Becoming Catholic in Ottoman Mardin ‎(c. 1662-1783)‎

Thesis

This thesis investigates the spread of the Catholic faith among Armenian and Syriac Christians in ‎Mardin, an Ottoman town in southeastern Anatolia, between 1662-1783 CE. It also examines why ‎the origins of Catholicism in Mardin attracted attention among Arabic-speaking scholars in the early ‎twentieth century, highlighting the need to revise these enduring historical narratives.

The thesis first inspects a series of unstudied Arabic historical publications dating to 1907-1915 by ‎Isḥaq Armalet (1879-1954), a Syriac Catholic priest and scholar from Mardin. It argues that ‎Armalet’s historical vision of Catholicism in Mardin was influenced by both wider contextual factors ‎and an agenda to craft a historical and geographical basis for his Syriac Catholic community. It then ‎examines a corpus of over 500 manuscripts produced and procured by Christians in Mardin between ‎‎1662-1783, preserved primarily in local collections (the Church of the Forty Martyrs, Dayr al-‎Zaʿfarān and the Church of Rabban Hormizd). Focusing on three different frameworks of analysis – ‎a first-person conversion narrative, churches in the region and local Christian manuscript culture – it ‎finds that the diverse Christian communities of Mardin experienced distinct dynamics and ‎trajectories of Catholicism, rather than one unified Catholic movement. Simultaneously, it highlights ‎the significance of this period for the development of the Syriac Orthodox confessional identity. In ‎these respects, the thesis exposes the limitations of the scholarship of Armalet and his ‎contemporaries.

This research contributes to recent scholarly debates on the global development of Catholicism by ‎exploring the interplay between local environments and processes of conversion. It also offers a fresh ‎outlook by shifting the traditional focus on missionary narratives to indigenous materials, and by ‎analysing the imprint of twentieth-century ecclesiastical history on our present knowledge. Finally, ‎its focus on Mardin illuminates the historiographically marginalised contexts of the eastern Ottoman ‎provinces and Syriac Christianity.‎

Authors: Maxton, RC

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-vm5y9ybvk
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Eastern Christianity; Mardin (Turkey); global Catholicism; religious conversion; Arabic manuscripts; Ottoman Empire; confessional identities; missionaries; Ottoman East; Syriac manuscripts
• Subjects: History; Manuscripts; Christianity