Christian Arabs Research Articles

Cluny and the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet: Hagiography and the Problem of Islam in Medieval Europe

Cluny and the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet: Hagiography and the Problem of Islam in Medieval Europe

Cluny and the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet: Hagiography and the Problem of Islam in Medieval Europe

Cluny and the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet: Hagiography and the Problem of Islam in Medieval Europe

The Prophet Muḥammad’s Covenant with Yūḥannah Ibn Ru’bah and the Christians of Aylah

This article examines the Prophet Muḥammad’s covenant with Yūḥannah, Prince of Aylah, and illustrates the role it plays in understanding religious pluralism and civil rights as envisioned in Prophet Muḥammad’s dream of a “Muslim Nation”. The article also briefly makes use of other covenants contracted between the Prophet and other Arab Christian tribes. The covenants reveal Prophet Muḥammad’s desire for religious pluralism and the granting of rights to all people, regardless of religion, creed, or personal practices. Although Prophet Muḥammad’s covenants with the Christians of his time are used as a framework of analysis in this article, these documents have not received as much attention as they deserve, as few researchers in our time have shown interest in them. Early manuscripts and historical sources, both Arab and Western, are referenced in order to explore the circumstances and consequences of these early correspondences between Islam’s final Prophet and contemporary Arab Christians. The findings of this investigation are significant in that the covenants serve as critical milestones and reminders in light of current discussions about relations between Muslims and Christians. The contents of the covenants can also be used as models for improving relations between Muslims and Christians in religiously diverse communities the world over.

The Prophet Muhammad in the poetry of contemporary Christian Arab poets

The personality of the noble Prophet Muhammad attracted the minds of writers, thinkers and philosophers of different times and places because of his virtuous qualities and sublime values, which made him truly a good example and a good model of the successor of God on earth, just as his life and his daily dealings were a practical model and ethics. This gave him credibility and the ability to persuade everyone who listened to or read about him This study deals with the prespectives of some contemporary Arab Christian poets on the personality of the Prophet weit also explores the ways in which these poets were influenced by his morals, vocation, spiritual and cultural influence, and the teachings of his Quran as well as their praise for him and his virtue, These perspectives are organized into several categories: 1) Religious tolerance. 2) Christian poets praise the Prophet. 3) Quranic intertextuality in the poetry of Christian poets.

Brief Synopses of New Arabic-Language Publications

Brief Synopses of New Arabic-Language Publications

Differences in the Factor Structure of the Eating Attitude Test-26 (EAT-26) in Different Cultures in Israel: Jews, Muslims, and Christians.

Background: In recent years, there has been a shift in the clinical presentation and, hence, diagnostic definitions of eating disorders (EDs), reflected in a dramatic change in the diagnostic criteria of EDs in the DSM-5. The Eating Attitudes Test-26 (EAT-26) is currently considered an accepted instrument for community studies of EDs, although it features an inconsistent factorial structure in different cultures. Therefore, it is essential to investigate whether the EAT-26 can still be considered an adequate instrument for identifying the risk of developing EDs in different cultures. The aim of the present study was to examine the construct validity and internal consistency of the EAT-26. Method: The study used exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) among different cultural populations in Israel. Results: Findings indicated different factors in different ethnic groups, most of which do not correspond with the original EAT-26 three-factor structure. Results: The analysis yielded two main factors among Israeli Jews, four main factors among Israeli Muslim Arabs, and three main factors among Israeli Christian Arabs. Conclusion: These findings shed light on cultural factors affecting perceptions of the EAT-26 items. This calls for a reconsideration of the generalization of the original three-factor structure of the questionnaire in different cultures.

A recurrent pathogenic BRCA2 exon 5-11 duplication in the Christian Arab population in Israel.

