‘The Byzantine Understanding of the Qurʾanic Term al-ṣamad and the Greek Translation of the...

‘The Byzantine Understanding of the Qurʾanic Term al-ṣamadand the Greek Translation of the Qurʾan’, Speculum 86, 2011,

887-913.

Christos Simelidis 715 Info Download PDF

‘The Byzantine Understanding of the Qurʾanic Term al-ṣamad and... http://www.academia.edu/1135766/_The_Byzantine_Understandi...

1 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54

The Byzantine Understandingof the Qur©anic Term al- Samad andthe Greek Translation of the Qur©an

By Christos Simelidis

In his 1988 University Lecture in Religion at Arizona State University, Josef vanEss argued for a widespread concept of a “compact” God in early Islam. Thenotion is expressed by samad in Sura 112.2, an enigmatic word, which “in thefirst half of the second Islamic century (and probably even before) . . . was un-derstood as meaning ‘massive, compact.’”1 There is Islamic evidence for this, vanEss argued: “The best testimony, however, comes from outside Islam: TheodoreAbu Qurra, bishop of H arran in Upper Mesopotamia (ca. 750–825), translatedsamad into Greek as sphyropektos, a quite unusual word meaning something like‘hammered together, closely united.’ Nicetas of Byzantium later on used holo-sphyros instead, ‘entirely chased in metal.’”2 Those familiar with the negativereception of these Byzantine translations of samad by several scholars will un-doubtedly be surprised by van Ess’s statement, which considers the translationsas trustworthy testimony. When John Meyendorff had earlier wondered tenta-tively whether some Byzantine interpretations of Islamic doctrine, including Godsphyropektos or holosphyros, could “in fact come from some forms of popularArab religion—distinct, of course, from orthodox Islam—which were known tothe Byzantines,” his thought was called “provocative.”3 Scholars translate sphy-ropektos (συρπηκτος) as “beaten solid into a ball” (Sidney H. Griffith andDaniel J. Sahas)4 or “solid (forged with a hammer)” (Reinhold Glei and AdelTheodor Khoury)5 and holosphyros (λσυρος) as “of hammer-beaten metal”

I would like to thank Sebastian Brock, Andrew Faulkner, Christopher Melchert, Walid Saleh, Ni-gel G. Wilson, and the anonymous readers for Speculum for their helpful comments and suggestions.

1 Josef van Ess, The Youthful God: Anthropomorphism in Early Islam (Tempe, Ariz., 1988), p. 5.The term “sura” is often translated as “chapter”; the Qur ©an has 114 suras. The second Islamic cen-tury corresponds to the eighth Christian century. Except where noted, all dates are cited accordingto the Christian era.

2 Van Ess, The Youthful God, p. 5.3 See John Meyendorff, “Byzantine Views of Islam,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 18 (1964), 113–32,

at p. 122; and Craig L. Hanson, “Manuel I Comnenus and the ‘God of Muhammad’: A Study inByzantine Ecclesiastical Politics,” in Medieval Christian Perceptions of Islam, ed. John Victor Tolan(New York, 1996), pp. 55–82, at p. 79 n. 48.

4 Sidney H. Griffith, “Byzantium and the Christians in the World of Islam: Constantinople and theChurch in the Holy Land in the Ninth Century,” Medieval Encounters 3 (1997), 231–65, at p. 262;Daniel J. Sahas, “‘Holosphyros’? A Byzantine Perception of ‘the God of Muhammad,’” in Christian-Muslim Encounters, ed. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Wadi Zaidan Haddad (Gainesville, Fla., 1995),pp. 109–25, at p. 111.

5 John of Damascus and Theodore Abu Qurrah, Schriften zum Islam, ed. and trans. Reinhold Gleiand Adel Theodor Khoury, Corpus Islamo-Christianum, Series Graeca, 3 (Würzburg, 1995), p. 99:



2 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54

(Meyendorff),6 “made of solid, hammer-beaten metal” (Craig L. Hanson),7 “im-penetrable” (Karl Förstel),8 or “made of solid metal beaten to a spherical shape”(Sahas).9 They are often inclined to assume that the Greek words represent “aclumsy translation” (Khoury),10 “a blatant, derogatory mistranslation of the di-vine epithet samad ” (Hanson),11 “the result of a biased attitude and wrong in-terpretation of the Qur©anic proclamation of Allah” (Sahas),12 or “one of the stockexamples in Christian polemics against Islam” (Kees Versteegh)13 or that theywere “probably originally chosen for polemical reasons, to claim that Muslimsbelieve in a material, corporeal God” (Griffith).14 Perhaps under the impres-sion of these views, in his recent translation of Theodore Abu Qurrah, John C.Lamoreaux, instead of sphyropektos, adopts a variant reading, steiropektos(στειρπηκτος), meaning “barren-built.”15

