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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 February 2019
This paper will examine the narrative of Salmān al-Fārisī/”the Persian” and his conversion to Islam, as recounted in the eighth-century Sīra of Ibn Isḥāq, as a lens into the laudatory interpretation of Christian monasticism by early Muslims. This account of Salmān al-Fārisī (d. 656 CE), an original Companion (ṣaḥābī) of the Prophet Muḥammad, vividly describes his rejection of his Zoroastrian heritage, his initial embrace of Christianity, and his departure from his homeland of Isfahan in search of a deeper understanding of the Christian faith. This quest leads the young Persian on a great arc across the Near East into Iraq, Asia Minor, and Syria, during which he studies under various Christian monks and serves as their acolyte. Upon each master’s death, Salmān is directed toward another mystical authority, on a passage that parallels the “monastic sojourns” of late antique Christian literature. At the conclusion of the narrative a monk sends Salmān to seek out a “new Prophet who has arisen among the Arabs.” The monks, therefore, appear to be interpreted as “proto-Muslims,” as links in a chain leading to enlightenment, regardless of their confessional distinction. This narrative could then suggest that pietistic concerns, shared between these communities, superseded specific doctrinal boundaries in the highly fluid and malleable religious culture of the late antique and early Islamic Near East.
1 In part, these types of travels between late antique monastic communities were undertaken with the intention of collecting the wisdom of various sages and composing biographies of regional religious authorities. Such was the case with the fifth-century Lausiac History of Palladius and the Historia Religiosa of Theodoret, among others. See the discussion of “Desert Ascetics and Distant Marvels” in Georgia Frank, The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 2000) 35–78. For Christian ascetics of the period this “wandering” was perhaps also a method of imitatio Christi, taking scenes of travel in the life of Christ and the apostles as the highest form of religious devotion. See Caner, Daniel, Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2002) 14Google Scholar. For the connection between knowledge and travel in the pre-Christian era, see Scott, Ian W., “The Divine Wanderer: Travel and Divination in Late Antiquity,” in Travel and Religion in Late Antiquity (ed. Harland, Philip; Waterloo, ON: Wilford Laurier University Press, 2011) 101–22.Google Scholar
2 Fred Donner articulated this idea in the article “From Believers to Muslims: Confessional Self-Identity in the Early Islamic Community,” al-Abhath 50–51 (2002–2003) 9–53, and later expanded the concept into a full monograph entitled, Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010).
3 See Horovitz, Josef, “Salmān al-Fārisī,” Der Islam 12. 3–4 (1922) 178–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Massignon, Louis, Salmân Pâk et les prémices spirituelles de l’Islam iranien (Tours: Arrault, 1934)Google Scholar.
4 Savant, Sarah B., The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran: Tradition, Memory, and Conversion (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization; Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013) 61–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hämeen-Anttila, Jaakko, “The Corruption of Christianity: Salām al-Fārisī’s Quest as Paradigmatic Model,” Studia Orientalia 85 (1999) 115–26Google Scholar.
5 See McAuliffe, Jane, Qur’anic Christians: An Analysis of Classical and Modern Exegesis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), esp. 240–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 See Fowden, Garth, Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993)Google Scholar, particularly the final chapter dealing with inherited traditions between early Islam and the Byzantine/Eastern Christian world.
7 A significant amount of scholarship has been composed on this subject. See Brown, Peter, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982) 103–52Google Scholar; Kirschner, Robert, “The Vocation of Holiness in Late Antiquity,” Vigiliae Christianiae 38 (1984) 105–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vööbus, Arthur, A History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient: A Contribution to the History of Culture in the Near East, Vols. I & II, (Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium; Louvain: Secrétariat du Corpus, 1958–60Google Scholar); Brock, Sebastian, “Early Syrian Asceticism” in Numen 20 (April, 1973) 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in addition to several works relating to the Syrian Church.
8 See Fred Donner, “From Believers to Muslims,” at 19–21. The core beliefs are mentioned as well in Donner’s Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam, which is an expansion of the original article. It should, however, be conceded here that the “believers” model is not without its critics. See Hoyland, Robert, “Reflections on the Identity of the Arabian Conquerors of the Seventh-Century Middle East,” Al-cUṣūr al-Wusṭā 25 (2017) 113–40Google Scholar, in which the author challenges the notion of a non-confessional, monotheistic society within the foundational period of Islam.
