Christian Monastic Life in Early Islam

My book, Christian Monastic Life in Early Islam (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), was written amidst the backdrop of sweeping changes to the religious landscape of the modern Middle East. The rise of Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) and its targeting of Christian and Yazidi minorities throughout Syria and Iraq, along with the indiscriminate persecution of other Muslim populations, clearly made research stressing a sense of medieval ecumenism all the more relevant. Newspapers across the globe ran headlines detailing atrocities against minority religious communities at the hands of ISIS; several accounts bearing a phrase such as “church bells have been silenced in Mosul for the first time in 1,500 years” in relation to the regional establishment of an Islamic State during the summer of 2014. Thereafter certain pundits unambiguously attempted to trace such violence to wider themes in Islamic history. But from my perspective, such events were anomalies in the long history of Muslim relations with other religious groups. Despite the destructive acts of extremist groups against ancient Christian shrines, churches, and monasteries across the Levant, I contend that such an aberration serves to affirm the extensive record of tolerance in the region. I should also point out the irony here that groups like ISIS overtly paid homage to the original umma (Muslim community) and the early caliphates, endeavoring to support their present conduct with precedents from the medieval past, yet their hostilities against other religious communities are far removed from the actual history of the early Islamic Near East. My book attempts to address this particular historical context and argues for not only a general religious tolerance in the early centuries of Islam, but for an overlapping of sectarian boundaries throughout the period.

There has recently been a palpable wave of interest in the blending of religious cultures and inter-confessional relationships in scholarship dealing with Late Antiquity and the early Islamic world. As of late, this period has been increasingly depicted as an era of receding barriers whether one considers the shifting of imperial borders or the mutability of social frontiers. Academic discourse has thus shifted from the older view that this period represents an undeniable decline, with its gaze resolutely fixed upon the late-Roman administrative center, to a more transitional interpretation based largely on cultural and religious contours. The cross-cultural pollination of religious ideas, ranging across political divides, has become a stable feature of contemporary research within the field of late antique studies. This nuanced understanding of flexible frontiers has yielded additional inquiries into how various groups would have self-identified, with regard to political, linguistic, geographic, and religious factors. The question of identity, or self-identity, in this period of Near Eastern history was often articulated within a blurry convergence of a Hellenistic/late-Roman past, a Greek/Syriac/Armenian/Coptic Christian and/or Jewish cultural heritage, and an emerging Muslim hegemony.

This monograph examines issues of confessional flexibility, as well the problems in attempting to rigidly delineate religious boundaries, during the early centuries of Islam in the Near East. The investigation is carried out with specific attention to Christian monastic life within a Muslim political milieu. Even following the turbulent transition from Byzantine hegemony to Islamic authority across the Levant in the middle of the seventh century, Christian monasteries of the region displayed continued vitality and sustainability for centuries under Islamic rule. While it has been widely acknowledged that Christian monasticism continued to flourish across Iraq, Syria-Palestine, and North Africa well into the Islamic period, the question remains as to the precise nature of the relationship between monastic communities and Muslim society. These disparate populations appear to have not only established a relatively harmonious coexistence, but also facilitated a collective exchange of ideas, interests, and concerns across would-be confessional divides. A considerable range of medieval texts from the Byzantine Greek, Syriac, and Arabic traditions (including hagiographies, historical chronicles, geographical treatises, and works of poetry) indeed demonstrate a discernible Muslim fascination with Christian asceticism and monasticism.

The theoretical underpinning of this research was largely inspired by the work of Fred Donner and his proposal for a Believers movement at the dawning of the Islamic period. As Donner has suggested most recently in Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2012), the earliest expression of such a religious drive, which would eventually come to be known as Islam, would have potentially included both Jews and Christians. Notions of rigorous piety and righteous manner of life would have been situated at the core of such a movement. My research builds upon this basic premise, but attempts to refine it by addressing a particular group of Christians within this more complex multi-confessional framework, i.e. the monastic communities of the Near East. While Donner’s argument may well have applied across broader religious boundaries, it seems that the emphasis on pious devotion might have held an even greater relevance on the possible spiritual kinship between Christian monks and their Muslim, and/or “believer”, counterparts.

The opening chapters discuss the dramatic shifts in monastic life from the Persian conquest of the Byzantine Near East and Egypt, in the early seventh century, to the Islamic conquest of the region. The initial decades of this period represent, perhaps more than any other time, an intense era of uncertainty for monastic communities in the East. Contemporary documents, archaeological investigations, and historical research have demonstrated the profoundly negative impact on monastic life generated by the war between Byzantium and the Sasanian Empire. In contrast to the widespread destruction of this former period, there is virtually no evidence for deliberate attacks against monasteries and churches in the early Islamic era. Even in the period of the seventh-century Islamic conquests, where indications of wanton destruction and/or looting of Christian religious sites may be most expected, there are few examples of direct violence against monastic settlements. The rejuvenation of monasticism under the early Islamic state clearly suggests a significant degree of toleration and support for subject Christian communities.

The subsequent section examines the diverse nature of Muslim interest in Christian monasteries during the medieval Islamic period. According to a variety of contemporary accounts, Muslim visitation to monasteries often involved wine consumption and licentious behavior on the part of the elites. While not dismissing this possibility, this research suggests that there was often a greater religious dimension to Muslim fascination with monastic sites. Sacred shrines throughout the late antique Levant had, after all, been held in esteem for their hospitality and miraculous powers long before the arrival of Islam. The pious spirit of pilgrimage and ziyāra/visitation was simply transferred into a new religious context; one that was defined by its fluid character and amorphous sectarian lines.

The remaining sections of the research seek to address why these institutions and their guardians would have been accorded such a privileged position within Islam during its formative era. In other words, what was the origin of this reverence for Christian ascetic communities that appears to have been transferred into a Muslim context? In turn, what can this tell us about the nature of Islam and confessional distinctions in the early period?

In addressing such questions, I attempt to highlight the role of ascetics, hermits, and monks in the process of this non-sectarian, inclusive drive for righteousness during the early Islamic centuries, isolating a particular group of Christians with whom piety-minded Muslims would have perhaps had the most in common. In essence, it was my goal to discuss the nature of religious inclusivity within medieval Islam, from its nascency into the formative period of the ninth and tenth centuries, by examining the treatment, reception, and interpretation of Christian monasticism.

Bradley B. Bowman is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and the Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program at the University of Louisville.