The Source Value of Arabic Typikon-Manuscripts as Testimonials for the Byzantinization of the Melkites

Abstract

With the expansion of Islam, the patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria were divided from the Byzantine Empire. The Orthodox Christians there still defined themselves as Byzantine Orthodox and began to adapt their liturgical customs by adopting Byzantine liturgical books. When Greek was not understood any longer, they began to translate and copy their liturgical books, thereby creating their own branch of tradition, which is marked by multilingualism, reception of their own Bible tradition as well as the exclusion of “neo-martyrs” from their calendar of saints.

1. Introduction

After the Council of Chalcedon (451 ce), the Christians in the patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria were divided into a pre-Chalcedonese so-called “Miaphysite” group and the “Chalcedonese” group, which was also designated as “Melkite”. With this division, the impact of Byzantium on the worship traditions of the Melkites grew (Nasrallah 1987, p. 156).

The designation as “Melkite” is itself troubling. Apparently, the term was purely pejorative (Treiger 2014, p. 8) and not used as a self-designation before the 15th century. The Melkites simply felt that, being Orthodox and regarding the hierarchy of the church, there was no differentiation between Orthodox and Melkite (Galadza and van Vogelpoel 2019, pp. 36–37). It rather seems that the designation points to the language; in this case, we would speak of the “Melkites” as Arabic-speaking orthodox Christians (Galadza 2018, p. 81), and it seems that this designation is projected back to the roots of Orthodox Christians in the patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.

With the rise of Islam and the Arabic conquests in the early 7th century, the Melkites were cut off from the Byzantine Empire and lost the support of the Emperor, so they had to define their own identity in contrast to the other Christian denominations who shared the same juridical status. They did so by relying on the worship tradition of Byzantium, and by adopting their own rites and particular traditions to the Byzantine Rite by taking Byzantine liturgical books and as soon as they were not able to speak Greek any longer, by translating those liturgical books into Arabic. This process of Byzantinization was a silent and slow process, taking place “gradually and locally” (Galadza and van Vogelpoel 2019, p. 39). It ended with the Melkite patriarch Malātiyūs Karma (d. 1634) deciding to translate all the Byzantine liturgical books at once and print them. For this purpose, he took the existing translations of the manuscript tradition and corrected them against the circulating Greek Byzantine liturgical books, leading to plain translations without specific Melkite traditions.

Since there is no fixed date for the process of Byzantinization with respect to how and where it began, I investigated the Arabic manuscript tradition of the Typikon.

In what follows, I will take up the comparative analysis of the existing Arabic Typikon manuscripts that I undertook for my dissertation project and provide additional data that result from important studies that have been published recently (e.g., Galadza 2018; Penn 2015; Sahner 2018; Tannous 2018). I will start with a brief presentation of the manuscripts, focusing on the relationships between them, since there are families that can be identified that seem to be independent of each other. This is followed by brief reflections on those relationships. The third chapter consists of observations regarding certain aspects of the worship as regulated in the Typikon manuscripts that demonstrate the process of formation of identity as Byzantine Christians on the one hand and Arabic Christians on the other hand: the question of the use of Arabic in worship, the question of quotations from the Bible and therefore the acquaintance with the existing versions of the Bible, and the question of the calendar of saints.

2. The Arabic Typikon Manuscripts

2.1. Short Presentation of the Arabic Typikon Manuscripts

2.1.1. Overview

The manuscripts of Arabic Typikon translations that I have compared in my research have been identified in Joseph Nasrallah’s seven-volume work “Histoire du mouvement littéraire dans l’Église Melchite du V^e au XX^e siècle” (Nasrallah 1979, 1981, 1983, 1987, 1989, 1996; Nasrallah and Haddad 2016). There are, however, further manuscripts among the Sinai New Finds, among them Sinai ar. NF 65, which consists of only 24 folios giving an index of feasts for the years 6776 and 6777 am (1268 and 1269 ce) and a poem to the name of God (Meïmarēs 1985, p. 59), as well as Sinai ar. NF 83, a corroded fragment of a codex that seems to transmit liturgical instructions (Meïmarēs 1985, p. 62).

The Typikon manuscripts are (in chronological order):

• Sinai ar. 265
• Paul Sbath 73
• Sinai ar. 266
• Sinai ar. 267
• Sinai ar. 264
• Ṣaidnāyā 107
• Mār ʾAliyās Šwayyā 34

Like almost all Christian Arabic liturgical manuscripts, these Typikon manuscripts are translations from Syriac or Greek, but these translations developed their own history: existing translations were taken and corrected or further developed, and by this, the Syriac or Greek original source was blurred. Due to misunderstandings of the original text, new terms and expressions were created and received (Ghoneim 2010, pp. 45–46). Thus, the Arabic Typikon manuscripts build their own branch of tradition.

2.1.2. Sin. ar. 265

Sinai ar. 265 is a Typikon, presumably from the thirteenth century (following the catalogue, Kāmil 1951, p. 33), consisting of 192 leaves of paper. The leaves have been numbered by a younger scribal hand, and among them are the remains of the torn-out leaf no. 150, which must have been torn out before the entry of the page numbers. Each page consists of 13 to 14 lines, and the alphabets used are Arabic and Greek. The manuscript is, furthermore, highly decorated with patterns, calligraphy, and miniatures. It is a beautiful manuscript: the line breaks are even, sections are marked by ornamentation, subheadings usually cover the full width of a page, and the ink colors are black and red. One remarkable aspect allows further conclusions to be drawn about the preparation of the manuscript: fol. 54b is struck out and is very similar to fol. 112b, and missing words in lines 7 and 9 caused a shift of the text, which is maybe a hint that it is a grubby copy of an already existing Arabic manuscript rather than the sign of an original translation.

The colophon on fol. 149b is as follows:

تمت نظام التبيقون المعل بروح القديس من الاب القديس كوكب البريه معلم الرهبان والدياره مارى سابا فتسالمه بناو الاهنا يسوع المسيح ان يرشد الى ما امر به فى كتبه على اللسن ابينا وقديسه ورسله مع شفاع السيده ام النور وجميع القديسين امين والسبح به دايم نها عمل برسم الاب القديس كير القس يوسف ابن القس الياس الحميد عمر الله له ولوالدينه ولجمع فى المعموديه له

I completed the system of the Typikon, the work in the Holy Spirit, of the holy father, the star of the desert, the teacher of the monks and the monasteries, Mārī Sābā. And it was given to him by the son of our God, Jesus the Messiah, that he guides to what he commanded with it in his scripture, through the tongue of our father and his saints and his apostles with the intercession of our Lady, the mother of the light, and all the saints. Amen. And glory to him forever. End of the works by order of the holy father, Kīr, the presbyter, Yūsuf, son of the presbyter ʾAliyās, the praiseworthy. May God grant a long life to him and to his parents and to the community connected to him by baptism.

