Iconofilia ed iconoclastia: Teodoro Abū Qurrah e la diatriba sull’immagine tra Cristianesimo d’Oriente ed Islām

Abstract

The main theme of this intervention is the role played by Syrian and PalestinianChristians in collecting and preserving the Greek philosophical thought and in guaranteeing its trasmission by being the warrantors of Greek and Patristic culture in the following centuries. During the period following the Islamic expansion, these started to translate in arabic this cultural heritage and it is thanks to this translating masterpiece from Greek to Syrian or from Greek to Arabic that the new comers found the first Arabic translations of the greatest Greek philosophers. The author whose thought will be inspected lived under the caliphates of Hārūn al-Rašīd (766–809) and al-Ma ʾmūn (786–833). Teodoro Abū Qurrah (725 o 750?), pupil of St. John of Damascus, also called Saint John Damascene, initiates a direct dialogue writing and speaking in Arabic with Muslims. Likely to be born in Edessa, he then moved to the Monastry of Saint Saba in Palestine and in 800 he finds himself in Baghdad; he will later on become bishop in Harran, in Northern Syria, where he will compose the Treaty on the veneration of images, subject of our reflection. This treaty is part of a greater discussion that doesn’t only concern Muslims but the entire Oriental Christian community.