9 Fred Donner, Muhammad and the Believers, 60–61.
10 Ibid., 66–67.
11 Ibid., 61.
12 Ibid., 66.
13 The central argument in the “believers” thesis suggests that fluidity in inter-religious discourse from this era corresponds to, or perhaps yields, the systematic development over time of a more clearly defined perception of confessional distinction within the early Islamic community. This formula is in relative accord with the conventional assessment of the hardening sectarian lines which, though undergoing a process of formulation and delineation in the Umayyad period, appear to have been fundamentally realized in the transition from Umayyad to Abbasid authority in the middle of the eighth century. The “believers” proposition can therefore ultimately be viewed as an important contribution to the analysis of the rise and establishment of Islam within a dynamic late antique religious context. Such a claim would correspond with assessments by historians such as Averil Cameron and Peter Brown, which tended to interpret and historically situate the rise of Islam in its perceived indigenous context within late antiquity—that of an intellectually vibrant, religiously diverse and complex, ascetic and eschatologically-minded culture of the Near East.
14 Troupeau, G., “Les Couvents Chrétiens dans la Litterature Arabe,” Études sur le christianisme arabe au Moyen Ȃge (1995) 265–79Google Scholar; Kilpatrick, Hilary, “Monasteries Through Muslim Eyes: The Diyārāt Books,” in Christians at the Heart of Islamic Rule: Church Life and Scholarship in ‘Abbasid Iraq (ed. Thomas, David; Leiden: Brill, 2003) 19–37Google Scholar; Elizabeth and Fowden, Garth, “Monks, Monasteries and Early Islam,” in Studies on Hellenism, Christianity and the Umayyads, (ed. Garth and Elizabeth Fowden; Meletemata 37; Athens: KERA, 2004) 149–74Google Scholar; Mourad, Suleiman, “Christian Monks in Islamic Literature: A Preliminary Report on Some Arabic Apophthegmata Patrum,” Bulletin for the Royal Institute on Inter-Faith Studies 6 (2004) 81–98Google Scholar; Fowden, Elizabeth, “The Lamp and the Olive Flask: Early Muslim Interest in Christian Monks,” in Islamic Cross Pollinations: Interactions in the Medieval Middle East (ed. Akasoy, Anna, et al.; Gibb Memorial Trust, 2007) 1–28Google Scholar; Livne-Kafri, Ofer, “Early Muslim Asceticism and the World of Christian Monasticism,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 20 (1996) 105–29Google Scholar; Sahner, Christian, “Islamic Legends about the Birth of Monasticism: A Case Study on the Late Antique Milieu of the Qur’ān and Tafsīr,” in The Late Antique World of Early Islam: Muslims Among Christians and Jews in the Eastern Mediterranean (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 2015) 393–435Google Scholar; Griffith, Sidney, Arabic Christianity in the Monasteries of Ninth-Century Palestine (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 1992)Google Scholar; idem, The Beginnings of Christian Theology in Arabic: Muslim-Christian Encounters in the Early Islamic Period (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 2002); idem, “Michael, the Martyr and Monk of Mar Sabas Monastery, at the Court of the Caliph ‘Abd al-Malik; Christian Apologetics and Martyrology in the Early Islamic Period,” in ARAM 6. 1 (1994) 15–48.
15 Ofer Livne-Kafri, “Early Muslim Asceticism and the World of Christian Monasticism,” 105–107.
16 al-Ṭabarī, Jāmi’ah al-bayān can ta’wīl al-Qur’ān (15 vols.; Egypt: Dār al-Macārif) 10:505.
17 Ibid.
18 Qur’ān, Sūrat al-Mā’idah, v. 82 (5:82).
19 There are several relevant studies on the development of the Sīra. See Rubin, Uri, The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muḥammad as Viewed By the Early Muslims (Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1995)Google Scholar; The Life of Muḥammad (ed. Uri Rubin; The Formation of the Classical Islamic World 4; Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 1998); Rankin, John C., The Real Muḥammad: In the Eyes of Ibn Isḥāq (West Simsbury, CT: TEI Publishing, 2013)Google Scholar; Schoeler, Gregor, The Biography of Muḥammad: Nature and Authenticity (London: Routledge Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Hamidullah, Muhammad, Muhammad Ibn Ishaq: The Biographer of the Holy Prophet (Karachi: Pakistan Historical Society, 1967)Google Scholar; Newby, Gordon D., The Making of the Last Prophet: A Reconstruction of the Earliest Biography of Muhammad (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989)Google Scholar.
