liturgical language from Greek, which fewer and fewer people
understood, to the new prestige language of Arabic, which in any case
was far more similar to their native language. In this regard, it’s
also worth noting that Aramaic-speaking Christians who used Syriac as
their liturgical language—including Chalcedonian Orthodox in
Northern Syria and Mount Lebanon—were much slower to transition
into Arabic, perhaps because their spoken and liturgical languages
were very similar if not the same. In fact, Syriac only completely
died out in favor of Arabic as a liturgical language in parts of the
Patriarchate of Antioch in the eighteenth century.
Engagement
with Islam—which in this early context largely means defending
Christian doctrine against Islamic criticisms—and the bolstering of
a Palestinian Christian identity do seem to be a major factor in the
adoption of Arabic as the chief language of theology for Orthodox
Christians. As a literary language, Arabic could be said to have been
born with the Qur’an and indeed, we find that the first Christian
theological works—such as the Apology
for the Christian Faith,
extracts of which are translated in the Anthology by Mark Swanson—are
already imbued with Qur’anic allusions and turns of phrase, even as
they seek to dissuade Christians from conversion to Islam or even
from associating too much with Muslims. This challenge of expressing
Christianity in the language of Islam is one of the characteristic
features of Arabic Christian literature, from its very beginnings to
our own day.
At the end of your conclusion, you note that “as the texts
assembled in this anthology show, the unique witness of the Orthodox
Church in the Arab lands holds important lessons for us today.”
Which lessons do you think are most important?
AT:
Most
importantly, the texts assembled in our Anthology show that
Christianity belongs
to the Middle East; that it is, at heart, an indigenous Middle
Eastern religion, no less than Islam. This has important
repercussions for how we are to understand both Christianity and the
Middle East. As regards Christianity, we ought to let go of the
narrowly Eurocentric view of its history and look at how Christianity
has been practiced for two millennia in the place of its origin. As
regards the Middle East, we ought to start seeing this region for the
religiously, ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse place
that it is and has always been.
Another
aspect that our Anthology helps shed light on is the high degree of
flexibility and adaptability of Orthodox Christianity to a wide range
of social and cultural situations. With the exception of Arab
Christian writers living in Antioch under Byzantine rule (969-1084),
such as the deacon, theologian, and translator Abdallah ibn al-Fadl,
all the authors represented in our Anthology lived under Muslim
domination. Unlike in Byzantium or Russia, in the Middle East after
the seventh
century Orthodox Christianity was not in a position of power.
Nonetheless, these Arab Christian writers expressed their faith with
conviction and in doing so succeeded in overcoming formidable social
and cultural challenges, such as articulating the Gospel in the
language of the Qur’an.
SN:
I
think that in order to have a fully-rounded picture of the history
and the breadth of Orthodox Christian theology and culture it’s
absolutely necessary to understand its Arab dimension. But to point
to a couple more concrete things that can be learned from Arab
Orthodox literature, I would say that, first of all, this literature
is essential for understanding how Orthodox Christianity has
traditionally interacted with Islam and Muslims, both theologically
and culturally.
Moreover,
this literature offers further angles for understanding the Fathers
since much of Arabic Orthodox literature follows closely in the
footsteps of Sts. John of Damascus and Anastasius the Sinaite and
engages with earlier patristic writings.
Also,
it is completely impossible to understand the history of relations
between the Orthodox, the non-Chalcedonians, and the Church of the
East without familiarity with Christian literature written in Arabic,
since the vast bulk of literature wherein members of these
communities discussed Christology—generally very eirenically, even
if strong differences and incompatibilities between their respective
theologies were often seen to exist—is in Arabic, using a
terminology that developed in Arabic.
Sum up what you hope the book does and who should read it.
SN:
What
we hoped to achieve with this volume is to give a comprehensive
introduction to the first millennium of Arabic-speaking Orthodox
Christianity. We feel that the translated texts give a good
representative taste of the main genres and themes of Arab Orthodox
literature and we have also provided a detailed bibliography and
notes for further exploring this literature in English and other
western languages. So we hope that this book will succeed in making
Arab Orthodox materials more accessible both to people interested in
related fields—Orthodox theology, Muslim-Christian relations,
Byzantine history, Islamic history, etc.—and to English-speaking
Christians whose roots, whether by ancestry or conversion, are in the
Middle East.
AT:
The
volume is suitable for anyone interested in the history of the Church
or in the Middle East. It is also, I think, quite suitable for course
adoption in seminars on Eastern Christianity, Muslim-Christian
relations, and so on. The volume opens a window onto a virtually
unknown world. Every reader will be richly rewarded.
Finally, tell us what you both are at work on next—another book
jointly authored? Individual research projects?
AT: My
main focus is the study of the Arabic translations of the Church
Fathers, of which there are hundreds and hundreds, virtually all of
them unedited and unstudied. I’m also preparing a complete edition
and English translation of The
Noetic Paradise—the
eighth-century patristic masterpiece, originally written in Greek in
Palestine but preserved only in Arabic, a few sections of which have
already been translated in chapter 8 of our Anthology. Besides, Sam
and I are working jointly on an edition and English translation of
Abdallah ibn al-Fadl’s major work, The
Book of Benefit.
This will complement Sam’s translations of two of Ibn al-Fadl’s
theological works in chapter 7 and our joint article, published in
2011, containing an edition and English translation of another
important text by this author.
SN:
In
addition to the project on Abdallah ibn al-Fadl that Sasha mentioned,
I’m currently working with my wife, Brittany Pheiffer Noble, to
translate Constantin Panchenko’s history of Middle Eastern
Orthodoxy under the Ottomans, Ближневосточное
Православие под османским владычеством.
Первые три столетия 1516–1831
(Near Eastern Orthodoxy under Ottoman Rule: The First Three Centuries
1516-1831). Panchenko’s book is by far the most exhaustive study of
Middle Eastern Orthodoxy during that period. In many ways it
complements our Anthology by bringing the story up to the beginning
of the modern era.
