DISSERTATION Titel der Dissertation Seeing Eye to Eye: Islamic Universalism in the Roman and Byzantine Worlds, 7th to 10th Centuries Verfasser Olof Heilo angestrebter akademischer Grad Doktor der Philosophie (Dr. Phil.) Wien 2010 Studienblatt: A 092 383 Dissertationsgebiet: Byzantinistik und Neogräzistik Betreuer: Univ. Prof. Dr. Johannes Koder Acknowledgements I have been fortunate to simultaneously enjoy a number of benefits: thanks to the European Union, it was possible for me to embark upon this work in Austria while receiving financial support from Sweden, and in an era when boundless amounts of information are accessible everywhere, I could still enjoy a certain time for reflexion in the process of my studies. I am blessed with parents and siblings who not only share my interests in different ways, but who have actively supported me in all possible ways, and particularily during the two overtime years it took me to write a work I initially hoped would be finished in two years alone. From my years of studies in Lund and Copenhagen, I owe gratitude to profs. Karin and Jerker Blomqvist, prof. Bo Holmberg and dr. Lena Ambjörn, Eva Lucie Witte and Rasmus Christian Elling. Dr. Carl and Eva Nylander have inspired my pursuit of studies, whereas the kind advices of prof. Werner Seibt almost ten years ago encouraged me to go to Vienna. Dr. Roger Sages, whose Talmud readings I had the pleasure to attend in Lund, has been my mentor in philosophical matters; my godmother Barbro Brilioth has brought me contacts everywhere. I am particularily in debt to dr. Karin Ådahl at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul and to prof. Jørgen Nielsen at the Danish Institute in Damascus. At the “Visions of Communities” symposium in Vienna in 2009, I had the opportunity to hear many of the scholars whose works have defined my field of research – I would especially like to thank prof. Hugh Kennedy for the kind advices he gave me at the occasion. I owe the work itself first and foremost to the great patience of my supervisor, prof. Johannes Koder, and to the enthusiasm of my English proofreader, prof. Charles Lock in Copenhagen. My second supervisor, prof. Herbert Eisenstein, has done the painstaking work of going through the Arabic transcriptions, whereas my father, Sven Heilo, in Lund, has acted as a second English proofreader. I would like to thank prof. Georg Scheibelreiter at the Institut für Geschichtsforschung, dr. Sibylle Wentker at the Institut für Iranistik, prof. Rüdiger Lohlker at the Institut für Orientalistik and dr. Maria Walk at the Institut für Byzanzforschung. Many thanks also goes to my colleagues, Johannes Grossmann and dr. Despina Ariantzi, and to our institute’s secretary, Mrs. Petra Greger. I am indebted to the ISAM library in Istanbul and to the Assad library in Damascus, to archbishop Damian of the monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai, and to dr. Mahmoud Abu l-Huda al-Husseini in Aleppo. I would like to dedicate the work to all people I met on my travels in the Near East in 2004-5, and especially to Abu Fareed, who told me to start writing. Contents Introduction 7 1. Empires 14 1.1 Farewell to Syria 20 1.1.1 At Crossroads 21 1.1.2 The Prophet 28 1.1.3 Raiders and Conquerors 32 1.1.4 The Arab Caesar 40 1.1.5 Summary 46 1.2 Submission 48 1.2.1 A Roman Ka’ba? 49 1.2.2 Emperors Without Crosses 57 1.2.3 Guardians of Paradise 64 1.2.4 Mirror for Princes 72 1.2.5 Summary 73 1.3 Holy War? 78 1.3.1 The Great Creature 79 1.3.2 Apocalypse Now 83 1.3.3 The “First Fall of Constantinople” 92 1.3.4 A Question of Faith 100 1.3.5 Summary 108 2. Borderlands 110 4 2.1 Saints, Warriors, Saviours 114 2.1.1 Unseen Warfare 115 2.1.2 The Soul and the Flesh 119 2.2 The Visible and the Invisible 126 2.2.1 Spiritual Matters 127 2.2.2 Problems of Confidence 134 2.3 Preliminary Observations (When does History become History?) 139 2.3.1 The Return of the Kings 139 2.3.2 The Persistence of Memory 141 3. Commonwealths 147 3.1 Cultural Capitals 151 3.0.1 Remarks 156 3.2 Renewal? 157 3.2.1 Books from Baghdad? 159 3.2.2 Class and Classics 168 3.2.3 Distinctions 174 3.2.4 Remarks 177 3.3 Missions 179 3.3.1 Word Wars 180 3.3.2 Language Games 182 3.3.3 Remarks 184 Conclusions 186 Bibliography 192 5 Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing: for they shall see eye to eye, when the LORD shall bring again Zion. Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem: for the LORD hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem. KING JAMES BIBLE, Isaiah 52:8 HEROD What does it mean? The Redeemer of the world? TIGELLIN It is a title claimed by Caesar. HEROD But Caesar is not coming to Judaea. Only yesterday I received letters from Rome. He told me nothing about that. OSCAR WILDE, Salomé (1892) 6 Introduction O King, you had a dream in which you saw an image, a huge idol that was facing you and whose countenance was terrifying. Its head was made of pure gold, its hands, breast and arms were made of silver, its belly and thighs were of bronze, the legs of iron and the feet of iron mixed with clay. As you beheld it, a rock, untouched by hands, broke away from a mountain and smote the image upon the feet of iron and clay, and shattered them to pieces. And instantly the clay, the iron, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all shattered, and they became like the chaff of a treshing-place in summertime; a strong wind carried them away and they were nowhere to be found. But the rock that had smitten the idol became a huge mountain which filled the whole world.1 When the Jewish prophet Daniel faces the victorious Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II, the representative of a politically inferior people claims to possess a stronger and more everlasting God than those of his overlords. It is a story which became so often repeated and reinterpreted that it turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy, whose universal appeal became its own foretelling about a truth more everlasting than that of its dreamer. What is important to note in the first place, however, is that it is not Jewish Monotheism which makes the truth claims of Daniel universal, but the universe – the dream of Nebuchadnezzar – in which the Jewish prophet claims the preferential right to interprete the truth. A universal God requires a universe; it is no coincidence that Daniel ended his days in the service of the first “World empire”, Persia, having served the restorer of Jerusalem, Cyrus the Great.2 1S¥, basile†, „√rakaq, kaÁ ˝do e˝k◊n mºa, kaÁ ƒn Ô e˝k◊n ®keºnh megålh sfødra, kaÁ Ô prøsociq aªt∂q ÊperferÓq „st¸kei ®nantºon soy, kaÁ Ô prøsociq t∂q e˝kønoq foberå? kaÁ ƒn Ô kefalÓ aªt∂q ¢pØ xrysºoy xrhsto†, tØ st∂uoq kaÁ o braxºoneq ¢rgyro¡, Ô koilºa kaÁ o mhroÁ xalko¡, tÅ d‚ sk™lh sidhr˙, o pødeq m™roq m™n ti sid¸roy, m™roq d™ ti πstråkinon. „√rakaq ‘vq Œtoy ®tm¸uh lºuoq ®j œroyq “ney xeir©n kaÁ ®påtaje tÓn e˝køna ®pÁ toÂq pødaq toÂq sidhro†q kaÁ πstrakºnoyq kaÁ kat¸lesen aªtå. tøte leptÅ ®g™neto “ma ∏ sºdhroq kaÁ tØ œstrakon kaÁ ∏ xalkØq kaÁ ∏ “rgyroq kaÁ tØ xrysºon kaÁ ®g™neto ˜seÁ leptøteron x¥roy ®n “lvni, kaÁ ®rrºpisen aªtÅ ∏ “nemoq ¯ste mhd‚n kataleifu∂nai ®j aªt©n? kaÁ ∏ lºuoq ∏ patåjaq tÓn e˝køna ®g™neto œroq m™ga kaÁ ®påtaje p˙san tÓn g∂n. Dan. 2:31-35. 2 Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth 18ff. Cyrus is called “the anointed of the Lord” by Deuteroisaiah (Is. 40ff) and it hardly needs to be emphasised which positive role Persia plays in the books of Daniel, Ezra, Esther and 7 Alexander the Great destroyed the political entity created by the Persians, but he had perhaps not needed go the whole way to India to understand the historical futility of his universal dreams. If he had listened to his teacher Aristotle, he would have known that the virtues of truth – craft (techne), knowledge (episteme), judgement (phronesis), wisdom (sophia) and intellect (nous) – are subject to rules which the mortal man can claim to subdue as little as he might hope to conquer the celestial bodies.3 As it were, after Alexander’s death the dispersed Hellenistic oikoumene was soon swallowed up by an empire that proved to have a more durable political techne, that of the Romans. We are never told what Jesus said when Pilate asked him what truth is, which is another way of answering the question. A Socrates would have initiated a dialogue with his accuser, but Jesus is no Greek philosopher and cannot meet Pilate as opponent in a common field of play.4 The truth of the Roman official is related to the rules of the physical world governed by the emperor; the truth of Jesus belongs to a kingdom that is “not of this world”. Technically, Pilate does condemn him to death, yet he “cannot find any fault” with him in his own view of sight, and Jesus does not consider the Roman guilty of deicide, since the death sentence is only a worldly matter.