Jews and Muslims in Christian Syriac and arabic texts of the ninth century

Abstract

In 780/8 I, the Nestorian patriarch Timothy I (727-823) addressed a letter to his friend Sergius, a future Metropolitan of Elam (794/95), describing a debate he had had with an "Aristotelian philosopher" at the Abbasid court, l The letter is essentially an apologetic treatise in defense of the Christian doctrines that are rejected by Muslims. The debate is cast in the style of a literary dialogue. In introducing his account, Timothy composed a preface explaining to Sergius the continuing need of Christians to defend their beliefs with rational arguments. He wrote: In the days of Herod, Pilate and the old Jews, there was both defeat and victory, and truth and falsehood. So also, now, in the days of the present princes, in our own time, and in the days of the new Jews among us, there is the same struggle and the same contest to distinguish falsehood and truth. 2 The "present princes" for Timothy were, of course, the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad, and the "new Jews" were the Muslims. Timothy agreed with the judgment of his Nestorian contemporary, Theodore bar K6ni, who had composed in Syriac a literary dialogue between a master and a disciple to defend Christian doctrines against Islamic objections. Theodore put the following sentence into the mouth of the master, as his assessment of the disciple's Islamic views: "As I see it, you are believing as a Jew. ''3 A review of the published Christian apologetic texts from the first Abbasid century reveals that the writers of these defensive tracts consistently characterize Islamic beliefs and practices as Jewish, or at least as Jewishly influenced. Of course, this usage was polemical, and behind it there stretched a long history of similar usages in earlier controversies. Greek, Latin, or Syriac