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Anthony David of Baghdad, Scribe and Monk of Mar Sabas: Arabic in the Monasteries of Palestine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Sidney H. Griffith
Sidney H. Griffith
Affiliation:
associate professor of Semitic Languages in The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.
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Extract

Forty years ago George Every called the attention of the scholarly world to the likelihood that in the oriental patriarchates after the time of John of Damascus the Arabic language increasingly became the language of the Melkite, or Roman (rūmī), community of Christians in the caliphate. They came to use Arabic, Every suggested, not only for scholarly purposes, but even for the divine liturgy, at least for the Scripture lessons.1 In the years since Every made these observations it has become increasingly clear that not only was there such an increase in the use of Arabic in the church during the first Abbasid century, but that the crescendo in the use of Arabic went hand in hand with the diminishment of Greek as a language of church scholarship in the monasteries of the Holy Land from early Abbasid times, perhaps even until the Ottoman period, when the so-called “Rūm Millet” reintroduced the control of Greek speakers in the Jerusalem patriarchate.2 Accordingly, one might speak of the first flowering of Christian life in Arabic in the Holy Land as having occurred during the three centuries stretching from 750, the beginning of the Abbasid caliphate, to around the year 1050, the eve of the crusader period in Near Eastern history.3 And the documentary evidence for the literary activity of the Holy Land monks who wrote in Arabic during this period is largely the archive of “old south Palestinian texts” which Joshua Blau studied for his Grammar of Chrtstian Arabic.4

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 7 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1989

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References

1. See Every, George, “Syriac and Arabic in the Church of Jerusalem,” The Church Quarterly Review 145 (1947–1948): 230–239.Google Scholar See also Every's, “Syrian Christians in Palestine in the Early Middle Ages,” The Eastern Churches Quarterly 7 (1946): 363–372.Google Scholar

2. See remarks, Every's in “Syriac and Arabic,” pp. 236–237.Google Scholar On the diminishment of Greek and the growth of Arabic, see the remarks of Griffith, S. H., “Greek into Arabic: Life and Letters in the Monasteries of Palestine in the Ninth Century, the Example of the Summa Theologiae Arabica,” Byzantion 56 (1986): 117–138;Google Scholaridem, “The Monks of Palestine and the Growth of Christian Literature in Arabic,” The Muslim World 78 (1988): 1–28.

3. Rachid Haddad has studied the works of the writers of this period in his La Trinité divine chez les théologiens arabes (750–1050) (Paris, 1985).Google Scholar

4. Blau, Joshua, A Grammar of Christian Arabic, vols. 267, 276, 279 (Louvain, 1966–1967).Google Scholar See the list of “old south Palestinian” texts in volume 267, pp. 21–33.Google Scholar Additional manuscripts, to which Blau had no access in earlier catalogs, are listed in Meimarēs, J.J., Katalogos tōn neōn Arabikōn Cheirographōn tēs hieras monēs hagias aikaterinēs tou orous Sina (Athens, 1985),Google Scholar Greek and Arabic.

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8. Ibid., and G.Garitte, “Homélie d'Ephrem ‘Sur la Mort et Ic Diable,’” Le Muséon 82 (1969): 135.

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14. See the Arabic text published in Kračkovsky, “New Testament Apocryphon,” p. 261; Garitte, “Homélie d'Ephrem,” p. 128.

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18. See Blake, R. P., “La littérature grecque en Palestine au viiie siécle,” Le Muséon 78 (1965): 367–380.Google Scholar For Mar Sabas monastery, see Ehrhard, A., “Das griechische Kioster Mar-Saba in Palaestina, seine Geschichte und seine litterarischen Denkmäler,” Römische Quartalschrift 7 (1893): 32–79;Google ScholarVailhé, S., “Les écrivains de Mar Saba,” Échos d'Orient 2 (1898): 1–11, 33–47;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMeinardus, Otto F. A., “Historical Notes on the Lavra of Mar Saba,” Eastern Churches Review 2 (1968–1969): 392–401.Google Scholar See also the appropriate sections of Chitty, Derwas J., The Desert a City (Crestwood, N.Y., 1966);Google Scholar and Flusin, Bernard, Miracle thistoiredansl'oeuvre de Cyrille de Scythopolis (Paris, 1983).Google Scholar See also the important work of Hirschfeld, Yizhar, “The Judean Desert Monasteries in the Byzantine Period: An Archeological Investigation” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1987).Google Scholar

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25. See S. H. Griffith, “Stephen of Ramlah,” and “Greek into Arabic.”

