The Islamic World and the Latin East: William of Tripoli and His Syrian Context

University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 8-2018 THE ISLAMIC WORLD AND THE LATIN EAST: WILLIAM OF TRIPOLI AND HIS SYRIAN CONTEXT Jeremy Daniel Pearson University of Tennessee Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Recommended Citation Pearson, Jeremy Daniel, "THE ISLAMIC WORLD AND THE LATIN EAST: WILLIAM OF TRIPOLI AND HIS SYRIAN CONTEXT. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2018. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/5076 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Jeremy Daniel Pearson entitled "THE ISLAMIC WORLD AND THE LATIN EAST: WILLIAM OF TRIPOLI AND HIS SYRIAN CONTEXT." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in History. Thomas E. Burman, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Maura K. Lafferty, Jay C. Rubenstein, Alison M. Vacca Accepted for the Council: Dixie L. Thompson Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) THE ISLAMIC WORLD AND THE LATIN EAST: WILLIAM OF TRIPOLI AND HIS SYRIAN CONTEXT A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Jeremy Daniel Pearson August 2018 Copyright © 2018 by Jeremy Daniel Pearson. All rights reserved. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Finishing this work has led me to reflect on all the help I have received along the way, and the debt I owe to a great number of people. First, I would like to thank my adviser, Thomas Burman, whose support and enthusiasm pushed my intellectual development and helped me believe that finishing this project was achievable. Tom Burman is kind to those around him, and his scholarship is infused with joy. He is a model for the kind of scholar I strive to be. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee, Jay Rubenstein, Maura Lafferty, and Alison Vacca, whose suggestions, revisions, and advice fundamentally shaped the direction of this project and improved its final form. They also provided personal support and encouragement throughout the process, and I am grateful for their kindness and generosity. I have also received a great deal of support from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. I would like to thank the history department and the MARCO Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies for funding me throughout the process, and for the advice and encouragement of faculty such as Jacob Latham, Chad Black, Luke Harlow, and Denise Philips. I would also like to thank UTK’s Humanities Center for funding me in my final year, and Tina Shepardson and the other scholars at the Center for offering valuable feedback during the writing process. I am similarly grateful to Thomas Lecaque, Stefan Hodges-Kuck, Katie Newell, and Jay Tomlin for their friendship and advice as we soldiered through a sometimes difficult program together, commiserating over our prospects over a beer or three. I am also grateful for the support I received at other institutions, especially during the two years I spent researching abroad. I would like to thank the Fulbright foundation for funding my time in Israel, and Harvey Hames, Uri Shachar and the other scholars at Ben Gurion University’s Center for the Study of Conversion and Inter-religious Encounters in Be’er Sheva for sponsoring my application and providing much needed support at key points of the writing process. I would like to thank Matthew J. Adams, Lisa Mahoney, Sean Kirkland, Ann Zimo, and the other scholars at the W.F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research, whose insight during workshops and over the dinner table introduced important questions and helped me as I worked through the problems I was grappling with. Equally important was the friendship of Joe Getzoff, Kyle Knabb, and Jessie Lerner, my fellow Fulbright scholars. Our Game of Thrones nights and B7 kvetching was vital therapy. Last, but far from least, I would like to thank my parents, John and Diana Pearson, and my brother, Joshua Pearson, who have always believed in me. They visited me while I was abroad, and have always treated the path I was on as valuable and worth doing. I am forever grateful for their love and encouragement. I would also like to thank Caleb and Heather Sutter for over twenty years of friendship and emotional support, and Tia Kilpatrick for cheering me on even when I was grumpy. Finally, I would like to thank my dear, sweet dog, Ajax, who passed away shortly before this project was iii finished. I am lucky to have called him my friend for nearly sixteen years. He was with me as I relocated to three different states, and spent many lonely nights writing. This is dedicated to you my friend. iv ABSTRACT For nearly two centuries after the First Crusade, a Latin-Christian elite controlled significant parts of the eastern Mediterranean, home to a diverse array of Christians, Muslims, and Jews. While seemingly a rich context for inter-religious cultural exchange, the dominant historical narrative has called this society a form of “proto-Apartheid,” with Frankish rulers successfully erecting impermeable boundaries between themselves and their largely Arabic-speaking subjects. This dissertation challenges this narrative through an investigation of the life and work of William of Tripoli, a thirteenth-century Dominican born in modern Lebanon, who spent his career evangelizing Muslims from a priory in Akko (Acre, Israel). William wrote two treatises on Islam that have been called “peculiar,” because of their positive portrayal of both the Qurʾān and the Prophet Muḥammad, but have not otherwise been integrated into our understanding of the cultural milieu of the Latin East. I argue that the “peculiar” elements in William’s work were borrowed from Arabic-Christian and Muslim sources, and that his entire rhetorical approach to Islam was informed by them. Through a contextualization of his work, I show that the religious, cultural, and social barriers of the Latin East were far more permeable than prior scholarship has acknowledged. Living and working alongside Muslims and eastern Christians cultivated within the Franks of the Latin East a uniquely Latin Eastern perspective. This was defined, above all, by the mental and emotional flexibility to interact with one’s neighbors from different sectarian communities in any of the ways that the context required, even while disagreeing with them in a broad, religious sense. William of Tripoli is the best written example we have of this perspective. He sought a pia interpretatio, or a pious interpretation of the Qurʾān, two centuries before this term was coined, because personal engagement with Islam had convinced him this was the best way to accomplish his missionary goals. v TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE…………………………………………………………………………..1 Introduction and Literature Review CHAPTER TWO………………………………………………………………………...36 Muḥammad’s Catechism and the Monk Baḥīrā CHAPTER THREE…………………………………………………………………….101 Destabilization and Strategies of Accommodation in the Notitia and De statu CHAPTER FOUR………………………………………………………………………154 A Dominican Wāʿẓ Preaches Mary and Her Son CHAPTER FIVE……………………………………………………………………….210 William of Tripoli and an Acculturated Latin Eastern Perspective CHAPTER SIX…………………………………………………………………………271 Conclusion and Final Thoughts LIST OF REFERENCES……………………………………………………………….274 VITA……………………………………………………………………………………289 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. The “Freer Canteen”…………………………………………………………256 vii CHAPTER ONE Introduction and Literature Review In the year 1095, thousands of western Europeans were inspired to march nearly two thousand miles to “reclaim” the city of Jerusalem. Most had never been to Jerusalem, and yet they felt it belonged to them and were prepared to make the trip at great personal and financial cost. After three years of misery and thousands of deaths on all sides, they successfully sacked the holy city, and established political control over a swathe of the Near East that included parts of the modern countries of Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey. We call this territory the Latin East, and at its height it comprised the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Principality of Antioch, and the Counties of Tripoli and Edessa. While the borders of these territories changed through treaty and conquest, and Jerusalem itself was lost more than once, the Latin East would endure as a political entity for nearly two centuries until it was finally conquered in 1291 by the Mamluk Sultanate. Western Europeans administered these territories, but the clear majority of the total population were indigenous Muslims, Jews, and Christians. The western European immigrants, or “Franks” as they were most often called, some of whom had fought in the wars of the Crusades and others who had not, found themselves in authority over a population that was more diverse than anything that existed in the West. For these Frankish authorities, a modus vivendi to accommodate this diverse population became vital

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