Medieval Arabic Literature

Examines the literary topos of dawn, the "Alba," in Persian poetry in comparative perspective, first considering the Alba poem in medieval Provencal lyric in southern France and northern Italy, establishing how the theme of the parting of two lovers at dawn was a well-established trope in European poetry of the medieval and renaissance periods.  A close parallel also appears in the Arabic poetry of Andalusia, perhaps with some interchange.  In Persian there are also some examples of the "Alba" theme -- the ghazals of Sa`di but especially Sana'i. Although Hafiz' poems do not use the Alba theme  in the same way, Hafiz does set many of his ghazals (perhaps 1/5 of all his ghazals) in the dawn or early morning.  The article develops how Hafiz uses the topos of dawn and why it is integral to his mythopoetic vocabulary.

A partir de los textos de las epístolas denominadas zurzūriyyāt, en este artículo se pretende profundizar en las dos caras del personaje en torno al cual se articulan estas originales y singulares composiciones, exclusivas de la literatura andalusí. El retrato literario que de él transmiten tiene mucho que decir sobre la figura histórica de un hombre apodado al-Zurayzīr, que en estas creaciones literarias oscila entre el símbolo y la realidad y que recuerda mucho al héroe de las maqāmāt.

Based on the epistles called zurzūriyyāt, in this article we try to study in depth the two sides of the character around which these original and unique literary pieces —exclusive of Andalusian literature— revolve. The literary portrait that these texts convey about the mentioned character has much to say about the historical figure of a man nicknamed al-Zurayzīr, who fluctuates between symbol and reality in these literary creations and who is very reminiscent of the hero of the maqāmāt.

The Arabian Nights is the most famous Medieval Arabic collection of tales that brings together stories from different literary traditions, mainly Indian and Persian. Over the past forty years, a new line of critical scholarship has concentrated upon the frame story of the Arabian Nights and its female protagonist Scheherazade. Perhaps inspired by the rewritings (and, thus, reinterpretations) of the tale in modern and contemporary fiction –  J. L. Borges, S. Rushdie, E. A. Poe, T. Hussein, N. Mahfouz and A. Djebar are just a few famous names of Arab and non-Arab authors who offered modern-day retellings of the frame story  ̶  the new criticism tries to engage real life with the tale and the figure of Scheherazade.

Traducción al español, con comentario, glosario, índices y notas, de la epístola de al-Ŷāḥiẓ 'Mufājarat al-ŷawārī wa l-gilmān'.

A translation into Spanish of the epistle 'Mufākharat al-jawārī wa l-ghilmān' by al-Jāḥiẓ, with introduction, notes and index.

Hikayat Abi l-Qasim al-Baghdadi (The Portrait of Abu l-Qasim al-Baghdadi) is an 11th-century Arabic work by Abu l-Mutahhar Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Azdi which tells the story of a Baghdadi party-crasher crashing a party in Isfahan. It is introduced by its author as a microcosm of Baghdad. This work, written in prose but containing numerous poems, is widely hailed among scholars as a narrative unique in the history of Arabic literature, but The Portrait also reflects a much larger tradition of banquet texts, from "Trimalchio's Dinner Party" and Plato's Symposium to the works of Rabelais. It also paints a portrait of a party-crasher who is at once a holy man and a rogue, a figure familiar among scholars of the ancient Cynic tradition or other portrayals of wise fools, tricksters, and saints from literatures around the Mediterranean and beyond. While some early scholars of The Portrait dismissed it as disgusting and obscene, this work, with its wealth of material-cultural, philosophical, spiritual, and literary treasures, is much more than just a "dirty book". Following an introduction, which offers new insights into the relationship of the work to both its Greek predecessors and to its European descendants, the volume presents a new, improved edition of the Arabic text, together with a richly annotated translation, that aims at being both scholarly and readable, reflecting the often racy style of the Arabic. This makes it not only useful to specialists and students of medieval Arabic literature, but also accessible to a much wider general readership of those interested in comparative literature or "world literature". There are extensive indexes of names, places, subjects, and rhymes.

