The Resurgence of the Gospel, Part Three: The Challenge of the Muslim Curtain

The Resurgence of the Gospel and the Flowering of the Global Christian Message

Part Three: The Challenge of the Muslim Curtain Introduction

Through upheaval and suppression, being despised by civil governments and facing outright persecution, Christians survived on the other side of the Muslim Curtain. This is part of their story.

“The Turkic-Moslem Curtain” is the more appropriate explanation for what “shut-off” for an untold breadth of time any social intercourse between the East and West. It also deals more realistically with the relationship between the Arabic speaking Moslems and the increasingly Christian West. As terrible as the militancy of the Arab Conquests were, they never cut-off contact between Europe and Asia. Under the Arabic umbrella, Christians were consider dhimmi [under-class] by the Arabic-speaking Moslem rulers. At the same time, the Christians were admired for their talents, skills, and abilities and utilized according to their particular talents. Even the Jews were so treated. Some were physicians to the caliphs. It was also dependent upon the origin of the Arabic speaking Moslems.

Islam is not a monolithic religion. Historically, there are two distinct political practices. The Shi’a combine religion and political into a single system with their religious leaders doing the governing. The Shi’a also believe they are the legitimate descendants of Mohammed. The Sunni and Alawite Moslems separate Mosque from the body politic. Islam is sectarian. The Sufi are the Moslem mystics and are off in another direction and sometimes fade in and out.

Before Mohammed and his hegira (flight) to Medina, Christians from Antioch and from Egypt came into upper Arabia and down the western coast along the Red Sea. Most of the Arab Christians in southwestern Arabia were the product of Coptic missionaries out of Egypt and shared the Coptic understanding of the Trinity. Those who lived just east of the mountains east of the Dead Sea and northward toward Damascus came out of Antioch and shared the Nestorian understanding which stressed the humanity of Jesus. Mary was not a thetokos, but the mother of Jesus the man in whom dwelt the fullness of God.

The best reading on the Arab Christians are the books of Kenneth Cragg, an Anglican missionary and scholar from Great Britain who wrote such works as The Arab Christian: A History in the Middle East (Louisville, KY: Westminster/Joh Knox, 1991) and The Call of the Minaret (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956). In 2008, Sidney H. Griffith published a study entitled The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque (Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press).

What really lowered a curtain between Asia and the Christian West was a series of events. The Arabic invasion of North Africa from Egypt to Morocco and into southern Spain was followed by the onslaught of a Mongol-Turkic group. This later group was converted to Islam by way of the Shi’ite defeat of the Persian armies and then turned their attention to Syria and Palestine followed by a Seljuk Turkic takeover of Palestine. This conquest roused the fears of the Eastern Mediterranean Christians, fears which reverberated all the way to Rome and into the western Mediterranean, fueling the Crusades. Almost simultaneously, a Fatimid Turkic Moslem army invaded, putting the whole Mediterranean world on alert. Stories and legends about Christians held hostage in the East and about a Christian presbyter, “Prester John,” somewhere in the heart of Ethiopia stirred the desire to rescue Jerusalem and the Middle East.

Even then, there was no let-up of interchange between Asia and Europe until 1452 when Ottoman Turks invaded Anatolia, known variously as Asia Minor (geographically) or Turkey (geopolitically). While there was no direct west-to-east route going through either Antioch or Caesarea on the Mediterranean eastern seaboard travel, travel was possible from points north and northeast of Antioch.

One could also travel east from Alexandria to the Red Sea and travel it to where it empties into the Arabian Sea and thence to the Malabar Coast of India. Another point of departure was by way of the southern coastline of the Euxine Sea (Black Sea). One could board ship from Chalcedon, Amastris, and Sinope, all port cities in the Roman provinces of Bithynia and Pontus and to the Ukraine, one of the sources of grain for first Rome and then Constantinople. One could sail east along the coastline to Armenia and Georgia.