1

There is no hint of when and how the manuscript came to the Sinai monastery, its place of preservation today, or what it was used for. On the one hand, there are only a few traces of use, but on the other hand, there are hints of a direct liturgical purpose, since the Typikon is collated with a collection of Arabic translations of sayings of fathers and a collection of Greek apolytikia.

Sabas and his lavra are referred to in the title of the manuscript, which is quite typical for the Sabaitic Typikon:

نظام ترتيب الكنايسي المستقيم رايها المسما بلغه اليونانيه تبيقون اي معلم الكنايس ومديرها المنسوب الى الاب سابا صاحب السبق المتوشح بالاهيات

System of the orthodox ecclesial order, which is called in the Greek language Tibīqūn, i.e., the teacher of the churches and her directory which is attributed to the father, Sabas, the founder of the lavra, the god-bearing.

2.1.3. Sbath 73

The manuscript Sbath 73 is taken from the collection of Paul Sbath, former Syrian priest in Aleppo, which is now kept in Rome at the Vatican Library. The catalog of Paul Sbath identifies this manuscript as a Typikon in Arabic and Syriac from the thirteenth century (Sbath 1928, p. 51). However, comparing the contents shows that the manuscript seems to be younger than Sinai ar. 267 (discussed below), so it is likely from the fourteenth century (Lüstraeten 2017, p. 141).

Unfortunately, the manuscript is fragmented and the name of the scribe and the title of the manuscript are missing. The manuscript consists of 242 leaves of paper with differing numbers of lines of script, and for each section there is a quire mark on the upper left edge in the form of an Arabic ordinal number written in full, following which the manuscript starts with the second section of about 16 pages and the last section or the last two sections are also missing.

The manuscript is written in Arabic and Syriac, and most of the liturgical texts as well as the references to the Bible have been preserved in Syriac.

What is striking are the numerous cancellations and amendments, which appear to be testimonials for extensive use. Thus, the manuscript seems to have been in poor condition already from its beginning.

2.1.4. Sinai ar. 266

Sinai ar. 266 is enigmatic. The title of the manuscript gives no hint to the Sabas monastery:

فصل مختصر من التبيقون يعرف به اطروباريات العياد علي دور السنة بتمامه وكماله

Abridged section of the Tibīqūn to become acquainted with the Ṭrūbāriyāt of the feasts in the course of the year in its entirety and completeness.

In fact, this manuscript is not a Typikon but a calendar of feasts with full Arabic translations of the respective apolytikia. The manuscript is collated with a table for the computation of Easter and a lectionary of the eleven resurrection Gospels. Since the first entry in the table is for the year 6830 am and gives 12 April for Easter, which can be identified with the year 1322 ce, Murad Kāmil identified this as the year of composition (Lüstraeten: 143). There is no colophon, no entry regarding the owner or the purchase of the manuscript, or anything else which would allow conclusions to its origins.

2.1.5. Sin. ar. 267

The manuscript Sinai ar. 267 is again a Typikon in Arabic and Syriac and is dependent on the manuscript Ṣaidnāyā 107. Murad Kāmil (1951, p. 34) dates this manuscript to the year 1325, Nasrallah (1981, p. 150) states that it was written before 1326, but ʾAzīz ʿAṭīya (1970, p. 496) gives the year 1345. This discrepancy is caused by the colophon on fol. 353ab, which states:

فكان النجاز من كتبته نهار الخميس خامس عشر شهر كانون الاخ بتاريخ سنه الف وستمايه وسبعه وثلثين بسنه يونانيه كتبه العبد الحقير الكثير الخطايا الاسم قس الياس ابن القس يعقوب من قريه اميون في بلد طرابلس الشام وكتبه وهو ابن ثمانين سنه ⁂ فلا يعتب عليه ان كان فيه نقص او زال ⁂ لان الله الكامل وحده ⁂ وكان المعتني بنصاخته وحبكه وتجليده الاب الفاضل السيد الرييس ابا افرام خادم دير سيده كفتون وساير مطوشياته ⁂ وهي ثمن اديره في الجبل والساحل واعتناه المذكور في نصاخته وعمله وقف عن روحه ⁂ لدير طور سينا ⁂ وهو برسم كنيسه السريان ⁂ في الدير المقدس طور سينا ⁂

And the completion of this book was on Thursday, the fifteenth of the second Kanūn of the year one thousand six hundred and thirty-seven in the Greek year. It was written by the humble and manifold sinful servant with the name: presbyter ʾAliyās, son of the presbyter Yaʿqūb, from the village of ʾAmiyūn in the land of Tripoli of Syria. And he wrote it as a man of eighty years. So don’t admonish if there is an omission or an amendment, because ʾAllāh is perfectly one. And the one who cared for its copy, its binding and its cover, was the exceptional father, the presider, ʾAbā ʾAfrām, servant of the monastery of the Lady of Kaftūn and the rest of its metochies. And those are eight monasteries in the mountains and at the shore. And the abovementioned took pains to preserve its spirit in the copy and his work for the monastery of Mount Sinai.

The date can only relate to the system of the Seleucid Era (also called “anno Graecorum”), which would not have been in use in that time anymore, except for some Syriac chroniclers. There are different systems with different beginnings of the year, so a precise transfer to our calendar is not possible; the year would be 1326 or 1327, suggesting Nasrallah’s dating is correct.

The colophon further identifies the writer as coming from ʾAmiyūn and the purchaser to come from the monastery of Our Lady at Kaftūn, which is very close to ʾAmiyūn. This monastery was either a bi-confessional monastery or a double monastery for two confessions in the thirteenth century, where Melkite and Maronite monks lived close to each other (Mouawad 2002, p. 95).

On the flyleaf preceding the first page, there is a notice of purchase, indicating that this manuscript was given “to the church of Our Lady for the group of Syrians,” which could possibly be identified with the Syriac congregation of the monastery Mt. Sinai, where it is kept today.

The title of the manuscript refers, of course, to the lavra of St Sabas:

[نكتب[ ترتيبً كناسياً ونظامً بيعياً مسما بلغه اليناني تبيكن منسوبَ الي سيق ابينا البار والمتوشح بالله سابا

We write the ecclesial order and the churchly system, called in the Greek language Tibīkun, attributed to the lavra of our father, the blessed god-bearer Sābā.

