Shaping the Good Christian King under Muslim Rule: Constantine and the Torah in the Melkite Arabic Chronicle of Agapius of Mabbug (Tenth Century)

Abstract

The word ‘Melkite’ comes from the Semitic root m-l-k, which gives the word for ‘king’ in Syriac (malkō) and Arabic (malik). The expression ‘Melkite Christians,’ therefore, means literally ‘the Christians of the King.’ It was coined in the late eighth–early ninth century to indicate those Christians living under Muslim rule – mostly in Egypt, Palestine and Syria – who shared the Chalcedonian, dyothelete faith of the Byzantine emperor. First attested in East Syrian (Nestorian) and Syrian Orthodox (Jacobite) sources,1 the term ‘Melkites’ was clearly born with a disparaging connotation, pointing at a supposed political loyalty to the emperor of Constantinople as well as at the acceptance of a creed that had been not only sanctioned, but forged by polit-