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Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations

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A twelfth‐century Muslim biography of Jesus

a
Suleiman A. Mourad
a
Department of History and Archaeology , American University of Beirut , Lebanon
Published online: 18 Apr 2007.

To cite this article: Suleiman A. Mourad (1996) A twelfth‐century Muslim biography of Jesus, Islam and Christian–Muslim
Relations, 7:1, 39-45

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09596419608721066

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 Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1996 39

A Twelfth-Century Muslim Biography of Jesus

SULEIMAN A. MOURAD

ABSTRACT The biography of Jesus as it appears in Ibn cAsākir's Tārīkh madīnat dimashq
comprises material which originated from the Qurcān and from the Bible (the Old and the New
Testaments). It also comprises material that is neither qur'anic nor biblical: material reflecting
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an image of Jesus whom the Sūfī order in the medieval period was using as the prophetic
authority for its ascetic teachings, and whose purpose was to make him a prototype of the
ascetic (al_zāhid). Furthermore, Ibn cAsākir, writing at the time of the Crusades, believed in
the imminent qiyāma of Jesus to lead the Muslims to victory and to defeat the invaders. Ibn
c
Asākir's biography of Jesus reflects the extent to which literature about the earthly career of
Jesus had developed in Muslim lore by his time.

While helping Professor Tarif al-Khalidl at the American University of Beirutj in

researching the Muslim Arabic lore about Jesus Clsa ibn Maryam), I came across a
full-length biography of Jesus in Ibn cAsakir's Tarikh madinat dimashq: about 80 pages
of the unedited manuscript, each of 35 lines, with an average of 18 words per line,
making a total of approximately 50 000 words. Professor Khalidi told me that finders
are keepers. So I am presently editing this work for publication by the Royal Institute
for Inter-Faith Studies in Amman, using the two principal manuscripts of Ibn cAsakir's
Tarikh: the one of the Zahiriyya library 1 in Damascus, and the other of the Egyptian
National Library (Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyyd) in Cairo.
The family of Abu al-Qasim CAB ibn al-Hasan ibn cAsakir, the author of this unique
Muslim Arabic biography of Jesus,2 had lived in Damascus for many generations. Ibn
c
Asakir himself was born in Damascus in 499/1105, six years after the establishment of
the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem; and he died in 571/1176, two years after Saladin
had succeeded Nur al-Din to the rule of Damascus. The man, by common admission,
was among the most knowledgeable Muslim scholars of his time, both as a specialist in
Hadlth and as a historian.
c
Ibn Asakir's monumental Tarikh of Damascus was written during the latter decades
of his life, and produced in 80 volumes, of which only sections have so far been edited.
The Tarikh begins with an account of the history of Damascus from pre-Islamic times
until the late eleventh century AD. The rest of it consists of biographical material,
treating historical figures directly or indirectly connected to Damascus.
c
The reason why Ibn Asakir chose to include an entry on Jesus in the biographical
section of his Tarikh may be attributed to the qur'anic verse (23:50) referring to the
Gospel story about the flight of Mary with Jesus from Judaea to escape the so-called
Massacre of the Innocents (Matthew 2: 13-22). The verse in question says: 'And We
made the son of Mary and his mother a portent, and We gave them refuge on a height
(rabwa), a place of flocks and water-springs.' According to one tafsir of this verse, the
3
rabwa where Mary and Jesus took refuge was Damascus: more precisely, the terraced
and watered pleasure-ground outside the city which is still called al-Rabwa. Also,

0959-6410/96/010039-07 © 1996 Centre for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations
 40 Suleiman A. Mourad

according to a Muslim tradition related by Ibn cAsakir, Jesus was to be resurrected in

