Preliminary Considerations on Dionysius Bar Ṣalībī's Islamic
Sources
Bert
Jacobs
KU Leuven
The Louvain Centre for Eastern and Oriental Christianity
(LOCEOC)
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James E. Walters
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2018
Volume 21.2
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https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv21n2jacobs
Bert Jacobs
Preliminary Considerations on Dionysius Bar Ṣalībī's
Islamic Sources
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol21/HV21N2Jacobs.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute, 2018
vol 21
issue 2
pp 357–389
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies is an electronic journal
dedicated to the study of the Syriac tradition, published semi-annually (in
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Qurʾān
Translation
Alphonse Mingana
Dionysius Bar Ṣalībī
Christian-Muslim apologetics
File created by James E. Walters
Abstract
Though Dionysius Bar Ṣalībī (d. 1171) wrote his Disputation Against the Arabs during the so-called ‘Syriac
Renaissance’ (c. 1026-1318), a period characterized by an increased Christian
awareness of Islamic literary culture, to date no sustained appeal has been made
for a direct use of Islamic sources in composing this work. This situation seems
largely influenced by Alphonse Mingana who categorically rejected Bar Ṣalībī’s
knowledge of Islamic literature, particularly the Arabic Qurʾān. This article
proposes to take a fresh look at the potential traces of Islamic sources the
work displays. Such a reading reveals traces of at least five other Islamic
literary genres besides the Qurʾānic excerpts for which the work is well known:
Muḥammad’s biography (sīra), heresiography, exegesis (tafsīr), prophetic traditions (ḥadīth), and the so-called ‘stories of the prophets’ (qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ). To prepare the way for a closer
assessment of Bar Ṣalībī’s Islamic sources, the aim of this paper is to survey
the various allusions to and quotations of the material reminiscent of these
five additional literary genres, and to reflect on their significance with
regards to Bar Ṣalībī’s interculturality.
Though the earliest interactions between Syriac Christians and Muslims
within the nascent Islamic empire may have been characterized by more hybridity and
ill-defined borders than was once suspected,* This article presents some intermediary results of my
current PhD project on the apologetic theology and sources of Dionysius Bar
Ṣalībī’s Disputation Against the Arabs, particularly
his use of the Qurʾān and other Islamic texts. I thank the FWO for
generously supporting my research. I also wish to thank James E. Walters for
his patience with me and for checking my English. Thus
the thesis of Michael P. Penn, Envisioning Islam: Syriac
Christianity and the Early Muslim World (Pennsylvania: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). the religious borderlines soon
became increasingly delineated. An activity particularly instrumental to this
development was the production of apologetic/polemic texts on both sides clearly
manifesting the depths of the Christian-Muslim theological divide. Though the
earliest examples of such works on the Christian side were still composed in Syriac,
such as The Disputation between Patriarch John and an Emir,
The Disputation between a Monk of Bēt
Ḥālē and a Muslim, and The Disputation between Timothy I
and the Caliph al-Mahdī, from the early ʿAbbāsid period onwards the use of
Syriac as the primary literary language of theological discourse and debate
gradually declined in favor of the official language of the Caliphate, Arabic. For overviews of the Syriac
apologetic texts in response to Islam, see Sidney H. Griffith, “Disputes
with Muslims in Syriac Christian Texts: From Patriarch John (d. 648) to Bar
Hebraeus (d. 1286),” in Religionsgespräche im
Mittelalter, Wolfenbütteler Mittelalter-Studien 4, ed. B. Lewis and
F. Niewöhner (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992), 251-273; id., Syriac Writers on Muslims and the Religious Challenge of
Islam (Kottayam: SEERI, 1995); Barbara Roggema, “Pour une lecture
des dialogues islamo-chrétiens en syriaque à la lumière des controverses
internes à l’islam,” in Les controverses religieuses en
syriaque, Études syriaques 13, ed. F. Ruani (Paris: Geuthner,
2016), 261-294. For early Muslim polemics against Christianity, see e.g.
David Thomas, “Early Muslim Responses to
Christianity,” in Christians at the Heart of Islamic Rule:
Church Life and Scholarship in
ʿAbbasid
Iraq, The History of Christian-Muslim Relations 1, ed. D. Thomas
(Leiden: Brill, 2003), 231-254. In the period of the so-called
‘Syriac Renaissance’ (c. 1026-1318), however, one more Syriac work specifically
devoted to refuting Islam would appear. Of all Syriac refutation texts, this one
perhaps most sharply draws the lines between the truth of Christianity and the
falsehood of Islam: The Disputation Against the Arabs (ōruʿutō luqbal ʿamō d-Arābōyē) composed by Dionysius Bar
Ṣalībī (d. 1171), the West Syrian Metropolitan of Amīd (present-day
Diyarbakir). A critical
edition based on five manuscripts together with an English translation was
published in 2005 by Joseph Amar, Dionysius Bar Ṣalībī: A
Reponse to the Arabs, CSCO 614-615 (Leuven: Peeters, 2005). I have
checked Amar’s edition against the oldest manuscript from the year 1207, Ms. Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate 160 (ff. 245a-278b).
Amar’s translation is the basis for the citations occuring in this paper,
but I regularly applied changes were deemed necessary. For Bar Ṣalībī’s
bio-bibliography, see Stephan D. Ryan, Dionysius bar
Salibi's Factual and Spiritual Commentary on Psalms 73-82, Cahiers
de révue biblique 57 (Paris: J. Gabalda et Cie, 2004), p. 1-14. On the
period of the ‘Syriac Renaissance’, see Herman Teule, “The Syriac
Renaissance,” in The Syriac Renaissance, Eastern
Christian Studies 9, ed. H. Teule et al. (Leuven:
Peeters, 2010), 1-30. Other writers of this period engaged Islam as well in
their theological writings, but none of them is credited for having composed
a seperate work in response to Islam. Some studies on these author’s
apologetics are Herman Teule, “Jacob bar Šakkō, the Book of Treasures and
the Syrian Renaissance,” in Eastern Crossroads. Essays on
Medieval Christian Legacy, Gorgias Eastern Christianity Studies 1,
ed. J.-P. Monferrer-Sala (Piscataway, NJ: Georgias Press, 2007), 143-154;
Salam Rassi, Justifying Christianity in the Islamic Middle
Ages: The Apologetic Theology of ʿAbdīshōʿ bar Brīkhā (d. 1318)
(PhD diss., University of Oxford, 2015); Bert Jacobs, “Unveiling Christ in
the Islamicate World: Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī's Prophetology as a Model for
Christian Apologetics in Gregory Bar ʿEbrōyō’s Treatise on the Incarnation,”
Intellectual History of the Islamicate World
6/1&2 (2018), 187-216.
Part of a larger encyclopedic work that also includes a theological
compendium and disputations against the Jews, Nestorians, Chalcedonians, and
Armenians, Against the Arabs is a quite significant hallmark
in the history of Christian-Muslim relations. See my PhD dissertation for a discussion of the larger
literary context. On the content and significance of the Disputation Against the Arabs, see also the overviews of Syriac
apologetic texts in nr. 2, as well as Sidney H. Griffith, “Dionysius bar Ṣalībī on the Muslims,” in IV
Symposium Syriacum: Literary Genres in Syriac Literature,
Orientalia Christiana Analecta 229, ed. H. Drijvers et
al. (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1987), p.