The script is untypical: to help the reader, there are marginal notes with information on the content of each double page—it seems that the Syriac script and the Arabic script were not written at the same time. The manuscript is in a good condition and bears only few traces of use.

2.1.6. Sin. ar. 264

The Typikon Sinai ar. 264 was—according to Murād Kāmil—written in 1336, but this is a strange date regarding the several steps of redaction, of which the redaction of 1336 was neither the first nor the last: the original manuscript was a Greek manuscript, written by the monk Hesychios of the monastery Mar Saba, who finished his work on 22 April 6695 am, which is 1187 ce. He gave that manuscript to the church of the Forty Martyrs in Ḥarat ar-Rūm (part of today’s Cairo). The colophon takes this as a point of departure for its strong emphasis on the ties to the Sabas monastery, as is stated on fol. 204b:

سجل كُلّ واقف على كتابنا هَدا يعلم ان نسخة الاَصل الروميّه المنتقل منها نسخه حيده حدّاً جدا وفى اخرها مكتوب ما هَدا فحواه ان كمل نسخَها في يوم الاثنين العشرين من شهر نيسان عام سته الف وستمايه خمسه وتسعين للعلم على يد ايسيشيوس الراهب فى دير السيق الكُلّى الشظف المختص بالقديس صابا المتقدس وعليه الخبيس الرومى على السيق المدكور وهى الان كنيسه القديسين الشهدا الاربعين بحاره الروم بالقاهره المحروسه ولعل تكون هذه النسحه منقوله من نسحه الاصل الى خط واضِع الكتاب او من نسخه منقوله منها لانه فى السيق المذكور وَضعهُ ولانها قريبه العَهد من المشار اليه لان فى وزاره ابيه على ايّام هرقل الملك اخذت دمشق من الروم فى سنه سته الف ومايه ثمانيه واربعين للعلم وهَذا القديس استقر فى الوزارهَ بَعد ابيه وعمل عليه شرحت ذلك فى كتاب الفته وسميته بالهادِى فى معرفه السيماوى في باب الشيروتوميّا 2 فبحت على من طالعهُ ان لا يشك فى ان هذه النسخه اتمّ من كل النسخ الموجوده في ايدى النآس لانها من المعدَن خرجت ولا ينبغى لاحد ان يغير منها شى البتّه بل يكون الاعتماد عليها فى كل الترتيب الموضوع وللّهِ الشكر وحيل الامتنان

Everyone who is interested in this our book is informed that the translated Roman [=Byzantine] original copy was copied till the end. And at its completion it is written that its sense and its copy were completed on the twenty-second day of the month Nīsān [= April] of the year six thousand six hundred ninety-five of the world [=1187 ce] by the hands of ʾĪsīšiyūs [=Hesychios], the monk, in the monastery of the lavra of great discomfort, the one dedicated to the holy Ṣābā, the Sanctified. And he is a Roman [=Greek] hermit according to the above-mentioned lavra. And it is for the church of the Forty Martyrs at Ḥārat ar-Rūm at Cairo. And this copy was translated from the original copy to the script of the writer of that book or from a translated copy, so that in the above-mentioned lavra it was compiled. And so it is closely adhered to because it was in the scriptorium of our father in the days of Haraqal [=Herakleios], the king, when Damascus was taken from Rome, in the year six thousand one hundred forty-eight of the world [=640 ce]. And this saint settled in the scriptorium after his father and worked on it. This was explained in a book that he composed and named “Guidance to the teaching about the heavenly things” in the chapter “Aš-širotoniya“ [=Cheirotonia]. And he investigated about him, who perused it, so that there is no doubt that this copy was finished before all [other] copies which can be found in the hands of men, so this is the original which was published. And it is not desired that anyone changes anything, but there should be reliance on it in all the regulations that are given. And thanks be to God and gratitude to his power.

The translation into Arabic was finished on Wednesday, 28 February 6816 am, given in Greek numbers, which is the year 1308 ce. The first appendix was added on Tuesday, 5 December 6844 am, which is identified with the seventeenth day of Rabīʿ II 736 ah and corresponds to the year 1335 ce. The author of that first appendix is Abū l-Fatḥ Qusṭanṭīn Ibn Abī l-Maʿālī Ibn Abī l-Fatḥ, apparently a monk.

The second appendix is not identified. The third appendix was added on Friday, 2 April 7082 am, which corresponds to the year 1574 ce, by a monk named Pachomios. This shows that the manuscript was in use for more than two hundred years.

The manuscript starts with a long doxology and a poem and then turns to explaining the purpose of a Typikon, after which it continues with the title:

التيبيكون المشتمل على الرسوم البيعيّه

The Typikon, comprising the orders of the church

Neither Sabas nor his lavra is mentioned. However, as shown, the colophon claims a Sabaitic manuscript as a model.

2.1.7. Ṣaidnāyā 107

The manuscript Ṣaidnāyā 107 appears to be a copy of Sinai ar. 267. The title is thus almost the same:

[نكتب] نظامً بيعياً وترتيب كناسياً مسما بلغه اليناني تبيكن منسوبَ الي سيق ابينا البار المتوشح بالله سابا

We write the churchly system and the ecclesial order, called in the Greek language Tibīkun, attributed to the lavra of our father, the blessed god-bearer Sābā.

The colophon on fol. 304b-305a gives some information on the way this manuscript has traveled:

نجز بعون الله وحسن توفيقه الكتاب الشريف التبيكن المبارك المترجم المنقول من الرومي الي العربي والسرياني ⁂ غفر الرب لمن ترجمه وكتبه وقايله واعتنا به وتعب فيه امين ◊ وكان النجاز من كتبته نهار الاربعا ثامن عشر خات من شهر تموز المبارك سنه ستالاف وتسعمايه احد وستين لابينا ادم عليه السالم ◊ وذلك علي يد العبد الخاطي المسكين ابراهيم باسم قس الساكن يومئد بمدينه صافيثا وهو يسال لكلمن قرا في هذا التيبكن المبارك ان وجد فيه غلط واصلحه يصلح الربّ الاله احواله قدام السيد المسيح لان كل انسان ناقص والله هو الكامل ◊ ولربّنا والاهنا الشكر دايماً ابد اسر مدى وعلينا رحمته امين ◊ يكون ذلك يكون بشفاعة السيده لها النور وجميع القديسين امين ◊ وهو برسم الخوري يعقوب بن سليمان الشماس بن حريز خادم كنيسه القديسه بربارة بمدينه بعلبك الله تعلى يهنيه به زمان طويل امين اشتري هذا الكتاب المبارك المسما كتاب التيبيكن الحقر فى روسا الكهنه سماون خادم كرسى دير ستنا السيده بمحرسه صيدنايا والمجيده مرثه مريّة الدير ستنا السيده