However, the translations of holosphyros and sphyropektos cited above are notaccurate. Jean Darrouzès observed in 1972 that one of the translations proposedfor samad in Qur©anic scholarship, that is, “dense” or “compact,” correspondsexactly to the Greek adjectives.16 His view contrasts sharply with the later viewsquoted above. In clarifying this problem, this article will review carefully the ev-idence both on the meaning and use of holosphyros and sphyropektos in Greekand on the early Islamic exegesis of samad. For the first time, the Greek trans-lations of samad will be juxtaposed, not with modern translations of samad, butwith translations and exegeses that could have been available to the ninth-centuryGreek translator of the Qur©an. It will be shown that holosphyros and sphyro-

6 Meyendorff, “Byzantine Views,” p. 125.7 Hanson, “Manuel I Comnenus,” pp. 61 and 75.8 Nicetas of Byzantium, Schriften zum Islam, ed. and trans. Karl Förstel, Corpus Islamo-Christianum,

Series Graeca, 5 (Würzburg, 2000), p. 117: “undurchdringlich.”9 Sahas, “Holosphyros,” p. 109.10 Adel-Théodore Khoury, Polémique byzantine contre l’islam (VIIIe–XIIIe s.) (Leiden, 1972), p. 339:

“une traduction maladroite.”11 Hanson, “Manuel I Comnenus,” p. 75.12 Daniel J. Sahas, John of Damascus on Islam: The “Heresy of the Ishmaelites” (Leiden, 1972),

p. 77. Subsequent and even recent accounts of the Byzantine translations and understanding of sa-mad are often dependent on Sahas’s book; see, for example, Nasir Khan, Perceptions of Islam in theChristendoms: A Historical Survey (Oslo, 2006), pp. 199–210, which, however, has many inaccura-cies and also heavily draws on N. A. Newman, The Early Christian-Muslim Dialogue: A Collectionof Documents from the First Three Islamic Centuries, 632–900 A.D. Translations with Commentary(Hatfield, Pa., 1993).

13 Kees Versteegh, “Greek Translations of the Qur©an in Christian Polemics (9th Century A.D.),”Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 141 (1991), 52–68, at pp. 61–62.

14 Griffith, “Byzantium and the Christians,” p. 262. Cf. Apostolos D. Karpozilos, “Byzantine Apol-ogetic and Polemic Writings of the Palaeologian Epoch against Islam,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 15 (1970), 213–48, at pp. 217–18; and Speros Vryonis, Jr., “Byzantine Attitudes toward Is-lam during the Late Middle Ages,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 12 (1971), 263–86, atpp. 272–73.

15 John C. Lamoreaux, trans., Theodore Abu Qurrah, Library of the Christian East 1 (Provo, Utah,2005), p. 224 n. 79.

16 Darrouzès thought that the Greek translators wanted to render the idea of cohesion and densityobtained by hammering a metal, as opposed to melting. See Jean Darrouzès, “Tomos inédit de 1180contre Mahomet,” Revue des études byzantines 30 (1972), 187–97, at p. 191.

888 The Greek Translation of the Qur© an



3 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54

pektos are knowledgeable renderings for samad and in fact testify to an earlyIslamic understanding of this term. Many other surviving fragments of the Greektranslation of the Qur©an suggest that this translation is in general more accu-rate than scholars have been willing to admit and that it was prepared with thehelp of lexicographical and exegetical material. As a result, the Greek transla-tion of the Qur©an offers an important, but hitherto misunderstood and under-estimated, contribution to our knowledge of the earliest reception of the Qur©an.The polemical tactics of later Byzantine theologians writing against Islam andquoting from the translation should not be confused with the translation’s accu-racy. The case of holosphyros will be reviewed in detail, and I will show that theword was misunderstood (intentionally or otherwise) by Nicetas of Byzantium,who was influential in later Byzantine literature on Islam.

