Ed. The School – 12-1996
It may be useful to remember that Muslims from Arabia settled in the Middle East around 640 AD the Christians instead occupied these lands since the early days of the spread of Christianity.
- Arabs: Muslims or Christians?
Can we therefore speak of Arabs or Muslims? Let us first clarify what is meant by the Arabic term. In the West the words Arabic and Muslim are often used interchangeably, almost as if they were synonyms and there was a coincidence of meaning between the two expressions. But things are different. The Arabic term indicates a geographical and cultural area, not an ethnic identity, nor a belonging to a religious confession.
Thus, arabity corresponds to a linguistic, cultural, political and historical belonging. Christians are an integral part of the Arab world and, like Muslims, they are no longer Arabs of Christians, so Christians are no less Arab than Muslims.
The linguistic and cultural homogeneity of the countries we call Arabs today is the result of the expansion of Islam. Islamization has forced Arabization and, in most cases, the adoption of the same language to different peoples. The original Arab element is today a minority within the Muslim world: only 15-20% of the total. The most populous Muslim country today is Indonesia: about 88% of the population comprising about 191 million people claim to be a follower of Muhammad (The World Almanac, Pharos Books, N.Y., 1992, p.725). The figure is equivalent to the entire Arab population that calls itself Muslim.
It should be added that about 10% of the Arabs today are Christian. In light of these observations the boundaries of the concept of Arabity extend. Although the West does not sometimes distinguish between Arabs and Muslims so does the average European.
Christians living in the Middle East are often seen as intruders. In reality, the Christian element in these lands is indigenous. An example is represented by the Coptic community in Egypt, which collects the legacy of the Egyptian civilization, passes through the experience first Hellenistic and then Christian and gives rise to figures of great importance: Origen and Athanasius, Cyril and the great fathers of Eastern monasticism, like St. Anthony, whose monastery stands near the entrance to the Suez Canal. We remember, in the Middle East, the Syriac communities. those Orthodox, melkite in the Palestinian area, Maronite in Lebanon.
The lack of clarity in often distinguishing the Arabic and Muslim terms represents a serious cultural damage for Middle Eastern Christians.
- Historical outline
Before the Muslim conquest, begun in the 7th century by Muhammad and completed by his successors, in predominantly Christian Middle East, two cultures stood out: the Hellenistic and the Syriac. In this cultural dualism present in the Christian context, the Arab civilization has its origin and development.
Historians say that already a few centuries before the advent of Islam, Christian Arab tribes were present in the Middle East. Already in the third century BC there were Arab kingdoms in Tripoli, Lebanon, and Petra, Jordan, with the Nabataeans. In the same period there are reports of two Arab tribes of Syria, the Manadhira and the Ghassanids. Christians and Jews have preserved and handed down their cultural heritage even after the Islamic penetration.
Taha Hussain, a well-known Egyptian writer, recalls in one of his many writings “that pre-Islamic poetry which, although it sprouted before the revelation of the Koran, was considered an unsurpassed model of artistic expression and the highest manifestation of the spirit and culture of the Arabs , so much so that it still influences the forms and contents of the poetic production which, among literary and artistic expressions in general, occupied and continues to occupy a place of primary importance “(Paolo Branca, Voices of modern Islam, Marietti 1991, pp. 51).
After the advent of Islam, the Middle Eastern and, to some extent, the Spanish Christian communities quickly arabized, bringing with them the rich heritage of the Greek, Coptic, Syriac and Latin traditions. To them it is the great merit of having translated into Arabic the most important Greek and sire scientific and literary works, thus allowing the “nomad invaders of the desert”, that is the Muslims, to approach the oriental disciplines.
“Zoroastrians, Jacobites (Copts and Syriacs), Nestorians, Melkites and Jews translated the treatises on astronomy, medicine, alchemy, philosophy, as well as literary and epic works into Arabic. This translation led to the creation of new terms and the remodeling of the Arabic language and grammar in the light of new conceptual schemes, not only philosophical, scientific and literary, but also economic and political. (…) The centers of civilization that had illuminated the East were in ruins, but others they were rising up: Kufa, Damascus, Baghdad, Kairouan, Cordoba, Seville, etc. and men of letters were now flocking to these centers “(Bat Ye’or, Les chrétients d’Orient entre jihad et dhimmitude, Paris, 1991, page. 276)
This phenomenon gave rise to a great flowering in the arts and in the letters that continued throughout the Middle Ages. Charlemagne was astonished at the gifts sent by the caliph Harun al-Rashid.
