Christianity, Islam, and the Religious Culture of Late Antiquity: A Study of Asceticism in Iraq and Northern Mesopotamia The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Zaleski, John. 2019. Christianity, Islam, and the Religious Culture of Late Antiquity: A Study of Asceticism in Iraq and Northern Mesopotamia. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42106922 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Christianity, Islam, and the Religious Culture of Late Antiquity: A Study of Asceticism in Iraq and Northern Mesopotamia A dissertation presented by John Zaleski to The Committee on the Study of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of The Study of Religion Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts April 2019 © 2019 John Zaleski All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor Charles M. Stang John Zaleski Christianity, Islam, and the Religious Culture of Late Antiquity: A Study of Asceticism in Iraq and Northern Mesopotamia Abstract This dissertation examines the development of Christian and Islamic writing on asceticism, especially fasting and celibacy, in Iraq and northern Mesopotamia during the formative period of Islam. I show that both Christians and Muslims created ascetic traditions specific to their communities, by reinterpreting the significance of disciplines they held in common and by responding to the practices and ideals of rival confessions. As I argue, Muslims transformed Late Antique models of asceticism and in so doing led Christians to reshape their own ever-evolving monastic traditions. The first part of the dissertation examines ascetic texts written by members of the East Syrian church, the largest Christian community in Iraq at the time of the Islamic conquest. I demonstrate that East Syrians appropriated Late Antique monastic thought by commenting upon, adapting, and reinterpreting Greek monastic texts. These commentators thus developed a self- consciously East Syrian tradition of interpreting ascetic practice, directed against rival Christian confessions and monastic movements. Central to this tradition was an emphasis on fasting and celibacy as mutually reinforcing disciplines, necessary throughout a monk’s life in order to reorient the soul’s desire toward God. In the second part of the dissertation, I show how early Muslim authors re-envisioned the value and meaning of ascetic disciplines that were central to eastern Christian monasticism and often associated by Muslims with Christian monks. In particular, I argue that Muslims iii reinterpreted the purpose of fasting and sexual abstinence in light of Qur’anic and Prophetic models of piety. Far from imitating Christian asceticism (as has been suggested by scholars in the past), Muslims thus created self-consciously Islamic traditions of ascetic practice. The final part of the dissertation argues that this Islamic ascetic discourse, which I call the “language of zuhd,” became a koiné, in which members of multiple religious confessions in Iraq took part. This section thus shows how East Syrian Christians confronted Islamic ascetic ideals — ideals formed by Muslims partly in response to Christian monasticism. Through these mutual responses, Christians and Muslims alike formed new traditions of asceticism, which have perdured among Muslim and Christian communities in the Middle East. iv Table of Contents 1. Title Page………………………………………………………………………………………. i 2. Copyright……………………………………………………………………………………… ii 3. Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………….. iii 4. Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………….... v 5. List of Tables…………………………………………………………………………………. vi 6. Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………... vii 7. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………. 1 Part I 8. Chapter One: Babai the Great and East Syrian Monastic Commentary……………………... 17 9. Chapter Two: The East Syrian Monastic Commentary Tradition After Babai……………… 77 Part II 10. Chapter Three: Asceticism in the Kutub al-Zuhd and Hadith……………………………... 135 11. Chapter Four: Asceticism and Sufism in Third/Ninth-Century Baghdad…………………. 195 Part III 12. Chapter Five: The Language of Zuhd and the Rise of an Ascetic Koiné…………………. 255 13. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………… 310 14. Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………. 317 v List of Tables 1. Table 1: Zuhd and the Woolen Cloak………………………………………………………. 276 2. Table 2: Zuhd and Seclusion………………………………………………………………... 277 3. Table 3: Zuhd and the Remembrance of Death…………………………………………….. 279 vi Acknowledgements In the course of writing this dissertation, I have benefited from the support of many people, and it is a great pleasure to thank them now. My first debt of thanks is to my advisor, Charles Stang, for his careful guidance and his unceasing encouragement and support throughout my studies. His advice and his close reading of drafts and related talks and articles have been essential to the development of the dissertation. I also owe thanks to my other readers, Khaled El-Rouayheb, Luis Girón-Negrón, and Nancy Khalek. Professor El-Rouayheb fostered my study of classical Arabic texts, and his close reading of chapters of this dissertation has saved me from several errors. Professor Girón-Negrón has offered kind guidance throughout my studies, and I am grateful that, in addition to turning his careful attention to my drafts, he has introduced me to the wonderful field of Judeo-Arabic. Finally, I am especially grateful to Professor Khalek for joining my dissertation committee as an outside reader, and for her sharp eye and feedback on my prospectus and chapters. It goes without saying that any remaining errors of fact or interpretation in the dissertation are solely my own. I would also like to thank Kevin Madigan, who was the first to encourage this dissertation topic, and who graciously passed me on to other readers as the project moved my studies earlier and eastward. I remain indebted to his kindness and historical acumen. This project was made possible by the support, both material and otherwise, of Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, which funded the initial years of research and writing, including archival work, as well as the Fordham University Orthodox Christian Studies Center, which has supported my final year of dissertation work. I am deeply grateful to these two wonderful institutions. In another way, this dissertation has been made possible by the hard work vii of the library staff at Harvard Widener Library, Dumbarton Oaks, and the Library of Congress, as well as the staff at the Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, the British Library, and the University of Birmingham Cadbury Research Library. I would also like to thank the departmental administrators of the Committee on the Study of Religion, Elise Ciregna and Barbara Boles. Their constant helpfulness and kindness have contributed much to my happiness and success at Harvard. Finally, I would like to thank my family, my brother Andy, and especially my parents for their endless support, encouragement, and help throughout my years of study, and for imparting to me the gift that is the love of learning. Above all, my gratitude goes to Teresa, who has surrounded my work with an ever-growing joy. viii Introduction This dissertation examines the development of Christian and Islamic writing on asceticism in Iraq and northern Mesopotamia during the formative period of Islam.1 I show that both Christians and Muslims created ascetic traditions specific to their communities, by reinterpreting the significance of disciplines they held in common and by responding to the practices and ideals of rival confessions. As I argue, Muslims transformed Late Antique models of asceticism, and in so doing, they led Christians to reshape their own ever-evolving monastic traditions. The relation between Christian and early Islamic asceticism has been a subject of longstanding scholarly interest, albeit primarily as a corollary to a broader question about the relationship between Christian mysticism and Sufism.2 In spite of the interest in this subject, however, a vast number of relevant texts remain to be examined. Each chapter of the dissertation analyzes texts whose ascetic content is either completely unstudied or only partially examined. As such, a primary contribution of this dissertation is to uncover new sources and reappraise 1 The dissertation thus focuses on the region of modern-day southern and central Iraq (the ‘irāq of Arab geographers), as well as on the area of upper Mesopotamia known to Arab geographers as al-jazīrah, the “island” between the Tigris and Euphrates. This region included modern-day northern Iraq, as well as portions of Mesopotamia now lying in northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey. 2 For classic studies of the relationship of Christian mysticism and Sufism, see Louis Massignon, Essai sur les origines du lexique technique de la mystique musulmane (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1922); and Tor Andrae, I myrtenträdgården: Studier i tidig islamisk mystic (Lund: Albert Bonniers Forlag, 1947); translated into English as In the Garden of Myrtles: Studies in Early Islamic Mysticism, trans. Birgitta Sharpe (Albany, NY: State