The Patriarch and the Caliph

Medieval Baghdad was an entangled world for the Christians and Muslims who lived and even partied together.

Benjamin Sharkey

Benjamin is a DPhil student in the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford. He is researching the experience of Christian communities in medieval Central Asia.

A painting of a Sultan's court gathering round as a ambassador is presented.

Receiving the Ambassador.

Dionisio Baixeras Verdaguer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

As we seek to understand and grapple with the nature of Muslim-Christian relations in today’s world, we should not imagine that we have to reinvent the wheel. Throughout their shared history, many millions of Christians have lived within Muslim societies and alongside Muslim neighbours, and their experiences, absent from the history of western Europe, offer valuable perspectives for understanding and navigating our current global landscape.

In 782 Patriarch Timothy was summoned for an audience with the Muslim Caliph al-Mahdī at his court in Baghdad. Timothy, just two years into his tenure as Patriarch, was one of the youngest to so far hold the title. As the head of the Church of the East, he oversaw communities scattered across an immense distance, from Syria to China, Sri Lanka to the Kazakh steppe; more believers, indeed, than the Pope in Rome. He himself came from a village near Erbil in northern Iraq, a region that was then, and for a long time after, majority Christian but which also lay near the heart of the Islamic Caliphate. Only twenty years before, the previous Caliph, al-Mahdī’s father, had founded Baghdad, intending it to be the great capital at the centre of the Islamic empire. It had since grown to an enormous size, soon eclipsing any city in Europe, its population over three times that of Constantinople or Rome. Among those who had newly settled in Baghdad was Timothy, who decided to similarly recentre the Patriarchate in the Caliphate’s capital. As such, Timothy was not an unusual sight at court. However, this day’s audience was something out of the usual.

Baghdad was home to more than five monasteries at this time. They served both Christians and Muslims as cool retreats and beauty spots within the bustling city.

Timothy entered the Caliph’s presence and made his courtesies and blessed him.

“Since you are wise,” the Caliph asked, “why do you say that God ‘begat’ a son?”

Over the next two days, al-Mahdī proceeded to ask him questions on the differences between Christianity and Islam: Do you believe in three Gods? Do you not believe that the Qur’an was given by God? Why do you not accept Muḥammad?

Yet, for a Christian in the early Islamic world, to respond to such questions was not without trepidation.

Generally, the Muslim state was not an active persecutor of Christians. Instead, Christians were expected to abide by certain social restrictions. These followed the precedent of a supposed agreement drawn up in the early seventh century between the second Caliph ‘Umar) and the majority Christian populations of the near east during the conquests of the region. Its historicity is doubted, but it came to have a great impact on the rights and responsibilities that Muslim authorities held to exist between themselves and their Christian subjects.

Accordingly, Christians were restricted in their behaviour and dress. They had to distinguish themselves by their clothing, such as wearing a distinctive belt called a zunnār, and they were forbidden from taking Muslim names. They were not allowed to build or restore churches, nor to encourage Muslims to convert, let them in their churches, carry out services in their hearing, or serve them wine. In this way Muslims and Christians would be kept visibly distinct, Christians would be socially subordinated, and Muslims prevented from being led astray, with conversion kept strictly one-way. In return, Muslim authorities would guarantee freedom of belief and extend the protection of the state to Christians. Such was the law in theory.

In the shade of the garden

On Easter day the Christians of Baghdad would come from throughout the city to the monastery of Samālū to take communion. With them too came many of Baghdad’s Muslims to join in the festivities that followed. In the cool shade of the monastery’s beautiful gardens and palm groves they drank wine, danced with young Christians and listened to the sounds of the services, the chanting of monks and priests. This was not an unusual occurrence. Baghdad was home to more than seven monasteries at this time. They served both Christians and Muslims as cool retreats and beauty spots within the bustling city, while their frequent feasts and festivals always attracted many Muslims.

A level of life otherwise invisible in the historical records, such revelries were a source of inspiration for many Muslim poets. Many of their longing verses on the joys of monastery gardens, the sound of Christian services, and the smells and tastes of wine, made their way into poetry collections, such as the tenth-century collection of monastery-themed poems and anecdotes compiled by the Iraqi Muslim al-Shābushtī. For these poets and the leisure class they represented, the transgressiveness of these themes was clearly part of the appeal, but in the background many ordinary Muslims too were freely attending Christian festivities and frequenting monasteries where they were overhearing services and rubbing shoulders with Christians.