Damascus on the last day.4 To Ibn cAsakir, the qur'Snic verse connecting the early life
of Jesus to al-Rabwa, and the tradition speaking of his expected resurrection in
Damascus, apparently justified the inclusion of his biography in the history of the city.
The Jesus biography of Ibn cAsakir comprises material of three kinds: (1) material
deriving from the Qur'an and Hadlth; (2) material indirectly deriving from the Bible
(the Gospel accounts of the life and career of Jesus, as well as the Messianic oracles of
the Hebrew Prophets); and (3) the rich lore about Jesus found in early Muslim Arabic
literature. In this presentation, I shall limit myself to some observations regarding this
unusual Jesus biography: observations relevant to the medieval Muslim perception of
Jesus, and the image the Muslims had of Christianity during the same period.
Ibn cAsakir was clearly well acquainted with the Gospel accounts and Christian
traditions about the career of Jesus, from his birth until his Ascension to Heaven.
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'Qesus] was bom', he says, 'on 25 December1, without specifying the year. Yet,
remarkably, Ibn cAsak1r adds the following: "From the Ascension of Jesus until the Hijra
of the Prophet [Muhammad], [the time difference is] 933 years'.5 This would place the
Ascension in 31 lBC, rather than in AD29 or 30, which is the date commonly accepted
for the end of the earthly career of Jesus. It would also make Christianity more than
four centuries older than it is commonly known to be.6
As the authority for this unusual date for the career of Jesus, Ibn cAsakir cites cAmir
ibn SharahU al-Sha'bl (d. 103/721), a Muslim scholar who lived in Kufa in the first
century of the Hijra and was considered in his time a leading authority on Hadlth.
Clearly, al-ShaTsi must have known pre-Islamic Arab traditions about the life and times
of Jesus which differed radically from those of the Gospel jand early church accounts,
no matter the historical value of these traditions.
Apart from departing from the Gospel tradition by dating the life of Jesus back to the
fourth century BC, Ibn cAs§kir presents Jesus in a manner completely different from that
of the Gospels. In the Gospels, Jesus features as an eminently liberal and sociable
person who ate, drank, allowed himself to be anointed with perfume and advised its
use, conversed easily with women, and frequented banquets.7 Ibn eAsakir, however,
makes a particular point of depicting him as an austere figure: an ascetic (zdhid) who
avoided all the pleasures of life, and particularly the company of women, whom he
classified in the same category as the shayatm, or devils,8 and who enjoined his followers
to abandon the world and its temptations, and seek the ultimate good of the akhira, or
hereafter. Here is one, typical example of the manner in which Jesus is presented in the
Ibn cAsakir biography:
Jesus son of Mary ate barley, walked on foot and did not ride donkeys. He did
not live in a house, nor did he use lamps for light. He neither dressed in
cotton, nor touched women, nor used perfume. He never mixed his-drink with
anything, nor cooled it. He never greased or washed his hair or his beard.
[When he slept,] he never had anything between his skin and the ground [on
which he lay], except his garment. He had no concern for lunch or dinner, and
desired nothing of the world. He used to consort with the weak, the chroni-
cally sick and the poor. Whenever food was offered him on [a platter], he
would place it on the ground, and he never ate meat. Of food, he ate little,
saying: '[Even] this is too much for one who has to die and answer for his
deeds."
It is worth noting here that Ibn cAsakir's depiction of Jesus as an austere ascetic, with
 A Twelfth-Century Muslim Biography of Jesus 41

quotations from the Muslim Jesus lore to support this depiction of the man, covers no
less than 13 pages of his Jesus biography.10
Abiding by the Jesus story in the Qur'an, Ibn cAsakir accepts the virgin birth of Jesus
as a fact. He seems to have been puzzled, however, by the Gospel figure of Joseph as
Jesus' father, or foster-father. It was apparently in an attempt to resolve this Joseph
question, that he explains the passage about the Annunciation in Surat Maryam as
follows:
[God] sent her [His] Spirit, meaning [the angel] Gabriel, who appeared to her
... in human form as a handsome youth of fair complexion, with curly hair,
and a moustache which was just beginning to sprout. When she saw him
approach her, she said: 'I seek refuge with God, if you fear God!' This was
because she took him for a young man of Israel called Joseph whom she used
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to see, and with whom she had grown up. [This Joseph] used to serve in the
temple of Jerusalem (bayt al-maqdis), and [Mary] thought he had been
seduced by the Devil [to assault her]... 11
With respect to the relationship between Jesus and Muhammad, Ibn cAsakir cites an
unknown Hadlth—also, a most unusual one—regarding the shdhadatayn (the basic
credo of Islam):
The Prophet, God's blessing and peace be upon him, said: "Whoever testifies
that there is no god but God, alone with no partner, and that Muhammad is
His servant and messenger, and that Jesus is the servant of God and His
messenger and the son of His servant [Mary], and [also] His word which He
gave to Mary, and a Spirit from Him, and that Heaven is a reality, and that
Hell is a reality, God will admit [such a man] to Heaven from whichever of the
eight gates he wishes to enter.'12
The name of Jesus appears to have been introduced into this expanded version of the
shahadatayn to underline the Muslim concept of Jesus as the prophet whose spiritual
relationship to Muhammad was the closest and most intimate. This Muslim view of
Jesus is further underlined by Ibn cAsakir in other Hadiths which he cites, among them
the two that follow:
(1) The Prophet, God's blessing and peace be upon him, said: T h e prophets
are brothers of the same male lineage, and Jesus and myself are brothers
because he prophesied my coming, and there were no prophets between him
and me.' 13
(2) When "A'isha asked the Prophet whether or not she could be buried next
to him, the Prophet is quoted by Ibn cAsakir as having said:
In [the] place [of my burial], there is [only] room for my grave, for Abu Bakr's
grave, for TJmar's grave, and for the grave of Jesus son of Mary, God's
blessing and peace be upon him.14
In keeping with the Qur'an and Muslim tradition, Ibn cAsakir perceives Jesus as a
prophet whose mission was the preaching of Islam to Israel, his true followers having
been the Muslims. For example, elaborating on material deriving from Luke 11:27, he
says:
A woman said to Jesus son of Mary: 'Blessed is the womb which carried you,
and the breast which suckled you'. Jesus replied: "No, but blessed is he who
reads the Qur'an and follows its [teachings]'.
 42 Suleiman A. Mourad

