The Qur’anic hapax legomenon 'sִamad' in Medieval Arab-Christian apologetics

2024

Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета: Сериа III. Филология, Vol 81, Iss 81, Pp 142-150 (2024)

The situation that emerged in the period of VIII-X centuries, when representatives of the Abbasid dynasty (750-1258), who had recently come to power, began to actively encourage the conversion of non-believers to Islam, prompted representatives of different ethno-confessional groups (Melkites, Jacobites, Nestorians) to react immediately: apologetic and polemical literature was created; moreover, many treatises often concealed the experience of the author's real participation in the discussions. This paper analyses the use of Sura 112 in Arab-Christian apologetic literature. Sura 112, despite its brevity (consisting of four ayats), occupies a special place in the Qur'anic corpus because it expresses in a concentrated form the key dogma of Islam about monotheism (tawhid). The Surah is also distinguished by the presence of a word not found in the Qur'an (the so-called hapax legomenon), ṣamad, which has given rise to a wide range of interpretations both in the Muslim tradition and in Byzantine polemical literature. For Arab-Christian authors who lived in the same territory as Muslims, the dialogue with Islam was even more relevant, but not in a polemical, as in Byzantium, but in an apologetic way, and Sura 112 was also the object of their attention.

article

Russian

St. Tikhon's Orthodox University, 2024.

koran, sura 112, arab-christian literature, medieval arab-christian apologetics, catholicos-patriarch of the church of the east timothy i, theodore abu kurra, «the disputation of abraham of tiberias», «the legend of sergius bahir», yahya ibn 'adi, «the book of explanation», коран, сура 112, арабо-христианская литература, средневековая арабо-христианская апологетика, католикос-патриарх церкви востока тимофей i, феодор абу курра, «диспут авраама тивериадского», «легенда о сергии бахире», йахйа ибн ‘ади, «книга разъяснения», Philology. Linguistics, P1-1091, Literature (General), PN1-6790