Executed with the aid of God the most high, this noble book is in accordance with the blessed Tībikun, translated from Roman [=Greek] to Arabic and Syriac. The Lord guarded him who translated it, copied it, and compiled it and who cared for it and made efforts with it. Amen. And the execution of his book took eighty-four days. It was completed on Wednesday, the eighteenth of the blessed month Tammūz of the year six thousand nine hundred sixty-one since the creation of Adam—peace be on him [typical Islamic formula for the designation of saints] [=1453 ce?]. And this by the hand of the fallible and miserable servant ʾIbrāhīm by name, henceforth priest at the town of Ṣāfīṯā. And he asks everyone who reads in this blessed Tībikun, if he finds mistakes or better things, to correct it. The Lord God be kind to his years, because before the Lord, the Messiah, every human is peccable and God is the perfect one. And to our Lord and our God be thanks for ever and ever and upon us his mercy. Amen. And this be with the intercession of our Lady, to her be the light, and of all saints. Amen. And it was [written] by the command of the chorbishop Yaʿqūb, son of Sulaymān, the deacon, son of Ḥāriz, servant of the church of the holy Barabra in the town of Baʿalbak. God, the most high, may grant him a long life. Amen. This blessed book, which is called book of the Tībīkun was purchased by the humble among the directors of the priesthood, Simāʿūn [=Symeon], servant of the chair of the monastery of our Lady in the town wall of Ṣaydnāyā and of the blessed Marṯa Marya of the monastery of our Lady.

Thus, the manuscript was completed on Wednesday, 18 July 6961 am, which corresponds to the year 1453 ce, and it was written by ʾIbrahīm, presbyter at the town of Ṣāfitā. The codex was commissioned by the bishop Yaʿqūb ʾIbn Sulaymān ʾIbn Ḥarīz, rector of the church of St Barbara at Baʿalbek. A partially illegible notice on the last page gives the information that a person named Simāʾūn purchased it for the monastery of Ṣaidnāyā, of which he was the abbot. Another notice gives the date of Wednesday, 26 July 7073 am, which corresponds to the year 1564 ce, for a purchase—maybe the purchase for the monastery of Ṣaidnāyā since the manuscript was kept there.

2.1.8. Mār ʾAliyās Šwayyā 34

The manuscript Mār ʾAliyās Šwayyā 34 bears the following title:

التيبيكون المشتمل على الرسوم البيعيّه

The Tībīkūn, comprising the orders of the church

It is the same title as Sinai ar. 264 and it is obviously a copy. On fol. 23b, it is written that the manuscript was written in two parts: the description of the agrypnia was taken from an earlier translation and the second part was written by Sābā bi ʾIsm lā bi-l-faʿl talmīḏ al-ʾAb al-maṭrān Yūʾākīm al-Ladaqīy at the monastery of Dūmā. This work was finished on Thursday, 6 March 7103 am, which corresponds to the year 1595 ce. The colophon mentions further Sābā bi ʾism šammās ʾibn Ṯadrus muʿraf bi ʾIbn al Ḥawrānīy from Beirut as copyist, who made this copy at the monastery of St John the Baptist at Dūmā in the region of Batrūn. A notice on fol. 211b says that the manuscript was given to the monastery of Mār ʾAliyās in Šwayyā and the reception was confirmed on fol. 1b by Bishop Yuḥannā from Maʿalūlā—unfortunately, he does not provide a date. The manuscripts correspond mostly word-by-word to Sinai arabicus 264, but the content of the appendices was integrated into the corpus.

2.2. Monasteries as the Contributors to the Process of Arabization and Byzantinization

All the Arabic Typikon manuscripts and most of the Arabic liturgical manuscripts come from monasteries. This is to be expected since the monasteries were consulted as scriptoria to copy books and since they possessed repositories for huge amounts of books. Palestinian monastic life was especially multifaceted and brought together monks from different cultures and languages, so the monasteries there were international (Hirschfeld 2006, pp. 401–2). Thus, there were different languages spoken, and if the communities were large enough, it could be arranged that they held the services in their own language (Taft 2010, pp. 168–69), which is already attested for the time of the founding of the lavra of St. Sabas (cf. Cyr. Scyth. Vita S. Sabas 32, ed. Schwartz 1939, p. 117). However, at the time the manuscripts were written, the monasteries in Syria were in a precarious condition, and many of them were destroyed (Nasrallah 1981, p. 80). Only a few monasteries in Syria demonstrably existed at that time, and Nasrallah mentions only two monasteries in Egypt that survived (Nasrallah 1981, p. 82). This hindered the intellectual exchange between these monasteries.

This explains the phenomenon of parallel translations of the same work at different monasteries, which leads to different Arabic versions of this work. Some of them were exchanged later so that the library of the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai also houses manuscripts or copies of manuscripts from Palestinian monasteries. It is thus not astonishing to find a Typikon tradition, which involves the Sinai monastery as well as Palestinian monasteries. The Sinai monastery recruited its monks not only from Egypt, but also from the realm of the patriarchate of Antioch and beyond, so it is also possible that some of them brought their Typikon tradition to the monastery.

This leads to the conclusion that the process of the Arabic translation of the Typikon was not a centralized process and that the patriarchs were not involved. Rather, the monasteries decided by themselves to translate the Byzantine liturgical books, to copy them, and to exchange them with other monasteries.

3. Observations Regarding the Celebrated Worship

3.1. Multilingualism

The process of Arabization raises several questions, among them the question of connection to Islamization (see Wasserstein 2006), the influence of the movement of Arabs outwards from the Arabian peninsula, or the impact of the coordinated translation of Greek literature into Arabic.

The Melkites, apparently, started to write in Arabic by the middle of the 9th century and to translate Christian texts (Leeming 2003, p. 240). However, translations of liturgical texts started from the 13th century onwards, and no systematic translations of any liturgical books are not found before the 17th century. The process of Arabization developed in waves and was sometimes interrupted by stages of Re-Graecization. Up to the 13th century, the Melkites tended to use Greek or Syriac (Christian Palestinian Aramaic) in worship, maybe because people assumed a certain dignity of the established liturgical languages (Pahlitzsch 2006, p. 40) or because the language was part of their identity since the Melkites defined themselves also as “as-Suryānī” (Pahlitzsch 2006, p. 47). Arabic happened to be implemented because Greek was not understood any longer.

