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Foreword
Thanks are due to the European Science Foundation (ESF) for sponsoring
the workshop entitled ‘Convivencia in Byzantium? Cultural Exchanges in a
Multi-Lingual and Multi-Ethnic Society’, Trinity College Dublin, 1–3 October
2010, under the auspices of its Exploratory Workshops scheme. According
to their brief, these workshops aim at bringing together a relatively
small number of international scholars to map out an area of research for
further study. The purpose of this meeting was therefore that of drawing a
broader picture of what is normally understood as ‘Byzantium’, capturing
its multi-cultural essence and emphasizing the manner of interaction between
different linguistic, ethnic and religious strands in its midst.
Further thanks go to Dr Sarah Alyn-Stacey, Director of the Centre of
Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Trinity, for encouraging and co-sponsoring
the event. When Professor Sergio La Porta agreed to act as co-editor
of the final volume I could not anticipate how precious his collaboration
would be to secure an outcome, and I am deeply indebted to him. Finally,
we would like to thank all contributors to the workshop who have made this
adventure possible.
Barbara Crostini
Stockholm University
Sergio La Porta
California State University Fresno, USA
7
Contents
Barbara Crostini
Introduction: Exploring Byzantine Convivencia 9
I. DELINEATING ARABS AND ISLAM IN BYZANTIUM
David Woods
Maslama and the Alleged Construction of the First Mosque
in Constantinople c. 718 19
Reinhold F. Glei
John Damascene on Islam: a Long-Term History in Byzantium 31
Nike Koutrakou
Language and Dynamics of Communication in Byzantium:
the ‘Image’ of the Arabs in Hagiographical Sources 45
II. MATERIAL EXCHANGES AND CULTURAL DIFFUSION
Arianna D’Ottone
Manuscripts as Mirrors of a Multilingual and Multicultural Society:
the Case of the Damascus Find 63
Mariachiara Fincati
ȉઁ ੁȠȣįĮȧțȩȞ: Greek Bible and Hebraica Veritas
among Byzantine Christians and Jews 89
Athanasios K. Vionis
‘Reading’ Art and Material Culture: Greeks, Slavs
and Arabs in the Byzantine Aegean 103
8
III. CROSSING BORDERS IN TEXTS AND ART:
TALES FROM THE FRONTIERS
Isabel Toral-Niehoff
Constantine’s Baptism Legend: a ‘Wandering’ Story
between Byzantium, Rome, the Syriac and the Arab World 129
Francesca Dell’Acqua
The Fall of the Idol on the Frame of the Genoa Mandylion:
a Narrative on/of the Borders 143
Charmaine Lee
The Tale of the Veronica in Paris, BnF fr. 1553:
an Example of Translatio studii et imperii? 175
IV. THE DYNAMICS OF CO-EXISTENCE
Joshua Holo
Both Byzantine and Jewish? The Extent and Limits
of Jewish Integration in Middle Byzantine Society 189
Annick Peters-Custot
Convivencia between Christians: the Greek and Latin Communities
of Byzantine South Italy (9th
௅11th
centuries) 203
Savvas Neocleous
Greeks and Italians in Twelfth-Century Constantinople:
Convivencia or Conflict? 221
Sergio La Porta
Re-Constructing Armenia: Strategies of Co-Existence
amongst Christians and Muslims in the Thirteenth Century 251
Index nominum et rerum 273
List of Contributors 297
31
Reinhold F. Glei
John Damascene on Islam:
a Long-Term History in Byzantium
When we look at the history of Christian-Muslim relations in Byzantium1
from the viewpoint of religious studies,2
we are tempted to say that it is a
history of misunderstandings. Since the rise of Islam in the seventh and
early eighth centuries, there is, in Byzantine sources, a continuous series of
misinterpretations of Islamic doctrines,3
mistranslations of Koranic verses,4
and even misspellings of Arabic words (as we will see later). Byzantine
polemics against Islam, however, demonstrates not only the shortcomings of
an interreligious ‘dialogue’ between Christianity and Islam, but also reveals
—and perhaps that even to a higher degree— the weakness and uncertainty
of some Christian doctrines held by and discussed within the Byzantine
church. Studying Christian views on Islam,5
we learn at least as much (if not
1
See the useful compendium: Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History,
Volume 1 (600–900), ed. by David Thomas and Barbara Roggema, History of ChristianMuslim
Relations 11 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), and therein my article ‘John of
Damascus’, ibid., pp. 295–301.
2
For a current definition of comparative religious studies, cf. Hans G. Kippenberg and
Kocku von Stuckrad, Einführung in die Religionswissenschaft: Gegenstände und Begriffe
(Munich: Beck, 2003); Klaus Hock, Einführung in die Religionswissenschaft, 3rd edn
(Darmstadt: WBG, 2008); Michael Stausberg, Contemporary Theories of Religion (London:
Routledge, 2009).
3
See, in general, Adel-Théodore Khoury, Polémique Byzantine contre l’Islam (VIIIe–
XIIIe s.), 2nd edn (Leiden: Brill, 1972), and idem, Les Théologiens Byzantins et l’Islam.
