Iranian Studies

ISSN: 0021-0862 (Print) 1475-4819 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cist20

Muslim-Christian Polemics and Scriptural

Translation in Safavid Iran: ʿAli-Qoli Jadid al-Eslām
and his Interlocutors

Alberto Tiburcio

To cite this article: Alberto Tiburcio (2017) Muslim-Christian Polemics and Scriptural Translation
in Safavid Iran: ʿAli-Qoli Jadid al-Eslām and his Interlocutors, Iranian Studies, 50:2, 247-269, DOI:
10.1080/00210862.2016.1233806

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00210862.2016.1233806

Published online: 24 Jan 2017.

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 Iranian Studies, 2017
Vol. 50, No. 2, 247–269, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00210862.2016.1233806

Alberto Tiburcio

Muslim-Christian Polemics and Scriptural Translation in Safavid Iran:

ʿAli-Qoli Jadid al-Eslām and his Interlocutors

This article explores the work of ʿAli-Qoli Jadid al-Eslām (d. circa 1722), a Portuguese
Augustinian missionary who embraced Islam during in the late seventeenth century. This
investigation situates the work of this author within the social, political, and intellectual
context of the late Safavid period. It traces the genealogy of his work as a response to the
Jesuit missionary Jerome Xavier (d. 1617) and the Italian scholar Filippo Guadagnoli (d.
1656). The article examines how ʿAli-Qoli’s production fits within the genre of dalā’il al-
nubuwwah, whereby the Bible is used as “proof ” of the validity of Islam. It also analyzes
the author’s use of common tropes of polemical literature, mainly that of accusing
Christian scholars of practicing taḥ rīf or scriptural tampering.

In 1695, disturbing news from Isfahan reached the Vatican, as the appointed Bishop
Louis Marie Pidou de Saint Olon (d. 1717) informed his superiors about a case of
apostasy. A Portuguese Augustinian missionary by the name of António de Jesus
(d. circa 1722) had embraced Islam, adopting the name of ʿAli Qoli Jadid al-
Eslām.1 And although he was not the first member of the Catholic clergy in Iran
that had done so,2 his case was deemed more scandalous because the culprit had alleg-
edly become “a doctor of the Qur’an” and was working on a book that attacked the
Christian faith.3
In this article I will analyze the context that led to the composition of ʿAli-Qoli’s
major work—a treatise against Christianity entitled Seyf al-muʾmenin fi qetāl al-mosh-
rekin (The Sword of the Faithful to Fight the Idolaters)—and the role that this book
played within the wider history of scriptural translation and refutation projects in

Alberto Tiburcio holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from McGill University and is currently a Postdoc-
toral Researcher at Philipps-Universität Marburg, where he collaborates with the project “Dynamics of
Transmission”, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. He would like to acknowledge Dr
Reza Pourjavady, who first introduced him to the work of ʿAli Qoli Jadid al-Eslām. He would also
like to thank Professor Rula Abisaab for her comments on an earlier version of this text. Preliminary
research for this study was undertaken during the summers of 2010 and 2012 in Tehran and Rome
respectively, thanks to two generous Graduate Student Travel Awards from the Faculty of Arts at
McGill University. The author is further grateful to the three anonymous reviewers of this work for pro-
viding valuable comments and suggestions. He would also like to thank his friends and colleagues
Candace Mixon from the University of North Carolina and Ann Strachan for their valuable suggestions
during the process of editing of this text.
© 2017 Association For Iranian Studies, Inc
248 Tiburcio

the early modern period. The following article does not intend to provide an exhaus-
tive analysis of this work, but rather to focus on how it responded to a debate that
originated in India almost two centuries before. I argue that the language and argu-
mentation in his book attest to a deep knowledge, not only of the Christian polemical
works to which he was responding, but also to the broader preoccupations of the
Muslim scholarly tradition into which he was seeking to integrate.

Biographical Information on ʿAli-Qoli

Very little is known about ʿAli-Qoli’s life. The announcement of his conversion is
briefly mentioned in missionary correspondence, while a couple of documents
from the Dutch East India Company say that he had become a translator at the
shah’s court.4 Furthermore, the Chronicle of Carmelites mentions that, in May
1708, the Carmelite Basil of Saint Charles (d. 1711) asked Rome for permission
to translate and hand out to the shah a refutation of an attack on Christianity pro-
duced by a renegade who worked at the shah’s court, which seems to be an allusion
to ʿAli-Qoli.5
His date of birth and death are unknown, although Francis Richard believes that he
might have died during the 1722 Afghan invasions.6 As for his arrival in Isfahan and
his date of conversion, there is a certain degree of confusion. Richard identified his
conversion date as September 1697,7 while Reza Pourjavady and Sabine Schmidtke
dated it to 1696.8 However, as previously mentioned, a letter from the Bishop
Pidou de Saint-Olon already refers to ʿAli-Qoli’s case in 1695,9 and a 1697 account
recorded in the Chronicle of Carmelites claims that the apostasy had taken place
three years before, thus pushing the date back to 1694.10 To add to this confusion,
Richard cites another source saying that Padre António succeeded Gaspar dos Reis
(d. circa 1690s) as the prelate of the Augustinians in Isfahan in October of 1696,
which of course could not have happened if he had already converted.11 The Chronicle
of Carmelites does mention his presence among Gaspar dos Reis’ retinue in 1694,12 but
this is also the source that mentions 1694 as the date of his conversion. Further, John
Flannery has also identified two documents dated 1697 that speak of the apostasy and
of the “recent” appointment of the Augustinian Prior Padre António.13
Equally ambiguous are the circumstances of such a conversion. Richard has ident-
ified a citation in which ʿAli-Qoli complained about the Capuchin Raphaël du Mans
(d. 1696) and his retinue for bribing Muslims into conversion.14 Richard also cites a
letter from du Mans stating that ʿAli-Qoli had informed him of his intentions to
convert and that he had tried to dissuade him with the following anecdote: One
day Du Mans was approached by the prime minister (Eʿtemād al-dowleh), who
asked him why he refused to embrace Islam. Showing him his priestly gray garments
and his bare feet, Du Mans replied that had he been Muslim and rich he would not
have had access to the palace. This story did not impress Padre António, who—while
understanding the advantages of wearing religious attire—did not fall for Du Mans’
“deceitful arguments” (arguments mensongers).15
 Muslim‒Christian Polemics and Scriptural Translation in Safavid Iran 249