The translations of Christian Arabs and Jews allowed St. Thomas Aquinas, philosopher, saint and doctor of the Church (1225-1274), to discover Aristotle and lay the foundations of modern philosophy.
European culture came into contact with the thought of the philosopher Yehia Ibn Takriti (+ 974), considered one of the greatest of the tenth century.
Thanks to the Christians, the Middle East has known the press, introduced for the first time in Lebanon and destined to give a new dynamism to the spread of culture.
The opening of Egypt to foreigners by the viceroy Mohamed Ali (the Kedive) 1769.- 1849, then brought a large number of Syrian-Lebanese to the country. Many devoted themselves profitably to trade and journalism. The first newspaper in Arabic, Al Ahram, founded by two Christian brothers, Bishara and Selim Takla in 1875, later became the most important daily in the Arab world.
Cairo and Beirut are the main centers of publishing in the Arabic language.
“Among the periodicals of ideas, which opened a window on the culture, science and technology of the West, there were the two products in Cairo by Lebanese Christians:” al-Muqtataf “by Ya’qub Sarruf (1852-1927) and Faris Nimr (1855-1951), and “al-Hilal” by Jurji Zaydan (1861-1914). An analogous undertaking was that of an encyclopedia, published in periodical fascicles, produced by Butrus Bustani (1819-1883 and his family, compendium of modern knowledge, which shows what was known and understood in Beirut and in Cairo in the last quarter of the nineteenth century “(Albert Hourani, History of the Arab peoples, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1992, pp.3CONSTRUCT TO LIVE AND BUILD THE PEACE-304).
- Characteristics of the Arab-Christian cultural heritage
For centuries in the Middle East the dominant culture has been the Greek one, as evidenced also by the Greek version of the Gospels. Often, however, Syriac, Coptic and Aramaic were also used. Only much later did the Arabic language become an important factor for the unification of different cultures.The Arab of Christian tradition, immersed in a Muslim environment, was called to continually clarify his faith, especially for the formulation of concepts that non-Christians were not always able to understand, with the risk of distorting the Gospel message. It is necessary to explain and clarify terms that are not always univocal, such as the Trinity, a concept that in Muslim circles meets more than one difficulty, because it casts doubt on the monotheistic faith. For this reason, it seems, at the end of each sign of the cross, the Middle Eastern faithful feel the need to add: “God is One and Unique. Amen!”.
Christians, spurred on to demonstrate the unity of their faith even in the multiplicity of confessions, have given life to a rich production of theological treatises in Arabic. These works, which date back to the first centuries of Islamic domination, have a great ecumenical value, because they actually overcome the divisions between the different Christian communities and traditions.
The first theological treatises date back to the 8th century. There are also comments in the Arabic language of the Bible, of the letters of the apostles and liturgical prayers. The first canon law code, which dates back to the 13th century, was published in Damascus and is still in force in the Maronite and Coptic churches. The first translation of the Gospel dates back to the 9th century, while King David’s litanies, translated in verse in the middle of the 10th century by the Andalusian bishop El Hafs Ibn El Ber, are considered a pearl of Christian Arab literature.
In the field of historiography, the great attention to the religious and civil history shown in previous centuries by the Syrian, Greek and Coptic communities continued with the Arab Christians. They distinguished Hunayn Ibn Ishak (809-873), a doctor who wrote a history of humanity from Abraham to the advent of Islam, and Ishak Ibn Hunayn (830-910), author of a history of medicine.
In addition to subjects of a religious nature, the works of the Arab Christian authors concern the sciences up until the thirteenth century. The translators create a vocabulary for the medical sciences that the Arabic language did not possess. The academies of Damascus, Bagdad, Cairo, founded by Christians, have given an immense contribution to the construction of the Arabic linguistic and cultural heritage. Here the Greek works of medicine and philosophy were translated by the Syriac into Arabic.
“The first scientific work in Arabic was a medical treatise written in Greek by Ahrun, a Christian priest from Alexandria, and translated from Syriac into Arabic in 683 by Masarjawayh, a Jewish doctor from Basra, Iran. In Babylon, under the Abbassids , medicine was still taught in Aramaic. Ibn Bakhtishu (+771), a Nestorian doctor, called by al-Mansur in Baghdad, founded a hospital of which his son (+801) became the first physician, a Jacobite, Yuhanna b. 777-857), doctor, translator and ophthalmologist, writes the first treatise on ophthalmology in Arabic (op. Cit. Pag. 276).