353-365; Herman Teule, “Dionysius Bar Ṣalibi,” Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History 3 (Leiden:
Brill, 2011), 665-70, p. 667-70. It is not only the latest
disputation against Islam to be composed in Syriac, but also the lengthiest and most
comprehensive work of its kind, covering all the major issues of Christian-Muslim
controversy in thirty chapters divided over three mimrē or
tracts. The primary topics of dispute, the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation,
are most prominently present, though various secondary themes have their place as
well. Mimrō I (chs. 1-8) is principally devoted to refuting
Muslim objections against Trinitarian doctrine, but also has an introductory chapter
on the origins and teachings of Islam, and one on the divisions in the early Muslim
community. The doctrine of the Incarnation is the central theme of mimrō II (chs. 9-24), but several chapters also discuss Muḥammad’s
prophetic status, the legitimacy of Christian spiritual practices, the scriptural
integrity of the Bible and the Qurʾān, and the proper conception of Paradise.
In these first two mimrē, Bar Ṣalībī relies on
four types of arguments to uphold the veracity of Christianity. Besides the usual
use of arguments from ‘nature and scripture’, he also presents testimonies from the
pagan sages, Bar Ṣalībī
provides two such testimony lists: in chapter 8 concerning the Trinity, and
in chapter 19 for the Incarnation. Only the latter list was studied in
Sebastian P. Brock, ”A Syriac Collection of Prophecies of the Pagan
Philosophers,” Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 14
(1983): 203-246; id., “Some Syriac Excerpts from Greek Collections of Pagan
Prophecies,” Vigilae Christianae 38 (1984):
77-90. and more importantly, arguments from the Qurʾān, which is
cited in a Syriac translation. Conforming to a widespread Christian approach to the
Qurʾān, his quotes serve either to demonstrate the Qurʾān’s flawed character or
conversely, to find support in it for Christian teachings. On early Christian approaches to the
Qurʾān, see Mark Beaumont, “Early Christian Interpretation of the Qurʾān,”
Transformation 22/4 (2005): 195-203; Sidney H.
Griffith, “The Qurʾān in Arab Christian Texts; the Development of an
Apologetical Argument: Abū Qurrah in the Maǧlis of
al-Maʾmūn,” Parole de l’Orient 24 (1999): 203-233;
id., “Christians and the Arabic Qurʾān:
Prooftexting, Polemics, and Intertwined Scriptures,” Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 2 (2014): 243-266;
Clare E. Wilde,
Approaches to the
Qur’an in Early Christian Arabic Texts (750CE-1258 CE)
(Palo Alto, California: Academica Press,
2014). This reading of the Qurʾān is fully developed in
mimrō III (chs. 25-30), undoubtedly the most original
part of the work. In these final six chapters, Bar Ṣalībī divides the pages into two
sections: one containing excerpts from the Qurʾān and the other section providing
his commentary, i.e. his apologetic and polemic interpretations of the cited
material. The themes that are discussed in the six chapters are revelation and
creation (25), Adam (26), Noah (27), the Patriarchs (28), Mary and Jesus (29), and
concludes with a chapter clustering Qurʾānic verses on a wide range of topics
(30).
The Issue of the Sources
Like other writers of the Syriac Renaissance, Bar Ṣalībī’s favored
method of composition, as displayed in Against the Arabs,
is to compile previous works and combine, edit, and shape them to his own
purposes. The identification of his sources and the assessment of how he makes
uses of them, however, is still largely uncharted territory. That he principally
draws, as might be expected, on Syriac and Christian Arabic sources has recently
received some initial attention. See Martin Heimgartner, Timotheos I.,
Ostsyrischer Patriarch: Disputation mit dem Kalifen Al-Mahdī,
CSCO 631-2 (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), tr.,
p. xxvii (nr. 105); Shabo Talay, “Aus dem polemischen Genre des
Syrischen: Die luqbal-Schriften von Bar Ṣalībī und Bar Šūšan,” in Orientalia Christiana, Festschrift für Hubert Kaufhold
zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. P. Bruns and H. O. Luthe(Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 2013), 511-521, p. 517-8. On Bar
Ṣalībī’s use of the now lost Chronicle of
Dionysius of Tell-Maḥrē (d. 845) in the opening chapter of the Disputation, see Bert Jacobs, “Tentative
Reconstruction of Dionyius of Tell-Maḥrē’s Account of the Rise of Islam
through Three Dependant Texts,” forthcoming. However, whether
he also made use of Islamic sources, a marked trait of Syriac Christian writers
during his period, See
Teule, “The Syriac Renaissance,” p. 23-8. remains completely
elusive to date. Despite the fact that several recent studies have called
attention to the originality of Bar Ṣalībī’s knowledge of Islamic history and
the Qurʾān, little to no appeals for a direct reliance on Arabic Islamic sources
have been made so far.
This state of affairs appears to be largely indebted to the first
modern scholar to have dealt with the text, Alphonse Mingana (1878-1937), who in
1925 not only rejected Bar Ṣalībī’s knowledge of the Arabic Qurʾān, but also of
Islamic literature altogether. Basing his argument solely on mimrō III, Mingana was arguing for Bar Ṣalībī’s reliance on a late
seventh or early eighth-century Syriac translation of a pre-standardized
recension of the Qurʾān, or as he called it, “an ancient Syriac translation of
the Ḳurʾān [sic] exhibiting new verses and variants.” Alphonse Mingana, “An Ancient Syriac
Translation of the Ḳurʾan Exhibiting New Verses and Variants,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 9/1 (1925):
188-235; reprinted with minimal corrections and additions in Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1925, 3-50. The current paper cites from
Mingana’s final version. Recently, Mingana’s study has been reprinted in
a volume seeking to challenge the Qurʾān’s traditional status in Islam,
Which Koran?: Variants,
Manuscripts, Linguistics, ed. Ibn Warraq (Amherst, Prometheus Books, 2008; 2011). Mingana’s study and
translation of the quotation section of mimrō III
was based on a single manuscript, Mingana Syriac
89 (1715 AD). After completion of his study, he was able to
compare this manuscript with Harvard Syriac 91
(1898 AD), the results of which he described in a supplementary note
appended to the paper. It was
in the context of postulating a dependence on such a translation that Mingana
provided several arguments for why Bar Ṣalībī could not himself have translated
the Qurʾānic excerpts from the Arabic. His boldest move occurs at the very end
of the paper, where he argues that Bar Ṣalībī simply was unqualified for the
task, due to his seemingly “extremely meagre” knowledge of Islamic works. Mingana, “An Ancient Syriac Translation,” p.
29-30.
