What is it about?
While editing for the first time three short Syriac texts (Syriac is a form of Christian Aramaic from Northern Mseopotamia, modern East-Turkey) from the Islamic period, the article tries to better understand the text history of the so-called Story of Sergius Bahira, an early Christian text of controversy with Islam. The three texts follow Sergius Bahira's story and the whole is presented in the manuscript as a "Story of Muhammad"
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Why is it important?
Three short Syriac texts are edited here for the first time. One of them is a very brief East-Syriac chronicle that seems to preserve Islamic material coming from an Iraqi/Shi'i background different from the usual Syrian origin of the information found in West-Syriac chronicles. The text history of the very popular Story of Sergius Bahira is reexamined and shows that this influential text was likely produced in an East-Syriac milieu from two independant hagiographical stories and later received distinct introduction and conclusion in West- and East-Syriac traditions.
Perspectives
The texts added to the famous Story of Sergius Bahira and edited here were found in a Syriac manuscript kept in the library of the Syrian-Catholic Patriarchate in Charfet (Lebanon) that our French team is currently cataloguing (describing the manuscripts as objects as well as their content). Readers can now have access to them for the first time and understand what they mean for the history of early Christian-Muslim relations.
Muriel Debie
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes
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This page is a summary of: Sergius Baḥīrā and a Syriac “Story of Muḥammad”, August 2023, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004537897_020.
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