STORIES, SAINTS, AND SANCTITY BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM IN THE MIDDLE AGES BY REYHAN DURMAZ B.A., MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY, 2007 M.A., KOÇ UNIVERSITY, 2010 M.A., CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY, 2012 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES AT BROWN UNIVERSITY PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND MAY 2019 © Copyright 2019 by Reyhan Durmaz This dissertation by Reyhan Durmaz is accepted in its present form by the Department of Religious Studies as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Date ____________ ____________________________________ Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date ____________ ____________________________________ Nancy Khalek, Reader Date ____________ ____________________________________ Suleiman Mourad, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date ____________ ____________________________________ Andrew Campbell, Dean of the Graduate School iii VITA Reyhan Durmaz was born in Turkey, in April 1984. Having lived and studied in various cities in south and north of Turkey, she moved to Ankara in 2002 to attend the Middle East Technical University. Reyhan received her BA degree from the School of Economic and Administrative Sciences iN 2007. Following her undergraduate study, Reyhan attended the graduate program of Anatolian Civilizations and Cultural Heritage Management at Koç University (Istanbul). After receiving her first MA degree in 2010, she attended the DepartmeNt of Medieval Studies at Central European University (Budapest), from which she graduated, cum laude, in 2012. In the same year Reyhan moved to Providence, RI, and started her doctoral studies at Brown University. At Brown, Reyhan worked on late antique Christianity and early Islamic history. Over the course of her doctoral studies, she served as the coordinator of the Graduate Colloquium, Borders and Boundaries in the Late Ancient and early Medieval Mediterranean (AY 2014-15), and as the academic coordinator of the Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at CEU (AY 2015-16). She participated in multiple archaeological excavations, in Istanbul and in southeast Turkey. She is a co-translator of the Jacob of Sarug’s Homilies on Women Whom Jesus Met (2016), and a contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity (2018). Reyhan received a Dumbarton Oaks Summer Fellowship in Byzantine Studies (2015), and a Dumbarton Oaks Junior Fellowship in Byzantine Studies and Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship in the 2018-19 academic year. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors of the saints’ stories that I studied in this dissertation take lines, sometimes pages, to tell their audiences that their feeble tongues and weak pens are not able to relate the amazing stories they are about to share. They say that it would be unfair to leave the stories in silence, but that they are only poorly and partially presenting the glorious, the terrifying, the exalted. Feeling like one of those authors, I am deeply thankful to my mentors, colleagues, and friends who made this research possible, and terrified to do injustice in acknowledging their contributions. The people I will mention in the following lines taught me, before anything else, generosity, perseverance, hard work, and humility. First and foremost, I owe my deepest gratitude to my two supervisors, Susan Harvey and Nancy Khalek. This research would not have been possible without their continued support, candid critique, generous engagement, and trustful foresight. I also had the privilege of working under the supervision of Suleiman Mourad. Every page of this dissertation benefited from his ideas, suggestions, and meticulous reading. The Department of Religious Studies at Brown University has been my home for seven years. I am immensely thankful to Nicole Vadnais and Tina Creamer for being fully supportive and helpful for everything I needed. Without their attendance, I would not have been able to accomplish anything. I would like to extend my gratitude to the Department’s directors of graduate studies, Janine Sawada and Stephen Bush. Brown Library and Brown Graduate School provided me with all of the resources necessary for my doctoral studies and dissertation. I am very lucky to lean on an institution so supportive and encouraging of their graduate students. In learning and research, having the opportunity to bounce your ideas off of great minds is priceless. Both in classroom and in extracurricular colloquia, I was nourished by my professors Jonathan Conant, Michael Satlow, Sarah Insley Say, Stratis Papaioannou, among others. I am deeply indebted to Niels Gaul for helping me develop my ideas at the earliest stages of