While rules existed to stop this mixing they were evidently not enforced. Indeed, the Muslim polymath al-Jāḥiẓ, in his Reply to the Christians written in the mid-ninth century, decried this regular flouting of the rules. The Christians rode highly bred horses and played polo, he complained. They gave themselves Muslim names, failed to wear their zunnārs or hid them beneath their clothes, and draped themselves in fashionable silks. Throughout most of the Muslim ruled near east and Mediterranean, Christians daily rubbed shoulders with their Muslim neighbours, generally without mishap. Christians worked with Muslims and many had Muslim relatives, as individuals and family branches slowly converted. Still these mixed environments could be hazardous for Christians to navigate.

A party in Damascus

At a party in Damascus, a few years prior to Timothy’s audience with the Caliph, a young Christian named Elias mixed alongside Muslim and Christian guests. He had been hired to wait at the party by the Muslim host, the owner of the saddle shop at which Elias worked, and found himself subjected to the taunts and mockery of some of the Muslim guests because of his distinctive dress. As the night wore on they warmed to him and he was invited to join the dancing, for which he laid aside his zunnār. Come morning, however, he was informed by some of the Muslim partygoers that they took this as a sign of his conversion. Terrified of being accused of apostacy from Islam if he was seen continuing to practice Christianity in public, he approached the manager of his workshop, a recent Muslim convert, who assured him that none of this would be reported. Sometime after this, Elias’ family confronted the manager over unpaid wages, and he threatened to report Elias for apostacy. Elias fled back to his home village. However, a few years later he returned, again requesting his unpaid wages. Enraged, the manager reported him to the authorities. He was charged with apostasy and executed.

So relates the account of his martyrdom, written not long after his execution, when he was already being commemorated as a martyr. We can’t be sure on the details. It is possible for instance that the narrative of being tricked at a party covers a more consensual conversion. Yet, parties could be hazardous as well as fun settings. Muslims and Christians freely mixed but there was still an underlying imbalance in social status. We see this in the poetic verses on monastery parties where young Christians often seem to have had little recourse in fending off the advances of older guests. Christians also had to be cautious in how they responded to possible mockery and questioning. Still, many of those executed for apostasy in this period had converted perfectly willingly before later recanting. Conversion to Islam was, in theory, very easy, requiring only the declaration of the shahāda, the Islamic expression of faith, acknowledging that there was no God but God and that Muḥammad was the messenger of God. Once witnessed, leaving Islam was legally impossible. However, again, this was not something that the state was active in searching out. Elias’ story rings true. Had he stayed in the village, he would probably have been fine, but it was a personal workplace conflict that provided the catalyst for his denouncement, at which point the state was compelled to act.

The streets of Córdoba

One of the other great cities of the early Islamic world was Córdoba, which lay at the heart of the Islamic emirate at the other end of the Mediterranean. Like Baghdad it dwarfed all the other cities of Europe and was home to many Christians and Muslims. Here, in 850, a country priest, while on an errand in the city, was approached by Muslims who asked him what Christians believed about Jesus and Muḥammad. The priest, named Perfectus, freely confessed Christ to be God but he was reluctant to offer an opinion on Muḥammad. However, further assured that there would be no repercussions, he did not hold back. He declared Muḥammad to be a false prophet, an adulterer deceived by demons. Enraged, his questioners nevertheless kept their promise and let him go. When, however, he was next in the city, word of his statements seemed to have spread. A crowd seized him, and he was taken before the city’s judge and imprisoned. Several months later he was beheaded.

Perfectus’ death sparked a wave of deliberate blasphemy in the city. Over the next nine years, 33 Christians confronted the judge, stood in the city’s market forum, and even entered the grand mosque, denouncing Muḥammad and provoking the state to execute them. Their actions were immensely controversial among the local Christians. Actions of deliberate provocation intended to lead to martyrdom had been condemned by the early church, and many also saw them as imperilling the freedom they enjoyed from social restrictions. However, like al-Jāḥiẓ, it was a frustration with precisely this lack of distinction between Christians and Muslims that had at least partly inspired the martyrs, concerned that the distinction between Christianity and Islam would be lost too. Yet, there were also 11 individuals executed in these years who had not sought martyrdom. Executed for apostacy, some had converted to Islam and then changed their minds, or been supposedly tricked like Elias, others were the children of Muslim parents who had converted through the influence of a Christian relative. All came from mixed families, many the children of mixed marriages, and, unlike the blasphemers, all had been hunted down by the state after being denounced by relatives or neighbours.

In the early Islamic world, blasphemy and apostacy were the main reasons Christians found themselves facing execution. However, in this too the state was not proactive but acted mainly in response to denouncers, who were often motivated by personal grievances.

