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حين التقى المسيحيون بالمسلمين أول مرة
يتأسس الكتاب على تحول مهم في دراسة تاريخ ما قبل الحداثة. ويضم مقدمات، وترجمات جديدة، وببليوجرافيا لمجموعة من النصوص السريانية التي كتبت عن الإسلام قبل الثورة العباسية في عام 750 م.
الكتاب يخاطب العديد من الشرائح بدءًا من المتخصصين في الدراسات السريالية حيث يضم مجموعة من الترجمات عنها وببليوجرافيا محدثة لتلك النصوص، وكذلك يهم الدارسين من طلاب الدراسات العليا أو الجامعيين وأيضًا العلماء المتخصصين في دراسات الإسلام المبكر لوجود هذه المجموعة من النصوص في مكان واحد، كما أن الكتاب مناسب أيضًا لجميع القراء من غير المتخصصين في أي مكان وزمان؛ لأهمية نصوصه التي تمتد إلى ما هو أبعد من حدود أي تخصص أكاديمي مفرد.
الكتاب يخاطب العديد من الشرائح بدءًا من المتخصصين في الدراسات السريالية حيث يضم مجموعة من الترجمات عنها وببليوجرافيا محدثة لتلك النصوص، وكذلك يهم الدارسين من طلاب الدراسات العليا أو الجامعيين وأيضًا العلماء المتخصصين في دراسات الإسلام المبكر لوجود هذه المجموعة من النصوص في مكان واحد، كما أن الكتاب مناسب أيضًا لجميع القراء من غير المتخصصين في أي مكان وزمان؛ لأهمية نصوصه التي تمتد إلى ما هو أبعد من حدود أي تخصص أكاديمي مفرد.
280 pages, Paperback
First published March 21, 2015
28 people are currently reading
417 people want to read
About the author
Michael Philip Penn
7 books15 followersMichael Penn is a specialist in the history of early Christianity. He explores how ancient Christian communities forged their own identity, especially in the context of religious and ethnic pluralism.
Professor Penn's first book Kissing Christians: Ritual and Community in the Late Ancient Church was published in 2005 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. In 2015 he published two books on Christian-Muslim relations: Envisioning Islam: Syriac Christians in the Early Muslim World (University of Pennsylvania Press) and When Christians First Met Muslims: A Source Book of the Earliest Syriac Writings on Islam (University of California Press). For these projects Professor Penn has received awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council for Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, the British Academy, the American Philosophical Association, the American Academy of Religion, and the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning.
Professor Penn is currently working on an Andrew Mellon Foundation funded collaboration with a Smith College computer science professor that uses recent advances in the automated analysis of handwriting to help analyze ancient Aramaic manuscripts. In addition to this work in the digital humanities, Professor Penn has begun several related projects that focus on the history of middle eastern Christianity and the manuscripts they produced.
Before joining the Mount Holyoke College Department of Religion in 2002, Professor Penn was a postdoctoral fellow at Brandeis University, and taught religion and Women Studies courses at Haverford College, Bryn Mawr College, and Duke University. He has also been a secondary school teacher, including six years as the director of forensics at Durham Academy High School, where he ran a nationally competitive policy debate team. In addition, he has held research positions at Apple Computers, the Weizmann Institute (Israel), Palo Alto Veterans Hospital, and Ames Research Center, NASA.
Professor Penn's class offerings include courses in the Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament and seminars such as "What Didn’t Make It into the Bible," "Sex and the Early Church," and “Early Christian-Muslim Relations.”
Professor Penn's first book Kissing Christians: Ritual and Community in the Late Ancient Church was published in 2005 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. In 2015 he published two books on Christian-Muslim relations: Envisioning Islam: Syriac Christians in the Early Muslim World (University of Pennsylvania Press) and When Christians First Met Muslims: A Source Book of the Earliest Syriac Writings on Islam (University of California Press). For these projects Professor Penn has received awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council for Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, the British Academy, the American Philosophical Association, the American Academy of Religion, and the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning.
Professor Penn is currently working on an Andrew Mellon Foundation funded collaboration with a Smith College computer science professor that uses recent advances in the automated analysis of handwriting to help analyze ancient Aramaic manuscripts. In addition to this work in the digital humanities, Professor Penn has begun several related projects that focus on the history of middle eastern Christianity and the manuscripts they produced.
Before joining the Mount Holyoke College Department of Religion in 2002, Professor Penn was a postdoctoral fellow at Brandeis University, and taught religion and Women Studies courses at Haverford College, Bryn Mawr College, and Duke University. He has also been a secondary school teacher, including six years as the director of forensics at Durham Academy High School, where he ran a nationally competitive policy debate team. In addition, he has held research positions at Apple Computers, the Weizmann Institute (Israel), Palo Alto Veterans Hospital, and Ames Research Center, NASA.