Though Mingana’s claim of having unearthed evidence of a
non-canonical Qurʾān was soon rejected by prominent contemporary Qurʾānic
scholars such as Gotthelf Bergsträβer, Theodore Nöldeke, and Arthur Jeffery, and
largely ignored by Islamicists ever since, to date no conclusive alternative
account for the provenance of the Qurʾānic translations in Bar Ṣalībī’s work has
been advanced.
Gotthelf Bergsträβer, “Die Geschichte des
Qurāntexts,” in T. Nöldeke, F. Schwally, G. Bergsträβer, and O. Pretzl,
Geschichte des Qurāns, 3 vols.
(Leipzig: Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1909, 1919, 1938),
Vol. 3, p. 100-2. For Nöldeke’s brief epistolary response from
April 13, 1925, see ibid., p. 102 (nr. 1). Bergsträβer’s view that the
variants presented by Mingana are unrelated to the non-canonical
variants known from Muslim sources was endorsed by Arthur Jeffery, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’an:
The Old Codices (Leiden: Brill, 1937), p. 14-15 (nr
1). Yet one interesting hypothesis worthy of further exploration
has already been put forth a while ago by Sidney Griffith, who suggested that
Bar Ṣalībī himself “made the translations to suit his own apologetic/ polemic
purposes, and that the variants are to be explained as distortions, rather than
as evidence of ‘an ancient Syriac translation’.” Griffith, Syriac
Writers on Muslims, p. 25. Before reexamining Bar
Ṣalībī’s potential translation work, however, it may be wise to first clarify
the more fundamental issue of his interculturality, as someone with no affinity
whatsoever with Islamic literary culture is indeed not very likely to be a
Qurʾānic translator.
As we shall see, Mingana’s ‘extremely’ low estimation of Bar
Ṣalībī’s interculturality was not only founded on a flawed manuscript basis, but
a fresh reading of the work brings to light traces of at least five other
Islamic literary genres in addition to the Qurʾān. Some of these materials had
been noted by Mingana and were (mistakenly) interpreted as “new verses and
variants [from the Qurʾān],” other materials he missed due to his neglect of
both mimrē I-II and the commentary section of mimrō III. See my PhD for a full assessment of Mingana’s proposals.
For the sake of convenience, these materials will be surveyed
according to their characteristic literary genres, though one has to bear in
mind that none of the materials under review are limited to works of one
particular genre alone.
Classification of Islamic Material by Literary Genre
Sīra
Although not the first trace of Muslim literature in the work,
we begin our survey with a passage in the commentary section of chapter 25
dealing with works on Muḥammad’s life, since the first half of it was the
sole basis for Mingana’s claim that Bar Ṣalībī’s knowledge of Islamic works
was “extremely meagre.” According to Mingana’s reading of the passage, Bar
Ṣalībī would have thought that Muslims have only two
books in addition to the Qurʾān, the Maghāzī and the
Mukhtāra. Mingana, “An Ancient
Syriac Translation,” p. 29-30: “[…] his own knowledge of Muslim
religious and historical books seems to have been extremely meagre.
[…] Of the innumerable Muslim works of ḥadīth
and history, preceding the twelfth century, the author had
apparently heard only of the Maghāzi and the
Mukhtāra (!), and
even these he had not seen and read; he was aware of their existence
only through hearsay: ‘the Muslims say that they have …’ A man of
this calibre would hardly be able to translate the Ḳurʾān [sic] or
to use the early works of tradition in a controversial work between
Christians and Muslims.” (Mingana’s italics) If that were
what he actually believed, one could indeed rightly criticize him for being
in a complete state of ignorance of the ambient Muslim culture. What Mingana
fatally overlooked, however, is that the single manuscript he is relying on
displays a large gap in the passage under consideration.
Ms.
. This
manuscript is nowadays easily consultable online, see
http://vmr.bham.ac.uk/Collections/Mingana/ Syriac_89.
This lacuna appears to be of an early date, since it is also present in all
the manuscripts consulted by Amar. Bar Ṣalībī, Against the
Arabs, ed. p. 111; tr. 103. Amar’s manuscripts include Harvard Syriac 91, the manuscript which
Mingana later used for comparison in his supplementary notes.
Fortunately, the oldest manuscript, Ms.
Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate 160 from the year 1207 AD, fills in
the missing relative clause qualifying Bar Ṣalībī’s statement (see
italics):
The Muslims say that they have two other books in
addition to the Qurʾān by which the lifespan of Muḥammad
is known (da-b-hūn metīdaʿ yubōlō d-Mwḥmd):
the Maghāzī (ܡܓܐܙܝ), which records the actions of Muḥammad in battle, and
(also) at the end of the book which they call the Mukhtāra (ܡܘܟܬܪܐ), they report
on the lifespan (yubōleh) of Muḥammad.
Ms. Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate 160, f.
271a-b. Cf. Bar Ṣalībī, Against the Arabs,
ed. p. 111, tr. p. 103-4. Also the word yubōleh occuring at the end of this passage appears to be
a better reading than yuqneh, ‘his image’,
the reading attested in the manuscripts consulted by Amar.
Thus, the mentioned “two other books” do not at all refer to
Muslim literature in general, as Mingana understood it, but only to particular works narrating the life of Muḥammad.
Apparently, Bar Ṣalībī acquired this knowledge from Muslim informants,
presumably orally or through a writing. As for the first work refered to,
there are numerous Islamic writings entitled Kitāb
al-Maghāzī (Book of Expeditions) reporting
on Muḥammad’s raids and military campagns during the Medinan period, such as
those of Ibn Isḥāq (d. c. 770) and al-Wāqidī (d. 823), to name only two
important writers.
See the works surveyed by F. Sezgin, Geschichte
des arabischen Schrifttums, Vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1967),
237-56, 275-302; and more generally M. Hinds, “Al-Maghāzī,” EI
2 5
(1986): 1161-6. The writing that answers to the name Mukhtāra is more doubtful. One possibility is that it
refers to a sīra work that has al-mukhtār, ‘the chosen one’, in its title, such as for instance
al-Baghawī’s (d. 1117) Kitāb al-Anwār fī shamāʾil al-Nabī
al-Mukhtār (Book of Elucidations on the Good
Qualities of the Chosen Prophet).
Although Bar Ṣalībī only refers to sīra
works the Muslims say they have in their possession, without claiming any
direct affinity with them, he does appear to be familiar with the basic
Muslim narrative of Muḥammad’s early years as seen from the account that
follows immediately thereafter, which was completely ignored by Mingana:
They also call him Aḥmad (cf. Q 61:6), as if it is the
same as Muḥammad, son of ʿAbdallāh, son of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib. When his father
died, his uncle Abū Ṭālib raised him, and his foster mother was called
ḥalīma. When he was forty years old, he went around saying that two angels
had come, tied up his stomach, washed his heart, and restored it to his
body. He also saw along the road a tree and a rock that greeted him. One day
he saw an angel who tried to strangle him three times, saying to him:
‘Recite in the name of your Lord, who made man from clay. Recite by your
honorable Lord, who instructed with the pen that wrote’ (Q 96:1-4). Bar Ṣalībī, Against the Arabs, ed. p. 111, tr. p. 103-4.
Amar misread several proper names at the beginning of this passage.