Al- Samad in Sura 112.2

Sura 112.1–4 reads as follows:1Say, “He is God the One, 2God the eternal. 3He begot no one nor was He begotten.4No one is comparable to Him.”17

In verse 2 “eternal” is a common modern translation for the term al-samad.18

However, the meaning of this word is far from clear;19 in fact, it is a well-knownlinguistic puzzle in the text of the Qur©an.20 A close reading of Qur©anic tafsır(commentary) has enabled Uri Rubin to illuminate the use of the word in theQur©an and its later understanding by Muslim commentators.21 The Qur©anicmeaning of the word and that of later exegesis should not be confused: the un-derstanding of the post-Qur©anic epoch does not necessarily reflect the Qur©anicmeaning of a particular term. According to Rubin, the term appears in the Qur©anin its original, pre-Islamic meaning, which was “the highest authority”; al-samad could be applied to the Arab sayyid (noble) to indicate the highest authority in

17 The translation is by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur© an: A New Translation (Oxford, 2004).Haleem notes for “eternal”: “Samad: other commonly held interpretations include ‘self-sufficient’ and‘sought by all’ (Razi).” Unless otherwise stated, all translations of the Qur ©an in this article are fromAbdel Haleem.

18 E.g., “Allah, the Eternal, Absolute”: Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Koran: Translation and Com-mentary (Lahore, 1934).

19 Other English translations include “the Independent” (Abdul Majid Daryabadi, The GloriousQur© an: Text, Translation and Commentary [Leicester, 2001]) and “Lord Supreme” (Tarif Khalidi,The Qur© an: A New Translation [London, 2008]). For more translations of this passage (completedbetween 1547 and 1939) see Franz Rosenthal, “Some Minor Problems in the Qur ©an,” in The JoshuaStarr Memorial Volume (New York, 1953), pp. 67–84 (section 2).

20 See Michael Cook, The Koran: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2000), p. 136.21 Uri Rubin, “Al-Samad and the High God: An Interpretation of Sura CXII,” Der Islam 61 (1984),

197–217. For the significance of Rubin’s study (not only for samad but also more generally for itsmethod of studying Qur©anic terms) see Walid Saleh, “The Etymological Fallacy and Qur ©anic Stud-ies: Muhammad, Paradise, and Late Antiquity,” in The Qur© an in Context: Historical and LiteraryInvestigations into the Qur© anic Milieu, ed. Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, and Michael Marx,Texts and Studies on the Qur©an 6 (Leiden, 2010), pp. 649–98, at pp. 654–58.

889The Greek Translation of the Qur© an



4 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54

the tribe, but it could also be applied to the highest authority among lesser dei-ties, the pre-Islamic High God, toward whom one turns in emergencies. Rubinhas shown that al-samad, which occurs only once in the Qur©an, was in latertimes (from the second Islamic century/eighth century a.d.) systematically reinter-preted by Muslim commentators who wanted to eliminate some theological dis-advantages of its original meaning, especially its polytheistic roots. A suppres-sion of the original meaning is evident in al-Tabarı’s Tafsır (early tenth century),where almost no traces of the pre-Islamic traditions are to be found. The newmeaning given to the term was “something which is not hollow ( laysa bi-ajwaf )or, without hollowness (la jawfa lahu ), i.e., consisting of one, solid, unchange-able monolithic entity.”22 Josef van Ess has drawn attention to a legend that il-lustrates very well the concept of a God without hollowness. It is found in al-Tabarı’s Tafsır:

[When God created Adam,] the angels passed by him and were alarmed when they sawhim. But the most alarmed of them was Iblıs, and he would pass by him and strikehim, and the body would make a sound like pottery makes, and it had a hollow ring—whereupon He says: “He created man of a clay like that of a potter” (55:14)—and hewould say: “You were created for some reason!” He would go in through Adam’s mouthand come out through his rear. Then he would say to the angels: “Do not be afraid of this: your Lord is solid (samad ), but this is hollow. Indeed, if I am given power over it,I shall utterly destroy it.”23

As Rubin explains,

It was soon realised that the interpretation of Allah as something without hollowness( jawf ), i.e., solid, could imply that he was material ( jism). For this reason, it was es-sential to reshape this interpretation so that it would become clear that Allah’s soliditymeant only that he was independent of humanly, worldly, changeable qualities. The word

jawf was, accordingly, taken to denote a human belly, and it was explained that al-samad was he who did not have a belly like that of created beings, or, he who did nothave intestines, or, he who was not hollow, and did not eat or drink, or, simply, hewho did not eat or drink.24

