Interreligious Disputation through Linguistic Boundary Maintenance: Elias of Nisibis on the Syriac and Arabic Languages

 At the beginning of his sixth of seven “sessions” (majālis) with Abbasid vizier ‘Ali al-Maghrebi (d. 1027), Church of the East metropolitan Elias of Nisibis (d. 1046) declares his intention to show that the Syriac language is “better, more useful, and of greater merit” than Arabic. In response to various questions posed by his Muslim counterpart, Elias enters into an analysis of grammar, handwriting, and speech that reflects his awareness of not only foundational principles of Arabic grammar, but also of contemporaneous debates among Islamic grammarians regarding the interpretation of the Qur’an. Following a 2009 study of David Bertaina, this paper will place Elias’ linguistic analysis within its broader Islamic intellectual context, thereby demonstrating that the dialogue might best be read as a Christian theological critique of the Islamic conception of revelation, ultimately occasioned by Christian concern about the increasing prevalence of Arabic over Syriac in the medieval Middle East.