The ‘Sirr al-Asrār’, ‘Secret of Secrets’, is a compilation of advice on politics, medicine and hermetic arts from the tenth century that was attributed to the philosopher Aristotle, who offers his counsel to Alexander the Great. In the ‘Sirr al-Asrār’ Aristotle describes different methods to gain political harmony. The first is the Circle of Justice. This describes an equilibrium between royal power, the army, subjects and justice, which should bind these different groups. In 1232, the long version of this text was translated into Latin in the Holy Land by Philip of Tripoli, under the title ‘Secretum secretorum’. This translation was very successful in Western Europe and was frequentlyeditedandcommentedon.Thischapterdiscussesthetransmissionoftheidea of power mediated by the ‘Secretum secretorum’ between East and West, with particular reference to the concept of the Circle of Justice, and how it was adapted to new political circumstances. In doing so, it argues the case for expanding transcultural historical research, but also provides some caveats in undertaking this task.

Предлагаемая Вашему вниманию работа является первым, по сути, академическим, подстрочным переводом на русский язык известного памятника раннеарабской поэзии — поэмы ʼИмруʼ аль-К̣айса, знаменитой как "муʻаллака ʼИмруʼ аль-К̣айса". Текст работы снабжен комментариями, которые, по замыслу автора данной публикации, должны предельно глубоко и, в то же время, доступно раскрыть перед читателем не только содержание поэмы, но и культурный, религиозный и географический мир Аравийского полуострова VI века н.э.

WILLIAM IX THE TROUBADOUR (1071-1126) AND ISLAM

The first troubadour, whose songs are preserved, was as duke of Aquitaine the most important French prince around 1100. His military activity was, at least three times, directed against the Muslims. Her aunts and sisters were married to Iberian Christian kings, whom he defended against Almoravid invasion. In 1100-1102, he participated in Holy Land to a failed crusade. During these expeditions, he had several contacts with Arab courts, in particular with Imâd al-Dawla,  the last emir of Saragossa of Banu Hudi dynasty, expelled of his capital by Almoravids. They were together in the troupe of the king of Aragon fighting them in Cutanda battle (1120). Imâd gave to him the so-called “Vase d’Aliénor d’Aquitaine”, his grand-daughter. It was preserved in Saint-Denis abbey and is nowadays in Louvre Museum. This precious crystal and silver object is not the only gift William IX received from a Muslim prince. At least one of his poems (V, Pasero ed.) seems to contain some Arabic words. Other elements show a possible influence of Hispanic-Arabic poetry in his own work. They nourish the debate on the ‘origins’ of Courtly Love. ‘Origins’ is not probably the good word, but better ‘polygenesis’ or Michel Foucault’s ‘conditions of possibility’. Thus, the study of the relations between William IX and Islam has to be done in an interdisciplinary way, which takes account of political and social history, of art history or of literature and linguistics.

Three of the most renowned praise poems to the Prophet, the mantle odes span the arc of Islamic history from Muhammad's lifetime, to the medieval Mamluk period, to the modern colonial era. Part 1: Banat Su'ad of Ka'b ibn Zuhayr; Part 2 Qasidat al-Burdah (Mantle Ode) of al-Busiri; Part 3: Nahj al-Burdah (The Way of the Mantle) by Ahmad Shawqi. Over the centuries, they have informed the poetic and religious life of the Arab and Islamic worlds. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych places her original translations of the poems within the odes' broader cultural context. By highlighting their transformative power as speech acts and their ritual function as gift exchanges, this book not only demonstrates the relevance of these poems to contemporary scholarship but also reveals their power and beauty to the modern reader.