The oldest manuscript has an additional sentence which adds a
somewhat polemical twist to the narrative: “Muḥammad and his foster
mother put him [the angel] down, as he [the angel] was about to
choke him with the pen that wrote”, see Ms. Syriac
Orthodox Patriarchate 160, f. 271b.
Very similar descriptions of Muḥammad’s genealogy, his
upbringing as an orphan, the miraculous events prefiguring his prophetic
mission, and the first revelation said to be brought to him by the angel
Gabriel at mount ḥirāʾ, are readily found in the sīra
literature.
See e.g. Alfred Guillaume, The Life of Muḥmmad: A
Translation of Ibn Isḥaq’s Sīrat rasūl Allāh (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 69-72 (on his birth, foster
mother, and the washing of his heart by two men in white when he was
an infant); p. 79 (Abū Ṭālib becomes Muḥammad’s guardian after the
death of his grandfather); p. 104-106 (on the stones and trees
greeting him and the first revelation he received, i.e. Q 96:1-5).
Note the slight discrepancy that Abū Ṭālib became Muḥammad’s
guardian after the death of his grandfather ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, not
after the death of his father, as Bar Ṣalībī wrote. The
Islamic character of this account is further emphasized by the fact that a
very different, much more polemic portrayal of Muḥammad’s career, drawn from
the Chronicle of Dionysius of Tell-Maḥrē (d. 845),
was included in Bar Ṣalībī’s opening chapter. See n. 7 for my forthcoming
study on this chapter.
Heresiography
The earliest trace of Islamic literature in the work is found
as early as chapter two, which discusses the divisions that arose in the
early Muslim community. Bar Ṣalībī writes that “approximately 73 heresies
(heresīs)” belonging to four principal sects
sprang up among Muḥammad’s people after his death. These four ‘mother’ sects
call themselves al-Shīʿa, al-Khawārij, al-Muʿtazila,
and al-Sunna, but their opponents call them
respectively al-Rawāfiḍ, al-Ḥarūriyya, al-Qadariyya, and
al- al-Murjiʾa. For all of these Arabic appelations Bar Ṣalībī also
provides Syriac equivalents. See Talay, “Aus dem polemischen Genre,” p.
516-7. This terminological overview then proceeds with a
sketch of the enmity and discord among them concerning the issues of
rightful leadership and divine providence. During this discussion, Bar
Ṣalībī also quotes some Qurʾānic verses and ḥadīth
said to be used against one another by these four sects. Bar Ṣalībī, Against the Arabs, ed. p. 5-8, tr. p. 2-9. In his Arabic
Chronicle, Bar ʿEbrōyō includes a similar but more elaborate account
of early Islamic schisms, undoubtedly borrowed from (a) Muslim
source(s), see Bar ʿEbrōyō, Taʾrīkh mukhtaṣar
al-duwal, ed. Ṣalhānī, p. 164-7.
The originality of this account among Syriac Christian texts
on Islam has been pointed out by scholars as Sidney Griffith, Herman Teule,
and Barbara Roggema. See the works cited in nr. 2 and 4. What
is yet to be explored, however, are the remarkable parallels with works of
Islamic heresiography, such as those written by al-Nawbakhtī (d. 912),
al-Ashʿarī (d. 936), al-MalaṬī (d. 987), al-Baghdādī (d. 1037), and
al-Shahrastānī (d. 1153), to name only some of the most prominent. Following
explicitly or implicitly a ḥadīth about the division
of the umma into 72 or 73 sects, all the named
authors classify, just as Bar Ṣalībī did, the various sects of Islam under
the four headings of Shīʿa, Khawārij, Muʿtazila, and Murjiʾa, and discuss their internal disputes. Henri Laoust, “La classification
des sectes dans le Farq d’al-Baghdādī,” Revue des Études Islamiques 29 (1961): 19-59;
reprinted in Pluralismes dans l'islam (Paris,
1983), 135-75; id. “La classification des sects dans
l’hérésiographie ashʿarite,” Arabic and Islamic
Studies in Honor of Hamilton A. R. Gibb, ed. G. Makdisi
(Leiden 1965), 377-86.; id., “L'hérésiographie musulmane sous les
Abbassides,” Cahiers de civilisation
médiévale 38 (1967), 157-178; Dominique Sourdel, “Les
classification des sects islamiques dans le Kitāb
al-Milal d’al-Šahrastānī,” Studia
Islamica 31 (1970): 239-247; Claude Gilliot, “Islam,
‘sectes’ et groups d’opposition politico-religieux (VIIe-XIIe
siècles),” Rives nord-méditerranéeennes 10
(2002): 1-13. At least one major scholar of Islamic
heresiography has recently drawn attention to the apparent influence of this
literature on Bar Ṣalībī’s presentation of the sects of Islam. Josef van Ess, Der Eine und das Andere. Beobachtungen an
islamischen haresiographischen Texten, 2 vols (Berlin/New
York: De Gruyter, 2011), Vol. 1., p. 77.
According to al-Shahrastānī, the divisions between Muslims
boil down to four fundamental issues: (1) the divine attributes (ṣifāt Allāh); (2) faith and eschatology; (3) divine
determinism (qadar); and (4) the issue of rightful
leadership (imāma). Laoust,
“L'hérésiographie musulmane sous les Abbassides,” p. 171.
In Bar Ṣalībī’s account, however, only the final two topics
appear to be of interest and most of all the issue of divine determinism. He
goes to some lengths to describe the four sects’ opinion on whether good and
evil come from God or from human freedom. This information has a distinct
purpose in his discourse, as it allows him to thereafter refute Sunnī
determinism and reaffirm the proper Christian understanding of divine
providence and human free will. It is not surprising to encounter this theme
this early in the work. In the aftermath of the shocking Zangid destruction
of the ‘blessed city’ of Edessa in 1144 and 1146, making sense of divine
providence was a very heavily debated topic within the West Syrian
community, a debate in which Bar Ṣalībī played a prominent role, although
still only a deacon at the time. Teule, “Dionysius Bar Ṣalibi,” p. 665. The Disputation as a whole may even be written in
response to the Muslim destruction of Edessa. After having upheld
the doctrines of the Trinitiy and Incarnation to his own
satisfaction, Bar Ṣalībī somewhat triumphantically writes that,
through his efforts, “the proclamation of Christianity has achieved
victory over the people that has overpowered us because of our sins
(ʿamō d-men ʿelat ḥṭōhayn etʿašan
ʿlayn)”. This important allusion to the fall of Edessa was
mistrans-lated by Amar, see Bar Ṣalībī, Against
the Arabs, ed. p. 81, tr. p. 74.