Back in Baghdad

Standing before the Caliph, Timothy was fully aware of the perils. In answering al-Mahdī’s questions he was walking a tightrope between blasphemy and conversion. If he responded too stridently in his answers he could find himself, like Perfectus, charged with blasphemy. At the same time though, the Caliph’s questions on the oneness of God and the status of Muḥammad drove at the key elements of the Islamic confession of faith. Al-Mahdī had apparently tried to persuade Timothy’s predecessor to convert during a similar audience, while Timothy’s opponent in the election for patriarch supposedly later converted to Islam under the Caliph’s influence. If Timothy answered too deferentially, he perhaps risked claims of inadvertent conversion, like Elias.

Asked why he believed God had begotten a son, he responded:

“O God-loving King, who has uttered such a blasphemy?”

"Do you not say that Christ is the Son of God?"

"O King, Christ is the Son of God, but not a son in the flesh, he is the word of God.”

He continued to answer the Caliph’s questions with much care and respect.

Did the Qur’an come from God?

“It is not my business to decide whether it is from God or not.”

“What do you say about Muḥammad?” This was the area of greatest sensitivity.

“Muḥammad is worthy of all praise by all reasonable people, O my Sovereign. He walked in the path of the prophets and trod in the track of the lovers of God. All the prophets taught the doctrine of one God, and since Muhammad taught the doctrine of the unity of God, he walked therefore in the path of the prophets. Because of this God honoured him and brought low before his feet two powerful kingdoms. Who will not praise, O our victorious King, the one whom God has praised? These and similar things I and all God-lovers utter about Muhammad, O my Sovereign.”

“You should, therefore accept the words of the Prophet.”

“Which words?”

“That God is one and that there is no other one besides Him.”

“I believe in one God, O my Sovereign, I have learned from the Torah, from the prophets and from the Gospel. I stand by it and shall die in it.”

“We children of men are in this perishable world as in darkness,” declared Timothy. “The pearl of the true faith fell in the midst of all of us, and it is in the hand of one of us, while we all believe we possess it. The signs wrought in the name of Jesus Christ are the bright rays and shining lustre of the precious pearl of faith.”

“We have hope in God that we are the possessors of this pearl,” declared the Caliph.

“Amen, O King,” Timothy replied, “but may God grant us that we may share it with you, and rejoice in the shining lustre of the pearl!”

“We pray,” he concluded, “that the King of Kings would preserve the throne of the Commander of the Faithful.”

Whether this interaction happened, or happened the way Timothy reported it in his letter cannot be known. Certainly he had regular audiences with al-Mahdī and his successors. Earlier in the year he had appeared several times before the Caliph on the matter of restoring various churches along the western border. In Baghdad he was also known as a willing opponent for debate and a well-regarded expert on Aristotle, at a court in which people still regularly engaged in such interreligious debates. But either way, his reason for circulating this letter was clearly instructional, showing others how to avoid the hazards implicit in everyday encounters and conversations. It offered a vision of how to navigate safely between the twin dangers of apostacy and blasphemy, neither compromising Christian beliefs nor recklessly offending Muslim beliefs. While circulated primarily among the leading bishops and schools of the region, these were the individuals and institutions tasked with training priests, monks and teachers, who, like Perfectus, might find themselves the most frequently on the end of similar questions, while they further offered instruction to laity. Originally written in Syriac, the dialect of Aramaic primarily used by Christians, it was soon translated into Arabic and in this form remained popular in the region into the modern-era.

Yet, still, Timothy felt keenly his own weakness and the imperfection of his answers, his inability to explain or persuade.

“I feel repugnance,” wrote Timothy in his introduction to the letter, “on account of the futility of the outcome of the work. But love covers and hides all these weaknesses as the water covers and hides the rocks that are under it.”

Further reading

Full translation of Timothy’s Dialogue with the Caliph al-Mahdī, translated by Alphonse Mingana (1928): Link.

Sahner, Christian C., Christian Martyrs under Islam: Religious Violence and the Making of the Muslim World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University press, 2018).

Interview

Books

Creed

S&U interviews

9 February 2024

9 min read

The Devil's perspective

Seeing through a rebel angel’s eyes opens up some surprising new angles on faith. Jonathan Evens interviews author Nicholas Papadopulos.

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A statue of an angel crouching and gesturing with one hand.

With The Infernal Word: Notes from a Rebel Angel, Nicholas Papadopulos, Dean of Salisbury Cathedral, is challenging the accepted narrative of faith “through the eyes of a rebel, an angelic non-believer with plenty of attitude.” His book enables readers to see the Biblical story in an unusual light - from the perspective of a devil who took up arms against heaven under the leadership of Satan.