Ibn Ḥazm's (d. 456/1064) Ṭawq al-Ḥamāmah is a sui generis work in the history of mediaeval Ara-bic culture. Modern scholarship on Ibn Ḥazm's Ṭawq proceeds along three lines: (1) editing and translating the Ṭawq; (2) explicating the Ṭawq and enquiring into its originality; and (3) looking into the Ṭawq from a comparative perspective. I intend, however, to pursue further the question of the Ṭawq al-Ḥamāmah's uniqueness, and I would also suggest a new reading of the text based on the exposition of its epistemology. My main proposition is that the Ṭawq al-Ḥamāmah's idiosyncracies rest on Ibn Ḥazm's endeavour to advance an epistemic justification of the concept of love. Ibn Ḥazm stresses that writing on love is beyond any fictional narrative. He underlines the idea that entering into the phenomena of love should adhere to al-ḥaqīqah (the truth) and should avoid any kind of flawed explorations. To arrive at an understanding of the work through the angle of al-ḥaqīqah, Ibn Ḥazm further contends that writing on love should be based on three key principles: (i) testimony ; (ii) observation; (iii) and knowledge stored in memory. These principles are behind the Ṭawq al-Ḥamāmah's epistemology that renders any writing on love not merely a fictional narrative but a textual attempt to depict the actual human experience. By deploying the principles of epistemology to investigate love, Ibn Ḥazm's Ṭawq al-Ḥamāmah not only modifies the existing genre of writing on love and lovers but also considers some aspects of this emotion that had hitherto evaded literary and scholarly treatment. This paper will explore Ibn Ḥazm's perspective on the ways of writing on love and manifest his epistemological approach in exploring the essence of this emotion as well as its causes and symptoms.

The fourth/tenth century work 'Aǧā'ib al-hind, barrihi wa-baḥrihi wa-ǧazā'irihi ('The Marvels of India, its Land, Sea, and Islands'), ascribed to the sea captain (nāḫudāh) Buzurg ibn Šāhriyār al-Rāmhurmuzī, contains some 136 narratives and descriptions of the marvelous phenomena purportedly found in and around the Indian ocean. Although known to scholars for well over a century, the work’s literary aspects have received scant attention in previous scholarship. This article sheds a new light on the work’s literary character, by analyzing the narrative structure of its maritime adventure tales. The narrative analysis offered here (informed by C. Bremond’s narratological model) shows that all the maritime adventure tales in 'Aǧā'ib al-hind revolve around an encounter between seafarers and strange phenomena or 'marvels'. Two narrative patterns are detected: in one, the seafarers take heed of the phenomenon and act prudently toward it, which leads to their salvation; in the other, the seafarers ignore the phenomenon and act rashly, which leads to their demise. The tales are thus shown to emphasize moral and didactic principles such as patience and perseverance (ṣabr), observation (i'tibār), and moral responsibility (taklīf). A comparison of one of the tales with its parallels in the Sindbād cycle and in al-Tanūḫī’s al-Faraǧ ba'd al-Šidda further demonstrates the moral and didactic principles that underlie the narratives of 'Aǧā'ib al-hind.

This Reader brings together nearly 80 extracts from major works by Christians and Muslims that reflect their reciprocal knowledge and attitudes. It spans the period from the early 7th century, when Islam originated, to 1500.

The general introduction provides a historical and geographical summary of Christian-Muslim encounters in the period and a short account of the religious, intellectual and social circumstances in which encounters took place and works were written.

Topics from the Christian perspective include: condemnations of the Qur'an as a fake and Muhammad as a fraud, depictions of Islam as a sign of the final judgement, and proofs that it was a Christian heresy. On the Muslim side they include: demonstrations of the Bible as corrupt, proofs that Christian doctrines were illogical, comments on the inferior status of Christians, and accounts of Christian and Muslim scholars in collaboration together.

Each of the six parts contains the following pedagogical features: a short introduction, an introduction to each passage and author, and notes explaining terms that readers might not have previously encountered.