Tafsīr
In the commentary section of mimrō III,
Bar Ṣalībī twice refers to opinions of Qurʾānic commentators, whom he calls
mfashqōnē. His first reference to Islamic
exegetical literature is on the subject of the odd so-called ‘disconnected
letters’ (al-ḥurūf al-muqaṭṭaʿa) occuring at the
beginning of the second sūra: “Alif Lam Mim. That is the Book, wherein is no
doubt, a guidance to the godfearing” (Q 2 :1-2, Arberry). In commen-ting on these verses, Bar Ṣalībī writes:
(The Qurʾān reads here) ‘that’ (haw) book and not ‘this’ (hōnō) book. Bar Ṣalībī may
allude here to the fact that although Muslim exegetes usually
interpret dhālika l-kitāb (Q 2:2) to mean
‘this book’, i.e. the Qurʾān, it literally says ‘that book’. This sentence was not included in Amar’s
translation, though it is present in his edition. What
sort of book is this? Their exegetes (mfashqōnē
dīlhūn) interpret these letters in many different ways. Some of
them say that these letters are the numbers of the years of Muḥammad[‘s
community] My
emendation.. And there are those who interpret them
according to the name of their God. Therefore he wrote and added after the
letters, saying: ‘That is the great tablet (lawḥō
rabtō) which is in heaven, raised up before the eyes of the angel
Michael’, which they call in Arabic (b-Ṭayyōyōʾīt),
the ‘Preserved Tablet’ ([al-] lawḥ
al-maḥfūẓ, ܠܘܚ ܐܠܡܚ[ܦ]ܘܕ). Bar Ṣalībī, Against the Arabs, ed. p. 112, tr. p. 104.
Muslim exegetical literature reports a wide range of possible
interpretations for the ‘disconnected letters’ appearing at the beginning of
some 29 sūras. On
the large spectrum of interpretations within Sunnī tafsīr, see Martin Nguyen, “Exegesis of the ḥurūf al-muqaṭṭaʿa: Polyvalency in Sunnī
Traditions of Qur’ānic Interpretation,” Journal of
Qurʾānic Studies 14/2 (2012): 1-28. Within this
large spectrum of views one finds the very same opinions voiced by Bar
Ṣalībī. With some discontent, al-Ṭabarī mentions a report to the extent that
a group of Jews had heard the recitation of alif lām
mīm and said that the numerical value of these letters (1+30+40)
indicate the number of years Muḥammad’s community would last. When they
thereafter heard the recitation of other letters carrying each time a higher
numerical value, they in the end had to conclude that the matter was
ambiguous.
al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy
al-Qurʾān, ed. Cairo, p. 210. Among the
interpretations al-Ṭabarī is more supportive of, he refers to the view that
the letters refer to God’s greatest name (al-ism
al-aʿẓam); to an abbreviation of one of God’s names, e.g. alm means al-raḥīm; or to
multiple names of God, i.e. alif stands for Allāh, lām for al-Laṭīf (‘the Gentle’), and mīm for al-Majīd (‘the Glorious’). Ibid., p.
204-228. Other commentators interpret the letters as one
of the names of the Qurʾān and say that it refers to God’s statement: “I
revealed this book [i.e. the Qurʾān] to you from the ‘Preserved Tablet’ (al-lawḥ al-maḥfūẓ)”, i.e. from the heavenly Book (cf.
Q 85:21-2).
al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-aḥkām al-Qurʾān, ed.
Beirut, p. 241. See Daniel A. Madigan, “Preserved Tablet,” EQ 4 (2004): 261-3.
Ms. Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate 160 has preserved an
additional sentence to Bar Ṣalībī’s comment which may contain his motive for
adducing this information on Muslim exegesis. In it, Bar Ṣalībī appeals to
the authority of Muḥammad to appropriate the contents of the ‘Preserved
Tablet’ to Christianity: “The things he [i.e. the angel Michael] recites
here, he [i.e. Muḥammad] says, are Christians things.”
Ms. Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate 160, f.
271b: ܗܠܝܢ ܕܬ̇ܢܐ ܗܪܟܐ ܗܠܝܢ ܕܝܠܢ ܟܖ̈ܝܣܛܝܢܐ
ܐܡܪ݂.
In other words, what the angel Gabriel is reciting from the
Preserved Tablet is not the Qurʾān in Bar Ṣalībī’s opinion, but things
(texts?) related to Christianity.
The second reference to Muslim exegesis occurs in his comment
on Q 69:17 about the so-called ḥamlat al-ʿarsh, the
angels bearing the Throne of God who are also mentioned in Q 40:7. Although
in the citation provided by Bar Ṣalībī, “They bear the Throne of your Lord
above them on the eighth day (b-yawmō tmīnōyō),” Bar Ṣalībī, Against the Arabs,
ed. 110, tr. p. 103. the reference to the amount of
angels was obscured possibly as a result of misunderstanding the elliptic
ending of the Arabic “they will bear the Throne of your Lord above them on that Day, eight [of them] (yawmaʾidh thamāniya),” Bar Ṣalībī clearly is aware of Muslim
interpretations of this verse: “Their exegetes say that four angels bear the
Throne of God, but then they add (awsefw) another
four which makes eight. Perhaps, the first four grew tired?”
Ms. Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate 160, f.
272b. The manuscripts consulted by Amar read ‘to add’ in the
singular (awsef) which is taken to mean that
it is the Qurʾān that adds four angels, see Bar Ṣalībī, Against the Arabs, ed. 113, tr. p. 106.
Mingana derived a rather bizarre argument against Bar Ṣalībī’s
translatorship from this comment, see Mingana, “An Ancient Syriac
Translation,” p. 6-7.
In this piece of rhetoric, Bar Ṣalībī appears to ridicule
Muslim exegetes who acknowledge four Throne bearers but later double their
number. To harmonize the fact that Q 69:17 mentions eight angels while some
ḥ
adīth report only four,
some exegetes indeed have taken the position that the Throne is currently
carried by four angels, but on the Day of Resurrection by eight. Stephen R.
A specific ḥadīth is often adduced in
support of this view: “Four carry Him today, eight (will carry God) on the
Day of Resurrection.” al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan
taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān, ed. Cairo, p. 229; p. 146.
The reason why Bar Ṣalībī found such a doubling of angels
absurd is obviously determined by the Biblical lens through which he reads
the Qurʾān. As such, he certainly knew that in Ezekiel’s vision only four
creatures carry the divine Throne (Ezek 1). He thus indirectly appears to be
criticizing Muslim exegetes, and by extension the Qurʾān, for contradicting
the Bible, a polemic made repeatedly in the Disputation.
Ḥadīth
Three direct citations of prophetic sayings of Muḥammad
recorded in the major Sunnī ḥadīth collections occur
among the Qurʾānic excerpts in mimrō III. Among the
verses dealing with creation in chapter 25, Bar Ṣalībī quotes a well-known
ḥadīth transmitted in various forms about what
God created first:
Disputation, XXV
Sunan Abū Dāwūd
And when he [i.e. Muḥammad] wished to speak of
creation, he said: “First He created the pen of the scribe (qnayō d-sōfrō). He said to the pen: ‘Walk and
write!’ But the pen answered: ‘What should I write?’. He said:
‘Write concerning what will happen until the end’. Bar Ṣalībī, Against the Arabs, ed. p. 110, tr. p.
102.
[…] I heard the Messenger of God (peace be
upon him) say: ‘The first thing God created was the pen (al-qalam)’. He said to it: ‘Write!’ It asked:
‘What should I write, my Lord?’ He said: ‘Write what was decreed
about everything until the Last Hour’ […].
