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Inter-Communal Relations and Changes in Religious Affiliation in the Middle East (Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2012

Lucette Valensi
Lucette Valensi
Affiliation:
EHESS/CRH
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Extract

Religion … appears in all different sorts in Syria: Turks, Jews, Heretics, Schismatics, Naturalists, Idolaters; or to be more exact these are genera that have their species in great number, for in Aleppo alone we counted sixteen types of religions of which four were Turks different from each other; of Idolaters, there remains only one sort which worships the sun; of Naturalists, those who maintain the natural essence of God with some superstition concerning cows and who come from this side of the borders of Mogor; and the others without superstitions named Druze, living in Anti-Lebanon under a prince called the Emir. They pay a tribute to the Great Lord, and live in their own manner, naturally. From this one can see how necessary it is to have good missionaries, and virtuous ones, for all the scandals that go on in this Babylon, and learned men to refute so many errors. There are fourteen Sects or Nations differing from each other completely in Religion, in rite, in language, and in their manner of dressing: seven of these are Infidels, and seven Christians. The Infidels are Turks or Ottomans. Arabs, Kurds, Turcomans, Jezides, Druze and Jews. Among the Turks there are, moreover, several sects and cabals affecting Religious sentiments just as there are among the Jews.

Type
The Construction of Minorities (A Joint Project of Annales and CSSH)
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , April 1997 , pp. 251 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1997

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References

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9 The following pages being the result of research in progress. I underline their temporary character. For an amply documented study treated from the perspective of social history, see Heyberger, Bernard, Les Chrétiens du Proche-Orient au temps de la Réforme catholique (Rome, Ecole française de Rome. 1994Google Scholar), in which emphasis is placed upon the region of Alep but which extends well beyond this frame. See also the same author. “Les Chrétiens d'Alep (Syrie) à travers les récits des conversions des missionnaires Cannes déchaux (1657–1681),” Mélanges de l'Ecole Française de Rome, 100 (1988–1991), 461–99Google Scholar.

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13 I borrow here an expression from Werth, Leon, 33 jours (Paris, 1992Google Scholar).

14 And still this was not always followed. Heyberger. Les Chrétiens, 53, relates that the Christian peasants of Nazareth wore white turbans in 1638.

15 Febvre. Théâtre, 376. See also Heyberger, Les Chrétiens, passim, on the adoption of Muslim dress by the Christians in order to avoid maltreatment and on the reminders reiterated by the Turkish authorities of prohibitions concerning vestimantary materials.

16 Rabbath, , Documents, II, p. 71Google Scholar, on the vengeance of honor. There are innumerable notes on the practice of circumcision and excision among the Copts, polygamy, repudiation and other practices judged aberrant by the Latin monks, in their reports sent to Rome. See Rabbath, . Documents, I. pp. 13. 54. 55Google Scholar. and so forth.

17 Because of the lack of Catholics in Bethlehem, the intermediaries of the Latin service were married to Greek schismatics. Some of these were reconciled, while others remained faithful to their own church; see Golubovich, , Croniche o vero annali, vol. 6–7. p. 133Google Scholar.

18 Heyberger. Les Chrétiens, 26.

19 Franciscan Archives from Jerusalem, book of baptisms, marriages, abjurations and reconcilliations. fol. 69. Similarly in 1716. a Jewish convert, returned “to his sect” because of violences exercised by the Jews, rejoins the Church in Alexandria (Franciscan Archives of Jerusalem, Reconcilliations … 1st part. Alexandria). In Golubovich, , Biblioteca. 2nd series, vol. 4. pp. 365–6Google Scholar, contains vexations undergone by the reconciled Greeks from the Greek schismatics and requests for help from the Frankish consuls and merchants.

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22 Ibid., 2nd series, vol. 1, pp. 89. 103, and so forth, on the marriages between schismatics and Catholics or on the frequenting of schismatic churches by Catholics, in the 1630s. See also vols. 11–12, p. 19 for the same years.

23 Ibid., 2nd series, vol. 2, 2nd part. p. 47.

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25 Golubovich, , Biblioteca, 2nd series, vol. 4, p. 49–50 and 376–7Google Scholar.

26 Rabbath, , Documents, II, p. 310–1Google Scholar. For the version in its entirety, see Relation de la mission des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus établie dans le Royaume de Perse par le R. P. Alexandre de Rhodes: dressée et mise au jour par un Père de la même Compagnie (Paris: Henault. 1659Google Scholar). The same friar, in a letter to a priest of the same company, at Lyon, in 1658: “Ordinarily I frequent the villages to seek out the little sick children, and to give them Holy Baptism when there is no remedy. We send these little angels into Heaven” (Rabbath, , Documents, II, p. 85Google Scholar). See also Febvre, Théâtre, 516. In the archives of the Franciscans of Jerusalem, Registro delle conversione al cattolicismo. 1853. the year 1626 in Cairo.