The Arabian Nights is the most famous Medieval Arabic collection of tales that brings together stories from different literary traditions, mainly Indian and Persian. It is a masterpiece of world literature, and there is an extensive body of scholarly work on it. Following its “rediscovery” by the French orientalist A. Galland in the 1700s and the publication of the printed Arabic editions in the 1800s, the collection became subject to prolific criticism. The best-known narrative of the Arabian Nights is the frame story of the collection, and since the late 1970s, a new line of critical scholarship has emerged, providing multiple interpretations of this element of the text. Perhaps inspired by the rewritings of the frame story in modern and contemporary fiction, this new criticism has proposed topical readings which have been inspired by feminist and gender approaches (Grossman, 1980; Malti-Douglas, 1991; Sallis, 1990), psychoanalytic theories (Beaumont, 2002; Clinton, 1985), and sociocultural and postcolonial perspectives (Mernissi, 2001; Shamma 2017). The main subject of these readings falls within the realm of otherness, and specifically of “sexual and gendered otherness”, i.e., the representation of the other and the relationship with the other sex. This research project identifies in the question of otherness the starting point from which to undertake the scrutiny of the academic literature on the frame story and offer a documented and critical overview of the main trends in modern and contemporary scholarship. In order to achieve this goal, this study proposes an innovative methodology which first compares the various versions and translations of the opening narrative of the Arabian Nights, and then investigates the critical readings, comparing them with the version(s) and/or translation(s) of the frame story they have taken into consideration. This preliminary phase of research sees its continuation in a more substantial discussion about how the readings have presented the question of the relationship with the other sex in the opening narrative of the AN. This study is also the first attempt to offer an annotated outline of the modern and contemporary criticism of the frame story concentrating on both English (i.e., written in English) and Arabic (i.e., written in Arabic) scholarship.

One of the richest and most interesting works of Arabic lexicography, the Kitāb al-Muḫaṣṣaṣ by Ibn Sīdah (d. 458/1066), contains a vast catalogue of voices on sexual vocabulary. The author provides a thorough and comprehensive collection of words with their definitions and peculiarities, including different explanations and philological digressions, as much as authorities from classical poetry, and all sorts of anecdotes and curiosities concerning sex. In his attempt to define this vocabulary as a whole, Ibn Sīdah not only offers numerous data about the sexual imagery of his time, but implicitly gets involved in the construction of a particular discourse about sexuality. Some features of this discourse are the androcentric approach, the direct and frank treatment of Arabic sexual vocabulary (without euphemisms or moralizing restrictions), and humor as a resource to deal with those aspects that seem particularly delicate or sensitive.

A comparative essay on the Medieval longue durée history of  Arabic and Latin as world languages. The essay focuses on some counterintuitive sociolinguistic comparative issues : we can alter the vision of a progressive disappearance of Latin toward progressive triumph of Arabic in their respective areas during the Middle Ages by refining our picture of the links between these languages and the other languages that lived in symbiosis with them. We can also use some special features well studied in Latin or in Arabic (lexicography,  art of sophisticated political prose are two examples) and develop some new comparative approaches between the two fields. We must reintroduce at least a partly comparative approach if we do not want to get entrapped into distortions and mirror-effects (examples of unreliable theories of genetic links between some Latin and Arabic cultural devices).

The Thousand and One Nights and the Arab literary canon  between past and present: responses to the Egyptian censorship in 1985. The Thousand and One Nights, which oldest manuscript dates back to the 15th century, is a distinguished collection of Arabic tales that brings together stories from different literary traditions, mainly Indian and Persian. The present study focuses on a prominent question relating to this masterpiece of world literature, namely its difficult positioning that straddles popular and high narrative within the canon of modern Arabic literature. In order to explore this broad subject, which can be approached from different angles, this article offers three reflections by Arab intellectuals, which were published in 1985 following the legal ban of 3000 uncensored copies of the collection in Egypt. While expressing their opinions on this event, the Arab critics also discuss the ambiguous role that the Thousand and One Nights holds within its own literary tradition. Consisting of medieval tales belonging to the genre of "middle narrative" (Chraibi 2016), the collection owes its modern-day notability to the various translations into European languages, which subsequently led to a renewed appreciation of this work throughout the Arab world. The convoluted textual history of the collection, the questions concerning decency it
provokes, and its relationship with the West makes its positioning in the modern Arabic canon a challenging task.

