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In many types of Muslim reactions to Christianity two elements come together: Christianity is a flawed religion because it has abandoned its original belief in the one God and, secondly, closely connected to the first point, Islam has come to supersede all earlier religions. Syriac and Arab Christians responded to this triumphalism and counteracted it in various ways. A well-known approach was to show that “deep down” the Prophet Muḥammad was very close to Christians and supported their beliefs. Positing an Ur-Islam that was philo-Christian required exegetical strategies that helped prepare the Christian communities for using the Qurʾān in debates with Muslims. Already in the second half of the eighth century, Arabicspeaking Christians found their way around the Qurʾān and knew how to challenge Muslims with it (Georg Graf, “Christlich-arabische Texte: Zwei Disputationen zwischen Muslimen und Christen,” in Griechische, koptische und arabische Texte zur Religion und religiösen Literatur in Ägyptens Spätzeit, ed. Friedrich Bilabel and Adolf Grohmann (Heidelberg: Verlag der Universitätsbibliothek, 1934), 1–31). Over time knowledge of exegetical debates among Muslims were used as an additional resource.

1. This apologetic approach was elaborated over the centuries and became the most distinctive characteristic of Arab Christian apologetic literature: This approach is explored in several studies, such as: Samir Khalil Samir, “L’unicité absolue de Dieu: regards sur la pensée chrétienne arabe,” Lumière et vie 163 (1983): 35–48; reprinted in Samir Khalil Samir, Foi et culture en Irak au XIe siècle (Aldershot: Variorum Reprints, 1996); Mark Swanson, “Beyond Prooftexting: Approaches to the Qurʾān in Some Early Arabic Christian Apologies,” Muslim World 88 (1998): 297–318; Sidney Griffith, “The Qurʾān in Arab Christian Texts: The Development of an Apologetic Argument: Abū Qurrah in the Maǧlis of al-Maʾmūn,” Parole de l’Orient 24 (1999): 203–233; Sidney Griffith, “Christians and the Arabic Qurʾān: Prooftexting, Polemics, and Intertwined Scriptures,” Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 2 (2014): 243–266; Sidney Griffith, “The Qurʾān in Christian Arabic Literature: A Cursory Overview,” in Arab Christians and the Qurʾān from the Origins of Islam to the Medieval Period, ed. Mark Beaumont (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 1–19; Barbara Roggema, “A Christian Reading of the Qurʾān: The Legend of Sergius-Baḥīrā and its Use of Qurʾān and Sīra,” in Syrian Christians under Islam: The First Thousand Years, ed. David Thomas (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 57–73; Barbara Roggema, “Qurʾānic Letter versus Spirit: Approaches to the Qurʾān in Kitāb Usṭāth al-rāhib and Masāʾil wa-ajwiba ʿaqliyya wa-ilāhiyya,” in Eastern Christians’ Engagement with Islam and the Qurʾān. Texts, Contexts and Knowledge Regimes, ed. Octavian-Adrian Negoiță, (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024) (forthcoming); Clare E. Wilde, Approaches to the Qurʾān in Early Christian Arabic Texts (750–1258 C.E.) (Bethesda: Academica Press, 2014); Gordon Nickel, “‘Our Friendly Strife’: Eastern Christianity Engaging the Qurʾān,” in Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, ed. Douglas Pratt and Charles Tieszen, vol. 15, 255–279.
2. A hitherto unknown specimen of Christian Arabic apologetic texts that are founded on the Qurʾān. It is a short text written in Karšūnī (Arabic in Syriac script) that lists verses from the Qurʾān and gives explanations as to how they should be interpreted. On the one hand, there are verses which, according to the author, plainly support core Christian beliefs (notably, the Incarnation, the Trinity, and the Crucifixion) but which were interpreted in diametrically opposed ways by Muslim scholars, and on the other hand, there are verses which—on the face of it—contain critique of Christian doctrines and therefore put the burden on the Christian author with regard to their interpretation. The first quotation from the Qurʾān sets out a clear stake: the Qurʾān itself calls for a civil tone in debate with the People of the Book, so Muslim disputants should adhere to this commandment and refrain from polemicizing against Christians. The verse in question continues with the assertion that the People of the Book believe in the same revelations and the same God as Muḥammad’s followers.
3. Rather than polemicizing against Islamic mores or the Prophet’s lifestyle, as some Eastern Christian and many Western Christians did during the Middle Ages, the main argumentative strategy here is to create a contrast between what the Qurʾān literally says and what Muslims actually believe. The opening passage already evokes some parallels. For example, in the much more elaborate debate text, The Debate between George the Monk and three Muslim jurists, Q 29:46 features in the same way and introduces the protagonist monk’s reasoning towards the conclusion that “If you believe in the Qurʾān, then you should believe in the Bible” (Ayman Ibrahim and Clint Hackenburg, In Search of the True Religion: Monk Jurjī and Muslim Jurists Debating Faith and Practice (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2022), 142–144). Another well-known text that presents a Christian-Muslim debate from a Christian perspective, the Debate of Theodore Abū Qurra with al-Maʾmūn provides us with more than a comparandum. The Karšūnī text presented here has actually borrowed its first passage from it and presents it in near-quotation. More specifically, it quotes from the Debate of Theodore Abū Qurra with al-Maʾmūn as it is known in its Syrian-Orthodox recension. Being a remarkably popular text (as can be judged from the quantity of surviving manuscripts), it circulated in the Syrian-Orthodox community too, where it was transformed into the Debate of Simeon, Bishop of Nisibis and Ḥarrān, with the Commander of the Faithful Hārūn al-Rašīd. Further down in the Karšūnī text, there are more quotations from this Debate of Abū Qurra.

