Jaarboek Thomas Instituut 1997 - Thomas Instituut te Utrecht

44 PIM VALKENBERG
Finally, we meet a couple of names: the Christian Yahya ibn 'Adï
(894-974) engaged a controversy against the Muslim author Abu 'Isa
al-Warräq, who attacked the Christian faith about a century before.
Despite the fact that both authors never met each other, Yahya devotes
a good deal of his writing to reproducing the arguments of his
opponent, so that we can gather a one-sided but fairly good idea of the
issues debated between Christian and Muslim mutakallimün in the
ninth and tenth century in the Middle East96
3.2 Spain in the twelfthand thirteenthcentury
Of all countries in Western Europe in the Middle Ages, Spain is
probably the region that has experienced the most bitter and sustained
interreligious conflicts. From the conquest of southern Spain by the
Omayyads in the beginning of the eighth century till the reconquista
by the Christian armies, ending in the recapturing of Granada and the
expulsion of the Jews in 1492, Spain or al-Andalus has been the scene
of many battles between Muslims and Christians. But it has been the
theatre of many forms of interreligious communication as well, in
which the Jews played an important part, often as intermediaries
between the Muslim states in the South and the Christian states in the
North. One can even say that the cultural and scholarly exchanges
between Jews, Christians and Muslims culminate in twelfth-century
Spain, together with the kingdom of Sicily in the thirteenth century".
Although it is tempting to include such great inhabitants of al
Andalus as the Muslim and Jewish philosophers Ibn Rushd (Averroes,
1126-1198) and Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides, 1135-1204), in this
theology, and its theological relevance.
96 See Abü "Ïsä al-Warräq, Yahya ibn 'Adï, De l'incarnation, traduit
par E. Platti (Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, 491', Scriptores
Arabici, 47), Lovanii 1987.
97 . Cp. R.W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages, London 1967,
p. 66; J. Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, Ill: The Growth of Medieval
Theology (600-1300), Chicago and London 1978, pp. 242-255; A.G. Weiler,
"Tolerantie van christenen in de middeleeuwen t.o.v. joden en moslims:
apartheid, verbanning en verovering", Begrip moslims - christenen 19 (1993)
no. 114, pp. 5-22.