Elsewhere, Ibn 'Asakir explains the following:

[After the Ascension of Jesus to Heaven, his followers] divided into three
communities. One said: 'God was among us for as long as He wished, then He
ascended Qefada) to Heaven.' Those are the Jacobites. Another said: T h e son
of God was among us for as long as he wished, then [God] made him ascend
(rafcfahu) to Him'. Those are the Nestorians. [Yet] another said: '[Jesus] was
the servant of God and His messenger for as long as God had wished, then
God made him ascend to Him.' Those are the Muslims. The two infidel
communities gained ascendancy over the Muslim community and destroyed
it. [For this reason,] Islam remained in eclipse until God sent Muhammad,
God's blessing and peace be upon him. 16
From what Ibn cAsakir says in this last connection, it is obvious that the Jacobites and
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the Nestorians—the two Christian sects best known to the Muslims—were seen to have
abandoned Islam, and hence to have become infidels by their own choice, some time
after the Ascension.17
Ibn cAsakir gives four other versions of this same explanation regarding the manner
in which the followers of Jesus became divided into different communities after the
Ascension. In three of them, he cites three communities which he leaves unnamed. 18 In
one of these three explanations, he describes the division among the followers of Jesus
as having been instigated by 'Satan and his demons' (tblis via cafantuhu), when they
intervened in one of their meetings and sowed discord among them." What we have
here is apparently a Muslim version or special interpretation of the New Testament
account of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-13). In a fourth explanation of what happened to the
followers of Jesus after the Ascension, Ibn cAsakir speaks of the emergence of four
rather than three different groups, the first three being the Muslims, the Jacobites and
the Nestorians, and the fourth being 'those who said that Jesus is one of three Gods:
the Transcendental God (allak trfdla) as one deity, Jesus as [another] deity, and his
mother Mary as [a third] deity*. This last group, says Ibn cAsakir, 'were the Israelites,
who are the kings of the Christians' (via hum al-isra ciliyyah, via hum tnnluk al-
nasara)20—the reference, in the latter case, being apparently to the Byzantines, or
perhaps to the Byzantines and the Latins of the West, both of whom had muluk, in the
sense of emperors.
According to the Qur'an, Jesus was not crucified: 'They slew him not nor crucified
him, but it appeared so unto them' (4:157). On this matter, Ibn cAsakir explains:
The Jews and the nasdra say that [Jesus] was killed. But the huwariyyun knew
that he was not killed, and they contradicted the report (qawl) of the nasdra
and the Jews.21
One is left wondering what Ibn cAsakir meant here by the nasdra (usually taken to
mean the Christians) and the huwariyyun (usually taken to refer to the disciples of
Jesus). Is it possible that the reference is to two early Christian sects (perhaps the
Nazarenes and the Ebionites) who might have held contradictory views as to how the
earthly career of Jesus came to an end?22
The perception of the non-Muslim followers of Jesus (i.e. of the historical Christians)
as being infidels is further attested in the stories related by Ibn cAsakir about the
Resurrection (al-qiydma)—to Ibn cAsakir, the expected qiydma of Jesus in Damascus,
and not the historical qiydma in Jerusalem, as reported in the Gospels. According to
him, one of the principal tasks of the Resurrected Jesus would be 'to fight for Islam', 23
and 'to destroy all the [non-Muslim] sects (al-milat)': the Jews, the Christians, the
 A Twelfth-Century Muslim Biography of Jesus 43