Textes et auteurs (VIIIe–XIIIe s.), 2nd edn (Louvain and Paris: Édition Nauwelaerts,
1969).
4
See my article, ‘Der Mistkäfer und andere Missverständnisse. Zur frühbyzantinischen
Koranübersetzung’, in Frühe Koranübersetzungen. Europäische und außereuropäische
Fallstudien, ed. by Reinhold F. Glei (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2012),
pp. 9–24.
5
For a source-oriented overview, see Wolfgang Eichner, ‘Die Nachrichten über den Islam
bei den Byzantinern’, Islam 23 (1936), pp. 133–62 and 197–244; more recently, see
Jannis Niehoff-Panagiotidis, ‘Byzanz und der Islam. Von der Kontingenzbewältigung zur
aneignenden Übersetzung’, in Knotenpunkt Byzanz. Wissensformen und kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen,
ed. by A. Speer and Ph. Steinkrüger (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012),
pp. 123–44.
Reinhold F. Glei
32
more) about Christianity as about the religion established by Muhammad
and his successors, which was denied to be a new religion at all – a significant
fact in itself because it indicates that Christians and Muslims share
much more religious belief than is admitted by both sides.
In this article, I will try to show how early views of Islam, as put forward
by John Damascene, dominated the Byzantine attitude to Islam for a long
time, virtually until this position was ‘destroyed’ by the Latins, as we will
see. Paradoxically, the very nature of these polemics led to a kind of modus
convivendi with Islam: the new religion was not seen as a completely different
‘other’ that was, in its otherness, disturbing and bewildering to a
Christian’s mind, but rather as just another aberration from Christian belief
that could be dealt with in a way proven by the Church Fathers for many
centuries: there was no ‘Orientalism’ at all in Byzantine polemics against
Islam. So if we take convivencia not only as a historical or sociological
term, but also as a hermeneutical one, we find a cultural and religious affinity
between Christianity and Islam, based on many similarities and
proved even by polemics, which stands to reason in view of their shared
background.
The earliest known Christian document to deal with Islam in some detail is
John Damascene’s chapter on the “still prevailing deceptive superstition of
the Ismaelites, the fore-runner of the Antichrist”.6
John Damascene, who
lived from about 675 until some time before 754, was a high official in
Damascus under the Umayyad caliphs Abd al-Malik and perhaps al-Walid I.
Under Caliph ‘Umar II (r. 717–20) who is assumed to have prohibited
dhimmƯs from holding high positions in government unless they converted
to Islam, John retired from office and entered the famous monastery of Mar
6
The standard edition is Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, ed. Byzantinisches Institut
der Abtei Scheyern. IV: Liber de haeresibus. Opera polemica, ed. Bonifatius Kotter
OSB, Patristische Texte und Studien, 22 (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1981),
pp. 60–7; for an English translation, see Daniel J. Sahas, John of Damascus on Islam.
The “Heresy of the Ishmaelites” (Leiden: Brill, 1972), pp. 133–41 (Greek text taken from
PG). See also Johannes Damaskenos und Theodor Abnj Qurra, Schriften zum Islam, ed.
and comm. Reinhold Glei and Adel Theodor Khoury, Corpus Islamo-Christianum, Series
Graeca 3 (Würzburg: Echter, 1995). The quotation mentioned above is from De Haeresibus,
ch. 100, ed. Kotter, p. 60, 1–2.
John Damascene on Islam
33
Saba near Jerusalem, where he devoted himself to studying and writing.7
His main work is the so-called Fount of Knowledge (ȆȘȖ੽ ȖȞઆıİȦȢ), a
large compendium of the theological knowledge up to his time. The second
part of this work forms a group of one hundred chapters called ‘heresies’,
containing not only Christian heresies in the proper sense of the word, but
also such varied topics as, e.g., Platonism, Judaism, and Arianism. The final
chapter deals with the latest and most dangerous heresy that has deceived so
many people in the last decades, i.e. Islam.
The significance of chapter 100 can hardly be overestimated. It formed
the Christian image of Islam for many centuries. As will be seen, later writings
often only develop and enrich the motifs laid down in the Damascene’s
description of Muhammad’s religion. What we are told about Islam (to give
a short abstract of chapter 100) is that the Arabs originated from Ismael, son
of Hagar and Abraham, and are therefore called Ismaelites or Hagarenes. In
pre-Islamic times, they were idolaters, until, at the time of Emperor Heraclius
(r. 610–41), a certain Muhammad appeared who, instructed by an
Arian monk,8
showed his pagan people the way to monotheism, telling them
that a holy scripture had come down to him from heaven. But Muhammad
was no true prophet because his mission was not confirmed by any witnesses
or miracles, and what is even more ridiculous, he got his revelations
while asleep. Muhammad’s most important doctrine was that there is no
God but the one God, creator of all things, who has neither begotten nor was
he begotten —clearly a quotation from Surah 112,3 (lam yalid wa-lam
ynjlad), which is a polemical reference to Christology. Yet, by reproaching
the Christians for being ‘associators’ (mušriknjn in Arabic), Muhammad at
the same time presents God as ਙȜȠȖȠȢ țĮ੿ ਙʌȞȠȣȢ (“without word and
spirit”),9
for he denies the Holy Trinity, the Logos and the Spirit being
persons (ਫ਼ʌȠıIJȐıİȚȢ) of the one God. If Christians, then, are ‘associators’
(ਦIJĮȚȡȚĮıIJĮȓ in Greek), the Muslims are ‘mutilators’ (țȩʌIJĮȚ) of God by
making him dumb and stupid, so to speak. Furthermore, they deny the cruci-
7
For a biography of John Damascene, see Sahas, John of Damascus on Islam, pp. 32 ff.,
and idem, ‘Cultural Interaction during the Ummayad Period. The “Circle” of John of
Damascus’, ARAM: Society for Syro-Mesopotamian Studies 6 (1994), pp. 35–66.