Anyone familiar with the New Testament letter of I Peter is familiar with Pontus and Bithynia and Cappadocia. Those three northern provinces along with Galatia and Asia are mentioned in I Peter 1:1. All the aforementioned alternate routes east were well-known in New Testament and early Christian times and were well attested to by personal memoir and travel journals of those who traveled by those routes. Even though one could not get past Antioch into upper western Asia, Antioch itself was not cut off from Damascus when Damascus was under Moslem control. There was considerable interchange between Antioch and Damascus at the time of Moslem supremacy in the 7^th and 8^th centuries. In fact, the man considered to be the equal to St. Augustine of Hippo in Christian influence, was born into a wealthy Arab-Christian family of Damascus. His father was treasurer in the court of the Moslem caliph. He succeeded to that position himself until ad 725 when he resigned and entered the monastery at Mar Saba near Bethlehem. At the age of 51,while still at Mar Saba, his brilliance as a Christian spokesman began to shine. Today he is known as John of Damascus and numbered among the saints. As Augustine is famous for his Confessions and The City of God, John of Damascus is known as the author of The Fount of Knowledge and of the hymn/anthem, The Day of Resurrection. His influence pierced the Arab Curtain and had effect upon the Orthodox Church in Constantinople and later yet upon Thomas Aquinas when he wrote his Summa Theologica four centuries later.

Another within Arab Moslem rule within the shadow of the Minaret was Patriarch Timothy I (ad 779- 823) of the Nestorian Church. He is famous for his Apology of the Christian Faith consisting of a series of discussions held with the Moslem Caliph al-Mahdi on the Christian faith and its belief in the Trinitarian nature of God. By the end of his life in 823 he left behind many homilies, and an interpretation of the theology of Gregory Nazienzen (Chabet, Litterature, p.108-9). It was under his oversight that Christians of the Nestorian Church extended their presence across central and east Asia. The decline of the Church of the East (Nestorian) across central and east Asia in the twelfth and thirteen centuries was to a great extent due to the gradual decline of the whole Arab Moslem caliphate which began when the Caliph al-Mu’tasim (833-42) made the decision to take on a bodyguard of Turkish slaves for the first time in Abbasid history and which proved to be disastrous for Arabia, Persian, Egypt, North Syria, Afghanistan, and the Indian Punjab. Only Spain and the Shi’ite Idrisids and Aghlabids of North Africa were spared. The Hamadanids (ad 929-1003) swung to the Turkic Moslem Fatimids side (969-1171) soon after the Fatimids took established their caliphate in Egypt.

The Nestorian Christians suffered greatly amidst all these upheavals and the resultant confusion told upon the administration of the Christian community until the arrival of the Mongols in certain areas. The hordes of Genghiz Khan in the early thirteenth century left the cities of Bukhara, Samarkand, Balkh and Herat, all Christian centers across central Asia greatly depopulated and practically in ashes. Between ad 1251 and 1260, Mangu the Great made the decision to incorporate China into his extensive empire and, thereby, incorporated the whole of Asia from the Pacific to the Russian steppes east of the Ural Mountains.

This was critical for the Asian Christian mission both positively and negatively. His brother, Kublai Khan (1260-94) went east and gained power over China. His other brother Hulagu started the Il-Khanate of Persia thereby over-throwing the Arab Abbasid Caliphate and devastated the city of Baghdad. Hulagu was ruthless in the destruction of Baghdad. The Nestorian Christians took refuge by hiding in their house-churches. As calm returned to the ruined city, Christians were granted full freedom by Hulagu. Yet all-in-all this was a calm before a storm because of the lamentable state of the church organization and of successive Il-khans of Persia who wavered toward Islam. Persecutions erupted, off and on, toward the Christians, until the 16^th century. In the 14^th century, Between 1380 and the advent of 1500, a Moslem Berlas Turk, by the name of Timur Lane (Tamerlane) usurped the throne of the Mongol ruler, Chagaty Khan at Samarkand and began a frightful reign of ruthless ferocity across Mesopotamia and India and Asia Minor. Both Christians and Moslems equally feared the likes who left mountains of skulls in Persia, Mesopotamia, India, and central Asia.

Both Christians and Moslems fled into the mountains. Between 1318 and 1385, the churches Tithana, Jundishapur, Balada, Dasena, Karkha, Beth Bagas, Geslina, Baghdad, Mosul, Erbil, Nisibis, and eight others disappeared. Timur virtually stamped out Nestorian Christianity except for those who fled into the fastness of the Kurdistan mountains and in the heights of the Hakkiari mountains between Lakes Van and Urmia. Not until the 1550’s did they begin to emerge into history. Once numerous between Antioch and Chengchu, China, except for isolated moments between A.D 1246 and 1292 did the Nestorian Christians gain notice. In those two years a few travelers from Rome, and later from Venice, Italy broke through the Mongol Khanates before the rage and carnage of Timur lane.

