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The biblical narrative in the Annales of Saʽīd ibn Baṭrīq and the question of medieval Byzantine-Orthodox identity

2011; Routledge; Volume: 22; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09596410.2011.543593

1469-9311

Uriel Simonsohn,

Byzantine Studies and History

Abstract This article pursues a close examination of the biblical narrative in Saʽīd Ibn Baṭrīq's (Eutychius of Alexandria, d. 940) historiographic work, the Annales, to reveal a wide range of sources that were available either to the patriarch himself or to an intermediate source on which he relied. These include not only a rich Judaeo-Christian lore but also a rather significant segment of Muslim materials, most notably tales of the prophets (qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā'). The Muslim trappings of some of the Judaeo-Christian apocrypha found in Ibn Baṭrīq's narrative suggest that we are dealing with a Christian writer who made use of Judaeo-Christian motifs that had undergone a process of Muslim literary adaptation. A comparison of his narrative with that of Christian works of the same period will show that he occupied a unique position among his contemporaries. Yet perhaps more importantly, once we acknowledge the role of the biblical narrative in enhancing the work's credibility in the eyes of its readers, we gain a better sense of the cultural world of that potential Christian readership. By focusing on the biblical narrative of Ibn Baṭrīq's treatise, the article bypasses the question of its apologetic agenda and addresses instead the writer's methodology and, through this, the cultural world of his readership. Keywords: Saʽīd ibn BaṭrīqEutychius of Alexandria Annales MelkitesapocryphaEastern Christian histographyIslamic histography Acknowledgements I wish to thank Jan van Ginkel, Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala, Wido van Peursen, and Bas ter Haar Romeny for reading a draft of this article and for their most useful comments; needless to say, any mistakes are my own. Notes The work first appeared in Cheikho, Carra de Vaux and Zayyat (1906–9) Cheikho, L., B. Carra de Vaux, and H. Zayyat, eds. 1906–9. Eutychii Patriarchae Alexandrini Annales. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 51; Scriptores arabici 7. Louvain: Peeters [Google Scholar]. Breydy also cites Cabrol, Leclercq and Marrou (1907–53 Cabrol, F., Leclercq, H. and Marrou, H. 1907–53. Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie Edited by: Cabrol, F., Leclercq, H. and Marrou, H. 30 vols in 15. Paris: Letouzey & Ané [Google Scholar], 1: 1205) in support of the view that Ibn Baṭrīq knew little about the history of Alexandria, as the Arab patriarch seems to have ignored his Greek predecessors because of his lack of knowledge of Greek (Breydy 1983 Breydy, M. 1983. Études sur Saʽīd ibn Baṭrīq et ses sources Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 450. Louvain: Peeters [Google Scholar], 1, n. 1). The Annales was the title given by Edward Pococke in his edition and Latin translation of the work (Pococke 1658–59 Pococke, E. 1658–59. Contextia Gemmarum sive Eutychii Patriarchae Alexandrini Annales, Oxford: Excudebat H. Hall. [Google Scholar]). 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