Dr Salam Rassi (BA, MA, DPhil)
Lecturer in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations
Address
- Street
-
Room 2.01
New College, Mound Pl,
Edinburgh EH1 2LX - City
- Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH1 2LX
Background
My main area of research is Christian-Muslim interactions across theology, philosophy, and literature. After completing my doctorate, I became a Mellon Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the American University of Beirut. I have also worked as a cataloguer of Syriac and Arabic manuscripts at the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library and was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Oxford. My first book, entitled Christian Thought in the Medieval Islamicate World, was published by OUP in early 2022.
Qualifications
BA History, SOAS, University of London (2004)
MA Christianities of Asia and Africa, SOAS, University of London (2008)
DPhil Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford (2016)
Undergraduate teaching
Christian-Muslim Relations: Diatribe, Discourse and Dialogue
Introducing Classical Syriac
Science, Sorcery and Wonder in Islam
Postgraduate teaching
Approaches to Research: Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations
The Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations
Introducing Classical Syriac
Science, Sorcery and Wonder in Islam
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Areas of interest for supervision
I would be interested in supervising PhDs in the following areas:
- Christian-Muslim theological encounters in the Middle Ages.
- Syriac literature (theology, poetry, historiography, canon law) in contact with Islam.
- Arabic-speaking Christianity in the Middle Ages.
- Christian encounters with Islamic philosophy.
Research summary
I primarily research the religious, intellectual, and social history of medieval Christian communities in Muslim-ruled lands. My interests cover a broad range of topics within the study of Christian-Muslim relations. These include historical theology, philosophy, history of science, and literature. I also work extensively with Arabic and Syriac manuscripts, since many of the works I study have yet to receive modern editions and translations.
My first book, Christian Thought in the Medieval Islamic World, is a study of ʿAbdīshōʿ of Nisibis (d. 1318) and his Christian apologetics against Islam. My book also covers a 600-year period of history—from the advent of Islam to ʿAbdīshōʿ’s lifetime—that saw the emergence of a distinct genre of Syriac and Christian Arabic apologetic literature. This genre, I argue, was central to how Christianity under Islam maintained theological continuity in the face of repeated challenges to its core teachings.
Current research interests
In addition to theology, I am also interested in philosophy and science as fertile sites of Christian-Muslim exchange. I have published an article on the ways in which Syriac Christian philosophy was transformed by its encounter with Muslim thinkers, namely Avicenna and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī. I also have a series of articles in preparation on the Syriac reception of post-Avicennan thought in Gregory Barhebraeus (d. 1286). The occult sciences are another area where Christian and Muslim cultures came together in exciting (and unexpected) ways. In 2021, I published a detailed study on a little-known alchemical treatise by ʿAbdīshōʿ of Nisibis and his use of both Christian and Islamic sources. Despite my training as a medievalist, I occasionally foray into more modern periods of Christian-Muslim encounter, having written an article on Arab Christian scribal practices at the dawn of print.Project activity
I am currently collaborating with colleagues on two major book projects. The first is an annotated translation of the historical section of the Book of the Tower (Kitāb al-Majdal) by ʿAmr ibn Mattā, an 11th-century chronicle of the patriarchs of the Church of the East. Our translation has been accepted for publication at Liverpool University Press’s Translated Texts for Historians (TTH) and will be a resource for students and non-specialists interested in the history of Christianity in Late Antiquity and the early Islamic period. I am also beginning a collaborative project to edit a handbook on the Syro-Arabic tradition. Among other things, it will examine historical interactions between the Arabic and Syriac languages and the emergence of a distinct Arabic-speaking culture and literature among Syriac-rite Christians in the Middle East.
Book
Christian Thought in the Medieval Islamicate World: ʿAbdīshōʿ of Nisibis and the Apologetic Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
‘Scribal and Commentary Traditions at the Dawn of Print: The Manuscripts of the Near Eastern School of Theology as an Archive of the Early Nahḍa.’ Philological Encounters, 6 (2021) 402–437 (open access).
‘Alchemy in an Age of Disclosure: The Case of an Arabic Pseudo-Aristotelian Treatise and its Syriac Christian “Translator”.’ Asiatische Studien 75, no. 2 (2021): 545–609.
Book Chapters
‘From Greco-Syrian to Syro-Arabic Thought: The Philosophical Writings of Dionysius bar Ṣalībī and Jacob bar Šakkō.’ In La philosophie en syriaque. Edited by Emiliano Fiori and Henri Hugonnard-Roche. 329-379. Études syriaques 16; Paris: Paul Geuthner, 2019.
‘Between Ecumenism and ʿaṣabiyya: ʿAbdīshōʿ bar Brīkhā’s Attitudes to Other Christians.’ In Syriac in its Multi-Cultural Context. Edited by H. Teule, E. Keser-Kayaalp, K. Akalın, N. Doru, and M.S. Toprak. Leuven: Peeters, 2017.
‘‘What Does the Clapper Say?’ An Interfaith Discourse on the Christian Call to Prayer by ʿAbdīshōʿ bar Brīkhā.’ In The Reception of Islam in Anatolia and its Neighbours. Edited by Andrew Peacock, Sar Nur Yildiz, and Bruno De Nicola, 263-284. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.
Book Reviews
The Syriac Writers of Qatar in the Seventh Century (ed. Mario Kozah). Al-Abḥāth 64 (2016): 164-167.
Book review: ‘Religious Origins of Nations? The Christian Communities of the Middle East (ed. Bas ter Haar Romeny).’ The Journal of Theological Studies 63, no. 2 (2012): 744-747.