8
This is a variant of the ‘vulgate’ tradition of the Nestorian monk Sergius (BaতƯrƗ). See
Barbara Roggema, The Legend of Sergius Ba‫ۊ‬ƯrƗ. Eastern Christian Apologetics and
Apocalyptic in Response to Islam (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
9
Ed. Kotter, p. 63, 73.
Reinhold F. Glei
34
fixion of Christ, and therefore miss the central dogma of soteriology, falsely
thinking that Christian worship of the Holy Cross is a form of idolatry.
For their part, Muslims are performing many pagan rites during their
pilgrimage and especially at the Ka‘ba. This point I am going to explain in
more detail in what follows. At the end of chapter 100, John Damascene
quotes some passages from several Surahs, namely from Surah 4 (The
Women), Surah 5 (The Table), Surah 2 (The Cow) and from an obscure
Surah named The She-Camel of God, which does not exist in the Qur’Ɨn and
probably refers to popular legends developed from the camel of ৡƗliত and
the Thamnjd mentioned in Surah 7 and elsewhere.10
Since the ending is quite
abrupt, chapter 100 may therefore be considered as incomplete.
Of course, it is impossible to discuss all these issues in detail here. Thus,
I would like to pick up one example to see how a central point in the Damascene’s
attitude to Islam was adopted, developed, and modified by later Byzantine
authors. As will be seen, there is a clear continuity up to the twelfth
century and a surprising break in the fourteenth century.
Just at the beginning of his account on Islam, John Damascene tells us
that, in pre-Islamic times, “(the Saracens) had been idolaters and venerated
the Morning Star and Aphrodite, whom notably they called Chabar in their
own language, which means ‘great’. So, until the times of Heraclius, they
were undoubtedly idolaters.”11
The pre-Islamic Arabian cult of Venus and the Morning Star, respectively,
are well known from ancient sources. Jerome, for example, in his Vita of
Hilarion, clearly attests it: “they (a certain Celtic people) are venerators of
Venus because she is the Morning Star, to whose cult (also) the Saracen
people are devoted”.12
Other testimonies, like that of the Greek historian
Procopius, suggest that the old pagan goddess al-‘UzzƗ (mentioned in the
Qur’Ɨn 53,19f.) is to be identified with Aphrodite.13
Isaac of Antioch, a
Syrian writer of the fifth century, also mentions al-‘UzzƗ using the Syrian
name Kaukabta which means She-Star, i.e. Venus.14
Jerome, in turn, in his
commentary on the prophet Amos, speaks of a star-god, “that in Hebrew is
10
See the commentary by Khoury in Schriften zum Islam, ed. Glei and Khoury, p. 198.
11
Ed. Kotter, p. 60, 7–9.
12
S. Eusebius Hieronymus, Vita S. Hilarionis Eremitae, PL 23, 29–54, at col. 41B.
13
Cf. Procopius Caesariensis, De Bello Persico 2,28,13: The Saracens sacrifice an enemy
to Aphrodite.
14
Cf. Julius Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums, gesammelt und erläutert, 3rd repr.
(Berlin, 1961; 1st edn, 1887), p. 40.
John Damascene on Islam
35
called Chocab, i.e. the Morning Star, whom the Saracens are venerating
until today”.15
Indeed the Hebrew word ʡʫʥʫ kǀchƗb means ‘star’, which is
kaukab in Arabic. In fact, however, it seems that al-‘UzzƗ had nothing to do
with the Morning Star, but was originally a tree-goddess, as is attested by
the famous KitƗb al-a‫܈‬nƗm (“Book of Idols”) of Ibn al-KalbƯ (8th
–9th
cent.),
the first description of pre-Islamic polytheism by a Muslim author.16
John Damascene, then, undoubtedly repeats nothing but the common
view of Christian antiquity. But one important question remains to be answered:
John tells us that the Saracens called that goddess Chabar (ȋĮȕȐȡ)
in their own language which he translates as ‘great’. Commentators have
been puzzled by that name, because ‘great’ in Arabic is kabƯra(tun) (feminine
form) which is not very similar to Chabar. Sahas suggested that the
name is derived from the elative form akbar (‘very great’),17
but neither this
form nor the feminine kubrƗ, an epithet of the goddess al-‘UzzƗ, is similar
to Chabar.