Zoroastrians and other polytheists, all of whom are united in infidelity (kufi), although
each sect was infidel in its own way.24
Writing at the time of the Crusades, what Ibn cAsakir had in mind was an imminent
qiyama of Jesus in Damascus to lead the Muslim Holy War against the Crusaders. On
this matter, he relates an alleged prophecy relating to the Crusades, attributed to
c
Abdallah ibn cAmr ibn al-cAs (d. 65/684), one of the Companions of the Prophet. I
give this alleged prophecy in paraphrase rather than in direct quotation, for the purpose
of brevity:
An army led by a Roman, one of whose parents is a devil (ahad abawayhi shaytan),
will invade al-Sham by land and by sea, disembarking between Acre and Tyre. The
local Christians (al-nasdra aUadhina bi-cd-shdm) will correspond with the invaders, to
indicate to them the weaknesses of the Muslims; and the Muslims would ask the local
Christians to leave [the Muslim] lands, because of their collusion with the enemy.
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Then, a great war will follow between the Muslims of al-Sham and their invaders; and
in the course of this war, Jesus will be resurrected to lead the Muslims to victory.25
According to Ibn cAsakir, this prophecy by cAbdallah ibn cAmr ibn al-cAs was meant
to explain the well-known Hadlth saying: 'God would send [the Muslim] community
Qiddhihi al-umma) a person who would renew its faith at the start of every hundred
years.' The Crusaders had first arrived in al-Sham towards the end of the fifth century
of the Hijra (the eleventh century AD), shortly before Ibn cAsakir was born, as already
observed. Perhaps Ibn "Asakir expected the Muslims to achieve their final victory
against them before the end of the sixth century of the Hijra (the twelfth century AD).
The prophecy about this victory, which he attributes to a Companion of the Prophet,
may well have been part of the Muslim lore that developed in al-Sham in reaction to
the Crusades: a lore which aimed at restoring confidence to the Muslims by assuring
them that the Crusaders were not the true followers of Jesus, but infidels; that Jesus was
not on their side, but on the side of the Muslims; and that the Muslim defeat at the
hand of these infidels would actually be vindicated before long by Jesus, upon his
imminent qiyama.
The biography of Jesus in Ibn cAsakir, as already indicated, includes a variety of
material deriving from the Qur'an and Hadlth, and from the biblical sources. The
material which originated from the Bible (the New Testament and the Old) is given
without any reference to the Bible, though frequently in slightly altered forms. The
most interesting, however, are the stories and sayings attributed by Ibn eAsakir to Jesus
and which derive neither from the Qur'an and HadTth, nor from the Bible. It is on the
basis of this extra-qur'anic and extra-biblical Jesus lore that Jesus is turned by Ibn
c
Asakir into a prototype of the zdhid, or ascetic, placing the main emphasis on this
aspect of his character. In doing so, Ibn cAsakir made Jesus say and do things he may
never have said or done, but which the Muslims in Ibn cAs5kir's time—the theologians
among them in general, and the Sufis in particular—would have wished him to have
said or done.
It can be argued that this was the case because the Sufi movement, which was rapidly
gaining ascendancy in Islam by the eleventh and twelfth centuries AD, needed some
prophetic authority on which to base its ascetic precepts. Such precepts could not be
found in the Qur'an, and only a limited emphasis on zuhd is detectable in the HadTth.
In fact, qur'anic Islam enjoins its followers to appreciate and enjoy the comforts and
pleasures the world has to offer—an injunction also found in Hadlth such as the
following: Three things pertaining to your world were made loveable to me: perfume,
women, and the most comforting to me being prayer.'26
 44 Suleiman A. Mourad

To the Sufis, Muhammad, as the author of Hadlth of this kind, did not seem to
recommend himself as a model for zuhd. So the role for the ideal zahid had to be
transferred to some other prophet, and the one chosen for it—originally, perhaps, by
popular Sufi opinion—was jesus. The choice of Jesus for the ideal zahid provided
Muslim Sufism, and the theologians devising a theoretical basis for Sufism, with the
prophetic authority they needed to justify the asceticism they prized.
To the good fortune of the Sufis and the theologians who followed their way, the
largest collection Muslim Arabic lore attributed to Jesus was to be found in Kitab
al-zuhd by Ahmad Ibn Hanbal (d. 241/855). Ibn Hanbal relates and cites over 70
anecdotes regarding Jesus, and sayings attributed to him, which emphasize his alleged
zuhd. Later, Abu HamTd al-GhazaH (d. 505/1111) was to relate over 100 such
anecdotes and sayings in his Ihyd'culum al-din. Hence, by the time of Ibn cAsakir, there
was no lack of Muslim material on Jesus to make him the model ascetic, which neither
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the Gospel nor the qur'anic Jesus was.

