Islam and Christianity
Family: Encounters with other traditions · 34 entries
Entries on this theme
Person
Abraha
c. 520 CEThe Aksumite governor who made himself ruler of Yemen, built the great church of San'a, and marched on Mecca with an elephant — the invader of the 'Year of the Elephant' remembered in Qur'an 105.Waraqa ibn Nawfal
c. 555 CEKhadija's cousin, an elderly Meccan Christian who had studied the scriptures; the man who first told the shaken Prophet that what had come to him in the cave was prophecy.Zayd ibn Amr
c. 560 CEA Meccan seeker who rejected the idols of his people and sought 'the religion of Abraham' years before the Prophet's mission — the tradition's example of the hanif, the indigenous monotheist.Salman al-Farisi
c. 568 CEA Persian seeker who passed through Zoroastrianism and Christianity before reaching Muhammad; freed from slavery in Medina, he is remembered for proposing the trench at the siege of 627.Heraclius
c. 575 CEByzantine emperor (610–641) who reconquered Jerusalem from Persia and then watched the Muslim conquest of Syria. The tradition preserves a letter from the Prophet and an audience in which Heraclius questioned Abu Sufyan.the Negus of Aksum
c. 580 CEThe Christian king of Aksum who gave the first Muslim exiles refuge and heard Ja'far's recitation — remembered in the tradition as a just ruler who, in some reports, himself became a Muslim.Ja'far ibn Abi Talib
c. 590 CEA brother of Ali who led the Muslim emigration to Abyssinia and answered the Negus for his people; killed at Mu'ta carrying the army's standard after Zayd ibn Haritha.Abu Haritha ibn Alqama
Bishop of Najran and its religious leader, one of the three chiefs who headed the sixty-man Christian delegation to Medina in 9 AH that debated Jesus and received the Prophet's offer of mubahala.Dhu Nuwas (Yusuf Asʾar Yathʾar)
The last Himyarite king before the second Abyssinian occupation: a convert to Judaism who in October 523 tried to force the Christians of Najran to apostatize and, on their refusal, dug the trench of fire — the event the Quran recalls in Surat al-Buruj.Faymiyun the monk
The ascetic and answered supplicant who entered Najran before the second Abyssinian occupation and called its people to Christianity; the Raheeq narrative names him as the agent of Najran’s conversion.
Event
The Massacre of Najran (Ashab al-Ukhdud)
October 523 CEIn October 523 the Himyarite king Dhu Nuwas, a convert to Judaism, marched on the Christians of Najran demanding they renounce their faith; on their refusal he dug the great trench and burned them — men, women, children and elders, twenty to forty thousand by report — the Ashab al-Ukhdud of Surat al-Buruj, whose blood summoned the Abyssinian occupation.The delegation of Najran
c. 631 CE · 9 AHSixty riders of Christian Najran came to Medina in 9 AH led by the Aqib, the Sayyid and Bishop Abu Haritha; when they declined Islam the Prophet offered the mutual invocation of God's curse (mubahala) with Fatima, al-Hasan and al-Husayn, they asked instead for terms, and a treaty granted them God's protection in exchange for two thousand garments a year.Adi ibn Hatim's flight to Syria, his coming to the Prophet and his conversion
c. 631 CE · 9 AHAdi ibn Hatim, chief of Tayy, a Christian who took the quarter-share, hated the Prophet on hearing of him and kept camels ready; when his slave saw the banners of Muhammad's armies he carried his family to the Christians of Syria, leaving Hatim's daughter, who was captured, released and came to rebuke him and urge him to go to the Prophet. He came to Medina; the Prophet rose, took him home, stood long for a weak old woman who stopped him, threw Adi a cushion and sat on the ground, and Adi said to himself, this is not the way of a king. The Prophet asked whether he had not been a Rakusi taking the quarter-share, which his religion did not allow, and foretold three things: wealth overflowing, a woman travelling safely from al-Qadisiyya to the House, and the white palaces of Babylon opened; Adi embraced Islam and used to say two had come to pass and the third would.
