A heaven of wine: Muslim-Christian encounters at monasteries in the early Islamic Middle East

This dissertation reconsiders the transition from Christianity to Islam in the Middle East during the half-millenium following the Muslim conquest by investigating the development of Islam in dialogue with Christianity. Monasteries provide an angle for understanding the vital role of Christians, both real and imagined, in the evolution of Muslim identity and the formation of Islamic culture and society. Texts about monasteries participated in a larger Muslim discourse that defined the relationship between Christianity and Islam, the legacy of Christianity in the Muslim community, and Islam itself. They exhibit the process by which Muslims absorbed Christian social and religious spaces and interpreted them in their own tradition.;The works on monasteries of Shabushti (d. ca. 988), Yaqut (d. 1228), and al-`Umari (d. 1349), as well as ascetic biographies, chronicles, and popular romances, show monasteries to be the setting for a wide range of Muslim-Christian interactions. Chapter one describes the Muslim understanding of the physical monastery and its relation to the landscape of the early Islamic Middle East. Chapters two and three examine the Muslim literary tradition about monasteries. In ascetic biographies, the story of the visit to the monastery allowed authors to explore the relation between Muslim and Christian asceticism, either acknowledging shared practices or describing competition between Islam and Christianity. The most prevalent literary trope portrayed monasteries as places to indulge in wine, music, and flirtation. The stories secularized the monastery, turning the sacred Christian space into a place of leisure and indulgence for Muslims. Chapters four and five examine the historical patterns that shaped these texts, the social interaction and cultural dialogue that occurred at monasteries. The stories, although conforming to literary tropes and exaggerated to boast or condemn, originated in actual visits to monasteries, which were the base for Umayyad court ritual, following the practice of their Ghassanid Arab predecessors. Monasteries marked an established network of privileged sites, the backdrop against which a distinctly Muslim sacred topography developed. Finally, post-Crusader legends of Muslim-Christian warfare show that monasteries remained potent symbols of the encounter between Islam and Christianity, sites of both peaceful interaction and violent confrontation.