Germline pathogenic variants (PVs) in BRCA1/BRCA2 are well-established risk factors for breast cancer (BC) and/or ovarian cancer (OC). Founder PVs have been described in BRCA1/ BRCA2 in several genetic isolates. The Christian Arab population in the Middle East is a relatively isolated ethnic group, yet founder, or recurrent BRCA1/BRCA2 PVs have not been reported in this population. In this study we describe PVs detected in cancer susceptibility genes among a cohort of Christian Arabs from Israel. We reviewed patient records from the Oncogenetic clinic at Rambam Health Care Campus during the years 2013- mid 2020. Thirty-five unrelated Christian Arab patients, with personal or family history of BC and/or OC underwent BRCA1/BRCA2 (14/35) testing or cancer gene panel testing (21/35) as part of their diagnostic workup. Three clinically significant variants in BRCA2, CHEK2 and RAD51C were found in 7/35 patients (20%). A recurrent duplication of the BRCA2 genomic region, encompassing exons 5-10 and the 5' portion of exon 11, was found in 5/33 (15.2%) patients for whom copy number variants (CNVs) analysis was performed. We identified a recurrent pathogenic BRCA2 duplication in Christian Arab patients with a personal/ family history of BC and/or OC. Our findings emphasize the importance of inclusion of CNVs analysis in BRCA1/BRCA2 genetic testing, and specifically for Christian Arab patients suspected of hereditary BC and/or OC.

Russia and the Melkites of Syria: Attempts at Reconverting into Orthodoxy in the 1850-s and 1860-s

Abstract Having entered into union with Rome in the 18th century, the Melkite Arab community of Syria preserved their Eastern rites and traditions. The attempts at Latinization in the mid-19th century brought a split in the community and provoked a diplomatic effort by Russia to bring the Melkites back to Eastern Orthodoxy. The raise of Arab nationalism in the 1850-s and traditions of church independence created a fertile soil for separatism. The relative weakness and inconsistency of Russian support, and especially a lack of material resources and strong diplomatic pressure from France, resulted in most of the newly converted Melkites returning to Rome by the early 1860-s. The article argues that Russian church policy in 19th century Middle East, strongly bounded by the limits of Orthodox canon law was largely ineffective. The Melkite affair was the last attempt to integrate the Arab Christians in the traditional system of the “Greek” Patriarchates. Thereafter Russian diplomacy took the course of Arabizing the Patriarchate of Antioch. The episode did, however, contribute to the elaboration of a new Vatican policy towards the Eastern Catholics: respect for their rites and traditions.

Religious Identity, Discrimination, and Psychological Distress Among Muslim and Christian Arab Americans.

This study examines differences in experiences between Muslim and Christian Arabs (N = 1016) utilizing data from the Detroit Arab American Study (DAAS). Results showed that Muslim and Christian Arabs held similar levels of religious centrality and psychological distress but differed in reports of negative religious public regard and experiences of discrimination. Additionally, religious public regard and religious centrality predicted psychological distress similarly for Muslim and Christian Arab Americans. The relationship between religious centrality andpsychological distress was mediated by negative religious public regard and perceived discrimination. Study implications are discussed.

Muslims and Christians in the Levant: A Shared Culture, An Evolving Concept of Citizenship

