The Melkite martyrs of the Mamluk epoch and historical memory of the orthodox arabs

Abstract

The Mamluk epoch was a period of deep decline of the Christian East. In the conditions of permanent religious persecutions, the cult of saints and martyrs consolidated the Middle Eastern Greek Orthodox (Melkite) community and ensured its positive self-identification. There were a number of individual and collective martyrdoms among the Melkites during the 13th and 15th centuries. This martyrology includes mass victims of the wars between the Muslims and the Crusaders, anti-Christian pogroms and trials as well as local spiritual and secular Christian leaders like Yaqub al-Hamaturi or Rizkallah ibn Nabaa, and even voluntary martyrs. At the same time the cultural decline of the Melkites of the late Medieval period, extinction of their literature activity caused weakening of collective memory and rapid lose of information about many confessors and martyrs of that epoch. The bulk of the martyrs of the Mamluk period had been already forgotten to the late 16th century and were discovered only by current scholars. The article studies as the facts of the late Medieval Melkite martyrdoms so the nature of the historical memory of the Middle Eastern Orthodox community in the Mamluk and Early Ottoman time.

Keywords

• the christian east
• the sultanate of mamluks
• the greek orthodox arab community (the melkites)
• religious persecutions
• the cult of saints
• neomartyrs
• the historical memory
• христианский восток
• мамлюкский султанат
• православные арабы (мелькиты)
• религиозные гонения
• культ святых
• новомученики
• историческая память