Papadopulos, who worked for seven years as barrister specialising in criminal law prior to ordination, says: “I have always been more interested in questions than answers, both as a criminal lawyer and as a priest. Posing difficult questions identifies the real issues. Writing in the rebel angel’s voice has allowed me to have fun whilst at the same time compelling me to work out what faith in God really means to me. They say the devil has all the best tunes – well, what better way to challenge the accepted narrative of faith than through the eyes of a rebel, an angelic non-believer with plenty of attitude.”

“To admire Satan … is to give one’s vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking, of incessant autobiography”

C.S. Lewis.

His central character is a rebel angel who sided with Satan in his insurgency and was cast out of Heaven. He is, as a result, an unhappy devil, perplexed by the triumph of good over evil and the stories of salvation. With eternity to ponder why God emerged triumphant from the struggle, this rebel angel has turned to the Bible, the record of God’s dealings with ‘the humans’ to find out why his side was defeated. Through his conversational and sardonic style, this rebel angel discusses a dozen of God’s significant encounters with humanity - each of which takes place on a mountain top, from Mount Ararat where Noah’s ark pitched up, to the Mount of Ascension where Jesus returns to heaven. Each of these infernal reflections reveals an aspect of God’s inexplicable and unfathomable love for humans and engages deeply with the reality of a loving God who is made visible and vulnerable in Christ.

The Devil and his rebel angels have a significant cultural history. From his earliest known appearance in the Book of Job - probably the oldest book in the Bible - the figure of the devil has haunted Western culture being understood “as the embodiment of evil, a figure of temptation, and a potential foil to God”. In The Devil: A Very Short Introduction, Darren Oldridge describes Christian art as representing the Devil “using naked, dark forms with bestial features, committing revolting acts in a Hellish landscape”. He continues, in relation to literature: “In Goethe's Faust, Mephistopheles' character is conveyed in words of nullity and darkness. Milton's Paradise Lost describes a fiend whose defiance towards God makes him a kind of perverse hero. The Devil is often described as an appealing character who tricks people into committing sins.” However, there is an opposite view, as set out by Erik Butler in The Devil and His Advocates, in which Satan has, since his first appearance, “pursued a single objective: to test human beings, whose moral worth and piety leave plenty of room for doubt.” Butler suggests that, while Satan can be manipulative, “at worst he facilitates what mortals are inclined to do, anyway”.

Responses to John Milton’s Paradise Lost exemplify the debates that rage around the depiction of the Devil in literature. Two rival “interpretive traditions” exist in relation to Milton’s depiction of Satan.

The romantic tradition, understood to have been begun by William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley, “contends that Milton unconsciously favoured Satan and that Satan was the true hero of Paradise Lost”. Blake famously wrote that Milton “was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it”. He views desire and energy as characteristics of the Devil and sees these as being opposed to reason, which is equated with God and the power appropriated by institutional Christianity. Similarly, Shelley in his Defence of Poetry writes: “Milton’s Devil as a moral being is as far superior to his God as one who perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture is to one who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his enemy.”

Unlike Shelley, however, Blake also believed that Jesus, through artistic imagination, harmonises the binary opposites that Blake viewed as being characterised by the Devil and God and, as a result, advocates a revolutionary form of Christianity. Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials is a more recent imaginative engagement with this side of the Paradise Lost debate, which sits somewhat uneasily between Shelley and Blake.

Set against the romantic view of Milton’s Satan as the true hero of Paradise Lost is a view, exemplified by C.S. Lewis in A Preface to Paradise Lost, which sees Milton’s account of the Fall as being similar to that of Augustine’s City of God, with Satan portrayed, not only as “morally evil but also supremely egotistical … even showing himself in some ways to be foolish and tedious”. Lewis wrote that “To admire Satan … is to give one’s vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking, of incessant autobiography”. While Lewis was writing A Preface to Paradise Lost, he was also working on The Screwtape Letters in which, by means of a fictional intercepted correspondence of diabolical counsel from a senior devil to an apprentice devil, seeks to show what the temptation of our souls looks like through the eyes of demons. Bruce L. Edwards suggests that “Screwtape’s timeless brilliance lies in depicting the everyday and showing how from a demonic point of view, the devotion and care Christians show to their fellow men and women, mirrors of the love God has shown to them, is unfathomable to the desperately lost and unreflectively wicked”.

“Why does God bother about such a crowd of undesirables? The angel’s writing is the lens through which I uncover the absurdity of God’s relationship with them.”