Muslims and Christians in the Levant:A Shared Culture, An Evolving Concept of Citizenship Kail C. Ellis (bio) Introduction Recent scholarship has endeavored to counter a widespread impression that the Middle East is a homogenous Arab and Muslim ethnic entity. Although Christians once constituted large and important communities in today's Arab world, later scholars tended to regard them as tools of Western interests or as victims of Muslim rulers whose histories are irrelevant to understanding the contemporary Middle East. An additional impediment to studying Christian Arab history was the reluctance of some scholars to approach questions dealing with sectarianism and communal politics. Yet, as this essay will explain, the record shows that Christians have been an integral part of Middle East society and culture throughout history and can and must be enabled and encouraged to do so now and in the future, not only in the interest of social peace and justice but also for the benefit of local society and culture as a whole. [End Page 1] The rise of political Islam in the 1970s and the resulting Islamization of Middle Eastern politics marked a reevaluation of the approach of overlooking Arab Christian history. Paul Rowe, Laura Robson, and Sidney Griffith, among others, have challenged the image of the Middle East as a homogenous Muslim region that is in opposition to the predominately Christian West.1 Sidney Griffith, for example, traced the spread of Christianity from the Holy Land westward throughout the Roman Empire as taking place simultaneously with the spread of the Gospel eastward to the Persian Empire, into China and southward into Arabia and India. This history was recorded in the widely spoken dialect of Aramaic, called Syriac and attests to the presence of Christians in the region some 600 years before the rise of Islam. The Qur'an also provides strong evidence of the Christian presence in the region, as Arabic-speaking Christians were the audience to whom much of the Qur'an was addressed.2 When Christians assimilated into Arab and Islamic society and embraced the Arabic language by the end of the eighth century, modern scholars tended to interpret this development as evidence of their marginalization and therefore as a topic unworthy of study. As a consequence, this superficial interpretation robbed Middle Eastern Christians of agency and of the positive view that by adopting the Arabic language, Christians could better express their identities in the Arabic idiom of the Arab Islamic culture of which they had become an integral part. By the tenth century, this interpretation seemed vindicated when Christians, still the majority of the population in the Islamic polity, were actively engaged in the development of Arab culture, literature, and the sciences. To support this view, Griffith cites the work of Christian scholars who, along with Jewish and Muslim scholars in the Islamic environment of Baghdad during the Abbasid caliphate in the ninth century, translated the works of Greek philosophy, science, and medicine into Arabic and Latin. Their contributions lasted from the ninth-century in Iraq into the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Egypt.3 Although relations between Christians, Jews, and Muslim during this period were often intellectually and culturally complementary, they were [End Page 2] also "confrontational and cooperative at the same time."4 Griffith maintains that from the thirteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth century, "numerous disabling factors" intervened to disrupt the complementarity of their relationship such as the evolution in Islamic religious thinking, the numerical decline of Christians and, finally, the demographic insignificance of Christians in some areas of the Middle East.5 Griffith and other prominent scholars maintain that the intellectual and cultural influence of Arab Christians in the Middle East has seldom been told. Even more damaging is the impact of this neglect today, as it has led Western scholarship to regard Christendom as coterminous with the Latin Middle Ages and to regard Eastern Christians as schismatic and even as a heretical people who left the Church centuries ago.6 Dhimmitude: Christians as "Minorities" The concept of "minority" as it pertained to Christians and other non-Muslim communities developed gradually in the Middle East. Its basis was laid by the Ottomans, who, after their victories...

Allah i nie tylko – podstawowe określenia Boga w arabskiej terminologii prawosławnej

The word “Allah” is associated usually with Islam. However, this term had been used among Arab Christians much earlier before the rise of Islam. Arabic language has been used in Orthodox service for almost 2000 years, so many terms have been developed long time ago. Among the most basic terms are the ones that call God and describe Him. They are used in the hymnography and prayers, sermons, articles and everyday life. However, in Polish literature those terms are still little known. Since Arabic belongs to the Semitic family of languages, its character is very different from Greek, Church Slavonic and Polish, and this affects a different point of view on some theological terms and also their variety. It also results in wealth of the terms related to God. The main reason of the differences in comparison with European languages is specific system of the Arabic language: the system of roots and themes. This is specified in the introductory part. The most basic terms related to God are presented and analyzed below. The terms are taken mainly from the liturgical texts, and some of them also from the Holy Scripture and sermons. Each term is also written in Church Slavonic to make it easier for the reader to understand it, since the Polish Orthodox terminology has not yet been established and unified. Each Arabic term is written in the original notation and ISO transcription used by Arabists in Poland.

Incarnation/Taǧassud Lexicon in Ninth-Century Arabic Christian Controversy: A Gender Issue

Incarnation/Taǧassud Lexicon in Ninth-Century Arabic Christian Controversy: A Gender Issue

The Development of Arab Christian Book Printing in Lebanon and Syria in the First Half of the 18th Century

The article deals with the history of the emergence of the Arab Renaissance in Lebanon and Syria at the turn of the 17th century and the commencement of Arab Christian book printing that became a driving force in this process. Based on the analysis of scientific, historical, and religious literature, the article reveals the figure of one of the first book printers in the Middle East, Abdallāh Zakher, who invented fonts used in the first Arab Christian books and was the founder of the first printing house in Lebanon, in the town of Chouweir, at the Monastery of St John the Baptist. The author also looks into the Ukrainian contribution to the development of Arab Christian book printing, particularly the release of two publications with support from Ivan Mazepa in Alepo in 1708, namely the titular Tetraevangelion with a foreword of Athanasius III Dabbās, Patriarch of Antioch, devoted to Ivan Mazepa, and the Gospel Book at the expense of Danylo Apostol, Myrhorod Colonel. Keywords: Arab Renaissance Nahda, Arab Christian book printing, Abdallāh Zakher, Mazepa’s Gospel, Danylo Apostol’s titular Gospel Book.