In any case, what ʿAli-Qoli had to say about his own conversion can only shed more
light on the matter if taken at face value, as he presents it as a purely intellectual and
spiritual transformation that happened through the study of scripture:

at the time when I belonged to the Christian faith, I had a privileged position
amongst priestly circles, to such a point that I was known as a leader of them [Chris-
tians]. Their men and women, who believed that I had been infused with the Holy
Spirit, would come to me for the forgiveness of their sins; until the Grace of God
and the Light of Faith illuminated the hovel of the heart of this poor man. In a
matter of a few years, it [my heart] was released into a path illuminated by the
lamp of Islam, aided by the love of the Leader of the Imams (may salutations
and praise be upon him). Then, the alley of doubt was closed, and the darkness
of the Christian path was completely removed and extinguished from my mind,
and thus I spent much time diligently seeking Christian books and putting all
my endeavors in refuting their false arguments. By comparing the terminology of
their books, through blessings and pride I bore witness to the Truth of the
Islamic Faith and to the prophetic mission of the Messenger of the Final Days
and to the guidance of the Leader of the Imams until the Last among Them
(pbuh).16

Apart from this, as has been pointed out before, we know that after embracing
Islam ʿAli-Qoli became an interpreter of European languages at the court of Shah
Solṭān Hoseyn (r. 1105‒34/1694‒1722). Before him, Du Mans had held this position;
however, contrary to the latter, ʿAli-Qoli would actually receive a salary for this.17
Further, the Chronicle of Carmelites also indicates that he had an active role in
anti-Christian hostilities, not confined to intellectual polemics, but even plotting
against the prominent Catholic Armenian Shahrimanian family.18 In any case, his
intellectual output far outweighs the documentation available on his life; therefore,
I now shift to the analysis of his work and of the milieu in which it was produced.

Interreligious Polemics in the Age of Confessionalization

Interreligious polemics, translation projects and commentaries of religious scriptures,

and conversion narratives were common throughout the early modern period in the
Muslim world. For instance, the first translation of the Gospels into Turkish was
completed in 1666 through a joint English‒Dutch sponsorship.19 At the same time,
many important projects of biblical translation and polemics would also take place
in the Persianate world, as I will later explore in more detail. I think that the analytical
framework used by Tijana Krstić in her study of conversion narratives in the Ottoman
empire is structurally relevant: she sees the recurrence of these kinds of works as a cul-
tural manifestation of the Age of Confessionalization. This term was originally used in
the context of western Europe to refer to the faith-based self-fashioning of Catholic
and Protestant polities, but she broadens the applicability of the term to also
250 Tiburcio

account for the gradual demarcation of the Ottomans as a Muslim power vis-à-vis the
Habsburgs, as well as a Sunni state vis-à-vis Shiite Iran. As a consequence, Ottoman
polemicists needed not only to assert their Muslimness, as it were, against western
Christendom, but in some cases also their specific Sunni identity.20
As for the case of Iran, the phenomenon of its conversion to Shiism during the
Safavid period and the role of Levantine ʿulamāʾ in this process has been well
studied.21 However, it has rarely been examined through this wider regional and
epochal prism, which is why the study of these kinds of materials in the Iranian
context fills a lacuna in the body of scholarship. While the early sixteenth century
was the height of the sectarian self-fashioning of Iran, when the Safavid empire was
adopting Shiism as an official religion, the late seventeenth century also witnessed
the recrudescence of sectarianism with the escalation of frontier wars against Sunni
Afghans and Baluchis in the east and southeast, and against the Lezgis in the Cauca-
sus.22 I exercise caution in establishing causal links between these conflicts and parallel
developments in intellectual history, there is indeed a correlation between these events
and the proliferation of anti-Sunni and anti-Sufi discourse among certain circles of the
ʿulamāʾ in the late 1600s, which is when ʿAli-Qoli arrived in Iran. This trend is often
attributed to the growing influence at the court of ʿulamāʾ like Moḥ ammad Bāqer
Majlesi (d. 1111/1699), who is credited with the forced conversion of Armenians,
the destruction of Hindu temples, the deportation of Banyan merchants to India,
as well as with favoring oppressive measures against Jews, and even against Sufis
and Sunnis.23 The extent of Majlesi’s responsibility is also a matter of debate, but
that is beyond the scope of this study. Let it suffice for now to say that, given the pre-
vailing environment of the time, it is hardly surprising that ʿAli-Qoli would also write
a polemical resāleh attacking Sufis, and that in it he would choose to compare them to
Christians and Sunnis.24
While we should be careful in painting a simplistic picture of the situation of non-
Muslim minorities in this period, many accounts from the late 1600s do provide evi-
dence for the scapegoating of groups that had previously fared relatively well, such as
Armenian Orthodox Christians. For instance, in 1671 the Armenian bishop of
Isfahan converted to Islam and a year later Armenian Christians were banned from
entering the Muslim quarters of the city.25 In addition, the importance of western
European Catholic missionaries factors into history. Since the early years of the
Safavid empire these groups had served as the diplomatic branch of European
powers that sought to establish a common anti-Ottoman front with Iran,26 and
most of them had desisted from the idea of converting Muslims and limited their
efforts to converting Armenian and Georgian Orthodox Christians into Catholi-
cism.27 However, in the late seventeenth century the anti-Ottoman alliance became
less relevant, since peace with the Ottomans had been established in 1639. At the
same time, relations between the state and the missionaries began to erode, as
French Jesuits pursued a more aggressive agenda of conversion that sought out even
Muslim targets. One of them, Aymé Chezaud (d. 1664), went as far as to organize
debates against Shiite religious scholars and to write polemical treatises against Islam,
as we will see later.28
 Muslim‒Christian Polemics and Scriptural Translation in Safavid Iran 251