Professor Penn's class offerings include courses in the Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament and seminars such as "What Didn’t Make It into the Bible," "Sex and the Early Church," and “Early Christian-Muslim Relations.”
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
May 25, 2018
The title of this book is very funny to me and when I first checked it out from the library I posted a picture of it on instagram, saying that I hoped it was a collection of cute and hilarious personal anecdotes. Unfortunately it's mostly not cute or hilarious. It's a collection of 7th and 8th century primary sources of Christians writing about Muslims, originally written in Syriac, and it will probably not be interesting to anyone who isn't the exact same kind of nerd as me. Did you know that there are very brief Christian accounts of the first and second fitnahs? There are!! Did you know that 8th century Miaphysites were slightly confused about the timeline of the Rashidun caliphate? They were!! Did you know that Christians and Muslims have been writing insane and terrifying apocalypses about each other for centuries? They have!! My favorite parts were the disputations - imagined conversations in which Christians and Muslims debate theology with each other, revealing more about the person who wrote them than any actual points of Christian or Muslim doctrine. My least favorite part was when some bishop named Jacob of Edessa wrote a letter with the blantantly unchristian suggestion that if a Muslim eats at a Christian's table, then the Christian should probably smash the table and then bury it somewhere. Feel free to come break and bury literally every piece of furniture in my house, asshole.
June 7, 2022
الكتاب رقم (٤)
يتحدث الكتاب عن أقدم المخطوطات السريانية والتي كتبت بأيدي القساوسة غالبا، وبها يتطلع المرء على النظرة الأولى للمسيحيين حول الدين الجديد.
ومن العجيب أنه حتى بعد انتهاء فترة الخلفاء الأربعة كان المسمى الأكثر شيوعا بهذه المخطوطات هو (الاسماعيليين أو الهاجريين) نسبة لهاجر زوجة إبراهيم عليهما السلام. وأيضا من الملاحظ تعايش بعض الطوائف المسيحية مع (الملوك العرب) من باب أعط ما لقيصر لقيصر وما لله لله.
كتاب جيد ولطيف للإطلاع عن وجهة النظر الأولى للطوائف المسيحية.
يتحدث الكتاب عن أقدم المخطوطات السريانية والتي كتبت بأيدي القساوسة غالبا، وبها يتطلع المرء على النظرة الأولى للمسيحيين حول الدين الجديد.
ومن العجيب أنه حتى بعد انتهاء فترة الخلفاء الأربعة كان المسمى الأكثر شيوعا بهذه المخطوطات هو (الاسماعيليين أو الهاجريين) نسبة لهاجر زوجة إبراهيم عليهما السلام. وأيضا من الملاحظ تعايش بعض الطوائف المسيحية مع (الملوك العرب) من باب أعط ما لقيصر لقيصر وما لله لله.
كتاب جيد ولطيف للإطلاع عن وجهة النظر الأولى للطوائف المسيحية.
July 25, 2015
First Syriac-Muslim Sources in Plain English
There is little doubt that Michael Penn’s book When Christians First Met Muslims will establish itself as a sourcebook for students of early Islam. However, while the material presented is excellent and even for me sometimes new, it contains very little surprises.
The positive of this book is that Penn’s translations are very easy to read. They are put in modern English and could almost be used as a bed-time lecture. The way he structured every document throughout his book is excellent: a statement of faith of the sender; a beautifully written context; a short manuscript history; and a definition of the authorship; followed by the translations.
This book never deviates from the consensus – and that is a problem. Students of early Islam know that it stinks in Mecca, and nobody has yet cracked open the riddle of how this all came about. So far, all trails are cold. Thus, providing a commented sourcebook that does not at least ask some pointed questions about its own evidence appears rather futile.
First, it needs to be disclosed that I have written two critical papers on the Umayyads, their conversion to Islam (or lack thereof) and their relationship to Muhammad (both for free on Academia.edu). In other words, I am intimately familiar with the consensus but also with fringe ideas. But, as everyone else, I have no definite answers since the hard evidence is very thin, and all literary documents are problematic.
Here is the issue: when everybody knows that the traditions reflect wishful thinking, old brooms cannot swipe clean. Penn states that some writers excluded ‘heretical’ texts by their competition. They should be assessed critically, he says. However, it does not prompt Penn to question whether the authors are actually of the faith that is generally assumed. Neither does he seem to realize that some of the writers made some extraordinary claims worth investigating. In addition, he writes that some texts had been fathered upon personalities of old. But he does not seem to take into consideration that every single text could have derived from questionable sources, and that every text has perhaps undergone changes to reflect the zeitgeist of later times. The landscape of religious fraud is colossal, and in the absence of firm evidence, we have very little other than numismatics to build a solid foundation. The process is easy: take an existing history and inject your own story; have your father convert to Mormonism post mortem; edit old books from another faith into yours; put words into another’s mouth. The possibilities have no end, and the elders sometimes even bragged about how they could forge handwriting. Then as now, they knew how to choose old parchments. If anything, ancient crooks were not stupid. We know today that convenient ‘traditions’ would have started to appear right after a religion’s rise to power, rather than decades or centuries later. Do we have to assume that it is any different with Islam?