СИРІЙСЬКИЙ ПЛАСТ ТОПОНІМІЇ УКРАЇНИ ЧАСІВ ХАЛІФАТУ

The article further sets out the important consequences of reliable identification of the group of place names Zhabye as replicas of the prototype Jābiya – the capital of the Ghassanids (Christian Arab federates of Byzantium in the 6th century). Thanks to this, it became possible to systematize already studied Ukrainian replicas of the Byzantine and subsequent age names-prototypes from Syria. Among the selected prototypes in the Middle East are: toponyms 'Asqalan, Callinicum / Raqqa, Dimashq Damascus, Fihl, Halab, ḤAWRĀN, Jābiya, Jarash, JIBAL, Quds = Bayt al-Maqdis Jerusalem, Laodicaea / Ladhiq, Palmyra, PHOENICIA, Ruṣāfa / Sergiopolis / Ῥάφες, Tiberias, Tripolis, Bilad al-SHAM / SURIYEH Syria, Yathrib/ Medina; anthroponyms Heraclius, Shurahbil, Theodosius, Ya'qūbī Jacob Baradaeus. As of 2020, highly reliable replicas of these prototypes were discovered in Ukraine: Oskolonivka, Skalonivka, Kalynuvatka, Kalynivka (over 80 place names), Raky, Rachyntsi, Damasky, Demeshkivtsi, Fyholivka, Khalepya, Khaleptsi, Tverdokhliby (3), Havrontsi, group Zhabye (20), Yaroshi (4), Yaroshivka (4), Chepelivka, Zhabelivka, group Kutsivka, Mahdyn, Ladyzhyn (6), Pal'myrivka, Ponykva, Rusava, Rosava (4), Rosokha, Rosochovatka, Serhiyi, Tyvriv, Trypill'a (2), Shamy / Surozh, Yastrub- (14 pl. n.); Irkliy r. (2), Irkliyiv, Irakliyivka, Zherebylivka, Zhuravlynka (4), Zhuravlivka (3), Pedosy, Khodosy, Yakubivka, e. a. The first replicas of this vector (Tripol, Khalep, Korsun') were pointed out by V. Z. Zavitnevitch and A. I. Sobolevsky (1888, 1911) as similar to the Byzantine place names. The remaining synchoric names were identified with varying degrees of reliability by the method of toponymic contextualization in 2005–2020. Moreover, if each individual replica can be challenged, their mutual conditionality acquires a new scientific quality. The current find of the initial territory in Syria and Palestine with a high concentration of synchoric and synchronous prototypes of this vector of toponyms-replicas in Ukraine radically improves scientific ideas about the whole picture of contacts between the steppe and forest-steppe population of the Dnieper region with Byzantium in the pre-chronicle time (4th – 9th centuries).

Towards the Arab National Renaissance: the Struggle for the Throne of Antioch in the 2nd Half of the 19th Century and Russia

The article is focused on little known pages of the Russian support to the Arabic church and national movement during the last decades of the 19th century. Supporting the Arab Orthodox population of Syria and Lebanon was an important part of the Russian policy in the Near East. The attempt to convert part of the Melkites to Orthodoxy in the 1860-s was not successful, but already in 1869 the Russian Consul in Beirut managed to ensure the election of a pro-Russian Arab Gabriel Shatila as Metropolitan of Beirut. After few failures of the Arabic candidates in the struggle for the Patriarchal see, in 1899, despite the opposition of the French diplomatic representatives (who supported the candidates of the Holy Sepulcher brotherhood), the Russians achieved the enthronement of Patriarch Melety Dumani. The newly discovered archive materials show the details of these events and contribute to their understanding in the course of the French-Russian confrontation in the region.