The Genesis of an Interreligious Debate: The Work of Jerome Xavier

The origins of the debate in which ʿAli-Qoli’s project arose can be traced back to the
last decades of the sixteenth century and the first of the seventeenth. It started with the
arrival at the Mughal court of a Navarran Jesuit missionary by the name of Jerónimo
de Ezpeleta y Goñi, better known to posterity as Jerónimo (or Jerome) Xavier (d.
1617). Although his presence in India cannot be dissociated from European imperial
ambitions, his easy access to Akbar’s (r. 963‒1014/1556‒1605) court should also be
understood within the context of the monarch’s well-known interest in theological
debates. Although Portuguese chroniclers such as Diogo do Couto (d. 1616)
mention that already Bābur (r. 932‒37/1526‒30) and Homāyun (r. 937‒63/1530‒
56) had manifested some interest in Christianity;29 Akbar would pursue this intellec-
tual endeavor in more depth. He is credited with the attempt to establish a syncretic
religion, which would be known as the “Divine Religion” (din-e elahi), and which
would incorporate elements of the Abrahamic religions, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism,
and Jainism. Because of this, his court patronized religious scholars from different tra-
ditions to debate theological concepts, in order to incorporate some of them to his
spiritual project.30 It is important to mention that recent scholarship has questioned
the mystification of Akbar’s ecumenism as a spiritual pursuit and has sought to under-
stand it more as a need to reconcile the differences of a diverse ruling class. This is
quite plausible, but a detailed debate on this is beyond the scope of this study.31
In 1578, Akbar summoned to his court a Dominican priest by the name of Gil
Eanes Pereira (d. sixteenth century), who had until then been based at Satgaon in
Bengal. At Akbar’s own request, the latter started teaching the Gospels at the court
using the 1558 Comentarios sobre el Catechismo Christiano, written by the Archbishop
of Toledo Bartolomé de Carranza (d. sixteenth century).32 However, the latter advised
the king to recruit a more specialized instructor on the scriptures. Following this sug-
gestion, Akbar commissioned a diplomatic mission led by the Armenian Domingos
Pires to ask the Viceroy of India, the Archbishop of Goa, and the head of the
Jesuits of Goa to send priests to the court, and to send with them copies of the Chris-
tian scriptures.
As a result, father Rodolfo Acquaviva (d. 1583), António de Monserrate (d. 1600),
and Francisco Henriques (d. sixteenth or seventeenth century) arrived at Akbar’s court
in 1580, bringing with them a seven-volume Bible in Hebrew, Chaldean, Greek, and
Latin printed in Antwerp between the years 1567 and 1572 by the famous publisher
Christophe Plantin (d. 1589).33 Although Akbar took great pleasure in this acqui-
sition, he remained keen on having a Persian translation of the Gospels. Thus, in
1582 he intended to send a letter to King Philip II of Spain (r. 1556‒98) with
Father Monserrate explicitly asking for the Holy Books in Arabic or Persian.
However, due to the overload of Portuguese ships, the embassy was never able to
leave the port of Goa. Seeing this, Akbar instead commissioned his court chronicler
Abu al-Fazl (d. 1011/1602) to undertake the translation project, perhaps overestimat-
ing the latter’s alleged knowledge of the Pentateuch and the Gospels.34 Whether or not
Abu al-Fazl ever even started the translation is hard to tell.
252 Tiburcio