27 See Heyberger, Les Chrétiens; Rabbath, , Documents, II. pp. 86–87Google Scholar: in 1669, 1674. 1675, for the baptisms administered by the Carmelites at Aleppo. Franciscan Archives of Jerusalem, Registre Tellaro, years 1626, etc., where the renegade, Turkish, Coptic parents entrust their children who are at the point of death.

28 Febvre, Théâtre, 516, on the relations between the exercise of medicine and missionary work.

29 Rabbath, , Documents, I, p. 53Google Scholar, excerpt.

30 Ibid., 62.

31 Heyberger, Les Chrétiens, 119–37, and in particular p. 129. For three cases of the conversion of prelates richly documented, see Golubovich, , Biblioteca, 2nd series, vol. VGoogle Scholar. See also Haddad, Robert M., “On Melkite Passage to the Unia: The Case of Patriarch Cyril al-Za'im (1672–1720),” in Braude, Benjamin and Lewis, Bernard, eds. Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, II, The Arabic-Speaking Lands (New York-London: Holmes and Meier, 1982), 67–90Google Scholar.

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33 Ibid., I, pp. 52–53, Poirresson (1652).

34 Ibid., I, p. 519, for Syria in 1698. Heyberger, Les Chrétiens, 404–8 on shipping books.

35 Golubovich, , Biblioteca, 2nd series, vol. 2, p. 18Google Scholar.

36 Rabbath, , Documents, I, pp. 517–544Google Scholar. For Rome, Heyberger, Les Chrétiens, 423. The following are opened in succession: a Greek college in Rome, 1576; an Armenian and Maronite college, in 1584; a college for Orientals attached to the Congregation de la Propaganda Fide in 1622. See Anawati, G. C.. “The Roman Catholic Church and Churches in Communion with Rome,” 389. in Arberry, A. J., Religion in the Middle East, I, Judaism and Christianity (Cambridge, 1969), 347–422Google Scholar.

37 Calaorra, Historian, 759. The same catechisation in 1627, in Arabic, for a “mora” who had married a renegade Sicilian, in Golubovich, 2nd series, vol. 7. p. 129.

38 Golubovich, , Biblioteca, 2nd series, vol. 4. pp. 410–18Google Scholar. Missing are the “souls” of which the Capuchins from several parishes assure us. In 1731, the author of another report on the state of the custodianship counts 3,353 souls, including the Franks. (I, vol. 2, p. 19.) For 1727, 1760 and 1764, see 138–141 and 178–227.

39 Golubovich, , Biblioteca, vol. VIII, p. 309Google Scholar, for the year 1636.

40 Golubovich, Ibid., vol. VII, “Chroniche,” pp. 22. 73. See also pp. 129–134 for the year 1627; 181–2 for the year 1630; pp. 216–7 for 1631.

41 Ibid., vol. VII, “Croniche” p. 22. vol. 11–12. p. 71–72 for the case of Cyprus, in 1639.

42 Ibid., 2nd series, vol. 11–12, p. 80.

43 Franciscan Archives in Jerusalem. Reconciliations, 1st part. Old Cairo.

44 Golubovich, , Biblioieca, 2nd series, vol. 4. p. 157Google Scholar.

45 Rabbath, , Documents, I, p. 55Google Scholar, concerning an Armenian bishop retired to Cappadoce (p. 95 concerns a Jacobite bishop of Aleppo).

46 Ibid., I, p. 126, Letters from the Ambassador of France at Constantinople to the Minister of Louis XIV, 1706–1707. Golubovich, , Biblioteca, 2nd series, vol. 1. 1634Google Scholar, on the incarceration of reconciled members who are denounced to the Turks by the Greeks.

47 Golubovich, , Biblioteca, 2nd series, vol. 14. p. 141Google Scholar.

48 Malik, C. H., “The Orthodox Church,” in Arberry, A. J., Religion in the Middle East, I, 297–346Google Scholar, and notably 317.

49 Franciscan Archives of Jerusalem, register of Tellaro.

50 On that which affects the Jews, see Morgenstern, Arie, “Messianic Concepts and Settlement in the Land of Israel,” in Cohen, Richard E., ed., Vision and Conflict in the Holy Land (Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, Jerusalem, 1985), 141–62Google Scholar, and the debate which follows, pp. 163–89. Lieber, Sherman, Mystics and Missionaries. The Jews in Palestine. 1799–1840 (Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press, 1992)Google Scholar.