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Bartolomeo Pirone

There is nothing wrong with the title of this new series of studies titled The Treasures of Arabic Christian Culture. Although many people may be surprised in seeing the words Arab and Christian in the same sentence, Arabs were present at the first Pentecost and received the baptism of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:11). Later some Arab tribes accepted Christianity, invented the Arabic script, and formed the first kingdoms in the Arabian Peninsula long before the rise of Islam.

After the rise of Islam, other Middle Eastern Christian communities, Syriac, Melkite, and Coptic, also came to be «Arabized» to a significant degree. A Christianity inspired by the Fathers of the Church but thinking in Arabic grew up in this environment. It re-examined the Christian heritage as it came into contact with a new religion, Islam, and for the first time Christians weighed their beliefs against those of another faith.

These Christians preserved and synthesized the scientific and philosophic inheritance of the Hellenic world and because of this the Muslim Caliphs of Baghdad and Damascus sought them out as court physicians and councilors.

They transmitted this treasure, through translations and commentaries on the medical treatises of Galen and Hippocrates, the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, and their disciples, and the scientific works of Euclid and Ptolemy. They were students of Greek learning and they began in the 9^th century a renaissance in the Arab world that three centuries later spread to the West.

Beginning in the 16^th century, these Arab Christians came to study in the West and when they returned home they built modern colleges in Lebanon, founded printing houses, and disseminated the methodology of the scientific revolution. As they brought learning from the west to the east so also they became in the 17^th and 18^th centuries the first Orientalists, introducing Westerners to Middle Eastern culture, both Christian and Muslim. In the 19^th century, they were the first promoters of the nahda, a second Arab renaissance, starting newspapers and other publications, reviving theatre, novels, and later the cinema.

Even so, these Arab Christians, being no less Arab than their Muslim counterparts, were not taken seriously in the Western world. In the endless fascination with all that was «different», they were dismissed as «charming» and «exotic». Because their faith was so similar to that of the West, because they were so oppressed by their Ottoman overlords, and because they were so few in numbers, they were ignored by Western intellectuals, attracting the attention only of those missionaries that sought to «evangelize» them.

In order to remedy this serious gap of knowledge about the Arab Christian world, the present series, The Treasures of Arabic Christian Culture is being offered to scholars and interested readers in Italy and all of Europe.

Samir Khalil Samir

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La letteratura arabo-cristiana e le scienze nel periodo abbaside (750-1250 d.C.). Atti del 2º convegno di studi arabo-cristiani, Roma 9-10 marzo 2007, a cura di Davide Righi, 331p, 2nd edition Bologna 2017, $ 17.50 isbn 978-1534769410

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Papers presented include:

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Elia di Nisibi, Il libro per scacciare la preoccupazione, Kitāb dafʿ al-hamm («The book on Driving Away Anguish from the Soul»), arabic text by Samir Khalil Samir; italian translation and notes by Anna Pagnini, indexes by Anna Pagnini, Paola Pizzi and Davide Righi; 2nd volume, 396p. isbn 978-1533690098.

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Elia di Nisibi, Il libro per scacciare la preoccupazione, Kitāb dafʿ al-hamm («The book on Driving Away Anguish from the Soul»), introduction by Paolo La Spisa and Davide Righi; arabic text by Samir Khalil Samir; italian translation and notes by Anna Pagnini, 1st volume, 3rd edition, Bologna 2018, 474p. isbn 978-1728616773.

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Ibn al-Munaǧǧim - Qusṭā ibn Lūqā, Una corrispondenza islamo-cristiana sull’origine divina dell’Islam, introduzione, traduzione, note ed indici a cura di Ida Zilio-Grandi, testo arabo a cura di Samir Khalil Samir, 3rd edition revised (2018), 314p.

