Oriental Hagiography

This article deals with the intertextual relations between Eastern Christian hagiographical traditions of Late antiquity on one hand, and some texts belonging to the early Islamic religious literature on the other. In the last two centuries, European orientalistic literature has considered the Islamic literature as a basin where past religious traditions have been converged and passively copied. In this contribution I would stress the original activity of early Muslim writers who reworked Eastern Christian legends in order to build a new religious identity as well as to consolidate new boundaries. Accordingly, the key-figure used by wirters of pre-modern Islam is the fighter-horseman- monk, a kind of sign and symbol of the “common semiotic koine” within the monotheistic tradition (Sizgorich). In this study, I will chose two narrative cycles: some texts relating to the instauration of Christianity in South Arabia, and the Martyrdom of Aretha and his companions in Nağrān (BHG 166). In both cases it is possible to point out mutual borrowings from one tradition to the other. In the former cycle, the Sīra nabawiyya by Ibn Hišām presents two texts whose sources have to be found in Christian hagiography of both Syriac and Geez (old classical Ethiopic) literature. In the latter, a reciprocal interference in both Christian-Muslim directions has been pointed out.

RESUMEN: Teniendo en cuenta la acción misericordiosa de Dios en los hombres y la respuesta de éstos a Dios, se pasa revista tanto al don de la conversión (fruto de la misericordia divina) como a las obras de misericordia impulsadas por esa misma conversión. Mencionando a varios conversos famosos, son recordados desde una visión cronológica otros más desconocidos, destacando algunos testimonios recientes y ciertos casos especiales de acción misericordiosa de Dios.  PALABRAS CLAVE: Conversión, misericordia, obras de misericordia, caridad.
ABSTRACT: Using as a point of departure the merciful action of God toward human persons and their response to God, this article examines both the gift of conversión (as a fruit of divine mercy) and the works of mercy undertaken as a result of this conversion. A number of famous converts are mentioned, with emphasis on recent testimonies and certain special instances of the merciful action of God. KEY WORDS: Conversión, mercy, works of mercy, charity.

This chapter presents an overview of the hagiographical sources concerning the East-Syriac saint John of Daylam (ca. 660–738), focusing on the relationship between the three extant Arabic lives and the lives preserved in Syriac, Sogdian, and Ethiopic. One Arabic life is a translation of one of the Syriac lives, another is the Vorlage for the Ethiopic version, while the third is known to us only in Arabic. After presenting the manuscript evidence for each of the lives in its respective language, the complex interconnections between them are briefly discussed.