To Akbar’s satisfaction, a Greek sub-deacon by the name of Leon Grimon (d. six-
teenth or seventeenth century) arrived in Fatehpur Sikri around the year 1591 with a
generous load of Chinese silk. Akbar decided to profit from his presence and had him
dispatched as an ambassador to Goa, requesting once again that Jesuit priests be sent to
the court. In response, the Order of Jesus appointed Duarte Leitão, Cristobal de Vega,
and Estevão Ribeiro to the Mughal court. However, they soon returned in disappoint-
ment after failing to convert the king, even if he had indeed shown appreciation for
their work and wanted them to establish a school to teach Portuguese to the children
of the nobility.35
In 1594, Akbar pursued his third attempt to attract priests to his court to embark
on the translation enterprise. It was then that Jerome Xavier, together with Manuel
Pinheiro (d. sixteenth or seventeenth century) and Bento de Góis (d. 1607) entered
Lahore around 1595. Upon arrival, neither one had any knowledge of Persian or
Arabic. In accordance with Akbar’s earlier initiative, the priests were encouraged
to establish a school to teach Portuguese to the princes and were granted Muslim
instructors to help them learn Persian.36 By Jerome Xavier’s own admission, as of
1598 he had made little progress in his language skills. But within a couple of years
he claimed to have rapidly improved his philological abilities enough to be able to
translate into Persian his own Fons Vitae (The Fountain of Life), through which he
sought to refute the beliefs of all non-Christians.37 Similarly, in 1602 he presented
Akbar with a Persian version of his Life of Christ, which he had written originally
in Portuguese.38
However, Jerome Xavier did not work on his translations on his own. Muzaffar
Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam have advanced the quite plausible hypothesis
that Persian-knowing Armenians might have aided him with these tasks.39 But
more importantly, they have found evidence that he counted on the collaboration
of the philosopher, theologian, and chronicler ʿAbd al-Sattār b. Qāsem Lāhori (d.
seventeenth century), with whom he often engaged in theological discussions at
Akbar’s court. In a colophon from a manuscript dated 1602, Jerome Xavier acknowl-
edges ʿAbd al-Sattār’s assistance in preparing a translation of the Gospels, which he
then presented at the court.40 Further, ʿAbd al-Sattār notes in his own autobiographi-
cal testimony, Akbar’s encouragement for his learning Latin, as well as how he then
engaged in the translation of Christian texts. He recounted collaborating with
Jerome Xavier, even if he had to distance himself at times from Xavier’s militant
Christian orientation.41
There is yet another layer of complexity to the story of these texts: at least part of
Jerome Xavier’s (and ʿAbd al-Sattār’s) “translations” might not have been much more
than transcriptions of earlier Persian renditions of the Gospels. In a letter from 1604
Xavier says that he had sent to Rome a copy of the Gospels in Persian written 300
years before. He sent it with an Italian envoy by the name of Giovanni Battista Vec-
chietti (d. 1619), who had brought to him a 1591 bilingual Arabic‒Latin edition of the
Gospels. In that same letter he mentions the fact that he was in the process of under-
taking his own translation of the Gospels into Persian, which would include the Latin
text from the Vulgate below the translation.42
 Muslim‒Christian Polemics and Scriptural Translation in Safavid Iran 253

After Akbar’s death in 1605, Jerome Xavier feared that his successor Jahāngir (r.
1014‒37/1605‒27) would not share his father’s enthusiasm for theological debates.
This was indeed the case at the beginning, but it changed gradually. In 1607 the
Jesuits presented the king with a Persian translation of the Gospels, although it is
not clear whether this was one of the older ones or the one prepared by Jerome
Xavier.43 Jahāngir thus became more favorable to having books about Christianity
in the royal library and to having Persian translations of certain works. On many
occasions, he even invited priests to explain to him the meaning of the imagery of
some illustrated manuscripts and printed books.44
Some of the latter books provide more detailed information regarding the circum-
stances behind their elaboration. For instance, Roberto Gulbenkian has identified a
manuscript of the Gospels presented to Jahāngir, which contains a note from
Jerome Xavier, in which he explains how he received a copy of the Gospels in
Persian, brought to India by an Armenian priest:

It [the book of the Gospels] reached our hands in the following manner. The said
priest who carried that book in arriving from Hierusalem to Persia left from there
in the company of Manucher who was coming as Ambassador from Shah Abbas
King of Persia to King Jehadin Acbar Mogor in the city of Lahore. And as the
said priest for some reason was unable to continue the journey with the said Ambas-
sador he remained behind and came in another caravan and died on the way. Some
Armenians travelling with him brought his books including the said one of the
Gospels to this city of Lahore and delivered them to Father Manuel Pinheiro of
the Society of Jesus who was living there on orders from the holy obedience.
The latter Father in returning the deceased Father’s book to Hierusalem kept
this one of the Gospels and as stated a transcription was made without changing
anything at all and it is faithfully reproduced.45

As we can see here, Jerome Xavier himself recognized that the version of the Gospels
that he would later present to the Mughal king was not a translation of his own
making but rather a verbatim transcription of an earlier one. There was a reason
for this: while it is undeniable that through local patronage some centers of learning
flourished more than others (and chief among these was Fatehpur Sikri in the Mughal
empire), Christian missionaries and Muslim ʿulamāʾ participated in intellectual dialo-
gues with scholars working in other locations throughout the Middle East and South
Asia. Thus, Jerome Xavier’s desire to respect the text of the older translation should
not be understood as a failure to produce one of his own, but rather as a necessity to
ensure that there would be no contradictions or even minor editing discrepancies
between the different biblical translations circulating in the region. This would con-
tribute to establish common intellectual grounds with any scholars who could poten-
tially be interested in using these texts for missionary purposes.
Gulbenkian has tracked down another manuscript of the Gospels in Persian held at
the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon, which also contains a note from Jerome Xavier.
254 Tiburcio

The transcription is attributed to a man (possibly an Armenian)46 called Sarkis Loudj

ben Amir Maleik and it was produced between the years 718 and 728 Hijri (1318 and
1328 AD).47
Having found lexical difficulties and contradictions between the latter version and
the Arabo-Latin version he had obtained from Vecchietti, Jerome Xavier decided just
to transcribe the 1328 Persian Gospels verbatim rather than using them as a guide for
a translation of his own. Gulbenkian thinks this might have also been done out of pru-
dence, given that any contradictions between the older translations and his own could
have put his book at risk of being listed in the Roman Index of forbidden books.48 In
any case, it was in this context that all these translations/transcriptions of Jerome
Xavier were produced. Thus, any subsequent references to Jerome Xavier’s “work,”
except for his Fons Vitae and his well-known polemical treatises, may actually refer
to the work that he and his collaborators transcribed.