The history of ice in medieval Arab societies is obscured behind a mosaic of a variety of references and scholarly citations. Beyond al-Qalqashandı’s reference to organised ice trafficking in fourteenth-century Mamluk Egypt, we do not have conclusive
evidence on the origin and use of ice as a consumer product. In this paper we trace its presence based on three genres of references: historical and literary quotations, medicine and literature pertaining to food. These references allow us to consider the extent of ice consumption in the Arab world before the ninth century, as well as the existence of an organised trade throughout the Middle Ages from that time. However, contrary to the Persian world, with its well-documented Iranian yakhchals, we still know virtually
nothing about ice-houses in medieval Arab societies. We also know very little about the profession of the thallâj or ice-seller, or whether the widespread consumption of ice that originated in Spain in the sixteenth century was in fact a legacy of an earlier trade in al-Andalus.

In Arabic literature there exist many examples of what we could call «rhetorical enumeration». In general, this enumeration usually groups three or four highly heterogeneous elements under a common characteristic, the reasons or causes for which are not always made clear or are understood to be known to all. A classic example would be the old adage that affirms that: «There are three impossible things: the gûl, the ‘anqâ’ and the loyal friend». These enumerations appear in the Arabic tradition so frequently that they may indicate the presence of a literary topos, a rhetorical convention rather than a repeated manifestation of simple
«counted things» on the basis of the expressive needs of each narrator or their own knowledge and beliefs. These enumerations are not infrequent in other cultures and literary traditions, be they Islamic or not. The present study attempts to analyze several of the rhetorical enumerations, and proposes some explanations for why they exist in relation to Arabic culture, literature and rhetorical tradition.

A finales del siglo XIV, un reconocido jurista y literato granadino llamado Ibn ‘Asim (m. 1426) componía —entre otros materiales—una colección de cuentos y chistecillos fundamentalmente humorísticos titulada Hada’iq al-azahir. El presente artículo se propone sacar a la luz parte de la abundante cantidad de elementos folclóricos reunidos en este repertorio esencial en el estudio de los cuentos en la literatura y el folclore españoles, que aporta al folclore universal versiones y variantes de tipos hasta ahora no documentadas

The paper deals with the topos of Amalecite rule in Egypt, its idea and historical correspondences. The Аrаb-Muslim scheme of Egypt's history fits surprisingly well the real history in case of the most important chronological points dividing different periods and in case of these periods’ duration and their content. However, the inner filling of this scheme is highly folklorized or fantastic. We can trace strongly negative correspondences in the stories of Amalecite rule in Egypt; together with other facts it can lead to the conclusion that the Arab authors keep proper Egyptian attitude to invaders retained in folklore.

The Arabian Nights is the most famous Medieval Arabic collection of tales that brings together stories from different literary traditions, mainly Indian and Persian. It is a masterpiece of world literature, and there is an extensive body of scholarly work on it. Following its “rediscovery” by the French orientalist A. Galland in the 1700s and the publication of the printed Arabic editions in the 1800s, the collection became subject to prolific criticism.
Over the past forty years, a new line of critical scholarship has concentrated upon the frame story of the Arabian Nights and its female protagonist Scheherazade. Perhaps inspired by the rewritings (and, thus, reinterpretations) of the tale in modern and contemporary fiction – like J. L. Borges, S. Rushdie, E. A. Poe, T. Hussein, N. Mahfouz and A. Djebar – the new criticism tries to engage real life with the tale and the figure of Scheherazade. This novel reception of the text testifies to a new sensibility in academic literature.
Narrative is transformed into the open domain of different disciplines, as well as literary cultures at the confluence of the Arab world and the West. Feminist and gender approaches, psychoanalytic readings, and sociocultural and postcolonial perspectives combine literary theories with extra-literary areas of knowledge. The main subject of these analyses falls within the realm of otherness, i.e. the image of the other and the relationship with the other (sex) at the basis of the plot of the frame story, and its metaphorical implications. Their outcomes are often heterogeneous, to the point of generating, sometimes, diametrically opposed visions.
Why is otherness in the frame story capable of embodying images (of the other sex) and meanings within but also outside the literary context? How have scholars received it? Why can their interpretations come to so different – even opposite - conclusions? 
The frame story of the Arabian Nights and its ample criticism deserves its own scrutiny. I will, therefore, provide an overview of the main trends in the interpretation of the tale, and how the image of the other and the relationship with the other sex is treated according to the intensions of the scholars, as well as to his/her area of study, theoretical framework and literary culture.

