Mari ibn Suleiman or Sulaiman ( ar, ماري إبن سليمان) was a 12th-century
Nestorian Christian
Nestorianism is a term used in Christian theology and Church history to refer to several mutually related but doctrinarily distinct sets of teachings. The first meaning of the term is related to the original teachings of Christian theologian N ...
author writing in
Arabic.
Nothing is known of his life. He is the author of a theological and historiographical work known as the Book of the Tower (''Kitāb al-Majdal'').
The work consists of seven parts.
The first is a general introduction, the second a theological treatise on Nestorian
Christology, the third discusses
Baptism and
Eucharist
The Eucharist (; from Greek , , ), also known as Holy Communion and the Lord's Supper, is a Christian rite that is considered a sacrament in most churches, and as an ordinance in others. According to the New Testament, the rite was instit ...
, the fourth the
seven virtues (piety, charity, prayer, fasting, pity, humility, chastity), the fifth on the "seven pillars" of
Creation
Creation may refer to:
Religion
*''Creatio ex nihilo'', the concept that matter was created by God out of nothing
* Creation myth, a religious story of the origin of the world and how people first came to inhabit it
* Creationism, the belief tha ...
,
Last Judgement, the
Prophecies, the
coming of the Messiah, the history of the
Eastern Church, the history of
heresies
Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. The term is usually used in reference to violations of important religi ...
, and the
canon of biblical texts. The sixth part presents the four "moats" of the Tower, as prayer, the observation of the
Day of the Lord, candles and incense, and penitence.
The seventh part describes the "gardens" of the Tower, where Christians, liberated from the obligations of Mosaic law, may repose.
The main interest of the work in modern scholarship is the historiographical material in its fifth part, an important testimony of the 11th to 12th-century history of the Eastern Church. The work can be dated approximately from the fact that the history ends with patriarch
Abdisho III (r. 1139–1148), suggesting a composition in the 1140s.
In the 14th century, another author,
Amr ibn Matta, imitated the work, and the two works have often been confused, even in their manuscripts.
The main manuscript for the work is Paris arab. 190 (13th century), besides Paris arab. 191 and 192 (14th century). Three further manuscripts are in the Vatican, one in London.
References
* H. Gismondi (ed.), ''Maris Amri et Slibae De patriarchis nestorianorum commentaria'', Rome, 1896-1899.
* Georg Graf, ''Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur'', 5 vol., Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1944-53.
* Éphrem-Isa Yousif, ''Les chroniqueurs syriaques'', L'Harmattan, 2002.
{{Authority control
12th-century Christian theologians
12th-century deaths
Nestorians
Church of the East writers
12th-century Arabic writers