Sunan Abū Dāwūd, ed. Dār al-salām, Vol. 5, book 42, 4700,
p. 213 (translation slightly adapted). For other versions,
see ‘creation’ in A. J. Wensinck, A
Handbook of Early Mohammadan Tradition (Leiden:
Brill, 1927), p. 49.
The reason why Bar Ṣalībī found this saying important enough to
include is seen from his commentary, in which he makes the error of
Muḥammad’s teaching apparent by contrasting it with the Biblical account of
creation:
Moses wrote: ‘In the beginning, God
created heaven and earth’ (Gen 1:1). He said this before [writing that]
(God) created the qalam, that is, the pen (qnayō
) of the scribe! And how is God in need of
writing, unless he fears to forget something?! Bar Ṣalībī,
Against the Arabs, ed. p. 113, tr. p. 105. Note Bar
Ṣalībī’s use of the Arabic term for pen, qalam.
On another occasion, in chapter 30, Bar Ṣalībī introduces a
saying of Muḥammad concerning his community with the words ‘Muḥammad
said’:
Disputation, XXX
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī
Muḥammad said: ‘My community is among the
nations as a white spot on a black ox (ūmtō dīly
baynōtʿammē ak ōtōḥwōrtō b-tawrō ukōmō)’. Bar Ṣalībī, Against the Arabs, ed. p. 128, tr. p.
122.
[…] (Muḥammad) said: ‘My community is among
the nations as a white hair on a black ox (inna
ummatī fī l-umamk-al-shaʿara al-bayḍāʾ fī l-thawr
al-aswad)’.
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, ed. Dār al-salām, Vol. 8, book 81, 6529,
p. 287 (translation slightly adapted).
Muḥammad’s apparent admittance of the insignificant position of
his community apparently was of value to Bar Ṣalībī’s polemics, for this is
what one reads in his commentary: “Your own prophet testifies that (Muslims)
are few in the world. Christians, however, are numerous and this is why they
are strong.” Bar
Ṣalībī, Against the Arabs, ed. p. 135, tr. p.
130.
With the words “Prayer of the Ṭayyōyē,”
Bar Ṣalībī cites one final ḥadīth in chapter 30. This
prayer is the well-known ‘Abrahamic prayer’ (al-ṣalāt
al-Ibrāhīmiyya) reported in various ḥadīth
collections, which serves as the closing supplication of the five-daily
Muslim prayer:
Disputation, XXX
Sunan Abū Dāwūd
Prayer of the Muslims: ‘O God, pray (ṣalō) for Muḥammad and the sons of his
people. And bless (barek) Muḥammad and the
sons of his people as you prayed for (ṣlayt),
blessed (barekt), and had mercy (w-ḥōnt) on Abraham and the sons of his
people. For he [i.e. Muḥammad] is praiseworthy and exalted (mshabḥō wa-mraymō)’. Bar Ṣalībī, Against the Arabs, ed. p. 132, tr. p.
127. Mingana was unable to identify this passage, perhaps
because he read ʿameh, ‘his people’
as ʿamhu, Arabic for ‘his paternal
uncle’, see Mingana, “An Ancient Syriac Translation,” p. 45
(nr. 3)
[…] So he [i.e. Muḥammad] said: ‘O God, send
your ṣalāt (ṣalli)
upon Muhammad, and the family of Muḥammad, as you have sent your ṣalāt (ṣallayta) upon
Abraham. And send your bless-ings (bārik)
upon Muhammad, and the family of Muḥammad, as you have sent your
blessings (bārakta) upon the family of
Abraham. Indeed, you are the praiseworthy (ḥamīd), the glorious (majīd)’.
Sunan Abū Dāwūd, ed. Dār al-salām,
Vol. 1, book 177/8, 976, p. 571-2 (translation slightly
adapted).
Though Bar Ṣalībī provides no comment for this quotation, his
motive for including it most likely is linked to an earlier debate on the
meaning of Christ’s prayer and the Muslim’s prayer for Muḥammad, in which
Bar Ṣalībī argued that “because you pray for your prophet, you seem to be
better than he is since you petition God to forgive him his
wrongdoing”.
Bar Ṣalībī, Against the Arabs, ed. p. 72, tr.
p. 65. This polemic background may also explain
(assuming that Bar Ṣalībī is the translator at work) why the Arabic verb ṣallā, which can mean ‘to pray’ or ‘to bless’
(usually the latter in this context) is rendered by its Syriac cognate
having only the meaning ‘to pray’. Even more pertinent, this background
could also provide an explanation for the distorted concluding doxology
which addresses the prayer not to God, but to Muḥammad.
In addition to these three direct quotations of prophetic ḥadīth, Bar Ṣalībī also twice alludes to Muslim
traditions on the collection of the Qurʾān. In chapter 23, in response to
the Muslim critique that the Gospels are unreliable since they were written
by the apostles and not by Christ himself, Bar Ṣalībī retorts by arguing
that such a critique applies as well to the Qurʾān, which was not written
down by Muḥammad himself, but was collected for the first time into a single
codex by his cousin ʿAlī ibn Abū Ṭālib:
Against them we say: Consider that when Muḥammad died,
the Qurʾān was neither written down. So his cousin ʿAlī ibn Abū Ṭālib –
others of them say: ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān – swore that he would not put on the
cloak (marṭūṭō) until their scripture was collected
and its parts joined together. For they were scattered here and there among
various individuals during the life of Muḥammad. So ʿAlī collected it and
made it into a single codex (ktōbō), and he called it
‘Qurʾān’ because he joined, that is, bound together (aqrana awkīt dabaq) (the fragments). Therefore ‘Qurʾān’ means:
‘volume and collection of disparate fragments’. Bar Ṣalībī, Against the Arabs, ed. p. 98, tr p. 90-1. Amar misread the
part on the swearing, reading it as though ʿAlī swore that ʿUthmān
would not put on the cloak. Note that Bar Ṣalībī implies that the
term ‘Qurʾān’ is etymologically derived from the Arabic verb aqrana, ‘to join together, to combine’, from
the root q-r-n, rather than from the root q-r-ء, ‘to read, to
recite’, which is the standard explanation. Though Bar Ṣalībī’s take
on it is manifestly polemical, this alternative etymology is not as
“fanciful” as Amar suggested, for the root q-r-n is discussed by Arab lexicographers among the
possible meaning of ‘Qurʾān’, see Anne-Sylvie Boisliveau, Le Coran par lui-même: Vocabulaire et
argumentation du discours coranique autoréférentiel
(Leiden: Brill, 2014), p. 41-3.
Although the standard Muslim account ascribes the first
collection of the Qurʾān to the initiative of Caliph Abū Bakr, several
traditions recorded in both Sunnī and Shīʿī sources indeed contain reports
that it was ʿAlī who first collected the Qurʾān after Muḥammad’s death.
