Converting the Caliph: a legendary motif in Christian hagiography and historiography of the early Islamic period
Résumé
With apostasy and conversion to Islam becoming a major issue among Christian communities in the provinces of Syria and Palestine conquered by the Arabs, accounts about true believers who resisted conversion and died as martyrs for their faith appeared in Christian hagiography and historiography of the eighth and ninth centuries. Different literary forms were elaborated to promote such figures: Syriac monastic chroniclers included short narratives about martyrs in their histories, while full-length martyrologies in the late-antique manner were composed in Greek and Arabic in the Melkite monasteries of Palestine. Many of these stories take place at the court of the Umayyad and first Abbasid caliphs, where the martyr's trial is usually set. Sometimes, the martyr himself is related to the caliph. Hagiographers seem to have been flirting with the idea of the conversion of the caliph himself. Eventually, the idea was explicitly given substance to in the Life of Theodore of Edessa composed in northern Syrian territory reconquered by the Byzantines. What is at stake behind the propagandist purpose these narratives serve is the fate of Christians in the newly formed Islamic Empire and the hope in a final victory of Christianity. The story of the martyrdom of Anthony/Rawh, alternately depicted as a relative of the caliph or a descendant of Muhammad himself, offers a good example of the development of this theme, as the story won fame and underwent transformations. I will study the use made of this legend by historians and hagiographers belonging to different Christian communities, in order to give insight into the polemical and apologetic aims of the Christian authorities in encouraging the promotion of such heroic figures.
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