The early ninth-century Hiberno-Latin text 'Nauigatio Sancti Brendani' ("The Voyage of Saint Brendan"; NSB) was a popular work on the Continent throughout the medieval period, as attested by its plethora of manuscript witnesses across more than a dozen languages. Likewise, the seven voyages of Sindbad, together known as the Sindbad cycle, had a broad audience before they were collected and emended in various later editions of the '1001 Nights'. NSB and the Sindbad cycle share in a rich tradition of voyage literature which has yet to fail to intrigue audiences. Further, similarities in motifs between NSB and the Sindbad cycle have inspired a number of scholars during the past two centuries to argue for Oriental influence upon NSB through the Sindbad cycle.

This latest entry into the discussion of the relationship between NSB and the Sindbad cycle begins by first elucidating their respective provenances. The two texts will then be briefly summarized with an emphasis upon paralleling common motifs. Their similarities, though, are products of coincidence, despite that they likely share minimally one source of influence. These coincidences are probable given the general congruency of details between actual voyage stories which influenced the author(s) of either text. Ultimately, this article argues that neither did NSB influence the Sindbad cycle nor vice versa. This presentation of the article is meant as a continuation of preliminary research discussed at the 35th Harvard Celtic Colloquium.

The lecture has been tailored such that it can be given within twenty minutes. A laptop will be provided to host a PowerPoint slideshow as a visual aid, thus necessitating projector access.

The paper is an attempt of a new interpretation of the term saqaliba that Ahmad ibn Fadlan, who was a 10-century Arab traveler, used in his Kitab as a designation of the population of the Middle Volga region. The most likely is that saqaliba in this region in the beginning of 10th century was a demonym, ie designation of certain territory residents, regardless of their genealogy and characteristics of the material and spiritual culture.
Genesis of the demonym could be associated with Imenkovo archaeological culture of 4-7th centuries AD, which is similar to authentically Slavic cultures. From VIII this culture was replaced by Turkic and Finno-Ugric cultures.
Volga Bulgaria emerged in the late 9th – early 10th century as the union of different ethnopolitical groups led by the Bulgars. In the 920's Almış, the ruler of the Bulgars, followed by Ibn Fadlan designated by the term "Sakaliba" ethno-political group in aggregate subordinated to Almış.
In the process of consolidating power of Bulgar leaders demonym saqaliba was replaced by the term bulghar in the writings of Ibn Rustah, al-Mas‘udi, Estakhri etc.

The premier work of Islamic devotional literature of the post-classical period is undoubtedly the Mantle Ode (Qaṣīdat al-Burda) of al-Būṣīrī (d. 694–696/1294–1297), which generated a vast body of derivative works composed in the hope of acquiring the blessing or baraka of the poem. Among these was the badīʿiyya, a praise poem to the Prophet Muḥammad (madīḥ nabawī) that is a contrafaction (muʿāraḍa) of al-Būṣīrī’s Burda in which each line exhibits a particular rhetorical device. The present paper offers a re-evaluation of the badīʿiyya as a hybrid devotional performance that combines the science of rhetoric—the essential element of the tenet of the miraculousness of the Qurʾān (iʿjāz al-Qurʾān)—with the art of praise poetry to the Prophet (madīḥ nabawī) as a reenactment of the miracle of the Qurʾān and of the baraka of al-Būṣīrī’s Burda. It takes as its main example Al-Kāfiya al-Badīʿiyya of Ṣafī ad-Dīn al-Ḥillī (d. 749 or 750/1348 or 1349) to examine the rhetoric and aesthetics of t...

