Abstract
The chapter presents the early versions of the Parable of the Three Rings. It traces the origins and transmission of the parable from the East to the West, beginning with the Parable of the Pearl from the dialogue between the Caliph al-Mahdi and the Nestorian Patriarch, Timothy I, in Baghdad. By examining the intellectual context of the Muslim world and describing the multicultural and multireligious environment, the chapter demonstrates the role of Christian and Jewish brokers in the transmission of the parable from the eastern Muslim world into Spain and the West. The chapter discusses the Story of the Three Impostors, Ibn Kammuna’s Examination of the Three Faiths, Al-Tha’alibi’s History of the Persian Kings, Abraham Abulafia’s Story of the Pearl, and Solomon Ibn Verga’s Scepter of Judah.
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Notes
- 1.
Alphonse Mingana, “The Apology of Timothy the Patriarch and the Caliph al-Mahdi,” Journal of the John Rylands Library 12 (1928), pp. 137–298; Shlomo Pines, “The Jewish Christians according to a New Source,” Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 2 (1966), pp. 1–74, esp. pp. 37–38 n. 139.
- 2.
Nestorian Christianity was a stream within Christianity that emerged in the first half of the fifth century out of the teachings of Archbishop Nestorius (381–451) of Constantinople, who maintained that Jesus had two separate natures, or personae—one divine, and the other human. The Church council that convened in Ephesus in 431 condemned Nestorian theology, but the sect continued to exist in the regions of Syria and Iraq. The Jacobites are a community of Syrian Monophysites (Christians who believe Jesus had only one nature); the Melkites are Greek Orthodox, whose name indicates that they are “the possessors of the King’s religion.”
- 3.
Mingana, “The Apology of Timothy,” p. 224.
- 4.
Ibid.
- 5.
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003, p. 231.
- 6.
Sidney H. Griffith, “Confessing Monotheism in Arabic (At-Tawhid): The One God of Abraham and His Apologists,” in The Oxford Handbook of Abrahamic Religions, ed. Adam Silverstein, Guy G. Stroumsa, and Moshe Blidstein, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 315–331.
- 7.
See, for example, Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: the Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, Boston: Beacon Press, 2001; Penna, La parabola dei tre anelli, pp. 32–49. In a sermon delivered in Crusader Jerusalem, Christianity is equaled to a pearl (“Christiane religionis margarita”); see Amnon Linder, “A new day, new joy: the liberation of Jerusalem on 15 July 1099,” in L’idea di Gerusalemme nella spiritualità cristiana del Medioevo: atti del Convegno internazionale in collaborazione con l’Istituto della Görres-Gesellschaft di Gerusalemme (Vatican City, 2003), pp. 46–64, at 61. Moritz Steinschneider has written about the medieval literature devoted to the cultural role of precious stones in the West and in the East; see Moritz Steinschneider, “Lapidarien: ein culturgeschichtlicher Versuch,” in Semitic Studies in Memory of Rev. Dr Alexandr Kohut, ed. George A. Kohut, Berlin: S. Calvary & Co., 1897, pp. 42–72.
- 8.
For further discussion, see The Orthodox Church in the Arab World, 700–1700: An Anthology of Sources, eds. Samuel Noble and Alexander Treiger, DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2014, pp. 23–24.
- 9.
On the Arabic versions, see Robert Caspar, “Les versions arabes du dialogue entre le Catholicos Timothée I et le Caliphe al-Mahdi (viie/viiie siècle): Mohammed a suivi la voie des prophètes,” Islamochristiana 3 (1977), pp. 107–175. See also: Dominique Urvoy, “La pensée religieuse des Mozarabes a face de l’Islam,” Traditio 39 (1983), pp. 419–432.
- 10.
Krisztina Szilágyi, “Christian Books in Jewish Libraries: Fragments of Christian Arabic Writings from the Cairo Genizah,” Ginzei Qedem 2 (2006), pp. 107–165.
- 11.
Ibid., p. 143.
- 12.
Miriam Goldstein, “Judeo-Arabic Versions of Toledot Yeshu,” Ginzei Qedem 6 (2010), pp. 9–42.
- 13.
Ibid., p. 15. Cf. Meira Polliack, “The Karaite Inversion of ‘Written’ and ‘Oral’ Torah in Relation to the Islamic Arch-Models of Qurʾan and Hadith,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 22 (2015), pp. 243–302.
- 14.
Giorgio Levi della Vida, “Un texte mozarabe d’histoire universelle,” in Note di storia letteraria arabo-ispanica, ed. Maria Nallino, Rome: Instituto per l’Oriente, 1971, pp. 123–125. Since 1983, the manuscript—listed as Raqqada Ms 2003/2—has been kept at the Museum of Islamic Arts in the city of Raqqada, in Tunis, not far from Kairouan.
- 15.
Mayte Penelas, “Contents of an Apologetic Nature in Ms. Raqqada 2003/2 (formerly Great Mosque of Kairouan 120/829),” in Eastern Crossroads: Essays on Medieval Christian Legacy, ed. Juan Pedro Monferrer Sala, Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2007, pp. 275–299; Philippe Roisse, “Redécouverte d’un important manuscrit ‘arabe chrétien’ occidental: le ms. Raqqāda 2003/2 (olim Kairouan 1220/829),” Collectanea Christiana Orientalia 1 (2004): pp. 279–285.