A Cycle of Refutations

Jerome Xavier’s work in Iran. In 1622, Carmelite missionaries brought to Iran a work
by Jerome Xavier that stirred up great controversy.49 This book, known as the A’ineh-
ye ḥaqq-nomā (The Truth-Reflecting Mirror), was to a certain extent a revised Persian
version of Xavier’s own Fons Vitae. Reactions from the Iranian ʿulamā’ did not take
long to appear. The first intellectual response to this work came from Aḥ mad b. Zeyn
al-ʿĀbedin al-ʿAlawi al-ʿĀmeli (hereafter referred to simply as Aḥ mad al-ʿAlawi;
d. circa 1060/1650).50 Having learned about Jerome’s work allegedly through his
contact with Carmelite missionaries, he prepared a refutation of it entitled Meṣqāl-
e ṣafā (Burnisher of Purity).51 He then wrote two other treatises against Christianity
and Judaism, which may have also been conceived as responses to Jerome Xavier.52
In 1625, Carmelite friars brought a copy of the Meṣqāl-e ṣafā to Rome. The Vatican
set up a commission to have it translated and refuted. Among the people involved in
the translation was the famous traveler and chronicler Pietro della Valle (d. 1652).
Bonaventura Malvasia (d. 1666) wrote the first refutation of it, published in 1628,
but the most elaborate response was Filippo Guadagnoli’s (d. 1656) 1631 Apologia
pro Christiana Religione.53
Guadagnoli’s Apologia within the cycle of refutations. Guadagnoli played a prominent
role in the Vatican and was associated with the missionary institution Propaganda
Fide. His intellectual authority derived mostly from him having been the first
person to teach Arabic and Syriac at the University of La Sapienza in Rome.54 The
original version of his Apologia was in Latin, but it was immediately translated into
Arabic and printed in 1637, to have it circulate in the Levant. Guadagnoli was
careful to make some amendments to the text in order to appeal to a Muslim reader-
ship. For instance, in the Arabic version he omitted a part in which he accused the
Prophet of Islam of being a hypocrite. Furthermore, he also wrote a conciliatory
reply to Aḥ mad al-ʿAlawi in which he said that the Qur’an was very similar to the
Gospels in its essence. However, this text was swiftly suppressed by the Vatican,
 Muslim‒Christian Polemics and Scriptural Translation in Safavid Iran 255

which—not surprisingly—disapproved of Guadagnoli’s tone.55 Finally, in 1656 the

Isfahan-based French Jesuit Aymé Chezaud, whom I have mentioned before, contrib-
uted to the debate by presenting his Masḥ-e meṣqāl-e ṣafā-ye ā’ineh-ye haqq-nomā,
which to a certain degree was an extended Persian version of Guadagnoli’s Apologia.56
This version was most likely the one used later by some the ʿulamāʾ in Iran, although
little is known about its circulation.
Later on, in the eighteenth century, the story of Guadagnoli’s work became the
object of legendary accounts, some of which went as far as to claim that he had
managed to baptize Aḥ mad al-ʿAlawi and turned him into a passionate defender
of the Christian faith.57 Whether this was indeed the case is hard to prove. My
research has only uncovered one reference to this anecdote, a short paragraph in
Jean-Pierre Nicéron’s (d. 1738) Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des hommes illustres
de la république des lettres.58 My research has also not uncovered any work attributed
to Aḥ mad al-ʿAlawi after any alleged conversion or any pen name associated with
him.

ʿAli-Qoli’s Seyf al-muʾmenin. ʿAli Qoli wrote his Seyf al-muʾmenin in response to
Guadagnoli’s Apologia encouraged by the influential mujtahid Fāzel al-Hendi (d.
1137/1724‒25), who also benefited from courtly patronage.59 Three manuscripts of
this work survive and can be found at the Astān-e Qods-e Razavi Library in
Mashhad, in the private collection of Seyyed Moḥ ammad ʿAli Rozati in Isfahan,
and in the Library of the Congregational Mosque (Masjed-e aʿẓam) in Qom. As for
the date of completion of this work, one of the manuscripts gives the date as 15 of
the month of Rabiʿ al-Akhar of the year 1123 Hijri, which corresponds to 2 June
1711 in the Gregorian calendar.60
‘Ali Qoli situated his project within this intellectual context, describing it in the
introduction of his Seyf al-muʾmenin in the following terms:

The intention of this translation was to collate the source of the Arabic Torah,
which is a Latin translation, and then to translate it [into Persian] and interpret
it so that it can serve as a proof to overcome the enemy. Were there to be any appar-
ent discrepancies between it, its translation and interpretation, and its Arabic ter-
minology, our brothers in the faith shall excuse [me], given that the source [of the
Arabic Torah], is a Latin Torah translated from the Hebrew, and therefore the
changes [made by] the impure Jerome [Xavier] contain many [instances of] tamper-
ing [taḥrīf]; and thus this Arabic translation has many differences with the Latin
one. [Therefore,] somebody who is not familiar with the Latin terminology may
not realize from [reading] the Arabic translation the degree to which Christian
priests have tainted it with impurity.61

In trying to show the superiority of the Muslim understanding of the Torah, he

turned to the question of translation, which became an area of contention. ʿAli-
Qoli continued:
256 Tiburcio

So, in translating the Torah, this humble servant has translated every non-equivocal
translatable term. Otherwise, I have done this [translation of the] Torah so that
anyone who wants to [use] the Arabic Torah to challenge Christians can verify
it with the authoritative collation of it which I have done with the Latin, so that
Christians will not be able to transgress its contents. For God is in whom help is
sought.62

