Islamic Ascetic and Christian Monastic Ties in Early Abbasid Iraq

This article examines the Islamic adaptation of the Maccabean story of the mother and her seven sons as preserved in the ninth-century Baghdadi ascetic Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s al-Ṣabr wa-l-thawāb ʿalayhi. While the story is well known in Jewish and Christian martyrological traditions, its Islamic version has received little scholarly attention. Through close textual comparison and contextual analysis, the article argues that Ibn Abī l-Dunyā did not merely transmit inherited Isrāʾīliyyāt material but deliberately reworked a Christian monastic narrative to articulate a distinctly Islamic ethic of ṣabr (patience, endurance, and restraint). Situating the adaptation within the intellectual and religious milieu of early Abbasid Iraq, the study highlights Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s engagement with Christian monastic literature and ascetic ideals. The article thus demonstrates how shared ascetic values enabled creative interreligious exchange and how Christian martyrological motifs were transformed to serve Islamic moral and pedagogical agendas

Asceticism · Fiqh · Islam · Judaism · Narrative · Islamic Studies and History · Medieval and Classical Philosophy · Medieval History and Crusades