In this paper, I intend to examine the Miaphysite recension(s) of the “Debate of Abu Qurrah with Muslim scholars at the court of the Caliph al-Maʾmūn,” paying close attention to confessionally-motivated editing, and considering its relevance to wider questions regarding Christian confessional boundaries in the Islamic world and the role of Islam in transforming intercommunal relations among Middle Eastern Christians.

The relevance of this topic to different subfields of history, theology, and philology is readily apparent, but what might it portend for political theology? An obvious answer is that the political theology of the Melkite and Miaphysite recensions vis-à-vis Islam may differ substantially. I also propose the following answer, with a narrower focus on the political-theological dynamics of intercommunal textual transmission. The relevance of the christological schisms to political theology is well-known. Christian political leaders aligning themselves with particular christological camps prompted subsequent developments in Christian political theology. A study of the long-term aftereffects of Chalcedon in the Middle East and the transformation of christological tensions following the Islamic conquests can provide us with a chance to see what happened to christology-centric political theology when a new batch of christologically-indifferent rulers took power. I tentatively suggest that the impact of Islam on Christian political theology, specifically in the case of Chalcedon’s aftershocks, was to diminish the political-theological tensions between warring christological factions, and instead enable their intercommunal boundaries to become more porous. The idea that non-Christian conquest might resolve some of the problems of Christian political theology may seem at first counterintuitive. But, it is important to recognize that while there were new political-theological questions raised by the rise of Islam, there were other old questions which were resolved, which in turn shaped the way that different Christian communities interacted.