A very interesting explanation is given by Georgios Monachos Hamartolos
(9th
cent.) in his Chronicon:18
Thus, from ancient times they were venerating idols, especially worshipping
a god whom the Greeks call Aphrodite, that means pleasure, and
the morning star which they say is Aphrodite herself and whom they call in
their own discordant language Koubar, that means ‘great’. [...] The wording
of her abominable and deeply impious prayer sounds as follows:
ࡓࡓǹȜȜȐ, ࡓǹȜȜȐ, ȅ੝Ȑ, ȀȠȣȕȐȡ, ࡓǹȜȜȐ. And that Alla, Alla is translated
by ‘the god, the god’, Oua is ‘greater’, and Koubar, Alla is ‘the great goddess’,
i.e. the moon or Aphrodite. Thus, the formula is like that: ‘the god,
the god is greater and the great goddess’.
From that account, we learn that Hamartolos’s source, which obviously influenced
John Damascene too, analysed the famous takbƯr (“magnification”)
allƗhu akbar by wrongly separating the phonemes into alla – ua – kbar, and
interpreted the first word as ‘god’, the second one as ‘great’, and the third
15
S. Eusebius Hieronymus, Commentariorum in Amos Prophetam libri tres, PL 25, 989–
1096, at col. 1055B.
16
Cf. Rosa Klinke-Rosenberger, Das Götzenbuch Kitâb Al-A‫܈‬nâm des Ibn al-Kalbî, unpublished
diss., Zürich, 1942, p. 42, with n. 179.
17
Sahas, John of Damascus on Islam, p. 87.
18
Georgius Monachus, Chronicon, ed. Carolus de Boor, Vol. II (textum genuinum inde a
Vespasiani imperio continens), p. 706.
Reinhold F. Glei
36
one as the feminine form kubrƗ (ȀȠȣȕȐȡ in Greek). This way, the Greeks
found an explanation for the strange and impious belief that the Arabs
venerated a great god Allah (‘the one god’) and a great female goddess
(Aphrodite) at the same time.
This speculative approach made by a Greek source to explain Muslim
‘idolatry’ sounds very sophisticated, but is, from a linguistic point of view,
of course completely absurd. Therefore, we have to look for a different explanation
of the goddess Chabar in John Damascene. Fortunately, there is a
more detailed account of pagan rites in chapter 100, too. Speaking of the
Muslim’s denial and mockery of Christ’s crucifixion, the Christian apologist
strikes back:
How is it that you rub yourselves against a stone at your Ka‘ba,19
and express
your adoration to the stone by kissing it? And some of them answer
that Abraham had intercourse with Hagar on it; others, that he tied his
camel around it when he was about to sacrifice Isaac. [...]20
But suppose
that it is of Abraham, as you foolishly maintain; are you not ashamed to
kiss it for the only reason that Abraham had intercourse with a woman on
it, or because he tied his camel to it, and yet you blame us for venerating
the cross of Christ? [...] This, then, which they call ‘stone’, is the head of
Aphrodite whom they used to venerate and whom they called Chabar, and
on which those who look closely can see, even until now, traces of an en-
graving.21
This is obviously a recording of the rites performed at the Ka‘ba which the
pilgrims surround seven times while trying to touch or to kiss the Black
Stone built into the wall in the north-eastern corner, about 5 feet from the
ground, not far from the door.22
The Black Stone (al-‫ۊ‬a÷ar al-aswad) was,
as Wellhausen states, the true sanctuary;23
according to Wellhausen, “the
Ka‘ba was only an enlargement of that stone...; it therefore was not only an
19
The Greek form ȋĮȕĮșȐȞ used here is obviously the accusative form ka‘batan, against
Eichner, p. 240 n. 1.
20
In the following paragraph, John shows that the last explanation contradicts Scripture.
21
Ed. Kotter, p. 64, 79–94.
22
Cf., e.g., A. J. Wensinck and J. Jomier, ‘Ka‘ba’, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, new edn,
vol. IV (Leiden: Brill, 1978; 3
1997), 317–22.
23
Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums, p. 74: “das eigentliche Heiligtum”.
John Damascene on Islam
37
idol’s house, but an idol in itself, an extended holy stone.”24
So I would suggest
that the name of the idol Chabar, which is misunderstood as ‘the great’,
is nothing but ‘what they call stone’, i.e. ‫ۊ‬a÷ar.25
The origin of the Black Stone is unclear. Whether it was indeed the head
of an idol, as John Damascene suggests, cannot be proved. According to the
‫ۊ‬adƯth tradition, the stone came down from paradise, whiter than milk, and
then turned black because of the sins Adam’s children committed (Tir-
midhƯ).26
Another ‫ۊ‬adƯth from the TirmidhƯ collection goes as follows: “The
prophet said about the stone: By God, God will awake it on the day of
judgement with two eyes for seeing and with a tongue for speaking. It will
testify for everyone who touched it in the right way.”27
Perhaps this is an
echo of the stone being an idol with human features. Be that as it may, in
any case the rites performed during the pilgrimage and especially at the
Ka‘ba were a concession to the former polytheistic inhabitants of Mecca
made by Muhammad for reasons of acceptance in his homeland. When conquering
Mecca in 630, Muhammad of course made sure that all idols were
destroyed, but he was wise enough to maintain the central cult at the Ka‘ba,
only declaring now Allah the lord of the sanctuary. At least from outside,
however, the pilgrimage rites looked just like what they actually were: relics
from idolatry. In his letter to Caliph ‘Umar II, Emperor Leo III states that
the Muslims used to adore “a deaf stone, at a place where we know something
has been left from idolatry. [...] You followed the pagan rites at that
stone in Mecca, in the corner of the house of idolatry itself, to which the
pagans of antiquity served and sacrificed.”28
The problematic nature of the
stone worship is even confirmed by the Islamic tradition itself, as can be
seen from a famous ‫ۊ‬adƯth of ‘Umar I, the second Caliph (634–44), which
says: “He came to the Black Stone, kissed it and said: I know you are (only)
a stone which can bring neither benefit nor harm. If I had not seen the pro-
24
Ibid.: “Die Ka’ba war nur eine Erweiterung dieses Steines ...; sie war also nicht bloss
Behausung eines Idols, sondern selber Idol, ein vergrösserter heiliger Stein.”
