Envisioning Islam DIvInatIons: REREaDIng LatE ancIEnt RELIgIon series Editors: Daniel Boyarin, virginia Burrus, Derek Krueger a complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher. EnvIsIonIng IsLam syriac christians and the Early muslim World michael Philip Penn university of pennsylvania press philadelphia copyright © 2015 University of Pennsylvania Press all rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United states of america on acid-free paper 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Library of congress cataloging-in-Publication Data IsBn 978-0-8122-4722-0 contents Introduction 1 chapter 1. When good things Happened to other People: syriac memories of the Islamic conquests 15 chapter 2. a Different type of Difference-making: syriac narratives of Religious Identity 53 chapter 3. Using muslims to think With: narratives of Islamic Rulers 102 chapter 4. Blurring Boundaries: the continuum Between Early christianity and Early Islam 142 conclusion 183 notes 187 Bibliography 251 Index 279 acknowledgments 293 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments In August 2001, I began a Kraft- Hiatt fellowship at Brandeis University. At that point I had become quite concerned with how reductionist were most modern images of Christian- Muslim relations; time and again, almost 1,500 years of complex, multivalent interactions were reduced to a history of un- mitigated animosity. In response, I wanted to explore whether writings from a little- known branch of Christianity might change our perspective. Could these ancient, neglected texts add greater nuance to how we envision the earli- est encounters of what eventually became the world’s two largest religions? A month later, my project became more pressing and much more com- plicated. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, American views of Islam grew increasingly uniform and increasingly hostile. Historians of antiq- uity are unlikely to singlehandedly reverse this trend and instantly dissuade best- selling authors and influential speakers from unequivocal denunciations of Islam. But I do think historians can challenge the reigning view that throughout time Christianity and Islam always and inevitably clash. These changes in the early twenty- first- century political, religious, and cultural landscape profoundly affected the shape of this book. What I had originally thought would be a fairly straightforward, quick project no longer was. Instead, it turned into a much longer but, to my great delight, much more collaborative endeavor than I could have ever imagined. Almost a de- cade and a half later, it seems that the import for this sort of project has not lessened, though my ability to remember everyone who has contributed to this work certainly has. So I apologize in advance that my list of intellectual interlocutors and dear friends remains woefully incomplete. One of the greatest boons to my research was the ability to do so much of at collaborative research centers. I greatly appreciated the opportunity to spend a year in residence at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and two years at the National Humanities Center. Each was a home away from home and provided a vibrant intellectual environment Brought to you by | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Authenticated Download Date | 6/30/15 1:24 PM 294 Acknowledgments and truly fantastic library staff. In addition to these centers, several other institutions were particularly generous in their financial support of my re- search. These include the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Ameri- can Council for Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Religion, the National Endowment for the Humani- ties, the Wabash Center, Brandeis University, and Mount Holyoke College. I also obtained valuable feedback on early chapter drafts from several reading groups including Providence Patristics in Rhode Island, LARCENY (Late Ancient Religion in Central New York), the CIA (Christianity in An- tiquity) in North Carolina, and the Five College Religion Group in Western Massachusetts. I was particularly fortunate not to lose any friends when I supple- mented this feedback with a shameless distribution of chapter drafts to Rhonda Burnette- Bletsch, Denise Buell, Catherine Chin, Maria Doerfler, Christiane Luckritz Marquis, Tina Shepherdson, and Stephen Shoemaker. Mount Holyoke students in my “Early Christian- Muslim Relations” semi- nars provided an additional two semesters worth of discussions on this topic and directly reviewed much of the book manuscript. So too, several Mount Holyoke undergraduates served as amazingly productive research assistants for this project, including Gabrielle Lachtrup, Audrey Lehrer, Rani Mehta, Bree Murphy, Holly Norwick, Caitlin Rajala, Betsy Reif, Julia Spector, and Hannah Spiro. The editorial board of the Divinations series, especially Derek Kreuger, provided great suggestions for how to further revise the manuscript, as did two anonymous readers. I also obtained invaluable assistance and mentorship on all things Syriac from Gabriel Aydin, Chip Coakley, and Lucas Van Rompay. The writing itself was vastly improved through the editorial assistance of Laura Poole, founder of Archer Editorial Services, Karen Carroll at the National Humani- ties Center, and Marian Rogers, the copyeditor for the University of Penn- sylvania Press. My research began during fellowship under the