Interestingly enough, such reports also mention ʿAlī’s act of swearing not
to put on the cloak, that is, not to leave the house, until the Qurʾān was
fully collected. For instance:
ʿAbd Khayr reported from ʿAlī that when he saw people in
despair and frustration at the death of the Prophet, he swore that he would
not wear his cloak on his back until he had collected the Qurʾān. Then he
sat in his house and collected the Qurʾān. So it was the first muṣḥaf in which the Qurʾān had been collected –
collected from his heart and this [muṣḥaf] is with
the descendants of Jaʿfar. Quoted in Shehzad Saleem, Collection of the Qurʾān: A Critical and Historical Study of
Al-Farāhī’s View (PhD diss., University of Wales Lampeter,
2010), p. 239. For the narratives of ʿAlī’s collection of the
Qurʾān, see ibid., p. 236-279; Seyfeddin
Kara, “The Suppression of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib’s Codex: Study of the
Traditions on the Earliest Copy of the Qurʾān,”
Journal of Near Eastern Studies
75/2
(2016): 267-289.
Bar Ṣalībī also remarks that Muslims differ on who collected
the Qurʾān for the first time: was it ʿAlī ibn Abū Ṭālib, or as “others of
them say” ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān? This ambiguity is also reflected in Islamic
sources, although there not only a difference is to be noted on whether the
first collection of the Qurʾān was made by ʿAlī or ʿUthmān, but “each of the
first four caliphs is reported to have been the first person to collect the
Ḳurʾān [sic].”
Welch, “Ḳurʾān,” EI
2 5 (1986), p. 405. See
also John Burton, The Collection of the
Qurʾān (Cambrigde: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p.
138-159.
According to the most widespread Sunnī account, the final
consonantal text was established during the reign of Caliph ʿUthmān who was
confronted with the need of uniting the Muslim community around one unified,
official text. The Caliph obtained the Qurʾānic collection commissioned by
Abū Bakr now in the possession of ḥafṢa, and appointed a commission to copy
it into several volumes which then were sent to the main cities of the
empire. Due to ʿUthmān’s initiative in the establishment of an official,
unified text, it came to be called al-muṣḥaf
al-ʿUthmānī, ‘the ʿUthmānic Codex’. Bar Ṣalībī also seems to know
of this subsequent stage of the Qurʾān’s textual history. To refute the
Muslim claim that the revelation of the Qurʾān is similar to that of the Law
and the Gospel, Bar Ṣalībī points out that, unlike Moses’ writing of the Law
and the apostles’ writing of the Gospel, Muḥammad did not write down the
Qurʾān himself, but ʿUthmān did it, which is why the book is called the
ʿUthmānic Codex (ktōbō
ʿUthmānī):
As for you, from where was the scripture revealed to
your prophet, although he [i.e. Muḥammad] died without writing (it)? Abū
Bakr ruled after him and did not write anything down, neither did ʿUmar
write the scripture. ʿUthmān collected (kanesh) your
scripture which had been collected by your elders (sōbē) and he made them swear to say whatever they heard from the
prophet. He wrote this down, and it was called ‘the ʿUthmānic Codex’ (ktōbō
ʿUthmānī). Bar Ṣalībī, Against the Arabs, ed. p. 111, tr. p. 103.
Note Bar Ṣalībī’s use of the nisba adjective
ʿUthmānī.
The oldest manuscript has also here preserved an additional
sentence, in which reference is made to other Muslim works narrating the
Qurʾān’s textual history: “The Muslims say they have two other books [in
which] the story of the codices is written (Ōmrīn
Ṭayyōyē d-īt l-hūn trēn ktōbē ḥrōnē. Ktīb sharbō
da-ktōbē).”
Ms. Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate 160, f.
271b.
Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ
As the Qurʾān narrates the lives and deeds of the prophets
before Muḥammad only in a very cursory manner, Muslim commentators soon
began to reconstruct the narratives by drawing on Jewish and Christian
traditions, the so-called Isrāʾīliyyāt, On this term, see
Roberto Tottoli
, “Origin and Use of the Term
Isrāʾīliyyāt in Muslim Literature,” Arabica
46 (1999): 193-209. which led to the emergence of
collections of ‘stories of the prophets’ (Qiṣaṣ
al-anbiyāʾ). These collections were included in the early sections
of Muslim historiographies, or were transmitted in separate works of Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ. Though the latter works were
produced from early on, it was in the eleventh century, just before Bar
Ṣalībī’s lifetime, that major works were composed, such as those by Abū
Isḥaq al-Thaʿlabī and Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Kisāʾī. Both were very
popular, comprehensive collections of traditions on the prophets, ordered
chronologically from creation to the time of Jesus. On this genre in general, see
Tilman Nagel, Die Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ. Ein Beitrag
zur Arabischen Literaturgeschichte (PhD diss., University
of Bonn, 1967); Roberto Tottoli, Biblical Prophets
in the Qurʾan and Muslim Literature, Routledge Studies in
the Qur'an (London/New York: Routledge, 2001). There are
two passages in mimrō III that recall the often
rather legendary character of the Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ
genre.
In the context of the Adam narratives of chapter 26, Bar
Ṣalībī quotes a peculiar account of Adam’s creation according to which he
would have laid soulless on the earth for forty years. A very similar
tradition was already reported by al-Ṭabarī (d. 923) in both his Tafsīr and History:
Disputation,
XXVI
Ṭabarī, Tafsīr/Ta
ʾrīkh
Adam was formed and lay on the earth for forty
years without a soul. The angels passed by him and saw him. Bar Ṣalībī,
Against the Arabs, ed. p. 115,
tr. p. 108. Note that the mention of the angels’ fear is
absent from Bar Ṣalībī’s version, possibly because it was
irrelevant to the point he seeks to make.
So God shaped Adam into a human being, and he
remained a figure of clay for forty years, corresponding to the day
of Friday. The angels passed by him and were seized with fear by
what they saw, and Iblīs felt fear most. al-Ṭabarī,
Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy
al-Qurʾān, ed. Cairo, p. 459; Franz Rosenthal, The History of al-Tabari, Vol. 1: General Introduction and From the
Creation to the Flood (Albany: Suny Press, 1989),
p. 262. On the proces of the creation of Adam, see Cornelia
Schöck, Adam im Islam. Ein Beitrag zur
Ideengeschichte der Sunna (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz
Verlag, 1993), p. 74-8. This aspect of the creation of Adam
was not discussed in Kisters’ study of Adamic legends in
Islam, see M. J. Kister, “
The idea behind this waiting period appears to be that a
certain time was needed for Adam’s clay body to dry before God could breathe
a soul into it.
Schöck, Adam im Islam, p. 75.
Such a time interval is, of course, totally alien to Bar Ṣalībī’s biblical
frame of reference, which is exactly the point he draws out in his
commentary:
Although scripture says that Adam was
created on the sixth day (cf. Gn 1:26-31), this scripture says that Adam
was formed and was lying without a soul in the dust of the earth for
forty years! Bar Ṣalībī, Against the Arabs,
ed. p. 116, tr. p. 109.