Thus, as we can see, our author traced the genesis of his polemic back to Jerome
Xavier’s Bible, which, as I have shown to be a prevalent practice, might have actually
been a copy of the 1328 translation.
The fact that ʿAli-Qoli’s approach consisted in arguing in favor of an Islamic reading
of the Torah and the Bible as a foreteller of the coming of Islam is also relevant. This
situates his work within the genre of aʿlām (or dalā’il) al-nubuwwah (sings of the pro-
phecy), a tradition that can be traced back to the Abbasid period (750‒1258), through
the works of the Nestorian convert ‘Ali b. Rabban al-Ṭ abari (d. 256/870) and his
contemporary, Abu Moḥammad ʿAbd Allah b. Muslim b. Qoteybeh (d. 276/889).63
Equally important is the idea that Jews and Christians had exercised scriptural tamper-
ing (taḥrīf) on the Bible: accusing another religious community of tampering with the
sacred scriptures was a common trope of interreligious polemics that preceded the rise
of Islam. Sabians, Samaritans, and Christians had used this argument to discredit the
authenticity of each other’s Holy Books since the second century AD, and it was
later utilized by Muslim religious scholars.64 Some polemics would add another layer
to the theme of (taḥrīf) by attributing it to Saint Paul, who was known in polemical
writings as Paul the Accursed (Bolus Laʻīn).65 This tradition continued throughout
the early modern period, with many works of this genre being produced especially in
the Ottoman empire, as Tijana Krstić has shown.66
ʿAli-Qoli’s Seyf al-muʾmenin is a complex work with different sections engaging
various theological debates which have been commonly explored by converts through-
out centuries of Muslim‒Christian polemics. I have addressed a more detailed analysis
of how his work is situated within the tradition of dalā’il al-nubuwwah elsewhere.67
Instead, I now turn to his refutation of the major claims advanced by Filippo Guadag-
noli in his Apologia and on some of his responses to Jerome Xavier. While these sec-
tions of the work are abstract and theoretical, insofar as they deal with theological
issues, they are also some of the easiest ones to contextualize on account of their
direct reference to Guadagnoli and Xavier.
Before looking at the specifics of ʿAli-Qoli’s response to Guadagnoli, it is pertinent to
advance a note of caution regarding the question of authorship. As we have seen in
Jerome Xavier’s case, it was not uncommon for European academics and missionaries
to work closely with native collaborators in their translation projects. It would not be
unreasonable to suspect that ʿAli-Qoli might have benefited from some assistance as
well. Therefore, in referring to his work, we should keep in mind that the actual author-
ship or the translation of certain passages may be debatable. At the same time, it is fair to
assume that had he not attained a considerable degree of linguistic skill, he would not
have become such an attractive asset at Shah Solṭān Hoseyn’s court.
 Muslim‒Christian Polemics and Scriptural Translation in Safavid Iran 257

ʿAli-Qoli’s Response to Guadagnoli in his Seyf al-muʾmenin

ʿAli-Qoli began this section by discussing a claim from the first chapter of Guadagno-
li’s Apologia, in which the Italian scholar allegedly accused the Prophet of Islam of
being ambivalent on his attitude towards idolatry. Our author quoted him saying:

The Muhammad of the Arabs invented a religion that bans idol-worshipping and
orders that only God be worshipped; yet at the same time he teaches idol worship-
ping. And he also issued an order [ fermān]—although the accursed father [i.e. Gua-
dagnoli] does not say in which book68—saying that on Friday, they [Muslims]
should glorify [him], and he ordered that on that day, just like in ancient idolatry
[beh dastur-e bot-parasti-ye qadim], everyone, male or female, should strip off
their clothes and dance together.69

ʿAli-Qoli then continued to show how Guadagnoli considered the Muslim proclama-
tion of faith—the shahādah—as an extension of this deviancy, considering the recog-
nition of Muhammad as the Messenger of God as a kind of polytheism (shirk).
ʿAli-Qoli first refuted the claim that Islam encouraged naked ritual dancing. He
accused Guadagnoli of linking this practice to the well-known passage in Genesis 9
where Noah becomes intoxicated. ʻAli Qoli argued that this passage was a forgery
by Jerome Xavier, and that its inclusion in the passage invalidated Guadagnoli’s scrip-
tural argument.70
To better refute Guadagnoli’s interpretation of the shahādah, ʿAli-Qoli resorted to
a parable. He narrated the story of a woman who had befriended Satan: one day the
woman’s husband asked her whether she would approve of him enlisting in the army
at a time when the king needed men to defend their country. She asked for three days
to reflect on the matter. During this time, she asked Satan whether her husband was
likely to be killed in the battlefield should he decide to join the war efforts. Satan
answered with a letter, the meaning of which she interpreted as guaranteeing her hus-
band’s safety. The husband then went to war and was killed by the enemy. She
returned to Satan in despair, asking him why he had deceived her. But Satan
replied that it was her who had misread the letter. She had read it thus: “You will
go and come back, you will not die at the battle” (mi-ravi mi-āyi, nami-miri dar
jang). Satan then told her she should have read it this way instead: “You will go
and not come back, you will die at the battle” (mi-ravi mi-āyi nah, mi-miri dar
jang).71 ʿAli-Qoli then compared Guadagnoli to the woman of the story, for being
equally blinded by Satan and being unable to properly understand the subtleties of
the Arabic language and for interpreting the shahādah as shirk.
A similar critique was then applied to Guadagnoli’s claim that no one but God
could know the interpretation of the Qur’an. Guadagnoli relied for his interpretation
on the phrase “mā yaʿlamu ta’wīlahu illā Allah” (no one knows its interpretation
except God). ʿAli Qoli argued that Guadagnoli had left the Qur’anic reference incom-
plete, omitting the phrase “wa-l-rāsikhūn fī-l-ʿilm” (and those who are rooted in
knowledge), which he interpreted to be a reference to the Imams.72
258 Tiburcio

And finally, our author tied the discussion on the meaning of rāsikhūn fī-l-ʿilm with
a seemingly gratuitous—yet profoundly significant—comparison between Sunnism
and Christianity. He used his critique of Guadagnoli as a pretext to accuse Sunnis
of engaging in similarly selective readings of the Qur’an. For him, Sunni refusal to
accept the teachings of the Imams was akin to Guadagnoli’s deliberate choice to
ignore the statement “rāsikhūn fī-l-‘ilm.”73 This analogy between Sunni and Christian
misreading of the scriptures and how that had led them to ignore the sense of the orig-
inal doctrines was anything but banal given the sectarian dynamics of the late seven-
teenth/early eighteenth centuries, which I have described earlier.