This is a minefield, and to untangle it does not come easy. Everybody who has not studied the facts from the very beginnings of Judaism and Christianity (Penn has a strong background in both) through to Islam and also everyone who has a vested interest in one of the Judaic sects perhaps approaches the discourse with a bias that essentially disqualifies them. What it takes is a broad understanding of the true mechanisms of (Judaic) religion through time and space.
To illustrate the problem, Penn faithfully repeats the traditions of the conflict between Muawiyah and Ali. He notes that Ali is at times missing where he should be prominent. But if this person is not there, it might be imprudent to repeat what is suspected by some as false. Of course, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and Ali’s non-existence would unleash the Rapture. However, it provides for clues for students where to take a closer look. His appearance in the Maronite chronicle might be due to an edit or to a later composition that had already absorbed tradition in the service of self-aggrandizement. Also, there is the issue of ‘civil wars’ between early ‘Muslims’. What if these were not civil wars but religious wars? At the current, poor state of research, every door needs to remain open until a path is found out of the maze. Penn should care less which reputed scholar may accept something when there exists no evidence at all or when he delivers counter evidence. He claims that the word ‘Islam’ had not emerged before the rise of the Abbasids. But the consequences do not surface in the rest of the book. The point is: if the context is false, how do we understand what the writers are trying to say?
Perhaps in the pursuit of simplicity and linguistic beauty, Penn creates a dis-service to the student by translating critical words into terms that may have a consensus (which is subject to changes). To translate the tayyaya as Arabs is fine as long as the author says Arabs [tayyaya]. Although it is all fuzzy, these are important stones to the puzzle, in particular since we know that there must be two kinds of Arabs, the good and the ugly. When the original term is removed, it leaves the puzzle unsolvable. Even if the introduction provides for sort of a key, when it is lost in the text, it leaves the doubt, which makes the documents unusable unless the student double-checks the Syriac originals. For example, he translates the word hanpa as pagan, which is ok as long as it reads pagan [hanpa], even though there are different possibilities. The word pagan is indeed more problematic than the Syriac term. It has very little to do with Paganism (which was marginalized at this time), and the word appears in sources from various sectarian and religious (!) backgrounds. It is simply a derogatory term for those outside of any given sect. In Penn’s own work, even the Jews are branded as Pagans (Jacob of Edessa). In other words, it is certain that hanpa does NOT mean pagan in the modern sense of the word (and gentiles might also be a mistranslation). Instead, it is a (perhaps derogatory) term for a (Judaic) sect that had already been active at the time of the book of Acts and appears to be on the path to Islam, which may thus inherit the designation naturally. Another problematic issue is with the word Muhammad. Here too, the author would have dramatically improved his work if he would have put down Muhammad [MHMD]. Despite the consensus, there is an increasing number of scholars that recognize that MHMT is not MHMD, which may not be the Prophet Muhammad either. Even though highly reputed scholars accept the historicity of Muhammad, the leader simply does not appear in the evidence until AFTER 632 AD, his undocumented (!) year of death. He slips into the role of Amr al-‘As with the Chronicle of Khuzistan. In other words the ancient inventors of the traditions outsmarted the modern scholars. Since it is a sourcebook, I do not anticipate a discourse about these issues, but I expect the author not to repeat traditions or to make decisions that are based on traditions when his evidence does not support or contradicts them.
Through Penn’s comments, it appears that he is unfamiliar with much of the symbolism in the documents, and he seems, at times, uncomfortable with Koranic doctrines or with the various meanings of Christian technical terms. Who can blame him? These expressions mislead the unsuspecting researcher into believing that there were only a few sectarian (main) divisions. But there were many more, and Penn might have been better off in following his gut feeling. In Penn’s translation, Jacob of Edessa contains precise theological statements that are identical with the Koran (3:40). When held against Sebeos where Mu’awiah declined Jesus as the Christ, it allows for exclusion of some of the (technical) groups. Jacob also holds the Hagarenes against the Jews who rejected Jesus as the Christ. According to Jacob, the former built a unity of Jesus the man with the spirit, i.e. the Word of God. As other contemporary authors claimed, the doctrine is a resurrected form of Messianic Judaism, described by the writers as like-Arianism (man carries the Word of God, perhaps close to Arian-Adoptionism or Appollinarism, man carrying the Holy Spirit, but not God). The problem is that all boundaries became fluid at sword point, depending on who held the weapons at any given time during the previous century or so. Yet, the novelty seems to be the focus on the role of the spirit (rather than the human-divine natures of Jesus). This could then be a rare mirror of the seventh century concerns of Maximus the Confessor (as it is believed), which had rocked the religious landscape from Seleucia to Rome.