20 al-Jāḥiẓ, , Thalāth Risā’il, (ed. Finkel, Joshua; Cairo: al-Matbacat al-Salafīyya, 1926) 14Google Scholar. Baḥīrā, the monk from Boṣtra, was commonly recognized as the first person to acknowledge the future prophetic significance of the young Muḥammad. See Sellheim, Rudolph, “Prophet, Chalif, und Geschichte: Die Muhammed-Biographie des Ibn Isḥāq,” Oriens, 18 (1965–1966) 33–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nau, F., “L’expansion nestorienne en Asie,” Annales du Musée Guimet: Bibliothèque de vulgarization 40 (1914) 193–383Google Scholar; and Nöldeke, T., “Hatte Muḥammad christliche Lehrer?,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft (1858) 699–708Google Scholar, esp. 704; Gero, Stephen, “The Legend of the Monk Baḥīrā, the Cult of the Cross, and Iconoclasm,” La Syrie de Byzance à l’Islam, VIIe-VIIIe siècles (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1992) 47–58Google Scholar; Barbara Roggema has also greatly contributed to the interpretation of the Baḥīrā narrative as it appears in both Muslim and Christian sources, in The Legend of Sergius/Baḥīrā: Eastern Christian Apologetics and Apocalyptic in Response to Islam (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009).
21 The Melkites and Jacobites are also specifically targeted by the ninth-century theologian Abū cĪsā al-Warrāq. See Early Muslim Polemic against Christianity: Abū cĪsā al-Warrāq’s “Against the Incarnation,” (ed. David Thomas; Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
22 Meyendorff, John, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions, The Church 450–680 A.D. (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1989) 83Google Scholar.
23 Barbara Roggema, The Legend of Sergius/Baḥīrā, 37.
24 al-Ṭabarī, Jāmi’ah al-bayān, 10:505.
25 Uri Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder, 21–22, 44–53. Cf. Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, “The Corruption of Christianity,” 116–17.
26 Saleh, Walid A., “The Arabian Context of Muḥammad’s Life,” The Cambridge Companion to Muḥammad (ed. Brockopp, Jonathan E.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 21–38, at 31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 G.R. Hawting has taken this problematic term as an identification of pure monotheism, a non-denominational form of the original dīn ‘Ibrāhīm. See Hawting, G.R., The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 21Google Scholar.
28 See Rubin, Uri, “Hanifiyya and Kacb—An Inquiry into the Arabian Pre-Islamic Background of the dīn ‘Ibrāhīm,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 13 (1990) 85–112Google Scholar. Montgomery Watt has suggested that the original name for the movement founded by Muḥammad was not Islam, but rather tazakkī, or “righteousness.” It is after the Hijra that the most numerous references to a community of mu’minūn begin to occur. It appears that in the early terminology of “believers,” Jews would have been included under this general rubric. During the period of the Prophet’s break with the Jews of Medina, he claimed to have been following the religion of Abraham, the ḥanīfīya; and the Prophet’s religion may have been called exactly that for some time afterward. See Watt, , Muhammad at Medina (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977) 301–302Google Scholar.
29 Wellhausen, Julius, Reste arabischen Heidentums (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1961) 234CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry, 27.
30 Ibn Hisham, al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya (ed. Mustafa al-Saqqa et al.; 4 vols.; Beirut: Dar al-Khayr, 1997) 1:186.
31 Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder, 21–22.
32 See Barbara Roggema, The Legend of Sergius/Baḥīrā.
33 Sacd, Ibn, Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt al-Kabīr, al-Ṭabaqat al-‘Ūla, (11 vols; Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī, 2001) 4:69–79Google Scholar. The similarity in narrative is not altogether surprising given that both al-Ṭabarī and Ibn Sacd owed much of their maghāzī material, or “exploits of the Prophet,” as well as the mubtada’, or “beginnings,” to Ibn Isḥāq via his student Salamah. See Gregor Schoeler, The Biography of Muḥammad: Nature and Authenticity, 32. Abū Nucaym al-Iṣfahānī, Ḥilyat al-Awlīyā, (11 vols.; Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1967–68) 1:190–95.
