Ninth-Century Arabic Christian Perceptions of ‘Otherness’ Under Muslim Rule

There has been considerable research on late medieval and early modern perceptions of “others”, among them Muslims, and the Western perceptions of Islam, while the “otherness”/“othering” of Christianity under Muslim rule is far less investigated. This paper seeks to present the ways Christians perceived alterity in an Islamic society in the ninth century, with Christian doctrine articulated in the Arabic language for the first time and in a new frame of reference – set by Islam. The article considers the ways “others” ‒ Muslims, Jews and other, mostly Christian communities living under Muslim rule ‒ are represented, concerning the names/forms and concepts related to “otherness” in the works of three authors: the Melkite theologian Theodore Abū Qurra (d. ca. 820‒825), the Jacobite theologian Ḥabīb ibn Ḫidma Abū Rāʾiṭa (d. probably soon after 830), and the Nestorian ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī (d. ca. 840), i.e. the first known Christian theologians who wrote in Arabic. In parallel to this, the article seeks to identify Christian definitions of “self” and reflect on the extent to which Christians perceived themselves as “others” under Muslim rule.