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C16/17/001#54271306

Abstract:

The Syriac Orthodox bishop and polymath Dionysius bar Ṣalībī (d. 1171) is a figure of great interest to the history of Christian-Muslim relations in the period of literary and cultural revival known as the 'Syriac Renaissance' (ca. 1026-1318). Living in a time of tribulation marked by the trauma of the fall of Edessa to the Seljuq Turks, Bar Ṣalībī composed the lenghtiest, most comprehensive, and latest treatise ever to be written in Syriac in a genre of religious disputation with Islam. But what has made his Disputation against the Arabs most famous and unique, apart from its length and scope, are its abundant quotations from the Qurʾān in Syriac rendering, which are found especially - but not exclusively - in the final part of this treatise. In these final six chapters, Bar Ṣalībī divides the pages into two synoptic columns, with one column containing translated excerpts from the Qurʾān, and the other an apologetic and polemic commentary. Starting with the first modern study of the treatise, several scholars have suggested that Bar Ṣalībī was quoting from a lost early Syriac translation of the Qurʾān. Other, lesser known scholarly responses, however, have contested this view and advanced different explanations, which also seek to account for the unwarranted interspersion of several extra-qurʾānic traditions among the excerpts that are genuinely qurʾānic. This includes, most notably, the views that Bar Ṣalībī preserved a Syriac collection of qurʾānic and extra-qurʾānic passages, or was personally involved as Syriac translator. This dissertation offers the first comprehensive source-critical study of all of Bar Ṣalībī's qurʾānic quotations, not just those in the final part of his treatise. By systematically comparing recurrent quotations of passages in his Against the Arabs and his Commentary on the Gospels, this study contends that Bar Ṣalībī's principal access to the text of the Qurʾān was not mediated by an alleged Syriac translation of the Qurʾān, nor by any Arabic source. Rather, he had access to a pre-existing, otherwise unattested topically-organized Syriac collection of qurʾānic and extra-qurʾānic testimonies against the Muslims. Moreover, the fact that extensive materials from this collection reflect the narrative structure of the popular Muslim genre of qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ ('stories of the prophets') and may even be directly based on a post-classical qiṣaṣ work, is best explained by assuming that the Syriac testimony collection utilized by Bar Ṣalībī did not emerge prior to the eleventh century and thus most likely was a product of the early Syriac Renaissance. This collection Bar Ṣalībī preserved most fully and faithfully in the final part of his treatise Against the Arabs as a kind of appendix, but it was also substantially used in the two earlier parts of his treatise, where selected proof-texts were borrowed and synthesized with materials taken from other sources, most notably earlier Syriac and Arabic Christian apologies in response to Islam. In addition to this source-critical study, this dissertation offers a study of the manuscript tradition and a new critical edition and annotated English translation of the Syriac testimony collection as preserved by Bar Ṣalībī.