Author: Andrew W. H. Ashdown
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780367559168
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Offering an authoritative study of the plural religious landscape in modern Syria and of the diverse Christian and Muslim communities that have cohabited the country for centuries, this volume considers a wide range of cultural, religious and political issues that have impacted the interreligious dynamic, putting them in their local and wider context. Combining fieldwork undertaken within government-held areas during the Syrian conflict with critical historical and Christian theological reflection, this research makes a significant contribution to understanding Syria's diverse religious landscape and the multi-layered expressions of Christian-Muslim relations. It discusses the concept of sectarianism and how communal dynamics are crucial to understanding Syrian society. The complex wider issues that underlie the relationship are examined, including the roles of culture and religious leadership; and it questions whether the analytical concept of sectarianism is adequate to describe the complex communal frameworks in the Middle Eastern context. Finally, the study examines the contributions of contemporary Eastern Christian leaders to interreligious discourse, concluding that the theology and spirituality of Eastern Christianity, inhabiting the same cultural environment as Islam, is uniquely placed to play a major role in interreligious dialogue and in peace-making. The book offers an original contribution to knowledge and understanding of the changing Christian-Muslim dynamic in Syria and the region. It should be a key resource to students, scholars and readers interested in religion, current affairs and the Middle East.
Author: David Thomas
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004497463
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 247
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Book Description
This volume contains papers from the Third Woodbrooke-Mingana Symposium on Arab Christianity and Islam (September 1998) on the theme of "Arab Christianity in Bilâd al-Shâm (Greater Syria) in the pre-Ottoman Period". It presents aspects of Syrian Christian life and thought during the first millennium of Islamic rule. Among the eight contributing scholars are Sidney Griffith on ninth-century Christological controversies, Samir K. Samir on the Prophet Muhammed seen through Arab Christian eyes, Lawrence Conrad on the physician Ibn Butlân, and Lucy-Anne Hunt on Muslim influence on Christian book illustrations. There is also a foreword by the Syrian Orthodox Archbishop of Aleppo. The picture that emerges is of community life developing in its own way and finding a distinctive character, as Christians responded to the social and intellectual influences of Islam.
Author: Peter Schadler
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004356053
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
How did Islam come to be considered a Christian heresy? In this book, Peter Schadler outlines the intellectual background of the Christian Near East that led John, a Christian serving in the court of the caliph in Damascus, to categorize Islam as a heresy. Schadler shows that different uses of the term heresy persisted among Christians, and then demonstrates that John’s assessment of the beliefs and practices of Muslims has been mistakenly dismissed on assumptions he was highly biased. The practices and beliefs John ascribes to Islam have analogues in the Islamic tradition, proving that John may well represent an accurate picture of Islam as he knew it in the seventh and eighth centuries in Syria and Palestine.
Author: Hugh Goddard
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1566633400
Category : Christianity and other religions
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
Hugh Goddard investigates the history of the relationships between Christians and Muslims over the centuries.
Author: Andrew W. H. Ashdown
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000244792
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 204
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Book Description
Offering an authoritative study of the plural religious landscape in modern Syria and of the diverse Christian and Muslim communities that have cohabited the country for centuries, this volume considers a wide range of cultural, religious and political issues that have impacted the interreligious dynamic, putting them in their local and wider context. Combining fieldwork undertaken within government-held areas during the Syrian conflict with critical historical and Christian theological reflection, this research makes a significant contribution to understanding Syria’s diverse religious landscape and the multi-layered expressions of Christian-Muslim relations. It discusses the concept of sectarianism and how communal dynamics are crucial to understanding Syrian society. The complex wider issues that underlie the relationship are examined, including the roles of culture and religious leadership; and it questions whether the analytical concept of sectarianism is adequate to describe the complex communal frameworks in the Middle Eastern context. Finally, the study examines the contributions of contemporary Eastern Christian leaders to interreligious discourse, concluding that the theology and spirituality of Eastern Christianity, inhabiting the same cultural environment as Islam, is uniquely placed to play a major role in interreligious dialogue and in peace-making. The book offers an original contribution to knowledge and understanding of the changing Christian-Muslim dynamic in Syria and the region. It should be a key resource to students, scholars and readers interested in religion, current affairs and the Middle East.