This multilingualism of the Melkites is reflected in worship and thus also in the Melkite manuscript tradition. At the large monasteries of Mar Saba in Jerusalem or St. Catherine of Mount Sinai, there were apparently monks from different origins who spoke different languages. Most scholars assume that they celebrated worship in linguistically separated communities, especially regarding the Liturgy of the Hours as well as the Liturgy of the Catechumens. However, the Divine Liturgy was celebrated together in Greek. This assumption is, however, based on accounts from Palestinian monasticism and may be wrong, but it helps to explain the number of horologia manuscripts in contrast to euchologia manuscripts (Galadza and van Vogelpoel 2019, p. 37). It also seems probable that Arabs attended services together with the Greek community and that their worship was bilingual in Arabic and Greek (Leeming 2003, p. 242).

The manuscripts reflect this bilingualism: Daniel Galadza and Alex C. J. Neroth van Vogelpoel described a Melkite manuscript giving the text of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom in Syriac letters but with many of the deacon’s parts and the people’s responses in Greek words in Syriac letters (see Galadza and van Vogelpoel 2019). They conclude that Greek text in Syriac letters was spoken in Greek and that the Divine Liturgy was thus celebrated in a bilingual mix of Greek and Syriac. The same is true for the Arabic Typikon manuscripts. The oldest one, Sin. arab. 265, describes an all-night-vigil in full, which is mostly Greek with the exception of some intercessions and the hint to an Arabic ad hoc-translation of the Bible (Lüstraeten 2017, p. 809). The other manuscripts also show the phenomenon of quoting Greek incipits in Arabic letters or in Arabic translation, leading to assumptions of their Greek or Arabic performance.3 In the long perspective, the Arabic Typikon manuscripts tend to quote more and more elements in Arabic than in their original language, thereby preferring the ordinary parts of the community as well as the parts of the deacon that are directed towards the community (Lüstraeten 2017, p. 810). Thus, it seems that the Arabization of Melkite worship started with the parts of the community or directed to the community, whereas the rest is preserved in the original language, leading to bilingual worship.

3.2. The Bible Version

Which Bible was used during worship? There are many different Arabic Bible versions in the manuscript tradition, especially since they are translated from different languages and different text types at different times and sometimes even from memory.4 Since Bible scholars were concentrating on the original text of the Bible, the Arabic Bible versions were not discussed for a long time. In the middle of the 19th century, the idea was discussed that the Arabic Bible is largely based on the Latin tradition (Schulthess 2012, p. 520), and in the 20th century, the focus of Arabic Bible studies was to find pre-Islamic Arabic translations in order to argue for the existence of fully Arabized Christians in Pre-Islamic times (Schulthess 2012, p. 522). A thorough investigation of the Arabic Bible started in 1980 with the works of Samīr Ḫalīl Samīr.

The most important contribution is the monograph of Hikmat Kashouh (2012) “The Arabic Versions of the Gospels. The Manuscripts and their Families”, which he published in 2021. Kashouh limits his work to the gospels, he extracts eight test passages from more than two hundred manuscripts copied between the eighth and nineteenth centuries, compares them, and groups them. He also compares the different variants with Bibles in other languages to determine the respective original. The manuscripts are from different books, such as full Bibles as well as liturgical books like lectionaries. The concentration on samples was necessary to work with that many manuscripts, but unfortunately limits the validity of his conclusions.

Since in an article from Kashouh (2007) published a comparison of his manuscripts based on John 1:1 and John 1:18, I was able to compare the quotations of the Prologue to John as given per incipit in the Typikon manuscripts for the reading at the Easter service to the samples of Kashouh.

According to this, the translator of Sin. arab. 264 used the so-called “Alexandrinian Vulgate,” the most widespread version of the Bible, a Bible that was based on a Syriac or a Greek original and then corrected against the Coptic version of the Bible (Kashouh 2012, p. 205). This version of the Bible goes back to the 10th century and became standard from the 13th century onwards, so that it is not surprising to find it here.

The identification is much harder for the other Typikon manuscripts: The related manuscript Mār Šw. 34 does not quote the incipit; at another incipit, the manuscript does not quote the verse from Matthew but the synoptic verse from Mark, which makes it impossible to compare the incipits to the samples provided by Kashouh. The oldest manuscript, Sin. arab. 265, does not quote incipits, and the manuscripts Sin. arab. 267, Sbath 73, and Ṣaid. 107 quote from a Syriac gospel. Regarding Sin. arab. 266, it is not possible to compare the Prologue to John but the incipits of the resurrection gospels; however, for comparison I could not use the samples of Kashouh but the wording of Sin. arab. 101, one of the oldest extant manuscripts of the “Alexandrinian Vulgate”. Following this, Sin. arab. 266 does not quote the Alexandrinian Vulgate, but its wording shows a close connection to the established Byzantine Greek Gospel. Thus, it seems, that the resurrection gospels are direct translations from the liturgical book (Lüstraeten 2017, pp. 170–79).

For a further identification of the version of the Bible used, it is necessary to compare the quotes from the Psalms as given in the Typikon manuscripts. However, this requires a thorough study of the Arabic tradition of Psalms, which is still pending, as the research concentrated on the Gospel tradition so far.

3.3. The Calendar of Saints and the Neo-Martyrs

How did the Melkites treat their particular martyrs who were never commemorated in Byzantium? To distinguish the early martyrs who died during the persecutions in the time of the Roman Empire from the faithful Christians who suffered their martyrdom in later times, the term “neo-martyr” is applied. However, the term is unspecific: according to Constantin Simon (2006, pp. 100–1), there are four groups of “neo-martyrs”, divided along their respective epoch:

• the Iconoclasm
• the Ottoman Empire
• the Roman Catholic or Protestant Rule and
• the Communist Regime.

In this division, he unfortunately overlooks those martyrs who died under the early Islamic rule, maybe because of his focus on Byzantium and Russia.5 Nomikos Michael Vaporis (2000, pp. 1–2), who focused his research on the “neo-martyrs” of the Ottoman Empire concluded that the rise of martyrdoms is in general a signal for the decline of a society (Vaporis 2000, p. 14), which was obviously the case, too, for those Christians under the rule of Islam.