Object
Coronation mantle of Roger II
The Norman coronation mantle made in the royal workshops of Palermo in 527 AH/1133 CE with an Arabic inscription dating it; kept in the Vienna treasury.Baptistère de Saint-Louis
The Mamluk silver-and-gold inlaid brass basin (c.1300) in which French kings were baptised — a metalwork masterwork in the Louvre.Hinckelmann edition
The first Arabic printing of the Qur'an in Europe — Hamburg 1694 under Abraham Hinckelmann — opening European Qur'an printing.Marracci edition
Ludovico Marracci's 1698 Padua edition of the Qur'an in Arabic and Latin with long refutations; a landmark in European Qur'an study.
Work
Building
Concept
Enmity and affection (al-adawa wal-mawadda)
In his reading of Qur'an 5:82, Rida defines enmity as hatred that shows in speech and action and affection as love that shows in speech and action, against the majority of commentators who take mawadda as love in general. He rejects the view that enmity and affection come only from conflicting interests and holds that the cause is the spiritual state formed by religious and moral upbringing. This is Rida's own reading, labelled as such.Mubahala (mutual invocation of God's curse)
Mubahala is a supplication in which two opposing parties gather and ask God to send His curse on the one who lies. Sha'rawi presents the Prophet's call to the Najran delegation to it, holds that the delegation's refusal showed doubt in their own position, and that the Prophet came with his family in certainty.Orientalism
Zaqzuq defines orientalism in its narrow sense as Western study of the Islamic East in its languages, history, creeds, law and civilisation. He credits it with positive work on manuscripts and editions and criticises its studies of the Qur'an, Sunna and the Prophet's life. He holds the religious motive to be its first cause, names scientific, commercial and political aims, and sorts orientalists into categories. These are the author's judgements, attributed to him.The orientalist claim that the Prophet authored the Qur'an
Zaqzuq presents orientalist views on the source of the Qur'an. He reports that George Sale's English preface states flatly that the Prophet was the author, a claim that shaped European writing for a long time, and that Richard Bell argued the Prophet drew on the Bible. These are the author's report and rebuttal, not a ruling by the museum.The orientalist claim that Islamic law derives from Roman law
Zaqzuq reports that most orientalists think Islamic law was influenced by Roman law to varying degrees, and names Goldziher, von Kremer and Sheldon Amos, some of whom say it is derived from Roman law. The book presents the claim in order to answer it; the museum gives no ruling.Priests and monks (qissisun and ruhban)
Rida glosses the words qissisin (priests) and ruhban (monks) in Qur'an 5:82: a ruhban is a celibate devotee withdrawn to a monastery or hermitage, a word he links either to fear or to the emaciation of camels, and a qissis is a church rank above the deacon and below the bishop, whose ideal is learning in his religion and its books. He reads the verse as joining devotees and scholars, calls monasticism an innovation in Christianity, and notes two transmitted readings of who is meant: those who believed in Jesus in his time, like the disciples, or the people of the Negus.
Group
Place
Screening Room
The Sultan and the Saint
2016 CE · 1437 AH†UPF's docudrama, narrated by Jeremy Irons, on St Francis of Assisi's meeting with Sultan al-Kamil at Damietta in 1219 amid the Fifth Crusade.Ali and Nino
2016 CE · 1437 AH†Adaptation of the famous novel: a Muslim Azerbaijani and a Georgian Christian in Baku on the eve of the Russian Revolution.Excuse My French
2014 CE · 1435 AH†Excuse My French.Fetih 1453
2012 CE · 1433 AH†Fetih 1453.Guelwaar
1993 CE · 1413 AH†Guelwaar.Hassan and Marcus
2008 CE · 1429 AH†Egyptian comedy with Adel Emam and Omar Sharif: a Muslim and a Copt each hiding in the other's faith; a film about national unity.Watu Wote
2017 CE · 1438 AH†Watu Wote.
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