Alexandria and Antioch in the First ʿAbbāsid Century

Abstract

ABSTRACT By using several contemporaneous compilations now embedded in the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, and by putting these in conversation with parallel texts produced in Syriac, this article explores the revitalisation of the contacts between the Severan patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch in the context of the late Marwānid and ʿAbbāsid periods. It argues that, while the commitment to communion was a shared inheritance of the late Roman period, the same commitment was renewed and refashioned in a quite different context, wherein the shifting distribution of power within the caliphate had placed the Alexandrian patriarchs in a position of distinct disadvantage and discomfort, far removed from the centres of patronage and of power.