The Orthodox Church in the Arab World 700-1700: An Anthology of Sources

Now available from the publisher here or from Amazon here. Read an interview with the editors here. Table of contents below the jump.

The Orthodox Church in the Arab World (700–1700)
An Anthology of Sources
 

Edited by Samuel Noble and Alexander Treiger

Foreword by Metropolitan Ephrem (Kyriakos)

A publication in the Orthodox Christian Series

Orthodox Studies/Literature
ISBN 978-0-87580-701-0
$35.00

Paperback jacket copy:

“This collection makes an extremely important contribution to the history of medieval Christianity and the history of the medieval Near East, inasmuch as such Arabic Orthodox materials are not widely available. There is, so far as I am aware, no other comparable book on this subject in English.”
—Stephen J. Shoemaker, University of Oregon

“This book is impressive in both content and presentation. The editors have marshaled a team of leading scholars in the field to produce a series of translations of significant Christian Arabic works and have added an introduction that forms a comprehensive history of Christians within the Muslim world. They have produced a book that will be of immense help to the further understanding of Eastern Christianity and the history of relations between Christians and Muslims.”

—David Thomas, University of Birmingham

Christian literature in Arabic is at least 1,300 years old, the oldest surviving texts dating from the 8th century. Yet in the Western historiography of Christianity, the Arab Christian Middle East is treated only peripherally, if at all. The first of its kind, this anthology makes accessible in English representative selections from major Arab Christian works written between the 8th and 17th centuries. Until now, several of these important texts have remained unpublished or unavailable in English. Translated by leading scholars, this anthology encompasses the major genres of Orthodox Christian literature in Arabic.

Included are representative samples of the most important Orthodox works written in Arabic: an 8^th century Apology for the Christian Faith; a work by Theodore Abu Qurra on discerning the true religion; a disputation of the monk Abraham of Tiberias with the Muslims; lives of little-known saints and martyrs; the world history of Agapios; the devotional poetry of Sulayman al-Ghazzi; philosophical works of ‘Abdallah ibn al-Fadl; the mystical treatise the Noetic Paradise; a treatise on the priesthood by Agathon of Homs; the Letter to a Muslim Friend by Paul of Antioch; the unpublished notebook and diplomatic correspondence of the Patriarch Macarius; and Paul of Aleppo’s travel account that sheds light on the history of the Orthodox Church in the Ottoman Empire, Southeastern Europe, and Russia.

Samuel Noble is a doctoral candidate in religious studies at Yale University.

Alexander Treiger is associate professor in the Department of Classics and Program in Religious Studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Metropolitan Ephrem (Kyriakos) is the Orthodox Metropolitan of Tripoli, al-Koura, and their Dependencies. 

Table of Contents:

Foreword vii
Metropolitan Ephrem (Kyriakos)

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 3
Samuel Noble and Alexander Treiger

C h a p t e r 1
An Apology for the Christian Faith 40
Mark N. Swanson

C h a p t e r 2
Theodore Abu Qurra 60
John C. Lamoreaux

C h a p t e r 3
The Disputation of the Monk Abraham of Tiberias 90
Krisztina Szilágyi

C h a p t e r 4
Hagiography 112
John C. Lamoreaux

C h a p t e r 5
Agapius of Manbij 136
John C. Lamoreaux

C h a p t e r 6
Sulayman al-Ghazzi 160
Samuel Noble

C h a p t e r 7
ʿAbdallah ibn al-Fadl al-Antaki 171
Samuel Noble

C h a p t e r 8
The Noetic Paradise 188
Alexander Treiger

C h a p t e r 9
Agathon of Homs 201
Alexander Treiger

C h a p t e r 1 0
Paul of Antioch 216
Sidney H. Griffith

C h a p t e r 1 1
Patriarch Macarius Ibn al-Zaʿim 236 

Nikolaj Serikoff

C h a p t e r 1 2
Paul of Aleppo 252
Ioana Feodorov

Notes 277

A Bibliographical Guide to Arab Orthodox Christianity 339

About the Contributors 351

Indexes 353