this dissertation, and thoroughly and faithfully following the development of my project. Volker Menze has always been a great mentor and friend at every phase of my graduate studies. I am also immensely grateful to Sidney Griffith and Stephanos Efthymiadis for their supportive, insightful, and delightful conversations, and for generously sharing their work and ideas, which greatly improved this dissertation. At Brown University I have had an incredible group of friends, who nurtured me and every stage of my research. I am very grateful to Michael Payne, who has always been in the backstage of this project, cheering or challenging every idea of mine. We took courses together, traveled to conferences, translated obscure texts, proofread each other’s works, had fun, laughed, argued, then laughed more. Noah Tetenbaum, with his friendship, support, sincerity and care, made some of the most difficult times of this project easier for me. Laura Dingeldein has contributed to my research with her brilliant ideas and feedback v and been a source of joy and laughter. Dora Ivanišević’s continuous friendship and support have been indispensable sources of comfort for me for more than ten years. Ayşe Şirin has been one of my favorite work companions, traveling to all the libraries and coffee shops of Providence and Istanbul with me. I also give my earnest thanks to Adrien Stoloff, Andrew Tobolowski, Daniel Picus, David Liao, Ed Peckham, Ian Randall, Kerry Sonia, Lynn Hernandez, Megan McBride, Rebecca Falcasantos, and Rob Kashow for being there every time I needed them. I would like to extend my thanks to the Syriac Studies community, the Dorushe, especially to Alberto Rigolio, Flavia Ruani, Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent, John Zaleski, Kyle Smith, Philip Forness, Salam Rassi, Sergey Minov, and Simcha Gross. Although we have been mostly far away, thanks to this community, I left every conference and workshop with new ideas, new friends, and new projects to look forward to. The final stage of this dissertation was supported by a Dumbarton Oaks Junior Fellowship in Byzantine Studies. I cannot overstate my gratitude to Jan Ziolkowski, Emily Jacobs, Eden Slone, Anna Stavrokopoulou, Joshua Robinson, Alyson Williams for providing a great work environment, all of the resources I needed for my research, and for so generously supporting my project at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, DC. It was also a delight to work alongside with the fellows at Dumbarton Oaks. Erin Walsh has been an amazing companion through the long working hours at the library. Daniel Caner has been the most honest and meticulous critic of my work; Christos Simelidis my most zealous supporter. The guidance Michael McCormick gave at the final stage of my project is invaluable. The fervent discussions with John Mulhall gave me many unforgettable moments of socratic conversation. It has also been a great pleasure to share thoughts, working hours, lunch, and laughter with Alberto Bardi, Anna Kelley, Carla Hernandez, Christine Griffiths, Mark Pawlowski, Sarah Leonard, Scotti Norman, Thomas ArentzeN, and other fellows I had the privilege of spending an academic year with. My project was also generously supported by a Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship provided by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. I would like to thank the Newcombe Foundation for making this fellowship possible, and Susan Billmeier, who has been wonderful in assisting, organizing, and communicating the process. Matthew Norton, a.k.a. the Prophet, deserves my heartfelt thanks for celebrating with me all the milestones at the end of this project. My dear friend Behice PehlivaN has continuously been supportive of every brilliant and not-so-brilliant idea of mine. Without her unconditional love and friendship, I would have been less and done less. And lastly, my gratitude to my mother and brother, Hatice and Ibrahim, is beyond words. I have been away from you for too long. It does not, by aNy means, compare to the love and support you give me, but this imperfect dissertation is dedicated to you. vi CONTENTS Abbreviations …………………………………………………………………………........................... ix Introduction: Orality and Narrative Transmission in Antiquity ……………….……………….1 Hagiodiegesis: The practice of orally narrating saints’ stories ……………………….1 Narration and transmission in early Islam ……………………………….…………...…32 Traveling stories ………………………………………………………………………………46 The structure and format of the dissertation …………………………………………….56 Chapter 1 – Muhammad as a Storyteller ………………………………………………………….61 Storytelling in the Qur’āN ……………………………………………………………….….67 Broader literary contexts of qur’ānic storytelling ……………………………………...85 The functions of storytelling in Muhammad’s prophetic career