Arabized Christian apologetics proved more durable than anti-Islamic diatribes

Evidence

Alvarus fulminated against Christian youths who preferred Arabic poetry to Latin letters; his own son, it seems, composed Arabic poems. Hafs ibn Albar, according to one of his Muslim contemporaries, was the most intelligent and most Arabized of the Andalusian Christians. Hafs translated the Psalms from Latin into Arabic verse. He also composed the Book of Fifty-Seven Questions, an Arabic apology of Christianity that (although it is now lost) seems to have been much less virulent than his father’s. Rather than vilifying Islam, as his father had, he crafted apologetical works that aimed to defend and justify Christianity in the eyes of both Christians and Muslims. Mozarab Christians had found the spirit of polite apologetical dialogue familiar to oriental Christians. The father’s diatribes were soon forgotten: Alvarus’s Indiculus luminosus and Life of Eulogius each survive in one tenth-century manuscript; of Eulogius’s none remain. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 551

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Interesting inversion for the modern ‘culture war’ discourse: the adaptable, conciliatory voice survived while the strident one faded to a single manuscript.
• CANDY: The fiercest polemicist’s own son became the most Arabized Christian apologist — a tidy irony about fathers and sons.

Related

• Polemicist fathers were culturally eclipsed by their more irenic, Arabized sons (similarity 0.93)
• Talented Christians in medieval Spain preferred Arabic learning over Latin. (similarity 0.83)
• Christians in ninth-century Spain adopted Arabic at Latin’s expense (similarity 0.81)
• Systematic theological anti-Islam polemic emerged only under Muslim rule (similarity 0.80)
• Mozarab hostility to Islam was a minority position, not a universal Christian attitude (similarity 0.80)
• Christian apologists writing in Arabic could concede Islam’s legitimacy while disputing its truth (similarity 0.80)
• Better-informed Christians under Muslim rule produced far more hostile views of Islam (similarity 0.79)
• Arabic Christian anti-Islamic literature was apocalyptic, polemic, and lurid in its invented tales (similarity 0.79)
• Christian conquest of Toledo enabled bolder anti-Islamic polemic in Arabic (similarity 0.79)
• Peter the Venerable targeted Christian admirers of Arabic learning (similarity 0.78)
• Peter’s polemics functioned as defensive theology against Arabic philosophy’s appeal (similarity 0.78)
• Mozarab authors supplied the rhetorical scripts Latin polemicists later deployed against Islam (similarity 0.78)
• Political conquest enabled sharper Christian polemic against Islam (similarity 0.78)