Stories, Saints, and Sanctity between Christianity and Islam in the Middle AgesSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference PortalThe National Endowment for the HumanitiesThe International Balzan Prize FoundationDavid A. Michelsoncbsc_adminRecord added to Zotero bycbsc_adminSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portalhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/IVVAN8LX/tei
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CREATED: This bibl record was autogenerated from a Zotero record.ReyhanDurmazStories, Saints, and Sanctity between Christianity and Islam in the Middle Ageshttp://syriaca.org/cbss/IVVAN8LXhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/a_comprehensive_bibliography_on_syriac_studies/items/IVVAN8LXhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/4861694/items/IVVAN8LX2019This dissertation analyzes encounter and exchange between Christianity and Islam in late antiquity and the Middle Ages through the lens of saints’ stories, their textual and oral narrators, and their audiences. It draws on a broad array of Greek, Syriac, and Arabic texts, including saints’ lives, homilies such as those of Jacob of Sarug (d. 521), the Qur’ān and qur’ānic commentaries, the Biography of Muhammad, local and universal historiographical works, belles-lettres, and travel literature, among others. The first part studies hagiographical storytelling (hagiodiegesis) as a religious practice in Christianity and Islam. Through narratological analysis, it reconstructs the agents, methods, and contexts of hagiographical storytelling in antiquity –a significant yet understudied practice. As the dissertation demonstrates, Muhammad and others in the early Islamic community were transmitters, narrators, and interpreters of Christian saints’ stories, participating in the broader world of late antiquity. This social-historical reconstruction lays the groundwork for analyzing the roles of Christian hagiography in Islamic literature. Until now, this question has mostly been considered in the context of qur’ānic exegesis. The dissertation shows that Christian saints’ personas and stories were also used as didactic examples of universal piety and wisdom; as “excellences” (faḍā’il) to praise towns and regions; as members of the eternal Muslim community; and as etiologies for Islamic beliefs and practices. This dissertation nuances our understanding of Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle Ages by taking the inquiry beyond the confines of impact and influence. Transmissions of Christian hagiographical knowledge were not isolated instances of exchange, nor was Christian hagiography merely a reservoir of tropes for the Muslim author. Narration and veneration of saints was a shared space, which was constantly expanded, negotiated, and contested between Christianity and Islam. The increasing knowledge of Christian saints in Islam allowed Muslim communities to participate in a broader ecumenical exchange. This knowledge provided Muslim authors with a creative, flexible space for developing different modes of authorship. It helped Muslim communities define Islamic notions of asceticism and sanctity vis-à-vis Christian concepts and discourse. And overall Christian hagiography was a powerful medium with which Muslim communities built and expressed their distinct local identities.
Durmaz, Reyhan. “Stories, Saints, and Sanctity between Christianity and Islam in the Middle Ages.” Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, 2019.
Reyhan Durmaz, Stories, Saints, and Sanctity between Christianity and Islam in the Middle Ages (Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, 2019).JacobitesMuslim-Christian relationsQuranSeven Sleepers of EphesusSt GeorgeSyriac influence [Arabs]VII-XVIII CEhagiographysaints