There is also a less direct but clear intertextual relationship with the long Christian Arabic version of the Legend of Sergius Baḥīrā. This legend has the same main purpose as the Karšūnī text: to show that Islam is a belief system modelled after Christianity. In the case of the Legend of Sergius Baḥīrā, the historicizing explanation for the alleged closeness of the two religions is the tight bond between Muḥammad and a Christian monk (Barbara Roggema, The Legend of Sergius Bahīrā: Eastern Christian Apologetics and Apocalyptic in Response to Islam). Their interactions form the framework of the text. Yet much of its persuasive force comes from the very text of the Qurʾān, which allegedly reveals the Islamic confirmation of the Christian beliefs. Contrary to how many modern readers read this text, there is no heretical basis to the monk’s alleged teachings (“Salvaging the Saintly Sergius: Hagiographical Aspects of the Syriac Legend of Sergius Bahira,” in Entangled Hagiographies of the Religious Other, ed. Alexandra Cuffel and Nikolas Jaspert (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2018), 55–83). This particular approach to Islam also comes out in the apologetic writings of the East-Syrian scholar Elias of Nisibis (d. 1046) and of the Melkite bishop Paul of Antioch (ca. twelfth century) (Paul Khoury, Paul d’Antioche, évêque melkite de Sidon, XIIe s. (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1964). For Paul of Antioch’s approach to Islam, see Thomas Carlson, “‘Becoming All Things to All People’: Positive Readings of Qurʾānic Christianity in Arabic Christian Apologetics,” In Eastern Christians’ Engagement with Islam and the Qurʾān, ed. Octavian-Adrian Negoiță, XXX).

1. The difference in confessional community of the authors of our texts and their various geographical locations shows that this type of apologetic approach was widespread among Christians around the Middle East. Our Syrian-Orthodox text was probably composed sometime between the eleventh and the sixteenth centuries and was still copied in monasteries in the twentieth century. It testifies to the continuing success of this appeasing pragmatic approach to Islam, which stresses the potential for convivencia according to the rules of ḏimma and counteracts the Muslim prerogative to categorize and treat all nonMuslims as unbelievers.
2. The Karšūnī text uses well-known Qurʾānic verses to explain why such categorizations are incorrect, among which most famously verse Q 5:82 in which Christians are called “closest in friendship” as opposed to Jews and polytheists who are “most hostile” to the Muslims. Other examples are verses which stress the Christians’ righteousness, piety, and humility. These are then juxtaposed with verses that speak in unambiguously negative terms about polytheism, which the Qurʾān asserts should be combatted by force. Such verses stand at odds with verses which guarantee protection for the “People of the Book,” who deserve protection for their faithfulness, in exchange for the payment of the ǧizya. Here the author adds historical proof to Qurʾānic proof: in early Islam there was no commandment to eradicate Christianity. If such a commandment had been there, then it would have established the norm. Instead, the Qurʾānic regulation of the ǧizya was properly enforced and thus it became practice. It follows that if later Muslim authorities decide to persecute Christians, they diverge from the Qurʾānic injunction as well as from Islam’s norms and tradition.

