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Syrian Christian Intellectuals in the World of Islam: Faith, the Philosophical Life, and the Quest for an Interreligious Convivencia in Abbasid Times

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Syrian Christian Intellectuals in the World of Islam: Faith, the Philosophical Life, and the Quest for an Interreligious Convivencia in Abbasid Times ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ SYRIAN CHRISTIAN INTELLECTUALS IN THE WORLD OF ISLAM: FAITH, THE PHILOSOPHICAL LIFE, AND THE QUEST FOR AN INTERRELIGIOUS CONVIVENCIA IN ABBASID TIMES SIDNEY GRIFFITH CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA I cerns.3 By far the most well-known of these is the patriarch’s account of his debate with he earliest Christian intellectual the caliph al-Mahdī (775-785) on the beliefs on record to enjoy a regular entrée and practices of the Christians.4 to the highest levels of the Patriarch Timothy’s account of his de- Abbasid elite in Baghdad was un- fense of Christian doctrine and practice in Tdoubtedly Patriarch Timothy I (727-823) the majlis of the caliph al-Mahdī, sometimes who for forty-three years (780-743) served listed among his works as Letter LIX, was as the major hierarch of the so-called destined to become one of the classics ‘Nestorian’ Church of the East,1 first in among the Christian apologies of the early Seleucia-Ctesiphon and then in Baghdad.2 Islamic period. It circulated in its original While the patriarch was no doubt fluent in Syriac in a fuller and in an abbreviated Arabic, he wrote in Syriac. And among the form,5 and it was soon translated into Ara- many works ascribed to him, most of which bic,6 in which language the account of have not survived to modern times, some Timothy’s day in the caliph’s court has en- fifty-nine letters are still extant, of the ap- joyed a long popularity, extending well into proximately two-hundred he is known to modern times. But it is not the only one of have written altogether. While they are ad- the patriarch’s letters which takes up what dressed to friends, mostly church officials, we might call Islamic issues. Several others they are more than personal correspondence, discuss questions which were obviously being on the order of public letters, or letter- posed with Muslim challenges in mind. Sev- treatises, perhaps best thought of as essays. eral cases in point are: a letter (XXXIV) on They discuss a number of liturgical, canoni- the proper understanding of the title cal and theological topics, and several of ‘Servant of God’ as an epithet for Christ;7 a them have to do with issues of Mus- letter in defense of the doctrine of the Trin- lim/Christian interest, including letters in ity (XXXV); and a letter against the opin- which Timothy describes in some detail the ions of those who demean the majesty of responses he has given to questions put to Christ (XXXVI).8 Another little known let- him by Muslims or inspired by Muslim con- ter (XL), which the patriarch addressed to ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies 7 (2007) - Page 55 Syrian Christian Intellectuals in the World of Islam _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ his former academic colleague Sergius, di- works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, rector of the school of Bashosh and soon to and in Greek mathematical, scientific and be the bishop of Elam,9 presents a somewhat medical texts by other writers, ushered in a detailed account of Patriarch Timothy’s col- whole new era for Christian intellectual life loquy with an interlocutor whom he met one in Baghdad. And since the Abbasid caliph’s day at the caliph’s court; Timothy says the capital was located in the historical heart- man was a devotee of the philosophy of Ar- land of the Assyrian Church of the East, it is istotle.10 But the course of the conversation no surprise that so-called ‘Nestorian’ Chris- which the patriarch reports, on the ways to tians, including Patriarch Timothy himself, know the one God, the three persons of the found their way into Baghdad to take advan- one God, the doctrine of the Incarnation and tage of the opportunities offered by the new the significance of various Christian reli- intellectual movement. Soon other Chris- gious practices, reads much like an account tians too, ‘Jacobites’ and ‘Melkites’ among of a conversation with a Muslim mutakal- them, would appear on the intellectual scene lim, rather than a philosopher.11 in the Islamic capital. Some were physi- The mention of Aristotle and of philoso- cians, some were philosophers, and some phy calls to mind the fact that Patriarch were logicians, mathematicians, copyists or Timothy was called upon by Muslim pa- translators. All of them contributed some- trons to arrange for the production of Arabic thing to the newly flowering culture of the translations of Greek logical and scientific early days of the first flourishing of Islamic texts, often from intermediary translations civilization. But in no society-wide enter- into Syriac. No less a personage than the prise did these ‘Nestorian’ and other Chris- caliph himself called upon