With these ongoing debates in mind, I asked Papadopulos where he thought The Infernal Word sits in relation to this diabolical heritage and how the book interacts with it. He responded by saying that: “This rebel angel is concerned with the Biblical narrative and what it discloses of God and of God’s relationship with humanity. He is not principally a tempter (as was Screwtape); nor is he a tragic hero plotting his revenge (as was Milton’s Satan); he is instead something of an investigative journalist – an armchair general, commentator, and amateur theologian, keen to ascertain why on earth God seems so keen on the creation that so regularly lets him down. He is also a realist: he harbours no illusions about the place of his kind in God’s economy. The cross was Christ’s decisive victory – the rebels have been beaten.”

This represents a key difference between Papadopulos’ protagonist and Lewis’ Screwtape. As Edwards notes: “Screwtape never understands why the Enemy [God] loves the patient [human beings], even to the point of giving up His life for another. This is not even ponderable for Hell-bent or Hell-bound dwellers, who are the ultimate egotists and self-aggrandizers.” This difference of approach also raises a question as to why Papadopulos’ protagonist is undertaking his investigation. As he recognises Christ’s decisive victory on the cross, what purpose is served by his investigation? That question takes us to the heart of the book’s purpose which is also linked to the challenges it provides to some accepted narratives of the faith.

We do know, however, why Papadopulos began the book. His ministry, prior to Salisbury, included time as Vicar of St Peter’s Eaton Square, London, and at Canterbury Cathedral as Canon Treasurer and Director of Initial Ministerial Education for the Diocese. The Infernal Word began as addresses preached on Good Friday in those earlier settings. Good Friday, of course, is the moment in the Christian story when the Devil appears to have won. So, I asked Papadopulos what was it about Good Friday that inspired him initially and which called his rebel angel into being: “The devil did not win on Good Friday, and he knows he did not win! Christ’s faithfulness sees to that. But - stuck for a sermon when serving as a parish priest I tried preaching from the vantage point of faith’s opponent - as a devil. Arriving in Canterbury, and needing a theme/motif for a Good Friday Three Hours Devotion, I remembered the experiment, and wrote the series from that vantage point. It obviously needed to culminate with the crucifixion, and that event’s location on a hilltop prompted the addresses which preceded it.”

Writing in the rebel angel’s voice allowed him to have fun while, at the same time, compelled him to work out what faith in God really means to him. He says he has always been more interested in questions than answers and that posing difficult questions identifies the real issues. As a result, I asked what it is about testing or exploring faith in this way that enables the essence or the essential to be identified: “The barrister’s skill is identifying the right questions, and that part of my formation lives on in me, jostling with the faith that has been real since I was very young. Theology is faith seeking understanding – the book is an account of faith in which sharp questions are posed, to which (ultimately) a fairly simple ‘answer’ is offered. But that’s in the Epilogue and I wouldn’t want to give it away! Asking questions is not something for people of faith to be afraid of – but we do have to have trustworthy places to ask them and to receive answers. My dearest hope is that a reader might identify with some of the questions posed in The Infernal Word, and find answers that are at least coherent and perhaps compelling.”

Martin Luther once said that “The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn” while Thomas More wrote, “The devil…that proud spirit…cannot endure to be mocked.” Papadopulos’ talk of having fun while writing in the rebel angel’s voice reminded me that creatives from Lewis to Bono have utilised this approach, so I asked whether it one he also endorses: “The rebel angel targets humanity and specifically ‘the Christians’. They are the object of his unremitting scorn and the source of his perpetual puzzlement – why does God bother about such a crowd of undesirables? The angel’s writing is the lens through which I uncover the absurdity of God’s relationship with them.”

Mountain-tops, as significant places of encounter with God, become important in providing a structure for his book: “The choice of mountain tops was actually triggered by the need to end on one (if Golgotha counts as a mountain top). As that was the destination, I looked for precursors and, of course, there are plenty – from Ararat onwards. I could have picked a different theme: Biblical encounters in cities, or beside water. But mountains serve the purpose, as they do throughout Scripture, as places of encounter between the human and the divine.”

I ended our conversation by asking in what ways the book challenges the accepted narrative of faith by providing a fresh perspective on familiar Biblical stories and why that is needed: “I hope the book is profoundly orthodox, but it poses some of the questions about faith that have fascinated me and that I believe fascinate others. Because it’s narrated by a rebel angel it can dare to be irreverent and occasionally downright rude. Don’t we always need fresh perspectives on the tradition? That’s what keeps it alive. It was the quest for a fresh perspective that first pushed me in the rebel angel’s direction when I was stuck for a sermon.”

The Infernal Word: Notes from a Rebel Angel is published by Canterbury Press.