34 Ibn Hisham, Sīra, 1:173.
35 Ibid., 1:174. The precise question uttered by Salmān is: “man afḍal ahl hādhā al-dīn cilmān?”
36 Ibid.
37 Qur’ān, Sūrat al-Tawbah, v. 34 (9:34).
38 Gordon D. Newby, The Making of the Last Prophet: A Reconstruction of the Earliest Biography of Muhammad, 2–4. Newby suggests that the exegetical nature of the Sīra is particularly concerned with the middle portion of the text. This section known as the Kitāb al-Mubtada’, or the “Book of Sending Forth,” is “a commentary on the Bible as well as a commentary on the Quran.”
39 Wansbrough, John, The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978) 2Google Scholar.
40 Ibn Hisham, Sīra, 1:175.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid. While the details here clearly serve as an allusion to the eventual Hijra of Muḥammad, it could also be a foreshadowing of the description of the “holy man moving between two thickets” that is to come at the end of the narrative.
43 For the rise of Christianity in Muslim polemics, see Mann, Jacob, “An Early Theologico-Polemical Work,” Hebrew Union College Annual 12–13 (1937–1938) 417–43Google Scholar. Additionally, there is a systematic assessment of medieval Muslim arguments to counter Christianity in Lazarus-Yafeh, Hava, “Some Neglected Aspects of Medieval Muslim Polemics against Christianity,” The Harvard Theological Review 89.1 (1996) 61–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
44 Hämeen-Anttila, 118.
45 Ibid., 124.
46 See discussion of “Desert Ascetics and Distant Marvels” in Frank, Georgia, The Memory of the Eyes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000) 35–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This journey also recalls the conversion story of Kacb al-Aḥbār, which involves travelling and studying under various Jewish scholars to finally reach Islam. See Ibn Sacd, Ṭabaqāt, 8:2, 156 on biographical form. For an analysis of Kacb’s conversion, see both Perlmann’s, Moshe “The Legendary Story of Kcab al-Aḥbār’s Conversion to Islam,” in The Joshua Starr Memorial Volume (New York: The Conference on Jewish Relations, 1953) 85-99Google Scholar, and “Another Kcab al-Aḥbār Story” in The Jewish Quarterly Review 45.1 (1954) 48-58.
47 Dietz, Maribel, “Itinerant Spirituality and the Late Antique Origins of Christian Pilgrimage,” Travel, Communication and Geography in Late Antiquity: Sacred and Profane, ed. Ellis, Linda and Kidner, Frank (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004) 125-134Google Scholar, at 126. Dietz suggests that the instabilitas aspect of pilgrimage was the ritual in and of itself, without regard to an explicit destination. This is “monastic” in the sense of a retreat from the familiar and dedication to the hardships of a wandering life.
48 Ibid., 127–29. Mun’im Sirry has discussed a rather analogous phenomenon in medieval Muslim hagiography, where the pious seeker reaches a pinnacle of asceticism through direct contact with an imminent teacher. See Sirry, Mun’im, “Pious Muslims in the Making: A Closer Look at the Narratives of Ascetic Conversion,” Arabica, T. 57, Fasc. 4 (2010) 437–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The “conversion” here is not, however, between confessional traditions, but rather a movement within traditional Islam toward a more ascetic or “Sufi” lifestyle.
49 See Sizgorich, Thomas, “Narrative and Community in Islamic Late Antiquity,” Past and Present, 185 (2004) 9–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 11. The quote from Sizgorich specifically refers to Muḥammad’s encounter with the monk Baḥīrā, but it applies here as well: “…these narratives employ a figure—the monk—which had been recognized and acknowledged for more than four centuries in communities of variant confessional alignments as a discerner of truth and godliness to support truth claims crucial to early Muslim programmes of communal self-fashioning.”