mentorship of Berna- dette Brooten and Marc Brettler. Tara Fitzpatricks and Liz Penland’s expert grant advice helped it flourish. Throughout, I received constant emotional support from my parents, from a wonderful group of best friends, and from my Doktormutter Liz Clark. I can’t thank them enough. As the project grew, so too did my immediate family. It is thus to my partner Sarah Willburn along with our twin daughters Tabitha Ann Penn and Sasha Naomi Willburn that I dedicate this book. Brought to you by | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Authenticated Download Date | 6/30/15 1:24 PM Introduction John: If a village of heretics should return to the true faith, what should one do with their mysteries? Jacob: They should be sent to the adherents of their faith. For this also happened to me. Once there were some Hagarenes who carried off the Eucharist from Byzantine territory. And when they feared their conscience and brought it to me, I sent it to adherents of the Byzantine confession. — Jacob of Edessa, Second Letter to John the Stylite In the late seventh century, John the Stylite sent his friend Jacob, bishop of Edessa, a series of inquiries ranging from when to consecrate holy oil to whether one should fast after Pentecost. Complications arose, however, when John asked what he should do with Eucharistic elements from a village that had just renounced Byzantine theology. By this time, there already was a two- hundred- year tradition of John and Jacob’s church seeing the Byzantine Eu- charist as invalid. Because Jacob had acquired a reputation of being a stickler for ecclesiastical boundaries, John probably thought his mentor would further reify church divisions, declare the Byzantine Eucharistic elements profane, and instruct him to simply throw them out. Jacob, however, confounded these expectations. He instructed John to find some local Byzantine Chris- tians and give them the villagers’ Eucharistic elements. But Jacob did not stop with this unexpected answer. He followed it with an even more surprising story relating his interactions with some Hagarenes. The word “Hagarenes” was the most common term Jacob used to speak of people whom we would call Muslims. The beginning of his anecdote thus appears to support the most common modern understanding of Christian- Muslim interactions, a relationship that twentieth- and twenty-fi rst- century Brought to you by | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Authenticated Download Date | 6/30/15 1:01 PM 2 Introduction writers often characterize as a “clash of civilizations.” At first, Jacob shared a story that seemed to be about Muslim raiders invading the Byzantine Empire and pillaging Christian religious symbols to denigrate an opposing faith. But again, Jacob confounded expectations. According to Jacob, these Hagarenes eventually decided to return the Eucharistic elements to the local bishop, a decision that cannot be easily explained through a clash- of- civilizations model of interreligious encounter. Unfortunately, Jacob’s account and dozens like it do not appear in modern discussions of early Christian- Muslim relations, because they were written in the “wrong” language. Because most modern scholars of early Christianity have been trained primarily in Greek and Latin, most modern discussions of early Christian depictions of Islam have concentrated on Greek and Latin texts. But when Muslims first encountered Christians they did not meet Greek- speaking Christians from Constantinople, nor did they meet Latin- speaking Christians from the western Mediterranean. Rather, they first en- countered Christians from northern Mesopotamia who spoke the Aramaic dialect of Syriac. Living primarily in what constitutes present- day Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, and eastern Turkey, these Syriac Christians were under Muslim rule from the seventh century onward. They wrote the earliest and the most extensive accounts of Islam and described a compli- cated set of religious and cultural exchanges that were not reducible to the solely antagonistic. Nevertheless, because so few scholars read Syriac, there has been relatively little analysis of these sources. As a result, most histori- cal reconstructions of Christian-M uslim relations exclude from consideration the largest corpus of early documents about Islam. Instead, studies most com- monly focus on works whose martial context often reinforces an oppositional, clash- of- civilizations model of interreligious encounter. Greek and Latin texts were not unanimous in how they depicted Islam, nor am I suggesting that they should be examined less. Nevertheless, because of most historians’ linguistic training, there remains a notable bias as to which sources scholars privilege when they investigate early Christian reactions to Muslims. How might the history of Christianity’s relationship with Islam change if, instead of relying on the writings of Christians who often met Mus- lims on the battlefield, one focused on Syriac Christians like Jacob who had more everyday contact with Muslims? I suggest that, by shifting these earliest sources from the periphery to the center of analysis, historians can more accu- rately envision the first interactions between Christianity and Islam. Syriac texts such as Jacob’s not only present different images of Islam; Brought to you by | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Authenticated Download Date | 6/30/15 1:01 PM