Writing ‘True Stories’: Historians and Hagiographers in the Late Antique and Medieval Near East

246 Pages·2010·2.78 MB·English

by  Arietta Papaconstantinou

WRITING ‘TRUE STORIES’
CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS IN LATE
ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES
General Editor
Yitzhak Hen Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva
Editorial Board
Angelo di Berardino Augustinianum–Instituto Patristico, Rome
Nora Berend University of Cambridge
Leslie Brubaker University of Birmingham
Christoph Cluse Universität Trier
Rob Meens Universiteit Utrecht
James Montgomery University of Cambridge
Alan V. Murray University of Leeds
Thomas F. X. Noble University of Notre Dame
Miri Rubin University of London
Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of this book.
VOLUME 9
WRITING ‘TRUE STORIES’
Historians and Hagiographers
in the Late Antique and Medieval Near East
Edited by
Arietta Papaconstantinou
in Collaboration with
Muriel Debié and Hugh Kennedy
H

F
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Writing 'true stories' : historians and hagiographers in
the late antique and medieval Near East. -- (Cultural
encounters in late antiquity and the Middle Ages ; v. 9)
1. Middle East--Historiography. 2. Hagiography--History--
To 1500. 3. Middle Eastern literature--History and
criticism. 4. Literature, Medieval--History and criticism.
5. Christianity and literature--Middle East--History--To
1500.
I. Series II. Papaconstantinou, Arietta. III. Debie,
Muriel. IV. Kennedy, Hugh (Hugh N.)
956'.0722-dc22
ISBN-13: 9782503527864
© 2010, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
D/2010/0095/49
ISBN: 978-2-503-52786-4
For A.,
Phantom of Delight

CONTENTS
Foreword ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction: Writing True Stories — A View from the West 1
CATHERINE CUBITT
Early Byzantine Historiography and Hagiography as Different 13
Modes of Christian Practice
DEREK KRUEGER
Creating Local History: Coptic Encomia Celebrating Past Events 21
GESA SCHENKE
A Saint and his Biographer in Late Antique Iraq: The History 31
of St George of Izla († 614) by Babai the Great
JOEL WALKER
Writing History as ‘Histoires’: The Biographical Dimension 43
of East Syriac Historiography
MURIEL DEBIÉ
Converting the Caliph: A Legendary Motif in Christian Hagiography 77
and Historiography of the Early Islamic Period
ANDRÉ BINGGELI
‘He was tall and slender, and his virtues were numerous’: Byzantine 105
ò
Hagiographical Topoi and the Companions of Muhammad in
î ûò â
al-Azd’s Fut h al-Sh m
NANCY KHALEK
‘Become infidels or we will throw you into the fire’: 125
â
The Martyrs of Najr n in Early Muslim Historiography,
(cid:2)â
Hagiography, and Qur nic Exegesis
THOMAS SIZGORICH
û â
Ibn al-Azraq, Saint Mar th , and the Foundation 149
â â î
of Mayy f riqn (Martyropolis)
HARRY MUNT
Christian King, Muslim Apostate: Depictions of Jabala 175
ibn al-Ayham in Early Arabic Sources
JULIA BRAY
Variations on an Egyptian Female Martyr Legend: 205
History, Hagiography, and the Gendered Politics
of Medieval Arab Religious Identity
STEPHEN J. DAVIS
Sainthood Achieved: Coptic Patriarch Zacharias according 219
to The History of the Patriarchs
MARK N. SWANSON
FOREWORD
T his volume began its life as a panel organized with Muriel Debié at
the 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies held in London
in August 2006. Our aim was to explore the all-too neglected relation
between history and hagiography as the two main narrative modes of repre-
senting the past in the late antique and medieval Near East. These were clearly
as distinct for their practitioners as they are for us, but they evidently shared
more common elements in that world than scholars allow for today. The inter-
weaving of the two genres and the blurring of their frontiers, but also their
circulation beyond religious or cultural borders, was one of the issues that we had
suggested as a possible angle of investigation, and it found favour with most of the
contributors.
In order to cover a wider chronological and geographical field, the six pa-
pers of the Congress session (Binggeli, Davis, Khalek, Krueger, Sizgorich, and
Walker) have been complemented with five additional articles (Bray, Debié,
Munt, Schenke, and Swanson). Catherine Cubitt, who gave a response at the con-
ference, has transformed and expanded it to make the volume’s introduction.
Some exciting new avenues of approach are opened by the contributors, and I
hope this volume, still a very tentative start, will inspire further work in this
promising area which lies at the intersection of several disciplines.
There could be no better venue for a book like this one than a series on Cul-
tural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and I would like to
express my gratitude to Yitzhak Hen for accepting the book in this series. It is also
a pleasure to thank Muriel Debié and Hugh Kennedy for being such gracious co-
editors, and Robert Hoyland for his comments and repeated proof-reading. This
book was prepared for the most part during a Marie Curie fellowship at the
x
Foreword
Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, which also met some of the
costs occasioned by the publication process.
—Arietta Papaconstantinou, June 2009