Addressing Guadagnoli’s Inquiry into Muhammad’s daʻwah

In another section titled Afkār-e Filip-e Pāderi dar bāreh-ye baʻsat74 va daʻvat-e
Moḥammad (Filippo’s thoughts on Muhammad’s Prophetic Mission and Preaching),
our author addressed Guadagnoli’s questions regarding the authenticity of a
number of accounts contained in the Prophet’s biography, the al-Sīrah al-nabaw-
wiyah. Guadagnoli was keen to show that Muhammad’s message had no divine
basis and was, hence, a fabrication. He thus started “investigating” whether Muham-
mad’s revelation was purely a product of his state of madness (divānegi) and he tried to
“establish” whether Muhammad had indulged in pagan practices during his youth.75
In response, ʻAli Qoli questioned once again Guadagnoli’s knowledge of Arabic phi-
lology, casting doubt on his ability to deal with Islamic scriptures, given that he had
received all his Arabic training in Rome. ʻAli Qoli then discredited Guadagnoli as a
mouthpiece of the devil, who took the message of Satan, “his helper” (muʿāven-e
khud) wherever he went: from Rome to India, Uzbekistan, and the Maghreb, a
clear reference to Guadagnoli’s role in the missionary institution Propaganda Fide.76
Our author then refuted other statements of Guadagnoli concerning the life of the
Prophet. Among these was the idea that Halima, the Prophet’s wet nurse, took care
of him and raised him until the age of sixteen, whereas Muslim scholars had established
that he only stayed with her until the age of four; or that he had been an idolater before
reaching the age of forty. ʻAli Qoli noted that Muslims believed that all prophets, from
the time of Adam, had been monotheists.77 And finally, our author closed this section by
addressing Guadagnoli’s claim that Muhammad had converted people from faithful
worshipers of the Trinity into a dubious kind of monotheism based on “one false
God” (yek Khodā-ye dorugh).78 Our author referred back to an older work of his, the
Hedāyat al-zāllin (A Guidance for those who are Led Astray), where he had refuted—
through a detailed textual analysis of the scriptures—the idea that any of the prophets
of the Old Testament had ever said anything even slightly related to the Trinity.79

On the Satanic Verses and Paganism

In another section entitled Khabar-e gharāniq va eshkāl-e Filip-e Pāderi va naqd-e

moʾallef (The Satanic Verses, the Doubts of Filippo and the Author’s Critique) ʿAli
 Muslim‒Christian Polemics and Scriptural Translation in Safavid Iran 259

Qoli argued that based on Jerome Xavier’s rendition of the Book of Genesis in all its
existing versions, God was pleased with Lot, Abraham, and Jacob, all of whom had
worshiped various creatures prior to converting to monotheism. Christians, he
insisted, recognized this fact and still accepted these men as prophets of God. Our
author wondered how Guadagnoli could then be so overzealous about condemning
Muhammad and discrediting his prophecy for having allegedly worshiped other
deities before the age of forty.
ʿAli-Qoli argued against Guadagnoli, who saw in Muhammad’s practice of ritual
prostration a sign of paganism. In trying to prove his point, Guadagnoli cited Sūrat
al-Ḥ ajj (22:52):

And We did not send before you any messenger or prophet except that when he
spoke [or recited], Satan threw into it [some misunderstanding]. But Allah
abolishes that which Satan throws in; then Allah makes precise His verses. And
Allah is Knowing and Wise.80

ʿAli-Qoli could not deny this interpretation entirely but he insisted that only Sunni
scholars took this verse to mean that Muhammad was seeking purification through
ritual prostration. At the same time, he noted again that if indeed biblical prophets
had engaged in the same ritual, it would be hypocritical of Guadagnoli to denounce
it only in relation to Muhammad.81 ʻAli Qoli argued that Muhammad could be
excused for partaking in this ritual before the revelation of the Qur’an. However, if
the biblical text were to be accepted at face value, and following Guadagnoli’s logic,
there would be no excuse for the biblical prophets’ engagement in similar practices.82
ʿAli-Qoli continued this discussion by finding evidence for Muhammad’s prophet-
hood in the biblical text. He quoted his rendition of Isaiah 53:

By his knowledge, this righteous (maʻṣūm) servant will justify many and will carry
their sins upon his shoulders, and therefore I will grant him many children, and he
will take a share from the spoils that he seizes from the brave ones [shojʻān], for he
poured his soul among the dead and was counted among the sinners.83

He treated this passage as a proof that the “Seal of Prophets” would be able to carry the
weight of all sinners, which meant that the Prophet of Islam would redeem humanity
through his revelation.
ʻAli Qoli then presented his “correction” of Guadagnoli’s interpretation of Sūrat al-
Ḥ ajj by quoting from Hosea 13:84 “Samaria shall perish, because they have embittered
their God, so they shall succumb to the sword; and their children will be snatched and
the wombs of their pregnant women will be ripped apart.”85 He argued that, just as this
passage referred to the people of Samaria and not to the walls, the alleys or streets of the
city; the same applied to the statements in Sūrat al-Ḥ ajj: one should understand the
precise meaning of its metaphors and figures of speech before attempting to draw a con-
clusion about the references to Allah, Satan, and the Prophet in this verse.86
260 Tiburcio