In 2018, Christian Sahner published his monograph “Christian Martyrs under Islam. Religious Violence and the Making of the Muslim World”, which was the first book concentrating on the Christian “neo-martyrs” under Islamic dominion. He analyses the hagiographical accounts of those martyrdoms with a focus on the social and juridical backgrounds. According to him, several elements of those hagiographical accounts do not need to be motifs but seem to reflect the reality of trial, torture and execution of Christians (Sahner 2018, p. 160). He reports that there was probably never broad-based persecution of Christians but episodes of religious violence in different regions at different times (Sahner 2018, p. 162). Usually, the Islamic states reacted to notifications of private individuals about conversions to Christianity (Sahner 2018, pp. 163–64), which was perceived by the rulers as apostasy from Islam or as blasphemy. Although those cases were handled with great care (Sahner 2018, p. 168), there was never a doubt about the Qurʾān enjoining death penalty as is said in Q 5:33:

إِنَّمَا جَزَاء الَّذِينَ يُحَارِبُونَ اللّهَ وَرَسُولَهُ وَيَسْعَوْنَ فِي الأَرْضِ فَسَادًا أَن يُقَتَّلُواْ أَوْ يُصَلَّبُواْ أَوْ تُقَطَّعَ أَيْدِيهِمْ وَأَرْجُلُهُم مِّنْ ِلافٍ أَوْ يُنفَوْاْ مِنَ الأَرْضِ ذَلِكَ لَهُمْ ِزْيٌ فِي الدُّنْيَا وَلَهُمْ فِي الآ خ ِرَةِ عَذَابٌ عَظِيمٌ

And the punishment of those who make war against ʾAllah and his messenger and walk upon the earth with corruption will be that they are killed or crucified or have their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides or that they are exiled from the earth. This is for them the disgrace in the world and for them thereafter a heavy punishment.

Some of the “neo-martyrs” suffered exactly the punishments mentioned here (Sahner 2018, p. 171). Public executions had the function of stabilizing the ruling regime at a moment when non-Muslims were the large majority; they also forged boundaries between Christianity and Islam at a time of porous borders and intermingling (Sahner 2018, p. 161).

Probably the first occasion was under the reign of caliph ʿAbd Al-Malik (685–705), who began to promote the new religion and the new language and to supersede Christianity. The measurements for the Islamic mission were successful, especially the settlement of Arab Muslims in the new provinces and the introduction of a tax per head for Christians and Jews so that although there was no systematic Islamization of the people, many of them converted to Islam. However, any Christian, who converted to Islam and afterwards converted back to Christianity had to fear a death penalty for apostasy and many of the Melkite “neo-martyrs” of this epoch are such “apostates”, who converted unintentionally or through trickery to Islam but wished to remain Christians. The next occasion was as the power passed from the Umayyad to the Abbasid Caliphate and the new caliph, Al-Manṣūr (754–775), forbid the public display of crosses on churches (Schick 1995, p. 163), the use of other languages than Arabic, the ringing of bells or the beating of woodclappers (Schick 1995, p. 166), etc. One of his successors, Hārūn Ar-Rašīd (786–809) continued this discrimination and during the civil war of the fourth fitna (809–813) between his sons, Christians fled to Cyprus or Byzantium.

It is thus not surprising that Christians who died during those attacks were considered martyrs in their respective communities and Sahner claims that most of the hagiographical accounts were written by Melkites and concludes that the Melkite Church lost their imperial support through the expansion of Islam and was thus in need to build up a new identity (Sahner 2014, p. 92; Sahner 2018, p. 200). The hagiographical accounts also served the function to discourage any Christian from considering converting to Islam.

However, in contrast to other Christian denominations, the Melkites included the new martyrs and the new hagiographical material into their Synaxarion, i.e., the calendar of saints that gives for each day the proper saints as well as short summaries of their lives to be read at liturgical assemblies. It needs to be distinguished on the one hand from the Mēnologion, which would be a pure calendar of saints and the Mēnaion, which would not contain the summaries of the saints’ lives but the proper for each feast.

The calendar of saints of the Melkite Synaxarion was edited and analyzed by Joseph-Marie Sauget in his book “Premières Recherches sur l’Origine et les Caractéristiques des Synaxaires Melkites”, which was published in 1969. In this investigation, Sauget compared 19 Melkite Synaxaria (distributed in 20 different manuscripts) of different ages, from the 11th to the 18th century (Sauget 1969, pp. 40–108), so it is obvious that these are Synaxaria of different stages of development. He explicitly excluded the first printed Melkite Synaxarion of Malātiyūs Karma (1612), since this was an Arabic translation of a Greek Byzantine liturgical book (Sauget 1969, p. 25). He tried to figure out the genesis of the sanctoral cycle and the presumed influences on it. Sauget found out that all analyzed Synaxaria copied and expanded the same archetype (Sauget 1969, p. 109) and that this original Synaxarion was a translation of a Byzantine Synaxarion, written in the 11th century (Sauget 1998, p. 178), similar to the Synaxarion of Codex Ambr. Grec. C 101 Sup. The differences between the different manuscripts of the Synaxarion result from later additions, e.g., of local saints or of feasts of other calendars, so the common structure of the different manuscripts is supposed to represent the primitive structure of the original Melkite Synaxarion (Sauget 1969, p. 109). Starting from that point, all manuscripts were enriched by the adoption of saints, and almost all of these manuscripts added Byzantine saints (Sauget 1969, pp. 170–71).

Furthermore, Sauget identifies two groups of manuscripts: a “primitive group”, representing the original structure of the Melkite Synaxarion as given in the Greek original manuscript, and an “augmented group” of manuscripts that were enriched with further feasts of non-Byzantine origin. Comparing the manuscripts of the “augmented group” shows that there are some commemorations that appear in almost all manuscripts of this group and that cannot be traced back to a Byzantine influence, which Sauget identifies as “Melkite proper”6. Once again, the proper about the “Melkite proper” is that these feasts are mentioned in almost every manuscript of the Melkite Synaxarion despite being unknown to the Byzantine Synaxarion. The “Melkite proper” consists of 36 feasts (Sauget 1969, p. 179)7:

• Abraam, the brigand (September 7th)
• Theodōros, the patriarch (September 24th)
• Basileios, the patriarch (September 25th)
• Abraam, the youth (October 6th)
• Nikolaos, the patriarch (October 8th)
• Iōannēs of Daylam (October 10th)
• Eustratios (October 17th)
• Ambakum (October 17th)
• Michaēl (October 17th)
• 63 martyrs of Jerusalem (October 22nd)
• dedication of Geōrg (November 3rd)
• Palladios (November 27th)
• translation of Iakōbos (December 1st)
• translation of Dēmētrios (December 2nd)
• Antōnios, the Qurayšī (December 24th)
• Iōannēes, the hesychast (January 8th)
• Maximos and Dometa (January 10th)
• Kyriakos (January 30th)
• Agathanos (February 7th)
• ʿAbd al-Masīḥ (Christodulos) (March 9th)
• Agathōn (March 10th)
• Ṭamūn (March 25th)
• Stephanos, the Sabaite (April 2nd)
• Kopras and Patermuthios (April 7th)
• Ephraim (May 5th)
• Theoktiste (May 13th)
• Märtyrer of Mamilla (May 20th)
• Christophoros of Antioch (May 21st)
• Kyriakos of Jerusalem (May 21st)
• Michaēl in Alexandria (June 6th)
• Bišoy (July 2nd)
• Asia (July 15th)
• Michaēl, the Sabaite (July 19th)
• Theodōros of Edessa (July 19th)
• Barlaam (July 19th)
• Aiglōn (August 12th)

Ignace Dick summarized the list as follows.

The saints proper for the Melkite Synaxaria are mainly patriarchs of Antioch of the 10th and 11th centuries, monks from the 9th to 10th century, and martyrs killed by the Muslims.8

Those martyrs killed by the Muslims are:

• The 63 martyrs of Jerusalem (October 22nd), who were crucified around the year 724 (Sauget 1969, pp. 310–11).
• Antōnios, the Qurayšī (December 24th), who was martyred in Raqqa in the year 799 because he worked a miracle with an icon of Theodore of Damascus (Sauget 1969, p. 332; Simon 2006, p. 121).
• Kyriakos (January 30th), who was beheaded (Sauget 1969, p. 343).
• ʿAbd al-Masīḥ (Christodulos) (March 9th), who was a higoumen of the Sinai monastery in the early 8th century (Sauget 1969, p. 366).
• Ephraim (May 5th) (Dick 1994, p. 134).
• Christophoros of Antioch (May 21st) (Sauget 1969, p. 380).
• Michaēl, the Sabaite (July 19th).

In some manuscripts, there are more commemorations of “neo-martyrs” and some of the saints of this list could not be identified precisely (e.g., Agathōn, who is commemorated on March 10th), so the number of “neo-martyrs” in the “Melkite proper” is maybe higher. Sauget suggests that these new commemorations—and by this the commemorations of the “neo-martyrs”—were introduced into the Melkite Synaxarion because of a Melkite liturgical reform (Sauget 1969, p. 176).

Among the new finds of Mount Sinai was the manuscript Sin. syr. M52N (Philothée 2008, pp. 501–20), which consists of two units of different dimensions, of which the first one contains a calendar of saints from October to September, which was further investigated in an essay by André Binggeli. In fact, it is a simple list that indicates for each day the name of the saint, without further information on his life or on the proper texts for this feast. Binggeli identifies this as an ancient Melkite calendar and observed that it stops at Maximos Confessor, who died in 662, so that several saints of the time after the spread of Islam are missing (Binggeli 2010, pp. 190–91)—with the exception of three Palestinian “neo-martyrs” (Binggeli 2010, p. 192):

• Bacchos (December 16th and April 11th)
• Christophoros (May 13th)
• Antōnios (December 29th)

All of them are “neo-martyrs” of the time of early Islam: Bacchos and Christophoros were both found guilty of apostasy and therefore died in the 8th century (Binggeli 2010, p. 191). Additionally, Antōnios is already known from the “Melkite proper” of the Synaxarion. Although this calendar does not confirm the feasts of the “Melkite proper”, it confirms—according to Binggeli—that the Melkites introduced new feasts of martyrs before the 10th century (Binggeli 2010, p. 193). In fact, they are already designated as “new martyrs” in the Syriac text (ܣܗܕܐ ܚܕܬܐ)—a term that can also be found in the Greek hagiographical literature (“νεομάρτυς” or “νέος μάρτυς”) (Binggeli 2010, p. 192).

Now, regarding the Typikon manuscripts, it is striking that no manuscript presupposes the same liturgical calendar. When comparing the liturgical calendar of the Melkite Synaxarion to the liturgical calendar of the several Melkite Typika, one has to respect that the latter usually only indicates the commemorations for which proper liturgical texts exist, whereas the Synaxarion usually indicates all commemorations of a day. This could explain minor differences and missing commemorations. However, the result is surprising: of the commemorations of the “neo-martyrs” that are given in the Melkite Synaxarion or in the ancient Melkite Mēnologion, none is taken up in any of the Arabic Typikon manuscripts.

Regarding the Melkite Synaxarion, one notes that the feasts of the “Melkite proper” are largely ignored in the Arabic Typikon manuscripts. There are only three exceptions:

• The dedication of Geōrg (November 3rd) is witnessed in all Arabic Typikon manuscripts but the oldest one.
• The miracle of Michaēl in Alexandria (June 6th) is witnessed in one Greek-Arabic Typikon manuscript.
• Theodōros of Edessa (July 19th) is witnessed in the same manuscript.

However, one has to state that from the “Melkite proper” that consists of 36 commemorations, only three feasts are mentioned in some of the Arabic Typikon manuscripts, so the “Melkite proper” of the Melkite Synaxarion was practically not incorporated into the Melkite Typikon. The same is true for the commemorations of the Melkite Mēnologion: None of the “neo-martyrs” is mentioned in the Arabic Typikon manuscripts.

One reason could be the age of the respective tradition: if the reform that was presumed in the Synaxarion tradition took place after the beginning of the Typikon tradition, the earliest Typikon manuscripts could not have copied it. Furthermore, it seems plausible to assume that a Typikon tradition would develop independently of a Synaxarion tradition. The interdependencies between the different Typikon manuscripts show that the regular way of the genesis of a new Typikon manuscript was to copy and adjust an older Typikon manuscript. However, how can we think about an authority that was able to introduce a “Melkite proper” of 36 commemorations into the Synaxarion but not into the Typikon, even though both books were copied in the same scriptoria of the same monasteries?