The German orientalist Manfred Ullmann, in his book “Medicine in Islam”, recalls that for the whole of the Middle Ages the best doctors were the Arab Christians, whose works constituted the source of the medical science of the time.
Mathematics and geometry were also the focus of the translators’ attention. The merit is Kasta Ibn Luca (+ 912) who translated “The elements” of Euclid, helped to create an Arabic mathematical terminology and also composed a history of Greek thought and an encyclopedia of history.
In astronomy, Yehia Ibn Gharir Al-Takriti (+1080) distinguished himself with his work “Guide to the science of astronomy”, considered a classic text.
In the field of art, architects, masons, artists and even prisoners, often recruited as labor, played a fundamental role in promoting techniques and styles.
“The floral and geometric motifs, the abundance of reproductions of animals, typical of Persian and Hellenistic art, continued to distinguish the Umayyad and Abbasid architecture. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, built between 687 and 690, is of Byzantine conception and style: Baghdad was built in 762 by one hundred thousand architects, workers and artists from Syria and Mesopotamia. This immense work of transmission of science through the Arabic language reaches its apogee under the first Abbassids, whose court completely iranizzata, strove to reproduce the splendors of the kingdom of Chosroes and the dynasty of the Sassanids. This is the era of translations (750-850) encouraged by al-Ma’mum, founder in 830 of a library (Bayt al- Hikma) in which works were translated from Sanskrit, Persian, Aramaic, Greek “(op. Cit. Pag. 277).
Some of the Christian authors who contributed with their work to the creation of the splendid Arab cultural heritage are also very well known in the West: Hunayn Ibn Ishaq, considered the greatest translator from Greek and Syriac, whose books were paid for by weight of gold from the caliph Ma’amun; Bar Hebraeus, author of the Chronicon died in 1286 and, in modern times, Gibran Khalil Gibran, of author of El Profeta died in 1931. Less known but equally important books on religious and civil history were written
- Census of cultural heritage
To introduce Christian authors, a committee of experts, coordinated by Fr. Samir Khalil, who heads the St. Joseph University in Beirut, started cataloging all the material published by Christians in Arabic. They are texts of philosophy, mathematics, theology and botany published within the confines of an imaginary Islamic empire, from India to Andalusia. It is a project of great importance that will serve to enhance and make known the Arab-Christian cultural heritage. So far, about 2,000 authors and 20,000 piece o work have been registered, published only to a small extent.
The working committee has agreed on some definitions. By “heritage” we mean the whole of the Christian tradition, while putting the accent on the classical period (730-1350); by “Arabic” we mean everything that the authors have produced in the language in which it is Koran. In essence, this census, with a clear ecumenical inspiration, brings to light a treasure of inestimable value, regardless of the content of the works and the Christian communities to which the authors belong. In this way we try to induce Christians to rediscover their Arab identity, going beyond current religious distinctions, and to encourage the re-appropriation of Arab cultural roots, in the hope of curbing the exodus to the West.
5.Simbiosi between civilizations
History teaches us that civilization is the fruit of a synthesis between tradition and novelty. The main merit of Arab Christians lies in having combined the Syriac, Hellenistic and Persian civilizations with the Arab one.
“This intellectual movement drove the best elements of the communities to the Islamization of scientists and scholars concerned so as to be able to maintain favorable conditions for study. The reasons for the conversion of scholarly dhimmi were manifold: facilitated access to sources, scholarships, jealousies and retaliations from Muslim competitors. The drive toward islamisation increased with the great flow of freedmen and slaves. We remember Abu Hanifa (767), founder of the Hanafite law school, the Persian musician Ibrahim al-Mawsili (742-804), Jawhar, conqueror of the Egypt (969) for the Fatimid al-Mu’izz, and founder of Cairo and the al-Azhar mosque. ” (op. cit. pag. 277-279).
This symbiosis was repeated in more recent times, with the revival of Arab culture towards the end of the nineteenth century. Civilization is just that: a harmonious fusion of the past and the future
Giuseppe Samir Eid
Free web translation from the original in Italian
The published articles intend to provide the tools for a social inclusion of the migratory flow, shed light on human rights and the condition of life of Christians in the Islamic world from which the author comes. Knowledge of the other, of cultural and religious differences are primary ingredients to create peace in the hearts of men everywhere, a prerequisite for a peaceful coexistence and convinced citizenship in the territory.