A further interpretation produced to eliminate the implications of a materialGod associated the “solidity” of Allah with what follows in the Qur©anic text(verse 3). It was thus suggested that al-samad was “something out of which noth-ing came out” or “he who neither begets nor is begotten.” Rubin points out that“being a unique Quranic epithet of Allah, al-samad eventually came to be re-garded as the most elevated attribute of Allah” and “as forming part of the Great-est Name of God (ismu llahi l-a¨ zam), being identified with the biblical epithetSeba © ot.”25

22 See Rubin, “Al-Samad and the High God,” pp. 202–3 and 210–14. The quotation is from p. 213.23 Al-Tabarı, The Commentary on the Qur© an by Abu Ja¨ far Muhammad b. Jarır al-T abarı, trans.

J. Cooper, 1 (London, 1987), p. 215 (this is the only volume published and covers up to Sura 2.103).Iblıs is the personal name of the devil in Islam. See van Ess, The Youthful God (above, n. 1), p. 1.

24 Rubin, “Al-Samad and the High God,” pp. 213–14.25 Ibid., p. 214.




5 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54

The Greek Translation of the Qur©an

Sura 112 and the Byzantines

Sura 112 had very high significance for Muslims and was believed to be equiva-lent to a third of the Qur©an.26 In this “concise monotheistic creed, until today, allMuslims recognize the essence of their faith.”27 The Byzantines were certainly awareof its importance in Islam: Sura 112 was inscribed on the Islamic coins issued bythe Umayyad caliph Äbd al-Malik (685–705) in 696 to replace the Byzantine coin-age.28 Äbd al-Malik also ordered the same sura to be inscribed on the Dome of theRock, which “formed a conscious counterpart to the so-called Anastasis, the ro-tunda over the tomb of Christ.”29 And Byzantine theologians had an additionalreason to pay special attention to it: they thought that it was directed against theTrinitarian Christian God.30 Indeed, Ibn Äbbas (d. late 680s) is reported by al-Qurtubi (d. 1273) to consider Sura 112.3 “a denial of the Christians.” 31 Scholarshave suggested that the entire Sura 112 is a Qur©anic rereading of essential parts of the Nicene Creed,32 and Walid Saleh wonders whether al-samad was chosen by earlyMuslim theologians to express the “indivisible—non triune” God in Islam.33

The Byzantine theologians’ awareness of this sura’s dogmatic importance inIslam is confirmed by its presence in one of the anathemas against Muslim be-liefs that were included in the conversion ritual for Muslims wishing to join theChristian church.34 The date of the ritual in its extant form is uncertain, but it is

26 According to the merit-of-sura tradition, which is placed at the beginning of the sura: “Becauseof the importance of this theme in Islam, the Prophet said that this Sura, despite its brevity, was equalto one-third of the Qur©an.” See Abdel Haleem, Qur© an, p. 444.

27 Van Ess, The Youthful God, p. 3.28 Sura 112 was dropped from the coins by the Äbbasids in 750. See Jere L. Bacharach, Islamic

History through Coins: An Analysis and Catalogue of Tenth-Century Ikhshidid Coinage (Cairo, 2006),p. 15.

29 Van Ess, The Youthful God, pp. 2–3.30 Cf. Meyendorff, “Byzantine Views” (above, n. 3), p. 122; and Rachid Haddad, La Trinité di-

vine chez les théologiens arabes (750–1050) (Paris, 1985), p. 236.31 According to the Nicene Creed, the concise exposition of the principles of Christian belief for-

mulated at the Council of Nicaea in 325, Jesus Christ was “begotten, not made” ( γεννηθντα, οποιηθντα). This statement clearly corresponds to Sura 112.3, “He begot no one nor was He begot-ten.” See Thomas E. Burman, Reading the Qur© an in Latin Christendom, 1140–1560 (Philadelphia,2007), pp. 28 and 218 n. 69. See also van Ess, The Youthful God, p. 3. According to Burman, al-Tabrisı (twelfth century) also explicitly mentions Christians among those whose teaching is refutedat 112.3, but other commentators do not do so, taking the verse as a response to the questions of “polytheists.”

32 See Angelika Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike: Ein europäischer Zugang (Frank-furt, 2010).

33 Walid Saleh, private communication (December 23, 2009). Friedrich Sylburg (1536–96) and Ja-cob Gretser (1562–1625) understood holosphyros and sphyropektos, the Byzantine translations of al-samad, as referring to a unipersonal God in contrast to the Trinitarian Christian God. See n. 134,below.