Bar Penkaye lays out a doctrine where the western Umayyads use ‘the immortal who was crucified for us’ to describe Jesus. The passage does not need to be dissected here other than stating in bold and capital letters: this is NOT Islam – but what is it? Also that the Deceiver in Pseudo Methodius pretends to be like God on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount is Muslim ANATHEMA (yet, it may be Abbasid). These are rather remarkable comments by the ancient authors that cannot be left by Penn without at least a hint of awareness. It also appears odd that bar Penkaye still awaited the deceiver while the ‘beast’ sat on the Temple Mount. Should he not have arrived seven decades earlier? Who then is this deceiver?
In the East Syrian Canons of 676, bishops are granted tax exemption. Penn takes this as evidence for Islam. However, in the text, it is the church that rules over the bishops’ exemptions, not a ‘Muslim’ leader. Besides, these taxes have been in place long before the advent of Islam. Likewise, he takes Mar Abba as referring to Islam when a sect erased the word ‘birth from the column of a page.’ Muslims have no issue with Matthew 1:25, and Jesus’ ‘birth’ presents a paradox for those only that had turned the Messiah into God. The Koran accepts the virgin birth from Mary. Instead, it disputes the stance that God has begotten a son. In other instances, Penn sticks with the comfort of the consensus even though his translation contains details that beg to differ. For example, bar Penkaye is accepted to having originated around 687 AD. However, the conquerors could not have arrived in Spain until later. The highly symbolic apocalyptical texts are even more problematic in their dating since prophesies are ALWAYS written after the facts – without exceptions. The only questions are how long after and to what purpose. But another set of questions could have been expected from Penn: where is Revelation in all of this doom? Why is there no hint of it?
A major disappointment of the book is that the author removed his translations for works that someone else was about to publish. Students have to go and buy yet another book when Penn’s sourcebook should have been complete. This is unacceptable.
Having said all this, I like this book, I really do – for pleasure reading. I hope that Penn picks up on the suggestions made here for a second edition. It will then be suitable for critical academia – and excellence.
A.J. Deus
Social Economics of Religious Terrorism
ajdeus.org – July 25, 2015
There is little doubt that Michael Penn’s book When Christians First Met Muslims will establish itself as a sourcebook for students of early Islam. However, while the material presented is excellent and even for me sometimes new, it contains very little surprises.
The positive of this book is that Penn’s translations are very easy to read. They are put in modern English and could almost be used as a bed-time lecture. The way he structured every document throughout his book is excellent: a statement of faith of the sender; a beautifully written context; a short manuscript history; and a definition of the authorship; followed by the translations.
This book never deviates from the consensus – and that is a problem. Students of early Islam know that it stinks in Mecca, and nobody has yet cracked open the riddle of how this all came about. So far, all trails are cold. Thus, providing a commented sourcebook that does not at least ask some pointed questions about its own evidence appears rather futile.
First, it needs to be disclosed that I have written two critical papers on the Umayyads, their conversion to Islam (or lack thereof) and their relationship to Muhammad (both for free on Academia.edu). In other words, I am intimately familiar with the consensus but also with fringe ideas. But, as everyone else, I have no definite answers since the hard evidence is very thin, and all literary documents are problematic.
Here is the issue: when everybody knows that the traditions reflect wishful thinking, old brooms cannot swipe clean. Penn states that some writers excluded ‘heretical’ texts by their competition. They should be assessed critically, he says. However, it does not prompt Penn to question whether the authors are actually of the faith that is generally assumed. Neither does he seem to realize that some of the writers made some extraordinary claims worth investigating. In addition, he writes that some texts had been fathered upon personalities of old. But he does not seem to take into consideration that every single text could have derived from questionable sources, and that every text has perhaps undergone changes to reflect the zeitgeist of later times. The landscape of religious fraud is colossal, and in the absence of firm evidence, we have very little other than numismatics to build a solid foundation. The process is easy: take an existing history and inject your own story; have your father convert to Mormonism post mortem; edit old books from another faith into yours; put words into another’s mouth. The possibilities have no end, and the elders sometimes even bragged about how they could forge handwriting. Then as now, they knew how to choose old parchments. If anything, ancient crooks were not stupid. We know today that convenient ‘traditions’ would have started to appear right after a religion’s rise to power, rather than decades or centuries later. Do we have to assume that it is any different with Islam?
