Abstract This study examines the origins and reception of the Dialogue between the Caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb and a Chinese Monk , one of the most intriguing interreligious dialogues of the early Abbasid period. Following a thorough examination of the manuscript tradition, the dialogue is presented in its first critical edition alongside a complete translation. Drawing on parallels between this text and Arabic literature from the eighth to eleventh centuries, whether ‘Christian’ or ‘Islamic’, the study demonstrates the text’s deep roots in Abbasid ascetic literature. It shows how the use of Islamicate representations and language enabled the anonymous author to create a legend of political and moral recognition between a monk and a prominent Muslim leader. Rather than being an expression of confessional and theological identity, this work should be understood as one of many medieval manifestations of a lost original source.
Abstract This contribution examines the Trinitarian doctrine of Elias, the East Syrian Metropolitan of Nisibis, within the context of medieval Arab-Christian engagement with Islamic theology and philosophy. Unlike earlier assessments that accuse Arab-Christian authors such as Abū Rāʾiṭah al-Takrītī, ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī, Yaḥyā Ibn ʿAdī, and Sāwīrūs Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ of reducing the hypostases to mere attributes, moving, in some way, their metaphysical meaning away from the official doctrine of their churches, Elias’ adoption of the Islamic teaching on divine attributes emerges as a deliberate strategy of theological inculturation. This study argues that Elias’ approach was possible due to two key factors: his Aristotelian metaphysical framework, in which the divine substance is conceived as a self-subsistent reality and the hypostases as properties; and his modification of Islamic doctrines on divine attributes to fit Christian theology. After introducing Elias and his works, the contribution analyses his metaphysical system, his adaptation of Islamic concepts, and the integration of these elements into what can be described as a “Christian-kalāmic” method. The conclusion evaluates both the effectiveness and the limitations of this approach in defending the doctrine of the Trinity within an Islamic intellectual milieu.
Abstract Philosophy was a subject of interest to several Syriac scholars in the Umayyad period, but they do not seem to have employed it in interreligious controversy or discussion. By contrast, in the early Abbasid age the Syro-Arabic Baghdad Aristotelians used it to seek common ground with Muslim and Jewish philosophers. This article highlights this contrast and endeavors to trace the evolution in the employment of philosophy in interreligious conversation through the writings of Patriarch Timothy I and Hunayn.
Abstract The Alexandrian Summary of Galen’s Sects for Beginners survives in an Arabic translation, and in a Hebrew translation, made from the Arabic by Shimshon ben Shlomo in 1322. This Hebrew translation is preserved in Vienna, Austrian National Library, cod. hebr. 29, fols. 1b–9a. We edit this Hebrew translation for the first time and study its significance for the textual transmission of this text. This translation is very literal, and we document the Arabisms that occur in it.
Abstract This article examines the Islamic adaptation of the Maccabean story of the mother and her seven sons as preserved in the ninth-century Baghdadi ascetic Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s al-Ṣabr wa-l-thawāb ʿalayhi. While the story is well known in Jewish and Christian martyrological traditions, its Islamic version has received little scholarly attention. Through close textual comparison and contextual analysis, the article argues that Ibn Abī l-Dunyā did not merely transmit inherited Isrāʾīliyyāt material but deliberately reworked a Christian monastic narrative to articulate a distinctly Islamic ethic of ṣabr (patience, endurance, and restraint). Situating the adaptation within the intellectual and religious milieu of early Abbasid Iraq, the study highlights Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s engagement with Christian monastic literature and ascetic ideals. The article thus demonstrates how shared ascetic values enabled creative interreligious exchange and how Christian martyrological motifs were transformed to serve Islamic moral and pedagogical agendas.
