The first Christian theologian of Islam served the Umayyad caliphs
Evidence
St John of Damascus, also known as Yuhanna ibn Mansur (d. c. 749), was probably the first to engage with Muslim theology in some detail. John of Damascus seems to have been of Arab parentage. He certainly knew Arabic, though he was also literate and indeed fluent in Greek. In Damascus, he had been a schoolfriend of Yazid, son of the Umayyad Caliph Muawiya I. When the Byzantines still ruled Syria, John’s father had worked for the Emperor Heraclius as a financial official. John did the same for the Umayyad caliphs, even though John apparently regarded himself as formally a subject of the Byzantine emperor. In 724 he left public life, as it had become impossible for Christians to continue to hold high office under the caliphs in Syria. The former public servant retired to the monastery of St Sabas in Palestine, where he studied theology and philosophy. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 52
Categorization
- XREF: A vivid instance of late-antique religious cosmopolitanism that would resonate with Ammianus-style frontier writing or the ‘late antique world’ literature.