Abstract
Stories between Christianity and Islam: Saints, Memory, and Cultural Exchange in Late Antiquity and Beyond by Reyhan Durmaz is an exploration of storytelling in the late antique and early Islamic Near East. It is divided into an introduction and six chapters, which address: “Storytelling in Late Antique Christianity” (chap. 1), storytelling in the Qur’an (chap. 2), a case study on three narratives in Qur’an 18 (chap. 3), “Christian Saints in Islamic Literature” (chap. 4), a case study of a particular story of two Christian saints (“Paul” and “John”) that entered into Islamic literature (chap. 5), and, finally, a reflection on the place of storytelling involving Christian figures in Islam (chap. 6). D.’s work is an important addition to recent works that compare religious culture in late antique Christianity and early Islam, including Jack Tannous’s The Making of the Medieval Middle East. Unlike Tannous, D. is particularly interested in the question of storytelling and its role in that culture. In exploring this question through carefully chosen case studies she also highlights the theological implications of the particular stories that late antique Christians and early Muslims chose to tell.
In the opening of the book D. discusses tales told in Syriac by late antique Christians of the Near East, particularly those in the apophthegmata (or “Sayings of the Fathers”) literature. In this context she uses the term hagiodeigesis to refer to “orally narrating stories of saints outside liturgical contexts” (20). These stories often feature the heroic saintliness of monks, and they are often woven around a narrative involving pilgrims who visited these monks. D. argues that the Qur’an, in its distinctive manner, participates in this tradition of storytelling. Indeed, she holds that certain Qur’anic passages that may appear incoherent initially are better understood when they are seen as oral compositions, products of this storytelling tradition. This interest in the Qur’an as (in part) storytelling connects Stories between Christianity and Islam to the work of Andrew Bannister (An Oral-Formulaic Study of the Qur’an), who argued through systematic text-mining that the Qur’an has a high formulaic density and consequently was likely composed orally. In Stories between Christianity and Islam, D. explores the way that Muhammad, in the Qur’an, tells stories of earlier biblical prophets in order to communicate fundamental messages about divine mercy and judgment, and human responsibility.
While it is true that the Qur’an (with the exception of Surah 12, on Joseph) does not recount extensive narratives, it is also true that the Qur’an is interested in the category of story (qiṣṣah) and engages regularly with Jewish and Christian stories in order to develop its own theological arguments. In Surah 27 the Qur’an notably declares, “Indeed this recitation narrates (yaquṣṣu) unto the Israelites most of that regarding which they differ” (v. 76), thus suggesting that the Qur’an is interested in telling and clarifying stories for the People of the Book. D.’s case study on Surah 18 is an important example of the Qur’an’s use of stories, as the Qur’anic author therein transforms Christian tales of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus and Alexander the Great. D. shows how the Qur’an reshapes the Christian story of the Sleepers of Ephesus so that the emphasis is on Islamic teaching and that the protagonists no longer bear Christian characteristics. The case of Alexander is particularly interesting. Alexander is effectively Christianized in works such as the Alexander Legend (and even integrated into Byzantine propaganda) and then de-Christianized in the Qur’an where he is referred to only with the honorific title the “Two-Horned” (Dhū l-Qarnayn).
The final three chapters of the work involve cases of pious Christian characters, from Saint Anthony to Saint George, whose stories were received and retold in an Islamic milieu. In these cases, too, the figures tend to lose their identities as Christians. D. describes how George appears in a hadith wherein Muhammad describes his faithfulness to his monastic vows despite the efforts of his own mother to have a prostitute seduce him. The case of saints “Paul” and “John” (two fifth-century ascetics) is particularly interesting as in Islamic texts they are given new, Arabic names: Fimyūn and Ṣāliḥ (the origin of the first name is disputed, while the second is the Qur’anic Arabic word for a pious man). They appear simply as pious believers, proto-Muslims of a sort. One can also find cases of explicitly Christian figures in Islamic literature, particularly in early Islamic literature, who are upheld for their piety. Notably, however, their piety tends to consist above all of ascetic feats, and not any particular Christian devotions. Thus D. writes, “In these and similar examples, Christian saints, like Antony, Fīmyūn, and Ṣāliḥ, as well as more prominent figures like Jesus, despite remaining Christian, were integrated into a community of true believers as instructors on the concepts of piety, sanctity, and asceticism” (144).
One interesting characteristic of Islamic storytelling with which D. engages in the second half of the book is the contrast between individual Christian figures, usually monks, and Christian institutions (including monasteries). Whereas individual Christians can be examples of piety, Christian institutions tend (with some exceptions) to represent what is wrong (from an Islamic perspective) with Christianity, namely that it is a corruption of the pure religion of Jesus. The Islamic engagement with monasticism is complicated. In Surah 57 (v. 27) the Qur’an makes monasticism an innovation of Christianity, and a saying of the Prophet Muhammad famously declares that the monasticism of his community is jihad. Often these things are interpreted as condemnations of celibacy in particular (the saying of Muhammad in one version is prompted by a woman who complains that her husband spends the night in prayer). Yet this perspective also contributed to an occasionally negative view of monasteries as sites of drinking and other sorts of immorality, as celebrated in the Book of Monasteries by the Muslim author al-Shābushtī (d. 998), a motif discussed in earlier works by Hilary Kilpatrick and Thomas Sizgorich. Various Islamic works, especially those written in later centuries (D. mentions the Memorial of the Saints of Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār, d. 1221), portray only those monks who see the truth of Islam and become Muslims in a positive light. And yet there are also references in Islam to the monk as a holy figure and an example to be emulated. Indeed a few early Muslim figures were given the honorific title rāhib, “monk,” in light of their ascetic practices.
In all, Stories between Christianity and Islam offers much more than a description of Islamic portrayals of Christian characters. D.’s principal interest is the place of storytelling as a common vehicle of religious expression among both Christians and Muslims in the Near East. The importance of storytelling in this context has often been missed by observers and she is right to emphasize it. Moreover, D. highlights this common tradition without avoiding or simplifying the differences between the theological convictions of Muslims and Christians, or indeed the way stories were sometimes used for the sake of apologetics and polemics. In this way Stories between Christianity and Islam illustrates the complicated nature of Muslim–Christian relations and offers the reader colorful portraits of holy figures, both Muslim and Christian, along the way.