50 See Suleiman Mourad, “Christian Monks in Islamic Literature,” 81–98.
51 See Vööbus, Arthur, History of the School of Nisibis, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, Subsidia 26 (Louvain: Secrétariat du CorpusSCO, 1965)Google Scholar as well as Becker, Adam, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis and Christian Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The story of the temporary conversion to Christianity of the Jewish philosopher David b. Merwān al-Mukkammaṣ (d. 937) takes place in Nisibis under a prominent Christian teacher. See Jacob Mann, “An Early Theologico-Polemical Work,” 417–18.
52 The word in the Sīra here is ghaiḍatayn, with the dual ending. Identical terminology is preserved in the Ibn Sacd, Ṭabaqāt, 4:74.
53 The dual is utilized in both cases, with the terms ḥarratayn (“two lava fields”) and ghaiḍatayn (“two thickets”) respectively, accompanied by terms indicating motion between these areas. Ibn Hisham, Sīra, 1:178.
54 Ibn Hisham, Sīra, 1:179.
55 For the differing views on the life, and death, of Jesus in the Islamic tradition, see Reynolds, Gabriel Said, “The Muslim Jesus: Alive or Dead,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 72.2 (2009) 237–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
56 Qur’ān, Sūrat Āl cImrān, vv. 65–67 (3:65–67). A similar sentiment appears in verse 135 in Sūrat al-Baqarah.
57 De Blois, François, “Naṣrānī (Ναζωραῖnos) and ḥanīf (ἐθνικόσ): Studies on the Religious Vocabulary of Christianity and Islam,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 65.1 (2002) 1–30Google Scholar, at 18. Waardenburg provides a similar assessment in the use of the term ḥanīfīyya, as one of the original names for the movement, which was not only a reaction against the paganism of Mecca, but also a “reform movement’ with regard to the local Christian and Jewish communities. See Waardenburg, Jacques, “Towards a Periodization of Earliest Islam According to Its Relations with Other Religions,” The Qur’an: Style and Contents (ed. Rippin, Andrew; The Formation of the Classical Islamic World 24; Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 2001) 93–116Google Scholar, at 102.
58 Blankenship, Khalid, “The Early Creed,” The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology (ed. Winter, Tim; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) 33–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On taḥrīf, or “alteration of scripture,” see also Reynolds, Gabriel Said, “On the Qur’anic Assessment of Scriptural Falsification (taḥrīf) and Anti-Jewish Polemic,” The Journal of the American Oriental Society 130.2 (2010) 189–202.Google Scholar
59 Christopher Melchert has discussed the multifaceted religious terminology of the early Islamic period with an interest toward groups maintaining a piety-driven worldview. Working on the basis of G.S. Hodgson’s Venture of Islam, Melchert attempts to draw parallels and contrasts between group identities across the broad spectrum of juridical-theological movements in the ninth century. See Melchert, Christopher, “The Piety of the Hadith Folk,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 34.3 (2002) 425–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
60 Donner, Fred, Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing (Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam 14; Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1998) 67Google Scholar.
61 For a discussion on the nuance of these terms, see Rahman, Fazlur, Major Themes of the Qur’an (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009) 29Google Scholar, 61, 110, and 137.
62 Qur’ān, Sūrat al-Mā’idah, v. 82 (5:82); Sūrat al-Tawbah, v. 31 and 34 (9:31, 9:34).
63 Qur’ān, Sūrat al-Ḥadīd, v. 27 (57:27).
64 Beck, Edmund, “Das Christliche Mönchtum Im Koran,” Studia Orientalia 13.3 (1946) 3–29Google Scholar; Sahas, Daniel, “Monastic Ethos and Spirituality and the Origins of Islam,” in Acts of the XVIIIth International Congress of Byzantine Studies (ed. Ševçenko, Iho et al.; Sheperdstown, WV: Byzantine Studies Press, 1996) 27–39Google Scholar; Sviri, Sara, “Wa-Rahbāniyatan Ibtadcūhā: An Analysis of the Traditions Concerning the Origins and Evaluation of Christian Monasticism,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 13 (1990) 195–208Google Scholar; See also section on the “Vocation of Monasticism,” in Massignon, Louis, Essay on the Origins of the Technical Language of Islamic Mysticism (trans. Clark, Benjamin; Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997) 98–104Google Scholar.
