Writing 'true stories' : historians and hagiographers in the late antique and medieval Near East / edited by Arietta Papaconstantinou in collaboration with Muriel Debié and Hugh Kennedy.

Incluye referencias bibliográficas

Introduction: Writing True Stories — A View from the West / Catherine Cubitt -- Early Byzantine Historiography and Hagiography as Different Modes of Christian Practice / Derek Krueger -- Creating Local History: Coptic Encomia Celebrating Past Events / Gesa Schenke -- A Saint and his Biographer in Late Antique Iraq: The History of St George of Izla († 614) by Babai the Great / Joel Walker -- Writing History as ‘Histoires’: The Biographical Dimension of East Syriac Historiography / Muriel Debié -- Converting the Caliph: A Legendary Motif in Christian Hagiography and Historiography of the Early Islamic Period / André Binggeli -- ‘He was tall and slender, and his virtues were numerous’: Byzantine Hagiographical Topoi and the Companions of Muhòammad in al-Azdî’s Futûhò al-Shâm / Nancy Khalek -- ‘Become infidels or we will throw you into the fire’: The Martyrs of Najrân in Early Muslim Historiography, Hagiography, and Qurânic Exegesis / Thomas Sizgorich -- Ibn al-Azraq, Saint Marûthâ, and the Foundation of Mayyâfâriqîn (Martyropolis) / Harry Munt -- Christian King, Muslim Apostate: Depictions of Jabala ibn al-Ayham in Early Arabic Sources / Julia Bray -- Variations on an Egyptian Female Martyr Legend: History, Hagiography, and the Gendered Politics of Arab Religious Identity / Stephen J. Davis -- Sainthood Achieved: Coptic Patriarch Zacharias according to The History of the Patriarchs / Mark N. Swanson.

A new interdisciplinary look on the relations between historiography and hagiography in the multicultural context of the late antique and medieval Middle East.
The papers in this volume examine the interaction between history and hagiography in the late antique and medieval Middle East, exploring the various ways in which the two genres were used and combined to analyse, interpret, and re-create the past. The contributors focus on the circulation of motifs between the two forms of writing and the modifications and adaptations of the initial story that such reuse entailed. Beyond this purely literary question, the retold stories are shown to have been at the centre of a number of cultural, political, and religious strategies, as they were appropriated by different groups, not least by the nascent Muslim community. Writing ‘True Stories’ also foregrounds the importance of some Christian hagiographical motifs in Muslim historiography, where they were creatively adapted and subverted to define early Islamic ideals of piety and charisma.