25
Cf. also Eichner, p. 238 n. 1: “Ich glaube aber, daß die nächstliegende Auffassung die ist,
daß mit all diesen Termini die Ka‘ba, der schwarze Stein, gemeint ist.” Eichner, however,
seems to suggest that Chabar is a transliteration of ka‘ba, not of ‫ۊ‬a÷ar.
26
Cf. Der ‫ۉ‬adƯth, Urkunde der islamischen Tradition, ed. and transl. Adel Theodor Khoury,
6 vols (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2008), II, p. 240, no. 2254.
27
Ibid., no. 2255.
28
Leo Imperator Augustus (cognomento Philosophus), Epistola ad Omarum Sarracenorum
Regem, PG 107, 315–24, at col. 320D.
Reinhold F. Glei
38
phet kissing you, I myself would not have kissed you.”29
This ‫ۊ‬adƯth, preserved
in five of the six great collections, is also quoted in the Christian
apology of al-KindƯ (9th
cent.), which was translated into Latin in the twelfth
century,30
but is completely unknown to the Greek tradition.
At this point, we should remember that the critique of the stone ritual
was a reaction to Muslim objection that the Christians venerated the True
Cross as an idol. The Christian apologist Abnj RƗ’i৬ah (c. 775–835), for example,
defends the adoration of the cross as follows: “Now the cross is for
us a qiblah and a glorious [thing], deserving of exaltation and honor and devotion,
and who takes up [this] qiblah, apart from all other things, is saved.
We, the Christian community, worship our Lord and our God, and do not
worship another god from among creatures.”31
Obviously, the author draws
a parallel between Christian veneration of the cross and Muslim veneration
of the Ka‘ba (referred to by the term qiblah, the direction of prayer towards
the sacred house). In Abnj RƗ’i৬ah’s view, neither is an act of idolatry.
If one, in turn, approaches this question from a Byzantine point of view,
it is clear that it was of an explosive nature. For a Byzantine Christian, there
was no issue of greater importance in the eighth century than what was later
called the iconoclast crisis. John Damascene himself arose to the status of a
most prominent defender of the images with his famous three orations he
wrote against Emperor Leo III on eikonodoulia.32
So we can draw the somewhat
paradoxical conclusion that even in his polemics against Islam John
kept thinking in anti-iconoclastic (that is: entirely Greek) categories when
he insists that Islam, the monotheistic, completely imageless religion par excellence,
bears traces of idolatry. The Black Stone has become, so to speak,
a Byzantine icon.
Moving on, we will now turn to later writers and their use of the Damascene’s
treatment of the above-mentioned topics, i.e. the worship of the
Black Stone and Aphrodite Chabar, respectively. There is, unfortunately, no
29
Khoury, ‫ۉ‬adƯth, II, p. 240, no. 2256.
30
Cf. Fernando González Muñoz, Exposición y refutación del Islam. La versión latina de
las epístolas de al-HƗšimƯ y al-KindƯ (A Coruña: Universidade da Coruña, 2005), Ch. 55,
38–42, p. 84.
31
Edited by Sandra Toenies Keating, Defending the ‘People of Truth’ in the Early Islamic
Period. The Christian Apologies of Abnj RƗ’i‫ܒ‬ah, The History of Christian-Muslim Relations
4 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006), pp. 133–35.
32
On the role of John Damascene in the iconoclastic crisis, see Sahas, John of Damascus
on Islam, p. 3 ff.
John Damascene on Islam
39
reference to pagan rites in Theodore Abnj Qurra (about 750 to 820/25), due
to the purely apologetic nature of his disputations with Muslim theo-
logians.33
Probably from the same time, i.e. about 800, dates a very interesting
text entitled ૅǹȞĮșİȝĮIJȚıȝઁȢ IJ૵Ȟ ȈĮȡĮțȘȞ૵Ȟ, a formula of renouncing
Islam by converts to Christianity.34
This ‘exorcism’ is clearly modelled
on John Damascene’s chapter 100, as the following paragraph reveals:
I renounce that house of prayer at Mecca, in which centre they say stands a
big stone having an engraving of Aphrodite. That stone is worshipped because
Abraham had intercourse with Hagar on it, or because he tied his
camel to it when he was about to sacrifice Isaac.35
And somewhat later: “I renounce the worshippers of the Morning Star, i.e.