In chapter 27 on Noah and the flood, Bar Ṣalībī at one point
interrupts the flow of Qurʾānic verses with a lengthy report on a giant
named Og, son of ʿAnaq (ʿAwg/ʿŪg bar ʿAnaq), said to
have survived the flood and who was later killed by Moses. The purpose of
this report, as his comment shows, is clearly to ridicule the silly stories
given credence by Muslims. Bar Ṣalībī, Against the Arabs,
ed. p. 119, tr. p. 112: “Observe that also this story is
unbelievable, dull, and very foolish”. As the many
legendary embellishments in this Og story very specifically points to a Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ work, it is worth quoting in full:
(God) did not set apart men, except Noah and those who
were with him in the ark, and Og, son of ʿAnaq, as the readers of the
scriptures (qōryay ktōbē) say. Og was the son of
Sayhan and his mother ʿAnaq, and Og was a giant. As he was created by God,
his stature was so great in creation that no one was able to describe it.
And he was an enemy of the Muslims (b
ʿeldbōbō d-mashlmōnē) and those who are like them.
His mother, ʿAnaq, was a woman of the daughters of Adam, and, as they say,
she was beautiful to behold. But the readers of the scriptures say that at
his birth he was already huge, in a way that is impossible to relate. On the
waist of the giant there was a belt, and he used to stretch out his hand
into the sea to take hold of a big fish from the bottom of the sea and he
would hold it up to the sun to roast and eat it. He lived for 3600 years. He
was born in the days of Adam, and lived until (the time of) Moses who killed
him.
They say that he was killed as such: The giant looked
from a distance upon the Children of Israel (bnay
Īsrōʾīl) as they were praying in their camp, and determined that
the circumference of the camp was about two hours away. So the giant
approached a big mountain and broke off a rock as big as the circumference
of the camp. He put it above his head intending to hurl it on them to kill
them then and there. But immediately, God sent a common bird, a hoopoe, to
show His power to His servant. And it took hold of a palm branch and a rock
the size of the head of the giant. And when the hoopoe pierced the rock, it
fell on the giant’s neck who collapsed to the ground. Bar Ṣalībī, Against the Arabs, ed. p. 118-119, tr. p.
111-2.
In the Old Testament, Og is only scantly mentioned as the
Amorite king of Bashan, a last descendant of a race of giants who was
defeated by Moses (cf. Nu 21:33-35; Dt 1:4; 3:11; 4:47). In early rabbinic
writings, these disparate verses gave rise to legendary elaborations which
later found their way to Muslim sources. B. Heller and S.M. Wasserstrom, “Ūdj,” EI
2 10
(2000): 777-8. See also Admiel Kosman, “The Story of a Giant Story:
The Winding Way of Og King of Bashan in the Jewish Haggadic
Tradition,”
Hebrew Union College
Annual 73 (2002): 157-190; Ján Pauliny, “ʿŪg ibn
ʿAnāq, ein sagenhafter Riese: Untersuchungen zu den islamischen
Riesengeschichten,” Craecolatina et Orientalia
5 (1973): 249-268. In the story itself, as cited by
Bar Ṣalībī, clues are found that it was indeed taken from a Muslim source,
namely the reference to “the readers of the scriptures” which is how ahl al-kitāb, the Muslim designation for Jews and
Christians, is usually translated in the Disputation;
the appellation of Moses’ people as bnay Īsrōʾīl, the
cognate of the Qurʾānic appelation banū Isrāʾīl; and
the fact that the giant is portrayed as “an enemy of the Muslims”. Gutmann remarks
that Og, who was among the earliest biblical figures depicted in
Islamic art, fascinated Muslims “as he symbolized the accursed, evil
infidel who is vanquished by such true believers as Moses”, see
Joseph Gutmann, “More about the Giant Og in Islamic Art,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute 3 (1989):
107-114, p. 111.
Indeed, very similar narratives, including specific details
are reported in popular works of Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ
such as those by al-Thaʿlabī and al-Kisāʿī’. al-Thaʿlabī, Arāʾis al-majālis fī qiṣas al-anbiyāʾ, tr. Brinner, p.
99-100, 399-403; al-Kisāʾī, Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā,
ed. Eisenberg p. 233-5, tr. Thackston, p. 251-3. The
enduring popularity of the story of Og and Moses is further testified by the
fact that historiographical works from the Mongol and later periods
sometimes include illustrations of scenes of the narrative. Joseph Gutmann and
Vera B. Moreen “The Combat between Moses and Og in Muslim
Miniatures,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute 1
(1987): 111-21. On the important place of the story of Og in Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ manuscripts from the
sixteenth century, see Naʿama Brosh and Rachel Milstein, Biblical Stories in
Islamic Painting (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1991), p.
39-40, 97-9; Rachel Milstein, Karin Rührdanz, and Barbara Schmitz,
Stories of the Prophets: Illustrated
Manuscripts of Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ (California: Mazda
Publishers, 1999), p. 131, 191. An early example is found
in Zakariyyā al-Qazwīnī’s (d. 1283) ʿAjāʾib al-Makhlūqāt
wa-gharāʾib al-mawjūdāt (Marvels of Creatures and
Strange Things Existing):
Image:
Ms.
Walters 659, f. 143b
Ms. Walters 659, f. 143b,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Muhammad_ibn_Muhammad_Shakir_Ruzmah-%27i_Nathani__The
_Demon_%27Uj_ibn_%27Unuq_Carries_a_Mountain_with_which_to_Kill_Moses_and_His_Men_-_Walters_W659143B_-_Full_Page.jpg
Concluding Remarks
Almost a century after Mingana’s paper on the Disputation Against the Arabs, a new start was made in the present
article in tracing the potential Islamic sources Bar Ṣalībī relied upon in
composing the work. Mingana’s swift claim that Bar Ṣalībī’s knowledge of Islamic
works was “extremely meagre” has proven to be ‘extremely’ inaccurate, not only
because it rests on a flawed textual basis, but also because it combines with a
highly selective reading of the text. The fact that little of the material
discussed above is paralleled in other known Syriac (or Christian Arabic) texts
leads one to suspect very strongly that Bar Ṣalībī was drawing directly on
Islamic sources, incorporating material as he saw fit to his apologetic and
polemic purposes at hand.
However, one should not fall in the opposite extreme of saying
that his knowledge of Islamic sources was ‘extremely rich’. Given the fact that
one finds in many Islamic works material on Muḥammad’s life, the sects of Islam,
tafsīr, the ḥadīth, and the
stories of the prophets, a limited number of Vorlagen
could already suffice to account for all the material under review. The
specificity of the material of the heresiography and Qiṣaṣ
al-anbiyāʾ genres may warrant first and foremost further exploration
along these lines. Particularly the prospects of a reliance on a work of Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ seems promising, as the use of such a
Vorlage not only could explain the origin of his
legendary accounts on Adam’s creation and Og the giant, but potentially also
account for his notices on Muḥammad’s life and Muslim exegesis as well as his
direct citations of ḥadīth material. Even more
fascinating – to go already one step further – it may possibly also go to some
lengths in explaining where the thematically arranged collection of Qurʾānic
excerpts included in mimrō III came from in the first
place. All of this, however, is a subject for some other time.
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