ISBN 978-1540332868

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Paola Pizzo, L’Egitto agli egiziani! Cristiani, musulmani e idea nazionale (1882-1936), prefazione di Andrea Riccardi, 2017 (ed. orig. 2002), 318p., isbn 978-1542337250

Reprint of 2002 edition

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Teodoro Abū Qurrah, Trattato sulla libertà, testo arabo a cura di Samir Khalil Samir, introduzione, traduzione, note ed indici a cura di Paola Pizzi (it's the 1st reprint of 2001 edition), 270p., Independently published, Bologna 2020.

isbn 9781535204989

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ثَاوُدُورُسُ أَبُو قُرَّة

مَيْمَرٌ في الْحُرِّيَّةِ

مَيْمَرٌ يُحَقِّقُ لِلإنْسَانِ حُرِّيَّةً ثَابِتَةً مِنَ اللهِ فِي خَلِيقَتِهِ

وأَنَّ حُرِّيَّةَ الإنْسَانِ لاَ يَدْخُلُ عَلَيْهَا الْقَهْرُ

مِنْ وَجْهٍ مِنَ الْوُجُوهِ بَتَّةً

حَقَّقَهُ الأَبُ

سَمِير خَلِيل سَمِير

دَرَسَتْهُ، تَرْجَمَتْهُ إِلَى اللُّغَةِ الإِيْطَالِيَّةِ، وَأَلَّفَتِ الْفَهَارِسَ

الدُّكْتُورَة ﭘـَوْلاَ ﭘـِــيزِّي

This treatise is one of Theodore Abū Qurrah’s (750-825) works written in Arabic. This Melkite bishop initiated a new theological and philosophical age in Middle Eastern Christianity. From the end of the eighth through the beginning of the ninth century A.D., the Church was engaged in a detailed process of comparing Christianity with Islam. In fact, the theological influence of Christianity upon Islam is still being discussed by scholars today. This fluid environment is reflected in Theodore Abū Qurrah’s treatise by his choice of subjects, literary style, and language. Human freedom, personal responsibility, eternal punishments and rewards, the origin of good and evil, and so on, were the subject of discussion between philosophers of both traditions. In this on-going debate Theodore Abū Qurrah, an expert in «‘ilm al-kalām» (scholastic theology), offered his apology for human freedom against schools of Islamic thought committed to the doctrine of Predestination.

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Storia di Rawḥ al-Qurašī. Un discendente di Maometto che scelse di divenire cristiano, introduzione, traduzione, note ed indici a cura di Emanuela Braida e Chiara Pelissetti, Bologna, Edizioni del Gruppo di Ricerca Arabo-Cristiana, Bologna reprint 2023 (ed. orig. 2001)

isbn 9791280091123

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A short Arab Christian anonymous manuscript prompts an historical “detective story” that could have been written in the “Thousand and One Nights”. The ensuing study takes as its point of departure the hagiographic text of the “Passion of Rawḥ al-Qurashi”. The author attempts to demonstrate the historical existence of the martyr, a grandson of Caliph Harūn al-Rashīd. This young Muslim aristocrat deeply moved by the miracles attributed to Saint Theodore aban-doned the comforts of the world and undertook a long spiritual and geographical journey that led him to martyrdom for his faith in Christ.

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ʿAbd al-Masīḥ al-Kindī, Apologia del cristianesimo, introduzione, traduzione, note ed indici a cura di Laura Bottini, (1998), 316p., isbn 9788816404571

Probably written during the caliphate of al Ma’mun (813-833), this apology is part of the rich literary heritage of Islamic-Christian controversy. The work consists of two letters. The first, purportedly written by a Muslim, affectionately invites a Christian to convert to Islam. The second, the Christian’s response, is written with an overflowery prose and ironic tone as he refuses to embrace Islam and praises the logical coherence and moral excellence of his religion. Going beyond a mere apology, this refutation of Islam by ‘Abd al-Masīḥ al-Kindī became extremely popular in Europe in the 12th century and helped to shape the conventional view of Islam during the High Middle Ages.

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Yaḥyā al-Anṭākī, Cronache dell’Egitto fāṭimide e dell’impero bizantino, introduzione, traduzione dall'arabo e note a cura di Bartolomeo Pirone, prefazione di Samir Khalil Samir, 3a edizione ulteriormente riveduta e corretta (Bologna 2023), 404p., isbn 9781535396271

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In a chronicle of epic sweep, Yaḥyā of Antioch, an Arab Christian historian, vividly describes nearly a century of interlocking Byzantine and Muslim histories. Yaḥyā chronicles lust for power, palace intrigues, the birth and death of dynasties, and natural disasters in a world dominated by Islam. He even takes the reader beyond the borders of the Byzantine empire and into the emerging powers of Bulgaria, Khazaristan, and Russia.