Thread by @ccsahner

1/ This week I'm posting about early converts to Islam and what happened to their descendants once inside Muslim society

ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAwn (d. 768) was a famous early Sunnī scholar from Basra whose grandfather had been a Christian deacon enslaved during the conquest of Iraq

2/ The grandfather was called Arṭabān, and judging from the name, he seems to have been a Persian. He was a deacon (shammās) and was captured and enslaved in southern Iraq (Maysān) by one of the Prophet’s Companions, ʿAbdallāh ibn Durra al-Muzanī

3/ This Arṭabān was eventually manumitted, became financially independent, and married another prisoner of war, a woman from Khurasan. Although he began life as a deacon, he seems to have been at home in his new religion, transmitting ḥadīth from ʿUmar, the second caliph

4/ Returning to ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAwn, we read that he had a Christian steward (wakīl) who collected the rent on his various properties in Basra. He himself lived in a house containing both Muslims and Christians, located near the sūq

5/ He apparently said: "Christians should live beneath me, not Muslims"; he lived on the top floor (I'm imagining an 8th-century version of a high-rise!)

Reports also suggest that he spent part of his youth on the Byzantine frontier, waging jihād as a volunteer

6/ Like some early ḥadīth scholars, Ibn ʿAwn was opposed to writing down traditions. But he did transmit a letter from ʿUmar which was addressed to Christians who had apostatized after having converted to Islam. One wonders if his family background had something to do with it?

7/ Despite being a mawlā (a non-Arab client of an Arab tribe), he married a free-born Arab woman. This was considered very taboo. In fact, the marriage was fiercely opposed by the famous Basran scholar Qatāda ibn Diʿāma, who was a member of the woman's tribe

8/ Ibn ʿΑwn was flogged on the orders of the chief judge of Basra, and the marriage was dissolved.

Despite his standing as a scholar, Ibn ʿAwn couldn’t overcome his lowly, non-Arab background, it seems

9/ Ibn ʿAwn is remembered as a famous ḥadīth transmitter and as one of the first generation of proto-Sunnī scholars in Basra.

But in his life, we see a lesson about the dramatic changes that non-Muslim converts (esp. Christians) experienced from one generation to the next

10/ I learned about the life of Ibn ʿΑwn while reading Van Ess, Theology and Society, Vol. 2, 404-417.

(This is an amazing book, well known in the German original, but now available in English translation. Read it!)

referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/theolog…

11/ At the top, images of modern Iraqi Christian clergy; a postcard from early 20th-century Basra; and a map of the Basra region