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Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies

Copyright © 1999  Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies. All rights reserved.

Averil Cameron
INTERFAITH RELATIONS IN THE FIRST ISLAMIC CENTURY

The old picture of a violent and sudden conquest of the eastern provinces of the Byzantine Empire by Muslim armies must be rethought, especially in light of the significant amount of archaeological evidence now available. This shows, first, that Byzantium was not in decline at the time of Muhammad; instead, the economic and cultural life of Syria and Palestine, including much of modern Jordan, was flourishing. Indeed, there were well-established Christian and Jewish settlements in Arabia itself. Second, there are many indications that life went on without serious disruption for several decades, even after the establishment of the Umayyad caliphate. Large-scale buildings continued to be erected by Christians, as at Madaba, and papyri from Nessana show how different communities coexisted on a daily basis. We must conclude, then, that the tales of violence and destruction in non-Muslim sources are often exaggerated, and that they are not good evidence for the actual state of affairs.

Suleiman A. Mourad
ON THE QUR´ANIC STORIES ABOUT MARY AND JESUS

A comparison of stories found in Christian religious texts with similar stories found in the Qur´an highlights the common heritage shared by Christianity and Islam. One of the many examples illustrating this mutual legacy is the story of the Annunciation of Jesus, which appears twice in the Qur´an. The version of the story in Surat Maryam (19:16-22) shares basic elements with the one in the Gospel of Luke (1:26-38);  in both places, the angel informs Mary that she will conceive a child and the announcement is preceded by the Annunciation of John. In Surat al-'Imran (3:45-49), however, the story is quite different and, in many respects, comparable to the one which appears in the apocryphal Protevangelium of James (11:1-3); in both of these versions, the Annunciation is preceded by the tale of Mary's birth and her upbringing in the Temple, culminating in the angel's announcement that Mary will conceive by, or of, the word of God. The similarity between each version of the Annunciation appearing in the Qur´an and the correspondent Christian text shows the relationship between the two monotheistic religions to be much more complex than scholars are willing to admit.

Sidney H. Griffith
ARAB CHRISTIAN CULTURE IN THE EARLY ABBASID PERIOD

An examination of the oldest surviving Arab Christian manuscripts makes it clear that, in the early Abbasid period, the inculturation of Christians into the world of Islam consisted of two steps: the translation of the scriptures and other ecclesiastical texts into Arabic, and the production of original works in Arabic by Christians. The present article studies this process in its earliest development in the monasteries of Palestine in the period between AD 750 and 1050. It features, in particular, an analysis of the introductory chapter to a work called The Summary of the Ways of Faith to highlight the religious issues involved in the Christian response to the call to Islam in this period.

Nadia Maria El-Cheikh
ARAB CHRISTIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO MUSLIM 
HISTORIOGRAPHY ON BYZANTIUM

This paper aims to define the role of Christian Arab historians in influencing the substance of the information found in Muslim texts on Byzantium. Various Muslim historians such as al-Mas'udi, Ibn al-´Adim and Ibn Khaldun acknowledge their debt to the historical works of Arab Christian historians and an analysis of other Islamic sources reveals that they also must have been acquainted with, and actually dependent upon, Christian Arabic sources, especially in their treatment of  the affairs of  the Christian church, the theological movements and the ecumenical councils in early Byzantine history. For the later periods, the type of information on Byzantium that Muslim authors required and acquired is different. Much less is said about ecclesiastical affairs while a great deal of attention is focused upon various aspects of Arab-Byzantine relations. Thus, even though reliance on Christian Arab sources in matters pertaining to Byzantium continues, it is less systematic and  more directly relevant to the Muslim context. This contrasts with the early period, when the Muslim view of Byzantium was fully shaped by the concerns of Christian Arab authors.

Jane S. Gerber
MUSLIM-JEWISH RELATIONS IN MEDIEVAL ANDALUSIA: 
CULTURAL CONTACTS AND Their Ambiguities

From the tenth to the twelfth centuries, the Jews of Muslim Spain experienced a remarkable cultural renaissance. This flowering began under the patronage of  Hasdai ibn Shaprut, a Jewish courtier serving in the court of the Caliph `Abd al-Rahman III of Cordova. With Hasdai's encouragement, Jewish poets and scholars flocked to Andalusia from Iraq and North Africa, launching what was to become known in Jewish history as The Golden Age of Spain. Particularly noteworthy were the poets, who borrowed freely from the form and poetic content of Arabic poetry to introduce a new system of prosody in pure Biblical Hebrew. The sophisticated literary movement that unfolded blended secular Arabic motifs and the Hebraic tradition in new and revolutionary ways. At its forefront were Jewry's religious leaders, presenting an unusual example of thoroughgoing acculturation to the surrounding culture. However, the popularity of Golden Age Hebrew poetry was not confined to one class, but appears to have been widely shared and disseminated among Jews as part of a broader cultural agenda. The stimulus for this poetic revolution, in contrast to other forms of cultural expression, appears to have been the claims to perfection of Arab poets and linguists. No evidence exists to indicate whether the new Hebrew poetry was known beyond the confines of the Jewish community. In general, caution should therefore be exercised in claiming that it is testimony to cultural pluralism and cultural symbiosis among Christians, Muslims and Jews in medieval Spain.

Ahmad Dallal
ON MUSLIM CURIOSITY AND THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF 
THE JEWS OF YEMEN

The first part of this article assesses modern scholarship on the history of the Jews of Yemen in light of Arabic sources written by Yemeni Muslim scholars. Since accounts of this history have largely neglected this rich vein of material and, indeed, seldom consulted more than a few Yemeni Jewish sources, it is here argued that the reconstruction of the history of the Jews of Yemen—as well as the larger history of the Jews under Islam—will remain inconclusive unless adequate use is made of Arabic Muslim sources. The second part of the article questions the notion, prevalent in modern scholarship on Jewish thought under Islam, that Muslims were oblivious to developments in Jewish literature, philosophy and religious discourse. Evidence from Yemeni Muslim literature reflects a high level of interest in, and use of, concepts found in Jewish religious thought and presupposes genuine Muslim intellectual curiosity in the subject. Furthermore, the evidence at hand reflects a higher level of cultural integration between the Jews and Muslims of Yemen than is usually recognized in modern studies.

Joel Beinin
THE JEWISH BUSINESS ELITE IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY EGYPT: 
PILLARS OF THE NATIONAL ECONOMY OR COMPRADORS?

Many secular Egyptian intellectuals began to examine the modern history of the Jews of Egypt as an aspect of their opposition to the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Fearing that normalizing economic relations would permit Israel's technologically more advanced economy to dominate Egypt, they have often portrayed Jews, Israelis as well as the historic Egyptian Jewish community, as economic parasites, usurers, and rapacious capitalists. Recent Egyptian writings on the privileged position of bourgeois Jews in the twentieth century typically assume an absolute opposition between compradors and foreigners on the one hand, and a patriotic national bourgeoisie on the other, thus denying the Egyptian element of Egyptian Jewish identity and portraying the activities of Jews as inimical to the national economy. Using the concept of colonial capitalism and a case study of La Société Générale des Sucreries et de la Raffinerie d'Egypte, this article argues that there were no significant differences between the business strategies of the leading Jewish and Muslim elements of the Egyptian haute bourgeoisie; they were often partners in the same enterprises. In political economy categories, there was not a unified bloc of Jewish capital or a Jewish bourgeoisie with a common set of economic and political interests.

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