Author: Christian C. Sahner
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069120313X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 360
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Book Description
A look at the developing conflicts in Christian-Muslim relations during late antiquity and the early Islamic era How did the medieval Middle East transform from a majority-Christian world to a majority-Muslim world, and what role did violence play in this process? Christian Martyrs under Islam explains how Christians across the early Islamic caliphate slowly converted to the faith of the Arab conquerors and how small groups of individuals rejected this faith through dramatic acts of resistance, including apostasy and blasphemy. Using previously untapped sources in a range of Middle Eastern languages, Christian Sahner introduces an unknown group of martyrs who were executed at the hands of Muslim officials between the seventh and ninth centuries CE. Found in places as diverse as Syria, Spain, Egypt, and Armenia, they include an alleged descendant of Muhammad who converted to Christianity, high-ranking Christian secretaries of the Muslim state who viciously insulted the Prophet, and the children of mixed marriages between Muslims and Christians. Sahner argues that Christians never experienced systematic persecution under the early caliphs, and indeed, they remained the largest portion of the population in the greater Middle East for centuries after the Arab conquest. Still, episodes of ferocious violence contributed to the spread of Islam within Christian societies, and memories of this bloodshed played a key role in shaping Christian identity in the new Islamic empire. Christian Martyrs under Islam examines how violence against Christians ended the age of porous religious boundaries and laid the foundations for more antagonistic Muslim-Christian relations in the centuries to come.
Author: Josef W. Meri
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191554731
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346
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Book Description
This accessible study is the first critical investigation of the cult of saints among Muslims and Jews in medieval Syria and the Near East. Through case studies of saints and their devotees, discussion of the architecture of monuments, examination of devotional objects, and analysis of ideas of 'holiness', Meri depicts the practices of living religion and explores the common heritage of all three monotheistic faiths. Critical readings of a wide range of contemporary sources - travel writing, geographical works, pilgrimage guides, legal writings, historical sources, hagiography, and biography - reveal a vibrant religious culture in which the veneration of saints and pilgrimage to tombs and shrines were fundamental.
Author: John Joseph
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780873956000
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
This study focuses on the Jacobites (Syrian Orthodox Christians), who, like their Aramaean ancestors, established a presence far beyond their ancestral lands. Professor John Joseph has found this historic Christian community to be an admirable case study in inter-communal relations in the Middle East. Of special interest is the discussion of how Western religious rivalries, Catholic and Protestant, have affected the religious tensions in the Middle East. Through Joseph's first-hand acquaintance with the region and mastery of previously unmined sources, he displays an intimate and thorough knowledge of his subject. Written with color, clarity, and extreme care, the book offers an objective recounting of a story that is at times full of passion and violence.
Author: Carole Hillenbrand
Publisher: EUP
ISBN: 9781474429719
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Explores the juxtaposition of conflict and co-existence in twelfth-century Syria Presenting numerous interconnected insights into life in Greater Syria in the twelfth century, this book covers a wide range of themes relating to Crusader-Muslim relations. Some chapters deal with various literary sources, including little-known Crusader chronicles, a jihad treatise, a lost Muslim history of the Franks, biographies, letters and poems. Other chapters look at material culture, from coins to urban development, internal relations between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims and between Crusader and Oriental Christians, and the role of the Turkmen. New insights into the career of Saladin are revealed, for example through the work of a little-known propagandist at his court, and Saladin's use of gift-giving for political purposes, as well as neglected aspects of the rule of his family dynasty, the Ayyubids, which succeeded him. Special attention is paid to the Christians residing in the Middle East, from Italians to Melkites and Armenians. Key Features Analyses valuable little-known primary sources in Arabic, Armenian, Syriac, Latin and Old French about a key period in Middle Eastern history Highlights the role of Oriental Christian communities in Syria Sheds new light on Saladin's career Contributes significantly to the ever-expanding field of Crusader studies Carole Hillenbrand is Professor Emerita of Islamic History at the University of Edinburgh and Professor of Islamic History at the University of St Andrews. She is the author of Islam: A New Historical Introduction (2015), Turkish Myth and Muslim Symbol: The Battle of Manzikert (2007), The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (1999), A Muslim Principality in Crusader Times (1990) and The Waning of the Umayyad Caliphate (1989).
Author: Christian C. Sahner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199396701
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
An accessible history of Syria's cultural and religious past documents such issues as the role of Christianity in society, the emergence of the Ba'ath party, and the arrival of Islam, and traces the origins of the current civil war.