Lucifer and Aphrodite, whom they call Chabar in the Arabian language,
which means ‘great’.”36
This is obviously a direct quotation from John
Damascene, with the slight variation that the stone is not placed in the
corner, but said to stand in the middle of the Ka‘ba, maybe a confusion with
the former statue of Hubal, a human figured idol made of red carneol that,
according to Ibn al-KalbƯ, stood inside the Ka‘ba.37
Another important author to be mentioned here is Niketas Byzantios ‘the
philosopher’, writing under Emperor Michael III (r. 842–67). In his great
anti-Islamic work called ૅǹȞĮIJȡȠʌȒ (“Confutation of the Qur’Ɨn”), he
alludes several times to Muhammad’s worship of Aphrodite. “He adores
Chubar, a very old idol, in the desert of Yathrib and in Mecca, which is, as
33
For Abnj Qurra’s writings against Islam, see the edition in Glei and Khoury, pp. 85 ff.,
and the English translation by John C. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abnj Qurrah, Library of the
Christian East, 1 (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2005). Recently, also a
Dutch translation, facing Glei’s Greek text, together with an introduction and some useful
notes, has been published: Johannes Damascenus & Theodorus Abnj Qurra, De eerste
christelijke polemiek met de islam, transl. Michiel Op de Coul and Marcel Poorthuis
(Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2011). An interesting comparison of the theological doctrines
shared by John Damascene and Theodore Abnj Qurra is offered by Smilen Markov,
‘Theodore ‘Abnj Qurra als Nachfolger des Johannes von Damaskus’, in Knotenpunkt Byzanz,
ed. by Speer and Steinkrüger, pp. 111–22.
34
Edited by Edouard Montet, ‘Un rituel d’abjuration des Musulmans dans l’église Grecque’,
Revue de l’histoire des religions 53 (1906), 145–63.
35
Ibid., p. 153, 20–7.
36
Ibid., p. 154, 19–23.
37
Klinke-Rosenberger, Kitâb Al-A‫܈‬nâm, pp. 43–4.
Reinhold F. Glei
40
they say, engraved like a type of Aphrodite.”38
Or, somewhat later: “God
said to the Saracens, speaking through his prophet, as they assert: Fall on
your knees and venerate Chubar as a God, who is an idol and a figure of
Aphrodite”.39
Or, already in the first confutation: “As we have heard from a
Muslim convert to Christianity, a stone idol sits in the middle of the house
(i.e. the Ka‘ba). [...] I think that (stone) is the idol of Aphrodite, as they
would say themselves”.40
It should be noted that Niketas, as well as the
exorcism, places the idol in the middle of the house. The additional
information given above that there was another very old idol of Chubar in
Yathrib, too, suggests that Muhammad established the old Meccan cult also
in Yathrib after his ‫ۊ‬i÷ra, which of course is completely absurd. That way,
Muhammad’s central monotheistic message ‘there is no God but the one
God’ is polemically confused with pre-Islamic idolatry and thus converted
into the sheer opposite.
There are few changes in the attitude towards Islam in the next centuries.
The work of Niketas remained decisive up to the twelfth century and was,
next to the Damascene’s, regarded as an authority by later authors. In 1110,
for example, the learned monk Euthymios Zigabenos wrote a large compendium
on heresies dedicated to Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–
1118). The last chapter of this Panoplia dogmatica (“Arsenal of Theological
Arms”) deals with Islam and extensively quotes John Damascene and Niketas
almost word by word. In the passage on the Black Stone which is said to
be the head of Aphrodite, Euthymios also incorporated a (somewhat distorted)
passage from the exorcism: “This idol named Bakcha Ismakech,
which the prophet himself called an object of adoration and observance, he
ordered to be venerated by these bloody barbarians”.41
The obscure name
Bakcha Ismakech is a misconception of the exorcism that gives some variant
spellings of the name Mecca: “The house of prayer was built by Abraham
and Ismael at Bakcha or Mekke or Makche”.42
Obviously, Euthymios’s
38
Niketas von Byzanz, Schriften zum Islam I, ed. and transl. Karl Förstel, Corpus IslamoChristianum,
Series Graeca 5 (Würzburg: Echter, 2000), p. 136 (Confutatio 26, 30–32).
39
Ibid., p. 140 (Confutatio 27, 33–35).
40
Ibid., p. 56 (Confutatio 1, 318–24).
41
Schriften zum Islam von Arethas und Euthymios Zigabenos und Fragmente der griechischen
Koranübersetzung. ed. and transl. Karl Förstel, Corpus Islamo-Christianum,
Series Graeca 7 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009), p. 54 (Panoplia 8,165–69).
42
Montet, ‘Un rituel d’abjuration’, p. 153, 13–15.
John Damascene on Islam
41
ૃǿıȝĮțȑȤ is distorted from the exorcism’s İੁȢ [i.e. ੁȢ] MȐțȤİ which means
‘at Mecca’.