65 Sahner, “Islamic Legends about the Birth of Monasticism,” 294–395.
66 See Sarah Sviri, “Wa-Rahbāniyatan Ibtadcūhā,” 195–201 as well as El-Badawi, Emran, “From ‘Clergy’ to ‘Celibacy’: The Development of Rahbānīyyah Between the Qur’ān, Ḥadīth and Church Canon,” Al-Bayān 11.1 (2013) 1–14Google Scholar.
67 One of the earliest incarnations of this statement comes from the Kitāb al-ṭabaqāt al-kabīr of Ibn Sacd.
68 Ibn Sacd, Ṭabaqāt, 5:70. For a comprehensive explanation of this nuanced term jihād, see Firestone, Reuven, “Jihād,” The Blackwell Companion to the Qur’ān (ed. Rippin, Andrew and Mojaddedi, Jawid; Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006) 376–388Google Scholar. In essence, Firestone argues that Jihād can take on a range of meanings and can be applied to different kinds of action. It easily becomes a religiously laden term because it represents the most basic ethical message of religion, that one must strive to do the good by overcoming the bad. The term jihād is frequently used as part of this idiomatic expression “in the path of God” to convey a sense of deep religious commitment to certain defined acts of devotion. Though in particular usage this term can be applied to the concept of war in defense of Islam and the community, it can also be employed in a more general sense, referring to “religious piety.” Early variations of this ḥadīth are reported by cAbdallāh ibn al-Mubarāk (d. 797) in the Kitāb al-Jihād in the following two formats: “Every community has its monasticism (li-kull umma rahbānīya), and the monasticism of this community is jihād in the path of God (fī sabīl Allāh)” and “A person mentioned itinerant asceticism (al-sīyāḥa) in front of the Prophet, to which the Prophet replied: “God has given to us instead jihād in the path of God, and the extolment of God (takbīr) throughout every lofty place.” See cAbdallāh ibn al-Mubarāk, Kitāb al-Jihād (ed. Nazīh Ḥammād; Mecca, 1978) 37–38.
69 See section on the “Vocation of Monasticism” in Massignon, Essay on the Origins of the Technical Language of Islamic Mysticism, 98–104.
70 Ibid. cf. Goldziher, Ignaz, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law (trans. Andras, and Hamori, Ruth; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981) 134–36Google Scholar.
71 Massignon, Essay on the Origins of the Technical Language of Islamic Mysticism, 99.
72 Ibid., 99–100.
73 The traditional rendering of the full v. 27 of Sūrat al-Ḥadīd follows: “As for monasticism, they instituted themselves (ibtadacūha), We did not prescribe it for them except that they were seeking to please God; but they did not observe it faithfully (fa-mā racawhā ḥaqq ricāyatihā). So We rewarded those among them who are true believers; but many of them are disobedient (wa kathīr minhum fāsiqūn).”
74 al-Zamakhsharī, , Kitāb al-Kashshāf can ḥaqā’iq ghawāmiḍ al-tanzīl wa cuyūn al-aqāwīl fī wujūh al-ta’wīl (6 vols.; Riyadh: Maktabat al-cUbaykān 1998) 6:52–53Google Scholar.
75 al-Zamakhsharī, Kitāb al-Kashshāf, 53. The commentary then goes on to explain that on a grammatical level, the phrase in question should be read as “We placed in their hearts compassion and mercy and monasticism…. We did not prescribe it for them except that they should seek, through it, the approval of God.” Edmund Beck further interprets the passage to reflect that Muḥammad, particularly during the early Medinan period, revered the ascetic ideal and monasticism due to the extreme versions of piety exhibited by their devotees. The meaning of the passage is, however, that such radical devotion was ultimately incompatible with human frailty and was therefore not explicitly enjoined to the pious by divine decree. Beck is essentially arguing that while the merits of monasticism were lauded, practical concerns compelled the Prophet to advocate for a more moderate set of parameters for worship. See “Das Christliche Mönchtum Im Koran,” 17–18.
76 Ibid.
77 Ibid.
78 Muqātil ibn Sulaymān, Tafsīr Muqātil ibn Sulīmān (ed. Shiḥātah; 5 vols.; Cairo: al-Hay’ah al-Miṣrīyah al-cAmmah lil-Kitāb 1979) 1:498–99.