İbn Rüste’nin el-A‘lâku’n-nefîse adlı eseri, Ortaçağların en önemli esirlerinden Harûn b. Yahyâ’nın Askalan’da esir edilmesiyle başlayan ve Roma’da nihayetlenen seyahatini de içermektedir. Fakat Harûn b. Yahyâ’nın seyahati münasebetiyle kendisinden aktarılan haberlerin çoğunlukla zaman ve mekân unsurlarından yoksun olması, araştırmacıların bu çok değerli seyahatnameden tam manasıyla istifade edebilmelerini de engellemiştir. Zaman ve mekân unsurlarından yoksun böyle bir haberde Harûn b. Yahyâ, Thessaloniki’den sonra karşılaştığı Sakālibe’nin Besiûs el-Melik (بسوس الملك) diye tanımladığı bir hükümdar döneminde Hıristiyan olduklarını ifade eder. Harûn b. Yahyâ’nın hem Besiûs el-Melik hem de Sakālibe demekle tam olarak kimleri kastettiğinin çok belirgin olmaması da 19. yüzyılın sonlarından itibaren sürmekte olan ilmî münakaşalara sebep olmuştur. Araştırmacılar şimdiye değin Besiûs el-Melik için Tuna Bulgar Hanı Bogoris/Boris ve Bizans İmparatoru I. Basileios isimleri üzerinde durmuş olmalarına rağmen aslında Besiûs el-Melik, 913 yılında ‘basileus’ unvanını alarak kullanmaya başlayan Tuna Bulgar Çarı Symeon idi. Besiûs el-Melik yani Tuna Bulgar Çarı Symeon döneminde Hıristiyan olan Sakālibe’yle kastedilen de sanılanın aksine sadece Slavlar değil Tuna Bulgar Hanlığı’nın tüm tebaasıydı. Söz konusu Hıristiyanlaşmaysa resmen yeni bir dinin kabulünden ziyade Symeon’un ülkesini yoğun bir biçimde Hıristiyanlaştırma çabalarına ve bundan netice almış olmasına üstükapalı bir göndermeydi.
Ibn Rusta’s work al-A‘lāk al-nafīsa contains the captivity of Hārūn b. Yahyā in ‘Askalān, who was one of the most important captives of the Middle Ages, and his voyage that ended in Rome. However, the lack of time and space elements in the reports that Hārūn b. Yahyā received on the occasion of his voyage, prevented scholars from benefiting this highly valuable travel narrative. In a report like this which lacks time and space elements, Hārūn b. Yahyā relates that Sakāliba he had met after Thessaloniki had been converted to Christianity in the times of the monarch Basiūs al-Malik (بسوس الملك). Since it is not clear whom Hārūn b. Yahyā  referred by both Basiūs al-Malik and Sakāliba, the problem was discussed in scholarly discussions that was started from the ends of 19th century. Scholars hitherto stressed that Basiūs al-Malik could be Khan Bogoris/Boris  of the Danubian Bulgars and Byzantine Emperor Basil I,  although in fact Basiūs al-Malik was Tzar Simeon of the Danubian Bulgars, who used the title “Basileus” in 913.  The people that were referred by the term Sakāliba, were not only Slavs whom converted to Christianity in the time of Tzar Simeon of the Danubian Bulgars, but all the subjects of  the Danubian Bulgar Khanate. The Christianization process that were referred was not an embrace of a new religion, but a tacit reference to Simeon’s intensive efforts to Christianize his land and his achieving results.