Even less independent, if that is possible at all, is the Thesaurus orthodoxae
fidei by Niketas Choniates (1150–1215) who stitches together complete
passages from John Damascene, Euthymios Zigabenos, and others.43
Here, the spelling of the Arabic names is even more distorted: Aphrodite is
now called Chamar, and the Ka‘ba has become Gabathan, possibly a reminiscence
to the cobbled place called Gabbatha mentioned in the Gospel
of John (19,13). Surprisingly, at the end of his treatise Niketas gives a more
adequate outline of the Islamic rites, now comparing them (like Abnj RƗ’i৬ah
before, but surely independently) to the veneration of the cross: “Therefore
the cross is venerable for us not as a wooden idol, but because it was an instrument
for the passion of Christ. So when you are involved in [the pilgrimage
to] Mecca, performing the holy rites as you like it, you do not acknowledge
any holiness to the stones and walls, but to Him who is venerated
in that house”.44
This sounds quite different and may therefore be a
later interpolation, probably from the fourteenth century, as we shall see
below.
A special case is the otherwise unknown Bartholomew of Edessa who
seems to have been a monk from the famous monastery of St Catherine at
Mount Sinai. The date of his lifetime is unclear, modern scholars placing
him at the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth centuries. In
his Confutation of an Agarene, which is, to a large extent, a novelistic account
of Muhammad’s life, Bartholomew seems to rely much more on Islamic
folk tradition than on the learned anti-Islamic literature mentioned
above. It therefore goes beyond the scope of this article to discuss this
author in more detail.45
Generally speaking, it seems that Byzantine knowledge of Islam had
reached a very low level at the end of the twelfth century, and when the
Latin crusaders came in 1204, their fellow Christians seemed to be the
enemy and not the Muslims. As was already indicated, there is a clear break
in Byzantine attitude to Islamic paganism after the Latin intermezzo. The
43
Cf. Khoury, Théologiens, pp. 249–52.
44
Nicetas Choniates, Ex libro XX Thesauri Orthodoxae Fidei: De superstitione Agarenorum.
Ordo qui observatur super iis qui a Saracenis ad nostram Christianorum puram
veramque fidem se convertunt, PG 140, 105–22 and 123–36 (at col. 121A).
45
See Bartholomaios von Edessa, Confutatio Agareni, ed. and transl. Klaus-Peter Todt,
Corpus Islamo-Christianum, Series Graeca 2 (Würzburg: Echter, 1988).
Reinhold F. Glei
42
great works of John Damascene and Niketas Byzantios had dominated the
scene until the end of the twelfth century, at times through weaker modern
versions of these authors. In the thirteenth century, there is a gap. We do not
know whether it was caused by the fact that things had come to a point of
stagnation, repetition, and even satiety, or by a mere lack of sources. It
seems likely, however, that people had made themselves comfortable with
this heretical convivencia.
Be that as it may, a fresh input was needed, but it was not before the
middle of the fourteenth century that a new image of Islam emerged. It
seems to be an irony of history that this new attitude was the result of Latin
influence (though not of the crusaders, of course). To understand these
changes, the Latin tradition needs to be considered. We are, however, not
going to discuss Peter the Venerable at this point, the initiator of Islamic
studies in Spain, and the famous Toledan Collection because it had no direct
influence on the East.46
Rather, it was a late thirteenth-century Dominican
friar who became essential for later Byzantine thought: Ricoldo da Monte di
Croce (1243–1320). He spent a long time in Baghdad, where he acquired
Arabic and held many discussions with Muslim theologians. Back in Italy,
he wrote 17 chapters on the refutation of the Qur’Ɨn (Contra legem Sarracenorum)
and even intended to make a new Latin translation of the Qur’Ɨn
(which was, however, never completed). His excellent knowledge of Islam
included Muslim theology (kalƗm) as well as ‫ۊ‬adƯth literature,47
and therefore
he did not suggest at all that Islam was a form of idolatry. In contrast,
he argued as follows:
When the devil saw that the faith of Christ rose up in the Oriental parts of
the world and that idolatry weakened, [...] because even he, the devil himself,
could no longer defend a plurality of gods and totally deny the Law of
Moses and the Gospel of Christ that had already spread all over the world,
he planned to deceive the world by inventing a fictitious law that was just
46
See my Petrus Venerabilis, Schriften zum Islam, ed. and transl. Reinhold Glei, Corpus
Islamo-Christianum, Series Latina 1 (Altenberge: CIS-Verlag, 1985).
47
Cf. Thomas E. Burman, ‘How an Italian Friar Read His Arabic Qur’an’, Dante Studies
125 (2007), pp. 93–109. In this article, Burman discusses Ricoldo’s marginal notes in his
manuscript of the Qur’Ɨn (Paris, BnF, Cod. Arab. 384) that show Ricoldo’s extraordinary
knowlegde of Arabic and of the Qur’Ɨn as well.
John Damascene on Islam
43
in the middle between the new and the old one. To follow that purpose, he
took possession of a satanic man, called Muhammad, etc.48
Here Ricoldo clearly states that idolatry did not play any role in the new religion,
but that Islam was rather a compromise between Judaism and Christianity,
a third-party religion, so to speak.