79 Qur’ān, Sūrat al-Mā’idah, v. 87 (5:87).
80 Muqātil ibn Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 499. El-Badawi provides an additional report on “proper conduct” from the Majmūcāt al-fatāwā of Ibn Taymīyyah (d. 1328) that utilizes the core lesson from this same ḥadīth to emphasize the stance against celibacy. See El-Badawi, “From ‘Clergy’ to ‘Celibacy,’ ” 9–10.
81 Sviri, “Wa-Rahbāniyatan Ibtadcūhā,” 195–201.
82 Ibid., 201.
83 Muqātil ibn Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 499.
84 al-Ṭabarī, Jāmi’ah al-bayān, 10:505–506. So important was this theme of humility in the practice of asceticism in late antiquity that it became a sort of game between competing hagiographers as to which of their subjects displayed the highest degree of spiritual perfection. See Wortley, John, “The Spirit of Rivalry in Early Christian Monasticism,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 33 (1992) 385–404Google Scholar. This characteristic of submission or obedience to the divine is clearly reflected in the Arabic term traditionally employed for “monk,” rāhib, which carries an intrinsic root meaning of “veneration,” “reverence,” “awe,” and perhaps most significantly, “fear.” See Lisªn al-cArab of Ibn Manẓūr’s entry for the root rahiba (vol. V), in which the words khawf (fear) and fajca (fright) are provided as related meanings. al-Ṭabarī likewise provides the definition of rāhib in this section of his commentary as equating to khawf, or “fear of God.” See al-Ṭabarī, Jāmi’ah al-bayān, 10:502. It may even be suggested that this connotation of “fear of the divine” is more heavily pronounced in the Arabic terminology than in other languages from the region, in which the monk can literally be understood as “God-fearer.” Whereas in the typical designations of both µοναχός and the practice of ἀναχωρɛῑν from the Byzantine tradition, and iḥidayē most commonly utilized in Syriac, the emphasis falls on the solitary nature of the monastic existence. In both of these cases the central element, from which the designations arise, concerns a retreat from the material world into spiritual seclusion. Such terminology is discussed in Claire Fauchon, “Les forms de vie ascétique et monastique en milieu syriaque, Ve-VIIe siècles,” Le Monachisme Syriaque, (ed. F. Jullien; Études Syriaques 7; Paris: Geuthner, 2010) 37–63. The Syriac term also carries the sense of celibacy, as the iḥidayē is isolated from both worldly affairs and from the bonds of married life. A virtually analogous term for these consecrated celibates is qaddīshē, or “saints/holy ones.” See Griffith, Sidney, “Asceticism in the Church of Syria: The Hermeneutics of Early Syrian Monasticism,” Asceticism (ed. Wimbush, Vincent J. and Valantasis, Richard; New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) 220–45, at 223Google Scholar.
85 Muqātil ibn Suleimān, Tafsīr, 497.
86 Ibid. The sentiment coincides with certain features within the cycles of Syriac rules for monastic conduct and provides a virtually analogous assessment of the bond between fear, humility, and the pious existence. The regulations imposed on monastic communities by the fourth-century Mār Ephrēm of Edessa, for example, contain the following passage: “It is good for you that you are being educated in the fear (deḥltē) of your masters; and becoming humble (makīk), and chaste (nekhef), and disciplined (maṭkus). Do not become undisciplined.” The sixth-century Rules of Jōḥannan Bar Qūrsos likewise provide guidelines for the initiates that highlight a particular concern over the “fear of God”: “They shall be sent into monasteries to read books and to learn the conduct of the fear of God (deḥlṭ ‘Elohē). For if many send their children to far off countries because of the instruction of this world, how much more fitting it is for those who have set apart and offered their children to God, that they must send them into the holy mountains for spiritual wisdom.” See Vööbus, Arthur, Syriac and Arabic Documents Regarding Legislation Relative to Syrian Asceticism (Papers of the Estonian Theological Society in Exile; Stockholm: ETSE, 1960) 24–50Google Scholar.
87 Fred Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins, 67.
88 Ibid., 75.
89 al- Jāḥiẓ, Thalāth Risā’il, 14.
90 Donner, “From Believers to Muslims,” 11.