This is a minefield, and to untangle it does not come easy. Everybody who has not studied the facts from the very beginnings of Judaism and Christianity (Penn has a strong background in both) through to Islam and also everyone who has a vested interest in one of the Judaic sects perhaps approaches the discourse with a bias that essentially disqualifies them. What it takes is a broad understanding of the true mechanisms of (Judaic) religion through time and space.
To illustrate the problem, Penn faithfully repeats the traditions of the conflict between Muawiyah and Ali. He notes that Ali is at times missing where he should be prominent. But if this person is not there, it might be imprudent to repeat what is suspected by some as false. Of course, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and Ali’s non-existence would unleash the Rapture. However, it provides for clues for students where to take a closer look. His appearance in the Maronite chronicle might be due to an edit or to a later composition that had already absorbed tradition in the service of self-aggrandizement. Also, there is the issue of ‘civil wars’ between early ‘Muslims’. What if these were not civil wars but religious wars? At the current, poor state of research, every door needs to remain open until a path is found out of the maze. Penn should care less which reputed scholar may accept something when there exists no evidence at all or when he delivers counter evidence. He claims that the word ‘Islam’ had not emerged before the rise of the Abbasids. But the consequences do not surface in the rest of the book. The point is: if the context is false, how do we understand what the writers are trying to say?
Perhaps in the pursuit of simplicity and linguistic beauty, Penn creates a dis-service to the student by translating critical words into terms that may have a consensus (which is subject to changes). To translate the tayyaya as Arabs is fine as long as the author says Arabs [tayyaya]. Although it is all fuzzy, these are important stones to the puzzle, in particular since we know that there must be two kinds of Arabs, the good and the ugly. When the original term is removed, it leaves the puzzle unsolvable. Even if the introduction provides for sort of a key, when it is lost in the text, it leaves the doubt, which makes the documents unusable unless the student double-checks the Syriac originals. For example, he translates the word hanpa as pagan, which is ok as long as it reads pagan [hanpa], even though there are different possibilities. The word pagan is indeed more problematic than the Syriac term. It has very little to do with Paganism (which was marginalized at this time), and the word appears in sources from various sectarian and religious (!) backgrounds. It is simply a derogatory term for those outside of any given sect. In Penn’s own work, even the Jews are branded as Pagans (Jacob of Edessa). In other words, it is certain that hanpa does NOT mean pagan in the modern sense of the word (and gentiles might also be a mistranslation). Instead, it is a (perhaps derogatory) term for a (Judaic) sect that had already been active at the time of the book of Acts and appears to be on the path to Islam, which may thus inherit the designation naturally. Another problematic issue is with the word Muhammad. Here too, the author would have dramatically improved his work if he would have put down Muhammad [MHMD]. Despite the consensus, there is an increasing number of scholars that recognize that MHMT is not MHMD, which may not be the Prophet Muhammad either. Even though highly reputed scholars accept the historicity of Muhammad, the leader simply does not appear in the evidence until AFTER 632 AD, his undocumented (!) year of death. He slips into the role of Amr al-‘As with the Chronicle of Khuzistan. In other words the ancient inventors of the traditions outsmarted the modern scholars. Since it is a sourcebook, I do not anticipate a discourse about these issues, but I expect the author not to repeat traditions or to make decisions that are based on traditions when his evidence does not support or contradicts them.
Through Penn’s comments, it appears that he is unfamiliar with much of the symbolism in the documents, and he seems, at times, uncomfortable with Koranic doctrines or with the various meanings of Christian technical terms. Who can blame him? These expressions mislead the unsuspecting researcher into believing that there were only a few sectarian (main) divisions. But there were many more, and Penn might have been better off in following his gut feeling. In Penn’s translation, Jacob of Edessa contains precise theological statements that are identical with the Koran (3:40). When held against Sebeos where Mu’awiah declined Jesus as the Christ, it allows for exclusion of some of the (technical) groups. Jacob also holds the Hagarenes against the Jews who rejected Jesus as the Christ. According to Jacob, the former built a unity of Jesus the man with the spirit, i.e. the Word of God. As other contemporary authors claimed, the doctrine is a resurrected form of Messianic Judaism, described by the writers as like-Arianism (man carries the Word of God, perhaps close to Arian-Adoptionism or Appollinarism, man carrying the Holy Spirit, but not God). The problem is that all boundaries became fluid at sword point, depending on who held the weapons at any given time during the previous century or so. Yet, the novelty seems to be the focus on the role of the spirit (rather than the human-divine natures of Jesus). This could then be a rare mirror of the seventh century concerns of Maximus the Confessor (as it is believed), which had rocked the religious landscape from Seleucia to Rome.