34 The anathemas only (with French translation and commentary) were edited by Ed. Montet, “Unrituel d’abjuration des musulmans dans l’église grecque,” Revue de l’histoire des religions 53 (1906),145–63. The whole text of the ritual was published by Friedrich Sylburg, Saracenica, siue Moame-

891The Greek Translation of the Qur© an



6 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54

possible that it may not be earlier than the late ninth century.35 The ritual in-cludes twenty-two anathemas; I cite the last one, followed by a concluding sen-tence (PG 140:133–34):

Κα π πσι τοτοις ναθεματζω τν θεν το Μωμεδ περ ο λγει τι ατςστι θες ες, θες λσυρος, οκ γννησεν οδ γεννθη οδ γνετο μοιοςατ τις. Τ ερημνα τονυν παντα κα ατν τν Μωμεδ κα τν συρλατονατο Θεν ναθεματζων κα ποτασσμενος ατος, συντσσομαι τ μν ω ληθιν Θε τ Χριστ .

[And in addition to all these I anathematize the god of Muhammad, concerning whomhe says that “He is god the one, god holosphyros, he begot no one nor was he begot-ten nor is anyone comparable (homoios) to him.” By anathematizing and renouncingeverything I have stated, including Muhammad and his sphyrelatos god, I am sidingwith Christ, the only true God.]

Samad is here translated as holosphyros; sphyrelatos, a synonym of holosphyrosoffered a few lines later, seems to be used contemptuously in this context withthe intention to present a material God. But my main aim here is to investigatethe Greek translation of samad itself. As noted above, Nicetas of Byzantium of-fers the same translation (holosphyros), which will be discussed in more detailbelow. Although almost nothing is known about the life of Nicetas, one of themost influential Byzantine theologians who wrote against Islam, we do know thathe was active in the middle of the ninth century. In his Confutatio falsi libri quemscripsit Mohamedes Arabs (Refutation of the Book Fabricated by the ArabMuhammad ) Nicetas quotes in Greek translation about two hundred verses of the Qur©an.36 It is clear that the translation is not his own because he occasion-ally has difficulty understanding it. Moreover, as Erich Trapp has shown, a com-parison of this translation with the translation cited in the anathemas of the con-version ritual leaves no doubt that both Nicetas and the author of the anathemasdrew on the same Greek translation of the Qur©an.37 Since the date of the ritualfor the reception of Muslim converts to Christianity is uncertain, we should as-sume that the terminus ante quem for the Greek translation of the Qur©an is themiddle of the ninth century. It probably belongs to the beginning of the ninthcentury.

thica ([Heidelberg]: Ex typographeio H. Commelini, 1595), pp. 74–91, and reprinted in Migne’s Pa-trologia Graeca, 140:123–36. For the ritual in general see Daniel J. Sahas, “Ritual of Conversionfrom Islam to the Byzantine Church,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 36 (1991), 57–69.

35 See Montet, “Rituel,” pp. 146–47; and Hanson, “Manuel I Comnenus” (above, n. 3), pp. 60–61. Adel-Théodore Khoury ( Les théologiens byzantins et l’islam: Textes et auteurs [VIIIe–XIIIe s.],2nd ed. [Louvain, 1969], p. 187) dates the ritual to the end of the ninth or the beginning of thetenth century, while Franz Cumont (“L’origine de la formule grecque d’abjuration imposée aux musul-mans,” Revue de l’histoire des religions 64 [1911], 143–50) argues that it contains material origi-nating as early as the late seventh century or the early eighth century.

36 According to Versteegh, “Greek Translations” (above, n. 13), p. 54.37 Erich Trapp, “Gab es eine byzantinische Koranübersetzung?,” Diptycha 2 (1980–81), 7–17.




7 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54



8 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54



9 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54



10 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54



11 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54



12 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54



13 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54



14 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54



15 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54



16 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54



17 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54



18 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54



19 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54



20 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54



21 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54



22 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54



23 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54



24 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54



25 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54



26 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54



27 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54

Job Board About Press Blog Stories Terms Privacy Copyright We're Hiring! Help Center

Academia © 2015



28 sur 28 26/02/15 15:54

Date post:	20-Feb-2016
Category:	Documents
Upload:	mikah9746553
View:	48 times
Download:	12 times