NOTES
1. Ibn cAsakir's manuscript of the Zahiriyya library is now available in photostat by Dar al-Bashir,
Amman, and it is produced in 19 volumes; each volume has its pages numbered separately. In this
study, I referred the reader to D2r al-Bashir photostat, volume no. 14, pp. 27(l)-106(8) ("isS ibn
maryam) for easier checking. Hereafter DBPZ.
2. Apart from the material on Jesus which is found in qisas al-anbiya' literature, it seems that this is
the only biography of Jesus which can be found in the Muslim Arabic biographical dictionaries.
3. See Ibn cAsakir, Tankh madtnat dimashq, vol. 1, Ed. by SalSh al-Dln al-Munajjid (Damascus:
al-Majmac al-cllml al-cArabI, 1951), 192(1)-198(15).
4. Ibn 'Asakir, 1:213(1)-218(6).
5. DBPZ, 14:30 (13-14).
6. Concerning the difference of 933 years between the Ascension of Jesus and the Hijra of
Muhammad, it cannot be argued that this difference refers to the Seleucid era. What we have in
Ibn cAs3kir>s text is an indication of the difference between the Ascension of Jesus and the Hijra
of Muhammad, and it is neither an indication of the birth of Muhammad nor to the difference
between the birth of Jesus and the Hijra of Muhammad. The known tradition concerning the date
of birth of Muhammad according to the Seleucid era is 892: see Ibn al-Tbrl (Bar Hebraeus),
Tankh mukhtasar al-duwal, Ed. by Antoine Salihani (Beirut, al-Mafbaca al-Kathulikiyya, 1969), 94
(14-15); see also Lawrence Conrad, Abraha and Muhammad: some observations apropos of
chronology and literary topoi in the early Arabic historical tradition, Bulletin of the School of Oriental
and African Studies 50 (1987), part 2, 234 (21-23).
7. As an example of such material, Jesus is quoted in the Gospel saying: 'For John came neither
' eating nor drinking, and they say, "He has a demon"; the Son of man came eating, and drinking,
and they say, "Behold, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners"!' (Matthew
11: 18-19).
8. DBPZ, 14:64 (9-19).
9. Ibid., 14:59 (34)-60 (5).
10. Ibid., 14:58 (10)-66 (13), 70 (26)-71 (16), and 78 ( l ) - 8 0 (35).
11. Ibid., 14:27 (21-25).
12. Ibid., 14:42 (16-18).
13. Ibid., 14:38 (26-27).
14. Ibid., 14:105 (24-26).
15. Ibid., 14:66 (32-33).
16. Ibid., 14:84 (28-33).
17. The general Muslim traditional view is that the Christians have counterfeited the Gospel. But here
we have an indication that the Christians did not counterfeit the Gospel, but rather abandoned
Islam.
18. DBPZ, 14:84 (19-21), 85 (32)-86 (9), and 86 (26)-87 (3).
19. Ibid., 85 (32)-86 (9).
 A Twelfth-Century Muslim Biography of Jesus 45

20. Ibid., 14:86 (13-20).

21. Ibid., 14:85 (6-7).
22. Concerning these two Christian sects, it is difficult to find out how each sect differentiated itself
from the other one: see J. Spenser Trimingham, Christianity Among the Arabs in Pre-Islamic Times
(London, Longman and librairie du Iiban, 1979), 48 (16)-49 (22); see also el-Hassan bin Talal,
Christianity in the Arab World (Amman, the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies, 1995), 9 (7)-12
(6).
23. DBPZ, 14:37 (33).
24. Ibid., 14:38 (17-18).
25. Ibid., 14:98 (l)-99 (13).
26. See al-Ghaz5li, Tfcya' cu/i2m al-dxn (Cairo: Mustafa al-Babl al-Halabl, 1939) 2:31 (20-21). Another
version of this Hadtth is quoted by Ibn Hanbal where the three things are: food, women and
perfume: see Ibn Hanbal, Musnad (Beirut, al-Maktab al-Islaml and D3r Sadir, 1969), 6:72
(21-22).
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