Bar Penkaye lays out a doctrine where the western Umayyads use ‘the immortal who was crucified for us’ to describe Jesus. The passage does not need to be dissected here other than stating in bold and capital letters: this is NOT Islam – but what is it? Also that the Deceiver in Pseudo Methodius pretends to be like God on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount is Muslim ANATHEMA (yet, it may be Abbasid). These are rather remarkable comments by the ancient authors that cannot be left by Penn without at least a hint of awareness. It also appears odd that bar Penkaye still awaited the deceiver while the ‘beast’ sat on the Temple Mount. Should he not have arrived seven decades earlier? Who then is this deceiver?
In the East Syrian Canons of 676, bishops are granted tax exemption. Penn takes this as evidence for Islam. However, in the text, it is the church that rules over the bishops’ exemptions, not a ‘Muslim’ leader. Besides, these taxes have been in place long before the advent of Islam. Likewise, he takes Mar Abba as referring to Islam when a sect erased the word ‘birth from the column of a page.’ Muslims have no issue with Matthew 1:25, and Jesus’ ‘birth’ presents a paradox for those only that had turned the Messiah into God. The Koran accepts the virgin birth from Mary. Instead, it disputes the stance that God has begotten a son. In other instances, Penn sticks with the comfort of the consensus even though his translation contains details that beg to differ. For example, bar Penkaye is accepted to having originated around 687 AD. However, the conquerors could not have arrived in Spain until later. The highly symbolic apocalyptical texts are even more problematic in their dating since prophesies are ALWAYS written after the facts – without exceptions. The only questions are how long after and to what purpose. But another set of questions could have been expected from Penn: where is Revelation in all of this doom? Why is there no hint of it?
A major disappointment of the book is that the author removed his translations for works that someone else was about to publish. Students have to go and buy yet another book when Penn’s sourcebook should have been complete. This is unacceptable.
Having said all this, I like this book, I really do – for pleasure reading. I hope that Penn picks up on the suggestions made here for a second edition. It will then be suitable for critical academia – and excellence.
A.J. Deus
Social Economics of Religious Terrorism
ajdeus.org – July 25, 2015
December 3, 2023
In this immensely useful sourcebook Penn has translated 28 Syriac writings which mention Islam, ranging from anywhere between the mid-seventh century to the mid-eighth. Penn's insightful comments on these texts are usually short but manage to cover the more important bits such as information about manuscripts in which the text can currently be located, potential authorship candidates for the text, and, most important of all, a time period in which to place the text's composition. Hopefully, this would not be the last sourcebook of its kind, and more Syriac texts would come to attention in the years to follow helping us shed more light on the present subject.
April 2, 2025
مراجعة كتاب ( حين إلتقى المسيحيون بالمسلمين لأول مرة)
للكاتب مايكل فيليب بن
بقلم : علاء القسوس
الكتاب يبدأ بمقدمة تاريخية حول تاريخ الجدال الكريستولوجي (أي الجدال حول طبيعة المسيح) و كيف إنقسم المسيحيون إلى عدة أقسام مختلفة و ثم يتناول ترجمة للعديد من النصوص السريانية المسيحية حول ظهور الإسلام حيث تباينت ردود فعل المسيحيين على الفتح الإسلامي لبلادهم ما بين رافضين من جهة و مؤيدين للفتوحات للتخلص من نير سيطرة الإمبراطورية الرومانية الشرقية على مقاليد السلطة و نظراً لأهمية هذه النصوص في توضيح الصلة الأولى بالمسلمين و مدى معرفة كل شخص بالعقائد التي يؤمن بها الآخر و إنتشار نوع من أدب الرؤيا الأبوكريفية مثل رؤيا يوحنا الصغير التي تُعتبر من النصوص المهمة التي وثقت اللقاء الأول بين المسلمين و المسيحيين و الكتاب موجه إلى القارئ الاكاديمي و غير الأكاديمي و هي تتضمن النصوص السريانية التي كُتبت عن الإسلام بأقلام مسيحية قبل الثورة العباسية سنة ٧٥٠ م.
للكاتب مايكل فيليب بن
بقلم : علاء القسوس
الكتاب يبدأ بمقدمة تاريخية حول تاريخ الجدال الكريستولوجي (أي الجدال حول طبيعة المسيح) و كيف إنقسم المسيحيون إلى عدة أقسام مختلفة و ثم يتناول ترجمة للعديد من النصوص السريانية المسيحية حول ظهور الإسلام حيث تباينت ردود فعل المسيحيين على الفتح الإسلامي لبلادهم ما بين رافضين من جهة و مؤيدين للفتوحات للتخلص من نير سيطرة الإمبراطورية الرومانية الشرقية على مقاليد السلطة و نظراً لأهمية هذه النصوص في توضيح الصلة الأولى بالمسلمين و مدى معرفة كل شخص بالعقائد التي يؤمن بها الآخر و إنتشار نوع من أدب الرؤيا الأبوكريفية مثل رؤيا يوحنا الصغير التي تُعتبر من النصوص المهمة التي وثقت اللقاء الأول بين المسلمين و المسيحيين و الكتاب موجه إلى القارئ الاكاديمي و غير الأكاديمي و هي تتضمن النصوص السريانية التي كُتبت عن الإسلام بأقلام مسيحية قبل الثورة العباسية سنة ٧٥٠ م.