The source for the ad 1246 visit was a letter to Pope Innocent IV written by Guyuk Khan of the Ulu Mongol tribe. It was written in the Persian language of the time and on the occasion of the arrival of Franciscan friars within his domain. The date at the end of the document corresponds to November ad 1246. Most likely it is in reference to the travels of William of Rubrick and John of Plano Carpini. In 1248, when back in Europe, John had written of his travels and whose return from the Mongol mission was recorded in the pages of Friar Salimbene of Parma who met him near Lyons. Both Carpini’s book of his travels and Salimbene’s report are in manuscript form and originally preserved in St. Mary’s Abbey at York, England.

This may not sound like a success story because it is the account of the failure of a mission to a landmass close to three times the length of the Mediterranean Sea and its coastal cities, from Caesarea in Palestine to Lusitania’s (Portugal) coast. However, when one takes into consideration the vast expanse of Asia, from Russia to Manchuria and China and the major cities in which Nestorian Christian bishoprics were found, it is more than remarkable how any semblance of Christianity survived, considering the carnage of Timur and his regime.

Two centuries later, about 1550, John Sulaka [also known as Simeon Sulacha and Mar Shimun VIII Yohannan Sulaqa] accompanied Franciscan missionaries all the way to Jerusalem where the Roman Catholic custodian of the Holy Sepulchre furnished him with introductory letters to Pope Julius III (1550). He was well received and through him, the process was begun to give the Nestorian Church a uniate status in which the Nestorians would retain their distinctive theology and liturgical practice in worship while having a fellowship with the Catholic Church.

Upon his return to Hurmizd, John Sulaka failed to win the whole community of Nestorian Christians to his side. He was also seized by the Turkish pasha of Diyar-Bekr and imprisoned where he was murdered. Where he failed to bring the Nestorian Christians into Uniate status with Rome, his successor, Ebedyeshu (1555-67), succeeded in doing so with recognition from Pope Pius IV (1559-1565). Over the next three centuries, three different Nestorian fellowships held uniate status with Rome.

In recent news, the Chaldaean Catholics killed in Iraq by ISIS troops are of the Nestorian Christian Church in fellowship with Rome. Nestorian Christians who are not in the Uniate structure are also facing harassment and persecution by ISIS. Many have fled over the years to the U.S.A.

Until the early 1800’s, the only contact with the Nestorians from Europe and the Americas came from the Vatican in Rome. The Christians of the West, Catholic and Protestant, were unaware of the existence of the Church of the East. Then came a discovery by Claude James Rich, Resident of the British East India Company in Baghdad, visited the site of the city of Nineveh in 1820. His two-volume report, Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan and on the Site of Nineveh, published in London in 1836, made the news in both Great Britain and the United States. In the same year of the discovery, Rev. Joselff came to Kurdistan and returned to England with a copy of the Syriac New Testament. The British and Foreign Bible Society published it and distributed copies of among Nestorian Christians in 1827.

Not long afterwards, the American Presbyterian Mission arrived in 1830, then in 1834, and in 1835. It were the Presbyterians and the Anglican Church out of England who accomplished the most among the Eastern churches and especially the Nestorians in Kurdistan between 1842 and 1844 and at Van on the Turkish side of Persia between 1902 and 1912. Then came World War I, which brought disruptions to the whole area with Turkey on one side, Russia, on another, and Persia and Iraq, on two others. The Nestorians still are around us in Chicago, Illinois; in Modesto, California; in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and up and down the Malabar Coast where the Mar Thoma Nestorian Church is exceptionally strong. This writer personally knows of the Mar Thoma Christians in Oklahoma City as a member of the congregation there was a student of mine.

I can write as I do because of a long relationship with Christians from India, be they Mar Thoma, Assembly of God, Catholic, or of other Christian affiliation.

The point of all this discussion is that the Nestorians formerly filled an area whose landmass exceeds the space between Europe and North America and have survived persecution after persecution.

 

 

PR

 

Coming in the Spring 2019 issue: “The Reconversion of Europe”

How did Europeans react to the challenge of the Turkic-Moslem curtain and what did it mean to the global mission of Christianity?