Another solution is that there was maybe no reform and no “Melkite proper” but a pure coincidence that Sauget found a large “augmented group” that in fact could have belonged to a small community and did not play a significant role in the development of the Melkite rite. It is also possible that there was a liturgical reform that was contested and that the Arabic Typika witnesses the tendency of refusal of that reform for the purpose of conserving the more ancient—and thus the more Melkite—practice (Lüstraeten 2017, p. 519). In fact, the Typikon manuscripts were not as widespread as the Synaxarion manuscripts, and in each group of the Arabic Typikon manuscripts, there is at least one manuscript that was copied at the Sinai monastery that could have served in multiplicating a conservative Arabic Typikon tradition. The argument against this is that the deviations of the Arabic Typikon from the Melkite Synaxarion are usually identified as adjustment to the Byzantine Rite. However, both ideas cannot explain why the “neo-martyrs”—which are apparently important for the identity of the Melkites—are ignored.

A third solution is to claim the reform and the addition of the “Melkite proper” solely for the Synaxarion tradition, because of the different purposes of the books. Whereas the Synaxarion keeps the records of all the saints that contribute to the identity of a group, the Typikon gives directions for the celebrations of the different days and is thus limited to the shape of the group’s worship.

Additionally, this may be the key for understanding the Arabic Typikon: of course the “neo-martyrs” are important for the identity of the Melkites as Melkites, but they are a hindrance in the self-definition of the Melkites as Byzantine Orthodox, since the Melkite “neo-martyrs” are not commemorated in the Constantinopolitan Synaxarion and hence not in Greek Byzantine worship. Thus, in commemorating Melkite saints from outside Byzantium in worship, one separates from the Byzantine Church and Empire. The exclusion of the “neo-martyrs” needs not be an intended consequence—in copying and translating Byzantine Typika with the aim of adjusting their own rite to the Byzantine Rite, the Melkite “neo-martyrs” could have been omitted (Sahner 2018, pp. 249–50).

There is one more observation: in commemorating the “neo-martyrs”, the deeds of the Islamic aggressors are also commemorated, which could aggravate the interreligious life in the Islamic Empire. This is corroborated by the fact that not only the Melkite “neo-martyrs” are ignored but so are other commemorations such as the victory against the Saracenes on August 16th, which is mentioned in the Melkite Synaxarion as well as in the Constantinopolitanian Synaxarion but not in the Melkite Typikon. The omission of historic conflicts could have served to prevent suspicion and new conflicts (Sahner 2018, p. 249).

4. Who Was Affected?

In his monumental work on the Melkite Church, Nasrallah admits that for the time of Mamlūk dominion, when the Typikon manuscripts were written, it is hard to reconstruct the lists of patriarchs, since most of them did not bequeath written testimonials to us (Nasrallah 1981, p. 45). Some of the patriarchs resided in exile at Constantinople and were elected there; we know little about bishops among the Melkites and due to the sources, Nasrallah does not even try to reconstruct the situation of the individual believers and the parishes.

In the beginnings of Islam up to the 9th century, Christianity and Islam were intermingled and borders between the two groups were porous (Penn 2015, p. 145). Apparently, it was quite common for Christians and Muslims to partake in the same rituals (Penn 2015, p. 166), and it seems that there was no sensible difference between Christians and Muslims alike. This is also due to the circumstance, that most of the people who would have called themselves “Christians” were baptized and attended worship on occasion, but also had no problems with magic or syncretistic rituals such as charms or necromancy and did not care much about questions of doctrine (Tannous 2018, p. 227). In his monograph “The Making of the Middle East. Religion, Society, and Simple Believers” from 2018, Jack Tannous argues that the majority of “simple Christians” did not know about theological issues such as incarnation or trinity, which from our point of view seem divisive between Islam and Christianity (Tannous 2018, p. 235). Since there were regions without priests or monks, there would have been no one to provide religious education, so the differences between Islam and Christianity were blurred.

The insufficient religious education was advantageous for religious conversions from Islam to Christianity, insomuch as there were no theological objections against Islam, but reasons such as material benefits, the chance of status and power, or simply a less regulated way of life (Tannous 2018, pp. 312–13). Tannous points to the circumstance that none of the contemporary authors write about theological reasons for conversion. Furthermore, it is obvious that there were fiscal benefits for Muslims, like for example tax reliefs. There were apparently conversions from Christianity to Islam, but also—as the case with the “neo-martyrs” shows—also re-conversions from Islam to Christianity (Tannous 2018, p. 334). This corroborates the assumption that conversions did not happen because of doctrine.

Furthermore, Tannous lists Christian ritual elements that were widespread among Christians as well as Muslims, such as the use of the consecrated Eucharist within rituals (Tannous 2018, pp. 371–74), the use of the name of Jesus Christ (Tannous 2018, pp. 374–75), baptism (Tannous 2018, p. 375–76), the application of the cross or the sign of the cross (Tannous 2018, pp. 376–80), or Christian relics (Hasluck 1929, pp. 36–37). Overall, this suggests an ideology of religious tolerance, at least among the “simple believers” of Christianity and Islam regarding Christian ritual life, which did not affect kinds of tolerance regarding doctrine or worship itsel, because they were foreign to them (Tannous 2018, p. 396). There was, thus, up to the 9th century no sharp distinction between being Christianity and being Islam.

Considering all of this, we need to ask for the “simple believers” among the Melkites: we do not know about the parishes and about the liturgy that was celebrated there, but we may assume that if there were priests, they probably never knew about manuscripts of Arabic Typika that circulated among the Melkite monasteries. Thus, any findings regarding the Byzantinization of the Melkites focus on the monasteries and are maybe not representative of all the Christians who would have defined themselves as “Melkite”.

5. Conclusions

Byzantinization and Arabization appear as parallel phenomena. Although Byzantinization started earlier and although both processes developed non-linearly and in waves, they both ended with the new translations by Malātiyūs Karma. which also set an end to the tradition of manuscripts. The time before, when Byzantinization and Arabization occurred, both processes were not centrally regulated but individual and parallel processes at the monasteries—the most important one among them the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai. The manuscripts which are preserved there—even today—are testimonials for a liturgical development as well as for the definition of a Melkite identity between other Christian denominations on the one hand and Islam on the other hand.

The Typikon manuscripts are documents to both processes: they are originally Byzantine liturgical books that were translated to Arabic, adapted, and expanded. They show the bilingualism of Melkite worship at different stages of history, and they regulate the use of liturgical books that became—as shown for the Gospel—more and more standardized. The search for an own identity becomes manifest in the case of the “neo-martyrs” and the Typika’s silence about them.

After all, we have to be careful about the coverage of the manuscripts. They were written at monasteries, copied at monasteries, and exchanged between monasteries—apparently without affecting the worship of the individual believer.