Ibn Barrajân (and al-Biqâ'î)

Waaay long ago in a library a thousand miles away, I picked up a published tafsîr by al-Biqâ'î. It made several Biblical references as I'd not seen in any other tafâsir. Many of these were referred, or deferred, to an Ibn BRGAN. Later I found out about Ibn Barrajân but, as of 2013, you could download a raw manuscript but not an edition.

Live long enough, and sometimes things change for the better. I am not the only one to travel down the same path; nor, I suspect, the first. Roy McCoy III, or Roy Michael McCoy, has a few articles and a full dissertation. It's not so easy to read the articles but the University of Oxford has generously allowed all to download the dissertation. I assume it's earned for him a PhD now.

Ibn Barrajân was an Andalusian. He was born in Tunis and made his way to Seville. Unfortunately this, and he, ended up under the Almoravids. On AH 536, which is AD 1146, their emir in Marrakesh summoned him and clapped him in irons, where he died.

Yousef Casewit in 2016 floated a summary of Ibn Barrajân's interface with the Bible. By his time, also the time of Ibn Hazm the Zahirite, a Catholic population existed in the Arabophone community. One may compare the Melkites in Jerusalem and Cairo. Outsiders in Spain called them the Musta'rabs, "Mozarab" for those still speaking Iberian Romance. As Arab-speakers, they needed a lection... and, perhaps, a Bible. Local traditions insist they had a Bible although such does not survive.

I am not willing, yet, to credit all this. Assuredly lections, at least, existed. Popular bases for the day's Lesson came from the Creation, from the Abraham/Isaac/Lot cycle, and from Matthew's Gospel. Casewit finds Ibn Barrajân quoting extensively such passages. Enough to finger the source as the Latin Bible; mostly Jerome's, but with a touch of Vetus-Latina as well. I assume Matthew has come from the Byzantine text of emperor Theodosius which Jerome promoted against the Alexandrine.

It is of high interest that Ibn Barrajân considers Matthew the Gospel against Luke. John the high-Christologer offers little of interest for the Moslem, and Mark - although eminently low-christologic - simply doesn't contain all the material one wants. Suras 3 and 19, I had thought, were more tied with Luke or at least with the harmonies. Harmonies existed in Latin and even in Arabic, which we tend to ascribe to relics of the Diatesseron. But not here: only Matthew is here.

Perhaps the Mozarabs were insisting on Matthew-alone so they didn't have to get sura 3 preached at them. Also famous, I must note, is an ancient translation of Matthew into Hebrew which was making the rounds among the Jews, of course not that many of them were much preaching from that book.

Zahirites like Ibn Hazm believed that the Bible was near-worthless, read only to be debunked. Ibn Barrajân by contrast loved the Torah (in Vulgate/MT form) and even defended it. He was accused of more of Christianising than of anything else, though. Perhaps because he did, in fact, use a Latin basis over Hebrew (plenty of Arab-speaking Jews existed, using their own translations). But also he may have accepted Original Sin from Adam, which other Muslim Sunnis deny.