the patriarch to tians take a more prominent role than they arrange for a translation of Aristotle’s did in the famed translation movement. For, Topica into Arabic, and Timothy discussed as Dimitri Gutas has rightly noted, the vast the undertaking in two very interesting let- majority of the translators of Greek and ters which have survived,12 in which the Syriac texts into Arabic were Christians.14 reader gains a lively sense of the multifac- As a matter of fact, for some generations eted processes involved in the enterprise. In previously many Christian scholars had been this connection, and in connection with the engaged in a translation movement of their beginnings of Christian involvement in the own of texts from Greek into Syriac, and Abbasid translation project, what John Watt latterly from Greek and Syriac into Arabic. has recently written about Patriarch Timo- Interest in Greek learning had been thy’s translation is noteworthy. He says: widespread in both the ‘Jacobite’ and the so- “The earliest unambiguous evidence of inter- called ‘Nestorian’, Syriac-speaking commu- est in Aristotelian philosophy in the upper nities from the sixth century onward.15 The levels of Abbasid Muslim society is the story begins back in the days of John Philo- commission of al-Mahdī to the East Syrian ponos (ca. 490-ca.570), a ‘Jacobite’ Chris- Catholicos Timothy I for a translation of Ar- tian student of the Neoplatonist Ammonius, istotle’s Topics from Syriac into Arabic.”13 son of Hermeias, in Alexandria.16 Philopo- This interest on the part of the Abbasid nos functioned both as a philosopher and as elite in Arabic translations of the logical a defender of Christianity. It was one of ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies 7 (2007) - Page 56 Syrian Christian Intellectuals in the World of Islam _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Philoponos’ students in Alexandria, Sergius known members of the Bukhtīshū family, of Resh‛ayna (d.536), a fellow ‘Jacobite’ with their connections with Jundīsābūr, from the environs of Edessa, who later Hunayn ibn Ishāq (808-873), who hailed switched his ecclesial allegiance to the from the ‘Nestorian’ capital of the Lakhmids, ‘Melkites’, who became the first-known link al-Hīra, and Abū Bishr Mattā ibn Yūnus between the enthusiasts for Aristotle in Neo- (d.940), from the flourishing monastery of platonist Alexandria and the Syriac- Dayr Qunnā, not far from Baghdad, who be- speaking communities in northern Syria.17 came “the founder of the Aristotelian school In Syria, the study of the works of “the Phi- in Baghdad early in the tenth century,”23 all losopher” and of other Greek thinkers al- soon came to be among the dominant Chris- ways involved translation into Syriac as the tian scholars in the Graeco-Arabic translation first step in the enterprise. From the time of movement in early Abbasid times. Sergius of Resh‛ayna onward, until well into It was within this context of the Graeco- Islamic times, the fortunes of Aristotle and Arabic translation movement of Abbasid Greek philosophy and science grew steadily times that a number of Christian intellectu- in the Syriac-speaking world, initially espe- als involved in the translation enterprise cially among the ‘Jacobites’. One thinks in came to the fore in their several communi- this connection of scholars such as Severus ties with a new approach to the Christian Sebokht (d.666/7), Athanasius of Balad encounter with the Muslims. Unlike their (d.696), Jacob of Edessa (633-708), George, predecessors, who were concerned primarily Bishop of the Arabs (d.724), and Theophilus in the Islamic milieu with composing apolo- of Edessa (d.785), to name a few of them.18 getic texts in Syriac and Arabic in response In the meantime, among the East Syri- to Islamic challenges, Christian translators ans and the so-called ‘Nestorians’, interest and scholars such as Hunayn ibn Ishāq (808- in Aristotle and the Greek sciences did not 873) in the ninth century, Yahyā ibn ‘Adī lag far behind that of the ‘Jacobites’. Paul (893-974) in the tenth century, and Elias of the Persian (fl. 531-578), a younger contem- Nisibis (d.1046) in the eleventh century, to porary of Sergius of Resh‛ayna who like- name only those with some name recogni- wise had connections with Alexandria, culti- tion in the modern west, turned their atten- vated a strong interest in Aristotelian tion also to philosophical, social and ethical thought, and although in the end he became questions. In particular, they sought a theo- a convert to Zoroastrianism back home in retical way, in tandem with contemporary Persia, at the court of Kusrau Anūshirwān Muslim thinkers, to commend a philosophi- (r.531-579), he seems nevertheless to have cal way of life, the cultivation of virtue and successfully championed Aristotle and Greek the pursuit of happiness, in a way that would philosophy among the Syriac-speaking, East promote a measure of convivencia in the Syrians in his homeland.19 Subsequently, it inter-religious, Islamo-christian atmosphere was in the ‘Nestorian’ school system, in cen- in which they lived.
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