July 1, 2018
Look, I approve of this book, I just didn't get much out of it. I expected - well, I expected something of more interest to a non-specialist. I'm sure the specifics of word choice in these accounts is of huge interest to scholars, but the accounts were mostly much too brief to tell me anything I didn't already know, since the subtelty was lost. Much of the first section is just a passing reference to a battle.
It's beautifully put together, and such access to primary resources for English speakers is essential, the intro is a succinct coverage of the various schisms in the Church of the time, but I was thoroughly bored for the first three-quarters. The final section, with apocalypses and other content, was much more interesting, but it was all a little late.
It's beautifully put together, and such access to primary resources for English speakers is essential, the intro is a succinct coverage of the various schisms in the Church of the time, but I was thoroughly bored for the first three-quarters. The final section, with apocalypses and other content, was much more interesting, but it was all a little late.
January 3, 2025
الكتاب حلو بس احس شوي الترجمه نص ونص أو ممكن الربط والشرح ممكن مش لمستواي بالقراءة
لكن كتاب جميل عطتني معلومات وفكرة أكبر أن مدينة حمص بسوريا لها أثر مسيحي كبير ماتوقعت ان ممكن تنذكر المدينه بكثرة كنت اتوقع ممكن حلب
لكن كتاب جميل عطتني معلومات وفكرة أكبر أن مدينة حمص بسوريا لها أثر مسيحي كبير ماتوقعت ان ممكن تنذكر المدينه بكثرة كنت اتوقع ممكن حلب
June 24, 2017
An excellent sourcebook that gives accounts mostly from Syriac, Monophysite, non-Caledonian sources. A very good source for teaching undergraduates the history of early Islam and the "early non-West"
January 9, 2022
مرجع لأقدم الكتابات السريانية عن الإسلام.
September 12, 2022
كتاب مهم و إن كان أكاديميا و ربما ممل في قراءته
February 1, 2020
I just finished reading this book which has served well in clearing the fog around the first century or so of Muslim Arab history. The book utilises the Syriac texts and even quarry inscriptions of the Assyrians of the Church of the East and Syriac Orthodox Church who had the earliest and most intimate encounters with the caliphates. Penn provides translations of the text which relates to the subject scope and as such, it ranges from a few lines to a few pages. There are instances where he does not provide a translation as other authors are working on publishing critical editions.
The literature various in tone and theme as time progresses, emerging as an apocalyptic style with the early victories against the Eastern Romans and Sasanian Iranians, and cementing in a polemical form towards the end of the Umayyad dynasty.
Just as the Anglo-Saxons across the other side of the world believed the Viking conquests were divine punishment for their own sins, so too did the Christians experiencing the relatively-quick conquests in Syria and Mesopotamia. At first, they were not aware that this new nation was a united Muslim one but rather vaguely seen as an Arab kingdom whose founder and leader was a "warrior and a prophet". Chroniclers believed that this shocking upset to the Roman-Persian status quo would not last and attempted to weave it's end into an apocalyptic coming of Christ.
It was not until the reign of the caliph Abd Al-Malik and his consolidations of Islamic identity that a clearer image of Islam was conveyed to outsiders and non-Arabs swelled the ranks of the faith. Breaking from the past, Al-Malik minted coins with overtly Islamic inscriptions which attacked the Trinitarian beliefs and ended the use of Roman and Sasanian coin dies which depicted the cross and holy fire. Reality sunk in and writers shifted towards objectively documenting the history of Muslim rulers like they did with others. Unsurprisingly, Ali was not listed among the rulers of Islam but an interegnum period was cited. Perhaps the most significant effect this had was compilation of canon and religious laws as Christians flocked to Islamic courts for more favourable judgements, converted to Islam or partook in intermarriage.
The literature various in tone and theme as time progresses, emerging as an apocalyptic style with the early victories against the Eastern Romans and Sasanian Iranians, and cementing in a polemical form towards the end of the Umayyad dynasty.
Just as the Anglo-Saxons across the other side of the world believed the Viking conquests were divine punishment for their own sins, so too did the Christians experiencing the relatively-quick conquests in Syria and Mesopotamia. At first, they were not aware that this new nation was a united Muslim one but rather vaguely seen as an Arab kingdom whose founder and leader was a "warrior and a prophet". Chroniclers believed that this shocking upset to the Roman-Persian status quo would not last and attempted to weave it's end into an apocalyptic coming of Christ.