Another argument that combines doctrinal disagreement with historical considerations can be found in paragraph [4] of the text. It was a major concern of the author to show that Christians are not polytheists. We see how in paragraph [4] this topic is presented as a miniature interreligious debate that is constructed in such a way as to prevent the Muslim listener from having to conclude that the Qurʾān is wrong or contradictory. If Christians are not monotheists, as a potential discussant might claim, then the Qurʾān is wrong in describing them as such in certain verses (of which examples are given in other sections). If Christians are monotheists, then the Qurʾān is wrong as well, because it appears to contain critique of a trinitarian understanding of the Godhead. The author makes clear that the only way out of this dilemma is to accept that the critical passages about the Trinity actually have no general applicability to Christians. They must refer to a special category of Christians only. This leads to a short statement about the beliefs of the followers of Marcion, Mani, and Bardaisan: “as for the Marcionites, they profess three Gods, one of justice, and a benevolent god, and an evil god. And the followers of Bardaisan, as well as the Manichaeans, [they profess] two creators and two gods, one of them the creator of good and light, and the other the creator of evil and darkness.” According to the author, it is their tritheistic and dualistic doctrines that form the target of the critical passages in the Qurʾān. Not only have mainstream Christians nothing in common with such believers, they are also far removed from them, since they moved to “Khurasan and Fars” and hence Christians in the Arab world cannot have been influenced by them. This passage, just like several other sections of this text, seems to allude to a wider discussion which the author expects will appeal to the background knowledge of the audience. Indeed these three heterodox groups feature in innumerable heresiographical and polemical works in Arabic, in which they are often specifically listed together. The religious ideas of their founders, Marcion (d. ca. 160), Bardesanes (d. 222), and Mani (d. 274) respectively, provoked refutations from early Christian critics and hence the heresiographical tradition goes back to their own days. Ephrem the Syrian (d. after 379) was probably the first to refute them in a single work, which is one of the reasons why they keep on appearing together, despite being diverse in their outlook and at times radically opposed to each other (Charles Wand Mitchell, S. Ephraim’s Prose Refutations of Mani, Marcion and Bardaisan of which the greater part has been transcribed from the palimpsest B.M. add. 14623 and is now first published by C.W. Mitchell and completed by A.A. Bevan and F.C. Burkitt, 2 vols. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1912– 1921); for their mutual polemics, see François De Blois, “Manichaean Polemics: M28 and the Book of Mysteries,” in Quand les dualistes polémiquaient: Zoroastriens et manichéens, ed. Flavia Ruani and Mihaela Timuş (Louvain: Peeters Publishers, 2020), 155–171). Centuries later, Theodore Abū Qurra (d. ca. 820) still presents them as three existing communities. In his On the Existence of the Creator and the True Religion he presented a fictional character coming down from the mountain in search of the true religion. He visits pagan, Zoroastrian, Samaritan, Jewish, Christian, Manichaean, Marcionite, Bardaisanite, and Muslim communities, where he measures his own sense of truth against theirs.

1. He describes the Manichaeans as Dualists, the Marcionites as Tritheists, and the Bardaisanites as believing in five gods: one strong God possessing the Intellect and four gods who are the elements (Ignace Dick, Théodore Abuqurra. Traité de l’existence du Créateur et de la vraie religion / Maymar fī wuǧūd al-Ḫāliq wa-l-dīn al-qawīm li-Ṯāwuḏūrus Abī Qurra (Jounieh: Librairie Saint-Paul, 1982), 205–210; translation: John C. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abū Qurrah (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2005), 4–5. The description fits the cosmology of Bardesanes to some extent, but Abū Qurra’s reference to “five gods” is a polemical oversimplification. Cf. Prods Oktor Skjærvø, “Bardesanes,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, ed. Ehsan Yarshater et al., vol. 3 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988), 780–785). It is tempting to assume, as Guy Monnot did, that the appearance of these three groups in Islamic heresiographical works is derived from the Syriac Christian tradition (Guy Monnot, “Thanawiyya,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, ed. P. Bearman et al., vol. 10 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 439–441).
2. The fact that the persecution of Manichaeans was particularly fierce may be a reason why—for argumentative impact—they are included under the “imitation Christians” who had to leave. At the same time, it is possible that this choice simply goes back to the fact that there were also Muslim authors who stressed the Christianizing tendencies in Manichaeism in the Islamicate world, as for example the tenth-century Ismāʿīlī missionary Abū Yaʿqūb alSiǧistānī: “likewise Mānī, [Bar]-Dayṣān, and Marcion each connected what is in his religious teachings to Christ (upon whom be peace!). All of them maintain that they came to renew the religion of Abraham and of Christ because it had been extinguished” (Reeves, Prolegomena to a History of Islamicate Manichaeism, 169). In addition, it seems that the comment of the Anonymous Commentary on the Nicene Creed that these “are the ones who hide behind the name of Christianity” is significant. In order to deserve protection, the various non-Muslim communities needed to demonstrate that they belonged to the Ahl al-Kitāb, the “People of the Book.” Famously the Sabians of Ḥarrān claimed to be of the same religion as the Qurʾānic Sabians (Toufic Fahd, “Ṣābiʾa,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, vol. 8, 677), while some Manichaeans, in turn, chose this label for themselves following the early ʿAbbāsid persecution (van Ess, Theology and Society, vol. 1, 508). In the same way, a convenient route was to demonstrate an affinity with Christianity, for example, by having an “Inǧīl” or, as the Māhāniyya, an Iranian Marcionite sub-sect, did, by stating that the Third Principle that holds good and evil in balance is Jesus (Patricia Crone, The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran: Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastrianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 243).

1. Ibn al-Nadīm writes about the Marcionites that “they hid themselves behind Christianity” (van Ess, Theology and Society, vol. 1, 505).
2. The Text
3. Mosul, Syrian Orthodox Archdiocese 120, ff. 144v–148r (late 15th–16th c.)43 [HMML project number ASOM 00120: https://www.vhmml.org/readingRoom/view/136359]; Mardin, Church of the Forty Martyrs 325, ff. 13r–17v (16th c.?) 44 [HMML project number CFMM 00325: https://www.vhmml.org/readingRoom/view/503671] (siglum: F); Mardin, Dayr Zaʿfarān 37, pp. 661–667 (1933 CE) [HMML project number ZFRN 00037: https://www.vhmml.org/readingRoom/view/122576] (siglum: Z).