With Ricoldo, then, the topic of Islamic idolatry was abandoned, at least
in Western thought on Islam. But these new ideas also found their way to
the eastern Romans. Around the middle of the fourteenth century, Demetrios
Kydones, a high official and counsellor of Emperor John Kantakouzenos
(r. 1347–54), who converted to Catholicism,49
translated Ricoldo’s
treatise into Greek.50
This was the starting point of a new era in the
Byzantine discussion with Islam. John Damascene’s and Niketas’s works
became largely obsolete and were replaced by the modern, more authentic
views of Kydones and Ricoldo, respectively. The most important works
were written by Kantakouzenos himself after his abdication, when he spent
his life as a monk called Joasaph for almost thirty years, and by another emperor,
Manuel II Palaiologos (r. 1391–1425). Kantakouzenos wrote four
apologies of Christianity and four polemical treatises against Islam, using
Kydones’s work extensively.51
Manuel, on the other hand, gives a detailed
report of 26 dialogues which he pretends to have held with a learned
‘Persian’, i.e. Turkish, Muterizes (a professor of Islamic theology, from Arabic
mudarris), who was in Ankara during a campaign at the end of 1391.52
Among Manuel’s sources are of course the writings of his grandfather
Kantakouzenos, along with Ricoldo/Kydones, but it seems that Manuel was
rather independent from his predecessors. This could lead to the assumption
48
Jean-Marie Mérigoux, ‘L’ouvrage d’un Frère Prêcheur Florentin en Orient à la fin du
XIIIe siècle. Le «Contra legem Sarracenorum» de Riccoldo da Monte di Croce’, Memorie
Domenicane NS 17 (1986), pp. 1–144, at pp. 117–18 = Ch. 13, 11–21.
49
On Kydones, see Frances Kianka, ‘Demetrios Kydones and Italy’, Dumbarton Oaks
Papers 49 (1995), pp. 99–110.
50
The Greek text, along with a Latin re-translation by Bartholomaeus Picenus, is edited in
PG 154, 1035–1170.
51
Johannes Kantakouzenos, Christentum und Islam. Apologetische und polemische Schriften,
ed. and transl. Karl Förstel, Corpus Islamo-Christianum, Series Graeca 6 (Altenberge:
Oros, 2005).
52
Manuel II Palaiologos, Dialoge mit einem „Perser“, ed. Erich Trapp, Wiener Byzantinistische
Studien 2 (Wien: Böhlau, 1966); Manuel II Palaiologos, Dialoge mit einem
Muslim, ed. and transl. Karl Förstel, 3 vols, Corpus Islamo-Christianum, Series Graeca
4/1–3 (Würzburg: Echter, 1993–96).
Reinhold F. Glei
44
that his dialogues with the Muterizes are authentic, at least in the essential
parts, but Förstel convincingly argues that the setting of the dialogues and
the personality of the Muterizes seem quite fictitious.53
At the end of the
fourteenth century, then, disputations on the veneration of the Holy Cross or
the Black Stone were outdated and did not play a role any longer. Finally,
after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, anti-Islamic literature became an
almost exclusively Latin domain,54
beyond our scope here.
To sum up, we can say that polemics against Islamic idolatry had a longterm
history in Byzantine thought, being adopted, enriched and distorted, at
least up to the end of the twelfth century. Since the early times of Islam, the
doctrine of the prophet Muhammad was not regarded as a new religion, but
as a Christian heresy, the last one, for the time being, in a large number of
errors that could be dealt with in a familiar way. It was only during the last
one hundred years of the Byzantine Empire that a somewhat different
picture of Islam emerged, no longer being seen as an old heretical amalgam
of Christian, Jewish and especially pagan elements, but as a mighty world
power going to annex the reign of the infidels in the name of the one God.
And that was the end of all convivencia.55
53
Manuel, Dialoge, ed. Förstel, I, pp. XXVIII–XXXI. In our times, Manuel’s dialogues
have become famous when Pope Benedict XVI quoted a passage from them during his
speech in Regensburg in 2006. See Benedikt XVI, Glaube und Vernunft. Die Regensburger
Vorlesung, full text, commented by Gesine Schwan, Adel Theodor Khoury and
Karl Kardinal Lehmann (Freiburg: Herder, 2006), esp. pp. 15–16, with n. 3.
54
An exception is the treatise De veritate Christianae fidei, written by George of Trebizond
just after the fall of Constantinople and sent to Sultan Mehmet in July 1453; cf. Georges
de Trébizonde, De la vérité de la foi des chrétiens, ed. and transl. Adel Th. Khoury,
Corpus Islamo-Christianum, Series Graeca 1 (Altenberge: CIS-Verlag, 1987). On the
Latin tradition, see now my article: ‘Die lateinische Islamliteratur nach 1453 – eine Renaissance
des Mittelalters?’, Wolfenbütteler Renaissance-Mitteilungen 33 (2011), 1/2,
[2013], pp. 55–75.
55
My warmest thanks go to the convenor Dr Barbara Crostini who discovered that wonderful
Abnj Qurra manuscript, to Trinity College Dublin for hosting the conference, and to
Dr Eva von Contzen for correcting my English.