Place, Practice, Patron: Making Religious Communities in the Early Medieval Jazīra

Place, Practice, Patron: Making Religious Communities in the Early Medieval JazīraStudies in Late AntiquitySyriaca.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/TMG9Z63C/tei

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2025-05-20-05:00

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CREATED: This bibl record was autogenerated from a Zotero record.ReyhanDurmazPlace, Practice, Patron: Making Religious Communities in the Early Medieval Jazīrahttp://syriaca.org/cbss/TMG9Z63Chttps://www.zotero.org/groups/a_comprehensive_bibliography_on_syriac_studies/items/TMG9Z63Chttps://www.zotero.org/groups/4861694/items/TMG9Z63CStudies in Late Antiquity9:1202551-84Religious communities in the early medieval Middle East are often articulated in modern scholarship through theological distinctions. “Monophysites, Nestorians, Melkites, Muslims, Jews, Manichaeans, and others in conversation and conflict” is a common way to describe this religious diversity. Some texts, however, describe more complex dynamics that have made and unmade religious groups. In this article, focusing on the eighth-century Jazīra (northern Mesopotamia), I demonstrate how place, practice, and patron played a role in the making of communities through a detailed reading of three Syriac texts: the Chronicle of Zuqnin, the Life of Simeon of the Olives, and the Life of Theodotus of Amida. Although the authors of these texts aimed at highlighting the doctrinal distinctions between groups, they also describe religious communities through their precise location, the practices they adhered to, and the leadership they followed or challenged. I argue that the texts’ emphases on these dynamics should be read against the backdrop of the changing Islamic law regarding the administration and taxation of non-Muslim populations. The increase in the amount and type of taxes levied on non-Muslims, and the discussions about the “protected” (dhimmī) status of non-Muslims, impacted the ways the inhabitants of the Jazīra reassessed and articulated communal boundaries. Through the example of these underexplored texts produced in the eighth-century Jazīra, I join the lively debate about the making of religious communities in the early Islamic Middle East with an eye to contributing to the discussions of the chronological and conceptual boundaries of Late Antiquity. Durmaz, Reyhan. “Place, Practice, Patron: Making Religious Communities in the Early Medieval Jazīra.” Studies in Late Antiquity 9:1 (2025): 51–84. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2025.9.1.51. Reyhan Durmaz, Place, Practice, Patron: Making Religious Communities in the Early Medieval Jazīra, Studies in Late Antiquity 9:1 (2025): 51–84, https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2025.9.1.51.