Православные арабы и лавра Св. Саввы в XVI — нач. XVII в. по данным арабо-христианских рукописей

Православные арабы и лавра Св. Саввы в XVI — нач. XVII в. по данным арабо-христианских рукописей

A recurring NFS1 pathogenic variant causes a mitochondrial disorder with variable intra-familial patient outcomes

Iron‑sulfur clusters (FeSCs) are vital components of a variety of essential proteins, most prominently within mitochondrial respiratory chain complexes I-III; FeS assembly and distribution is performed via multi-step pathways. Variants affecting several proteins in these pathways have been described in genetic disorders, including severe mitochondrial disease. Here we describe a Christian Arab kindred with two infants that died due to mitochondrial disorder involving FeS containing respiratory chain complexes and a third sibling who survived the initial crisis. A homozygous missense variant in NFS1: c.215G>A; p.Arg72Gln was detected by whole exome sequencing. The NFS1 gene encodes a cysteine desulfurase, which, in complex with ISD11 and ACP, initiates the first step of FeS formation. Arginine at position 72 plays a role in NFS1-ISD11 complex formation; therefore, its substitution with glutamine is expected to affect complex stability and function. Interestingly, this is the only pathogenic variant ever reported in the NFS1 gene, previously described once in an Old Order Mennonite family presenting a similar phenotype with intra-familial variability in patient outcomes. Analysis of datasets from both populations did not show a common haplotype, suggesting this variant is a recurrent de novo variant.Our report of the second case of NFS1-related mitochondrial disease corroborates the pathogenicity of this recurring variant and implicates it as a hot-spot variant. While the genetic resolution allows for prenatal diagnosis for the family, it also raises critical clinical questions regarding follow-up and possible treatment options of severely affected and healthy homozygous individuals with mitochondrial co-factor therapy or cysteine supplementation.

Orientalist Construction on the Existence of Ammiyah Arabic in Egypt in the 20th Century

This study aims to explorehow the Ammiyah language came about in Egypt in the 20th century. It adopted an observational research design. To gather the data, the books and journals covering Orientalism were examined.The study details three of the findings. First, the Ammiyah language differs from the Arabic Fusha in terms of syntax, lexical and phonological characteristics. Second, Ammiyah has often been used in Egypt in familial and social communication. Third, the construction carried out by Orientalists in popularizing the Ammiyah language in order to shift the role of the Arabic Fusha as the language of state administration in Egypt through two aspects. The government orders the writing of books and newspapers in the Ammiyah language using Latin letters, and prohibits the teaching of Fusha language in the school and all activities. Although the Orientalist effort failed because of the opposition from Arab literary groups both Muslim and Christian Arabs, as well as the Al-Azhar and Majma 'Lughah Universities which protected the purity of the Arabic language, there was still a social impact on Egyptian society. The Egyptian society utilizes a number of Ammiyah languages in day-to-day contact.

Otec arabské křesťanské literatury: Theodor Abú Qurra (755-830). Prolegomena

The study presents a fundamental introduction to Theodore Abu Qurrah (755–830), one of the key authors of Arabic Christian literature from the eighth to the ninth centuries who lived in the Islamic empire and who wrote in Arabic. The first part of the study consists of Abu Qurrah's biography, while the second part examines Abu Qurrah's written works. This second chapter contains the entire inventory of Abu Qurrah’s Greek and Arabic written works. The study aims at demonstrating why Theodore Abu Qurrah is considered the father of Arabic Christian literature.

From the Margins of the Colophon: Arab Orthodox Monasticism in Ruins

Abstract This article, drawn from two years of ethnographic fieldwork, traces the temporal articulations of Orthodox Christian monasticism in post-war Lebanon. It recounts one Lebanese monastery’s reinhabitation—founded on the uncanny return of its martyred saints—as evidence of monastic life’s constitutive intimacy with ruination. The article subsequently explores the grammars of temporal delimitation (the juridical and territorial apparatuses of state land tenure as well as the archival trace of historiography) and argues that these approaches disable the possibility of accounting for such a return in ruins. Offering the Orthodox tradition’s language of ascetical dispossession as an analytic counterpoint, the article takes up the monastic language of renunciatory withdrawal. The temporality of this withdrawal, in its protological and its eschatological marginalization, brings into relief a form of time that presses upon the limits of historiography.