- 16.
See Norman Daniel, The Cultural Barrier: Problems in Exchange of Ideas, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1975, pp. 151–157.
- 17.
Most Arabic versions of the dialogue have not yet been published in critical editions, and, as previously noted, the Kairouan manuscript is of degraded quality. Nonetheless, the notion that the parable was not included in the translation appears to be well founded. For a comparison between the Syriac source and the Arabic translations, see Mayte Penelas, “A new Arabic version of the Dialogue between Patriarch Timothy I and Caliph al-Mahdī,” in Cultures in Contact: Transfer of Knowledge in the Mediterranean Context, ed. Sofía Torallas Tovar and Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala, Córdoba and Beirut: Oriens Academic, 2013, pp. 207–236.
- 18.
Szilágyi, “Christian Books in Jewish Libraries,” pp. 138–140, 145–149.
- 19.
Saadya Gaon: The Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, trans. and ed. Alexander Altmann, new introduction by Daniel H. Frank, Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002, pp. 5, 11.
- 20.
Ignác Goldziher, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981, 162–163. For a critique of religious tolerance in early Islam, see Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
- 21.
Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014, p. 13. See also: Adel Khoury, Toleranz im Islam, Altenberge: Christlich-Islamisches Schrifttum, 1986, esp. pp. 17–20. Quotations from the Qur’an follow: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur’an: A New Translation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
- 22.
Goldziher, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, pp. 79–81; And also: “Muslims, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, all walk in error, in the dark,” cited in Altman, Saadya Gaon, p. 11.
- 23.
Edward G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, [1902], Bethesda: Iranbooks, 1997, p. 268, n.1; Michael Ebstein, “‘Religions, Opinions and Beliefs are Nothing but Roads and Paths...While the Goal is One’: Between Unity and Diversity in Islamic Mysticism,” in Accusations of Unbelief in Islam: A Diachronic Perspective on Takfir, ed. Camilla Adang et al., Leiden: Brill, 2015, pp. 492, 496–513.
- 24.
Reynold A. Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism, [1921], London and New York: Routledge, 2014, p. 154.
- 25.
Ebstein, “Religions, Opinions, and Beliefs,” p. 494.
- 26.
Reynold A. Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam [1914], Lanham: World Wisdom, 2010, pp. 61–62.
- 27.
Ebstein “Religions, Opinions and Beliefs,” p. 491; Janne Mattila, “The Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʼ on Religious Diversity”, Journal of Islamic Studies 28 (2017), pp. 178–192.
- 28.
On the Sufis, see Sarah Sviri, Sufim: Antologia, Tel Aviv: Mapa, 2008.
- 29.
David Thomas, Alexander Mallett, eds. Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, vol. 4 (1200–1350), Leiden: Brill, 2012, p. 868.
- 30.
Salo W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, second edition, revised and enlarged, vol. v: religious controls and dissensions, New York: Columbia University Press, 1957, p. 104.
- 31.
Benjamin Z. Kedar, Crusade and Mission: European Approaches Toward the Muslims, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984, p. 173. I shall discuss the attribution of this radical statement to Frederick II and Simon of Tournai in Chap. 3.
- 32.
Louis Massignon, “La légende de “tribus impostoribus” et ses origins islamiques,” Revue de l’Histoire des Religions 82 (1920), pp. 74–78; Friedrich Niewöhner, Veritas sive verietas: Lessings Toleranzparabel und das Buch Von den Drei Betrügern, Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1988, p. 246.
- 33.
A Shi’iti-Isma’ili Muslim branch that was established at the end of the ninth century by Hamdan Qarmat and which preached an egalitarian social order and a regime of absolute justice.
- 34.
Nizam al-Mulk, The Book of Government or Rules for Kings, trans. from Persian Hubert Darke [London 1960], Richmond: Curzon, 2002, pp. 229–230. Scholars point to the similarity between the idea underlying the Three Impostors and that which appears in the writings of two “freethinkers,” Muslims who reject the religions that are based on revelation and prophecy. See Sarah Stroumsa, Freethinkers of Medieval Islam: Ibn al-Rawāndī, Abū Bakr al-Rāzī and their Impact on Islamic Thought, Leiden: Brill, 1999, p. 217; Idem, “The Religion of the Freethinkers in Medieval Islam, “ in Atheismus im Mittelalter und in der Renaissance, ed. Friedrich Niewöhner and Olaf Pluta, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999, pp. 45–59.
- 35.
Ibn Kammuna’s Examination of the Three Faiths: A Thirteenth Century Essay in Comparative Study of Religion, trans. Moshe Perlmann, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971. For further study: Barbara Roggema, “Epistemology as Polemics. Ibn Kammuna’s Examination of the Apologetics of the Three Faiths,” in The Three Rings: Textual Studies in the Trialogue of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. Barbara Roggema et al., Leuven: Peeters Publishing, 2005, pp. 47–70; Reza Pourjavady and Sabine Schmidtke, A Jewish Philosopher of Baghdad: “Izz al-Dawla Ibn Kammūna (d. 683/1284) and His Writings, Leiden: Brill, 2006.