It was not until the reign of the caliph Abd Al-Malik and his consolidations of Islamic identity that a clearer image of Islam was conveyed to outsiders and non-Arabs swelled the ranks of the faith. Breaking from the past, Al-Malik minted coins with overtly Islamic inscriptions which attacked the Trinitarian beliefs and ended the use of Roman and Sasanian coin dies which depicted the cross and holy fire. Reality sunk in and writers shifted towards objectively documenting the history of Muslim rulers like they did with others. Unsurprisingly, Ali was not listed among the rulers of Islam but an interegnum period was cited. Perhaps the most significant effect this had was compilation of canon and religious laws as Christians flocked to Islamic courts for more favourable judgements, converted to Islam or partook in intermarriage.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 19, 2019
The title gives away what this is all about: it is a text with primary sources. These texts are, for the most par, little known outside scholarly circles. Many of the writings are fragmentary and the translator tries to make them sound readable despite this. And these writings were selected primarily from the Umayyad period when theological development by Islamic scholars was still early in its infancy and not yet majorly influenced by Greek and Persian philosophy.
Many of the writings fit into certain groups: Apocalyptic literature, Anti-Polemic literature, and one-off mentions of the early Muslims that were included in pastoral letters. Muslims are usually refereed to as "Ishmaelites", "Arabs", "Hagarenes" and even "pagans". Some of the writings display an early knowledge of Islam while others don't even know what direction Muslims pray in. Mentions of the "King of the Greeks", "Romans" - both of which refer to Byzantium - show that many were hoping this invasion woud be temporary. It was only in later writings that this hope fades away.
The translations are readable. It would help if the original text was included. Also, except for the introductions, notes in the meaning are barely adequate. Overall, I liked it.
Many of the writings fit into certain groups: Apocalyptic literature, Anti-Polemic literature, and one-off mentions of the early Muslims that were included in pastoral letters. Muslims are usually refereed to as "Ishmaelites", "Arabs", "Hagarenes" and even "pagans". Some of the writings display an early knowledge of Islam while others don't even know what direction Muslims pray in. Mentions of the "King of the Greeks", "Romans" - both of which refer to Byzantium - show that many were hoping this invasion woud be temporary. It was only in later writings that this hope fades away.
The translations are readable. It would help if the original text was included. Also, except for the introductions, notes in the meaning are barely adequate. Overall, I liked it.
November 6, 2025
This book highlights the Syriac texts that documented the Muslims’ first appearance in the Levant. a rare contemporary account from the “other side.” These sources also corroborate key Islamic narratives, especially the scale of the Byzantine armies and the Muslims’ early commitment to protecting non-Muslims’ rights and religious practices.
What was interesting to me was that some churches interpreted the Islamic conquests as an act of divine punishment that ought not to be resisted, a "determinist" view reminiscent of the "Jabriyya" doctrine that would later emerge in Islamic thought and be firmly rejected by Muslim scholars. It is hardly coincidental that the rise of Jabriyya coincided with the Umayyad period, where most of these Syriac accounts were written. This shows the interplay between the Christian religious context of the region and the development of Islamic theological debates. The letters also show that the Christian knowledge of Islam doesn't surpass the practical "visable" aspects of it (slaughter, prayer, marriage) while the doctrinal dimensions of the faith, though already rooted in the Qur’an and Sunnah, remained an ambiguous field even among Muslims themselves, and from what i see it was on its way to Clarity, as Islam began to engage with societies shaped by centuries of theological controversy, that would enforce the muslim scholars to put an end to ambguity otherwise islam would become heavly influniced by outsider doctrines and loose its oroginal essence.
Another unexpected point: the tone. I expected hostility, but many texts are neutral or even appreciative, especially regarding Muslims’ guarantees of religious rights for Christian minorities. The book shows clearly that, unlike the Byzantines, who persecuted these communities, aiming to unify them under a single church, the muslim arabs let them keep their beliefs. This made their rule far more acceptable and explains how quickly it stabilized. It was practical, strategic, and a reminder that justice really is the best among policies. It is also ironic that some Christians sought to enlist Arab authority in their sectarian disputes instead of resisting the "pagans", humans are humans always.
Finally, the documents might make an uninformed reader think the Levant and Iraq had no Arabs before Islam. In reality, groups like the Ghassanids and Lakhmids were already well-established there, and the regions were naturally connected. That long-standing presence and cultural familiarity made the acceptance of Arab Islamic rule far easier. In sum, this book is both important and deeply entertaining.
Read
April 11, 2022didn't finish this book but i spent 1.5 hrs reading 30% of the book so I think I can mark it as read without feeling like I'm cheating lmao. it's a good book but it's obviously written for academics not me, maybe I'll get back to it later when I don't have lots of stuff to study
January 8, 2024
الكتاب جيد لكن المؤلف لم يدرج مناظرة بيت حلي وهذا يحسب عليه.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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