26. Vatican Arabic MS 71 was purchased in Cairo by Andreas Scandar, who was sent on an expedition to purchase manuscripts for the Vatican library in 1718. See Assemani, J. S., Bibliotheca Orientalis, vol. 2 (Rome, 1721), pp. 485, 510–511.Google Scholar Strasbourg Oriental MS 4226 was likewise purchased in Cairo by an agent for the library, a certain Dr. Reinhart; see Oestrup, , “Über zwei arabische Codices,” p. 453Google Scholar n. 1.

27. Tisserant, , Specimina, p. xxxix;Google ScholarGaritte, , “Homélie d'Éphrem,” p. 135.Google Scholar

28. Graf, G., “Iğtimāc l-ahi bacda Šatāt aš-šaml [sic],” al-Machriq 12 (1909): 695–706;Google ScholarSauget, J.-M., “Une version arabe du ‘sermon ascétique’ d'Étienne Ic Thébain,” Le Muséon 77 (1964): 367–406.Google Scholar

29. Seen. 10 above.

30. Garitte, , “Homélie d'Éphrem,” pp. 156–157.Google Scholar

31. Seen. 12 above.

32. Sauget, , “Le Dossier Ephrémien,” pp. 426–458.Google Scholar

33. Mai, , Scriptorum Veterum, pp. 143–145.Google Scholar Note that Mai's folio numbers do not correspond to those now on the MS.

34. Oestrup, , “Über zwei arabische codices,” pp. 455–458.Google Scholar

35. On Cyril and his work, see particularly Flusin, Miracle et histoire.

36. See Fleischer, H. L., “Über einen griechisch-arabischen Codex rescriptus der Leipziger Universitäts-Bibliothek,” in Fleischer, Kleinere Schriften, pp. 378–388.Google Scholar The manuscript is now in Leningrad. See Graf, Georg, Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, 5 vols. (Rome, 1944–1953), 1:407.Google Scholar

37. See the facsimile published in Fleischer, , Kleinere Schriften, vol. 3,Google Scholar plate 1, and in Graf, G., “Athar naşrānī qadīm; aw tarĝamah mār Abramiūs al-quiddīs hi l-carabiyyah,” al-Machriq 8 (1905): opp. p. 260.Google Scholar

38. Fleischer, , Kleinere Schriften, p. 381.Google Scholar

39. Ibid., p. 380.

40. Ibid., p. 380 n. 2. For other instances of the use of forms of the verb tafsīr to mean “to translate,” see Griffith, S. H., “The Arabic Account of cAbd al-Masīh an-Nağrānī al-Ghassānī,” Le Muséon 98 (1985): 338–339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41. Graf, G., Die christlich-arabische Literatur bis zurfränkischen Zeit (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1905), pp. 13, 16;Google Scholaridem, “Die arabische Vita des hi. Abramias,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 14 (1905): 509.

42. Graf, , Geschichte, 1:407Google Scholar n. 1.

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44. The Arabic text of the life of St. Abramios was first published by Graf, G., “Athar nasrānī qadim,” pp. 258–265. Graf also published a German translation of the text in “Die arabische Vita des hl. Abramios,” pp. 509–518.Google Scholar A Latin version appears in Peeters, P., “Historia S. Abramii ex apographo arabico,” Analecta Bollandiana 24 (1905): 349–356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See the remarks of Vailhé, S., “Saint Abraham de Cratia,” Échos d'Orient 8 (1905): 290–294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Finally, what is preserved in Arabic is incorporated into the French version of the life of Abramios in Festugiére, A. J., Les moines d'orient, vol. 3, part 3, Les moiaes de Palestine (Paris, 1963), pp. 69–79.Google Scholar

45. With Mar Sabas, the monastery of St. Charitōn was also the site of scribal work in Arabic. See Griffith, “Stephen of Ramlah,” and the colophons in Cachia, P. and Watt, W. M., Eutychius of Alexandria, the Book of the Demonstration (Kitāb al-Burhān), vols. 192, 193, 209, 210 (Louvain, 1960–1961).Google Scholar Eutychius of Alexandria had nothing to do with this work, which is the product of the monks of the Holy Land. See now Breydy, M., Études sur Sa'īd ibn Batrīq et ses sources, vol. 450 (Louvain, 1983).Google Scholar See also Arbache, Samir, “Sentences arabes de saint Basil,” Le Muséon 98 (1985): pp. 315–329.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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57. See Schwartz, , Kyrillos von Skythopolis, pp. 15–19;Google ScholarGenier, R., Vie de saint Euthyme le grand (Paris, 1909).Google Scholar

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60. See, for example, Halkin, F., “Saint Jean l'érémopolite,” Analecta Bollandzana 86 (1968): 14, 20;Google ScholarDetorakis, T., “Vie inédite de Cosmas le mélode,” Analecta Bollandiana 99 (1981): 102, 108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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