- 36.
He blesses each figure in turn as he mentions him, suggesting that he considers the three to be equals—but he does not present the choice of the three religions to which he devotes his discussion as a qualitative choice, but as a quantitative one, that is, these three religions represent the largest number of believers. See Perlmann, Ibn Kammuna, pp. 38–39.
- 37.
Moritz Steinschneider, Polemische und apologetische Literatur in arabischer Sprache zwischen Muslimen, Christen und Juden [Leipzig 1877], Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 37–38.
- 38.
Perlmann, Ibn Kammuna, p. 11.
- 39.
Ibid., p. 3.
- 40.
Hermann Zotenberg, Histoire des rois des Perses par Abou Mansour “abd Al-Malik ibn Mohammad ibn Isma′il al-Tha’alibi: historien et philologue arabe de la Perse (a.h. 350–430),” Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1900, pp. 465–466. The story is also mentioned in Victor Chauvin, “Documents pour la parabole des trois anneaux,” Vallonia 11 (1900), pp. 197–198.
- 41.
Zotenberg, Histoire des rois des Perses, p. xxxv. For more on al-Thaʿalibi, see Bilal Orfali, “The Works of Abū Mansūr al-Thaʿālibī (350–429/961–1039),” Journal of Arabic Literature 40 (2009), pp. 273–318.
- 42.
Christopher Lowney, A Vanished World: Medieval Spain’s Golden Age of Enlightenment, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012, p. 14.
- 43.
Ernest Renan, Averroès et l’Averroïsme, Paris: M. Lévy, 1866, p. 294. Renan hinted at the Jewish source of the parable, but apparently was not referring to Abraham Abulafia’s Parable of the Pearl (which is discussed below), since Steinschneider only published the story from The Light of the Intellect in 1877. Renan’s surmise was based on an article published in 1857, in which the author suggests that the source of Boccacio’s novella was the parable of the precious stones told by Solomon Verga in Scepter of Judah, which is discussed below. See Michel Nicholas, “Le conte des trois anneaux,” La Correspondance Litteraire 1 (1857), pp. 205–206.
- 44.
Shagrir, “The Parable of the Three Rings,” p. 171; Moshe Idel, “The Pearl, the Son and the Servants, in Abraham Abulafia’s Parable,” Quaderni di Studi Indo-Mediterranei 6 (2013), p. 130.
- 45.
Abraham Abulafia, Sefer Or Ha-Sekhel, MS Vatican 33: 37v–39v. Some ten manuscripts are found at the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem; See also Moshe Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 47–51.
- 46.
Adapted from the translation in Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah, pp. 48–50.
- 47.
The literary meaning of exemplum is an example or model that teaches proper conduct. Historically, it is usually defined as a short story presented as a true occurrence, intended to be incorporated in a sermon to persuade the audience of a lesson that will direct them toward salvation: Claude Brémond, Jacques Le Goff, and Jean-Claude Schmitt, L’Exemplum, [1982], Turnhout: Brepols, 1996, pp. 37–38.
- 48.
Nonetheless, Abulafia’s writings contain positive statements about Christianity. See Moshe Idel, Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism, London and New York: Continuum, 2007, p. 333.
- 49.
Americo Castro, The Structure of Spanish History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954, p. 227.
- 50.
Idel, “The Pearl, the Son and the Servants,” esp. pp. 134–135. See also Idel, Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism, pp. 370–371, n. 203.
- 51.
Ibid., pp. 125–16; Joseph F. O’Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1975, pp. 18, 23.
- 52.
Thomas E. Burman, Reading the Quran in Latin Christendom, 1140–1560, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007; Charles Burnett, Arabic into Latin in the Middle Ages: The Translators and their Intellectual and Social Context, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009.
- 53.
Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue Against the Jews, trans Irven M. Resnick, Washington D.C: The Catholic University of America Press, 2006.
- 54.
Urvoy, “pensée religieuse,” p. 421.
- 55.
Kedar, Crusade and Mission, p. 26–27.
- 56.
Castro, The Structure of Spanish History, p. 224–225. On the disputes surrounding the concept of convivencia and the critique thereof, see David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015[1996], pp. 7–9.
- 57.
Castro, The Structure of Spanish History, p. 223–224.
- 58.
Solomon Ben Verga, Sefer Shevet Yehuda, ed. Isaac Baer, Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1947, story no. 3, pp. 78–80.
- 59.
Ibid., pp. 8, 12–15.
- 60.
Jeremy Cohen, A Historian in Exile Solomon: Ibn Verga, “Shevet Yehudah,” and the Jewish-Christian Encounter, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016, pp. 24–25.
- 61.
Solomon ben Verga, Sefer Shevet Yehudah, pp. 78–80.
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Shagrir, I. (2019). The Earliest Versions of the Parable of the Three Rings. In: The Parable of the Three Rings and the Idea of Religious Toleration in European Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29695-7_2
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