382 Nikolai N. Seleznyov Moscow nns@rsuh.ru JACOBS AND JACOBITES: THE SYRIAN ORIGINS OF THE NAME AND ITS EGYPTIAN ARABIC INTERPRETATIONS By the time of the Muslim conquests of the Middle East, Eastern Chris- tianity had experienced numerous divisions caused by ideological and political confrontations. Controversies over the union of the di- vinity and the humanity of Christ, perceived as an essential point of Christian doctrine, as well as the Byzantine imperial policy, aiming at strengthening Byzantium’s influence in Syria, Arabia, the Cauca- sus, and Egypt, had resulted in the separation of the ethno-religious communities of these provinces from Byzantium. The controversies remained unsetled, and the divisions, created by them, continued. To a Muslim observer, Eastern Christianity looked like a hodgepodge of various denominations among which the following three were the most influential: the Syro-Persian Christianity, the Graeco-Roman Orthodoxy, and the anti-Chalcedonian faction, insisting on “one na- ture” of Christ. The Muslim jurist and doxographer Mu昭ammad aš- Šahrastānī (1076–1153) summarized this as follows in his celebrated Book of Religions and Sects (Kitāb al-milal wa-n-niḥal): “Then Christians split up into seventy two sects, 1 the three big divisions among them being: the Melkites, the Nestorians, and the Jacobites.” 2 A similar view of the Christian divisions, differentiating between three main commu- nities, is also found in the Christian author 雇Alī ibn Dāwūd al-Arfādī’s The Book of the Concordance of Faith (Kitāb iǧtimāʿ al-amāna), influenced by the Islamic doxographical tradition: “[Christians] are reducible to three divisions (firaq), for they ascend to three denominations (maḏāhib) (1) The notion that the Christians were divided into seventy two groups was probably influenced by Muslim ۉadīṯs: see G. H. A. Juynboll, Encyclopedia of Canonical ۉadīth, Leiden, Boston, 2007, pp. 437, 458. (2) W. Cureton, Muhammad al-Shahrastáni, Kitāb al-milal wa-n-niḥal. Book of Religious and Philosophical Sects, London, 1842, pt. 1, p. 173.