Our author then concluded that Jerome Xavier’s Bible (which Guadagnoli used)
had invited his audience to embrace Saint Paul’s doctrines indiscriminately because
it included the passage in which Jacob bows to his brother, Esau. He compared
these doctrines to certain Sufi ones, particularly Ibn ʻArabi’s (d. 638/1240) unity of
existence (waḥdat al-wujūd). He saw a sign of adherence to this doctrine in the
words that Jacob uttered to Esau: “take this blessing [raḥmat] that God gave me at
the time when he gave me everything.”87 ʻAli Qoli indicted Xavier for tampering
with the text, leading his readers to believe that God had revealed all existing knowl-
edge to Jacob to the point of making his knowledge indistinguishable from God’s.
Such a view, he insisted, was tantamount to blasphemy.88

Confronting Guadagnoli’s Attack on Intra-Muslim Sectarianism

Finally, in a section called Eshkāl-e dīgar-e Filip beh Mosalmānān va pāsokh-e ān

(Other Objections of Filippo and the Responses to These) ʿAli-Qoli quoted Guadagnoli
reproaching Muslims for the great number of internal conflicts that the Islamic world
had experienced throughout its history. Guadagnoli emphasized the successive
struggles between ʿUthmān (d. 35/656) and ʿAli (d. 40/661), ʿAli and Muʿāwiyah
(d. 60/680), and between the latter and Ḥ assan (d. 50/670), the son of ʻAli.89 ʻAli
Qoli did not deny the existence of such schisms. He rather embraced the “righteous”
and “virtuous” struggles of the Shiites, exalting the merits of martyrdom and denoun-
cing the corrupt faith of the first three caliphs and of the Umayyad dynasty (661‒750).
Furthermore, he equated the sacrifice of the Shiite martyrs with that of the “prophets
of the Bani Esrā’il,” such as Zacharias, John the Baptist, and Jesus. He also confronted
the question of internal schisms by comparing intra-Muslim sectarian violence with
the past strife between Catholics, Jacobites, and Nestorians, as well as the more
recent altercations between Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Schismatics (Arme-
nian Orthodox).90

Some Aspects of his Response to Jerome Xavier

Overall, the Seyf al-muʾmenin includes more direct refutations to Jerome Xavier than
to Guadagnoli, but a detailed analysis of all the responses to Xavier is beyond the scope
of this article. However, let us look at one section that can easily be situated within the
historical context of the debate with Jerome Xavier. According to the testimony of
Xavier’s collaborator, ʻAbd al-Sattār, mentioned above, Jahāngir was keen on discuss-
ing the different dietary restrictions of Christians and Muslims. He recounted how the
well-known prohibition of scale-less fish and the debate on animals with divided hoofs
were raised during assemblies (majāles) at the court; and it was reported that both the
ʿulamāʾ and the Jesuits (presumably Xavier among them) participated in these discus-
sions.91 And although these discussions were common tropes in the history of
Muslim‒Christian polemics, the fact that Jerome Xavier had engaged in these
 Muslim‒Christian Polemics and Scriptural Translation in Safavid Iran 261

debates may explain why ʿAli Qoli decided to address this topic so vehemently his Seyf
al-muʾmenin.

Islamic Ritual Purity and Slaughtered Meat

ʿAli-Qoli thus included in the Seyf al-muʾmenin a section entitled Aḥkām-e gūsht-e
ḥeyvānāt dar Tūrāt va bāvar-e Naṣārā dar in bāreh (Rulings on Animal Meat in the
Torah and Christian Beliefs in this Regard). He introduced this discussion by
noting that it was suitable (monāseb) to write it “so that these infidels [Christians]
will not have any excuse [to justify their dietary practices]” (barā-ye ānkeh in koffār
hich ʿazari nadāshteh bāshand).92 He began by referencing Deuteronomy 14, which
he translated thus:

Do not eat impure [najes] animals. Instead, the [kinds of] animals that you should
eat are the ox, the sheep, the deer, the goat, the ibex, the ewe, the gazelle, the bull—
which is the male of the cow—, the mūr—which is a male camel—, the seybil—
which is a kind of mountain cow—, and any animal with divided hoofs and
which chews the cud. But among those with a divided hoof and which chew the
cud, do not eat those from the family of the camel, the rabbit, or the hyrax.93

He then accused Jerome Xavier of having added the camel to the list of forbidden
animals:
and because Jerome was a liar who did not hide his lies, since he wanted to forbid
what was allowed [ḥalāl rā ḥarām konad], and since the general rule [for prohi-
bition] was forgotten [that is, the rule of the divided hoof], he rendered the
camel, through his pen, inside the category of forbidden meat.94

He then noted how Moses had added pork to the list, precisely because of the cri-
teria of the divided hoof, and how he forbade his community to eat aquatic animals
without fins and scales.95 Yet, ʿAli Qoli noted, Jerome Xavier chose to transpose a
ruling from Genesis 9, in which Noah was allowed to eat any terrestrial animal, to
his reading of Deuteronomy 14. In Xavier’s view, since Moses’ ruling on water
animals seemed to suggest that aside from animals without fins and scales, all other
animals would be permissible (ḥalāl) and therefore all ground animals would be
ḥalāl. Our author further claimed that since in Deuteronomy 14 the word “impure”
(najes) was used instead of the word “forbidden” (ḥarām), Xavier (and allegedly
Saint Paul before him) had taken advantage of this terminological distinction to
render ḥalāl certain ḥarām animals. Thus, ʿAli Qoli felt the need to refute this logic:
[One] way of thinking aiming at removing this inconsistency [that is, the textual
contradictions regarding the permissibility of eating certain animals] [is to say]
that [the scriptures] say that [these animals] are impure [najes] instead of forbidden
[ḥarām]. But he [Jerome Xavier] did not know that this way of reasoning would
262 Tiburcio

disgrace him further, since wherever in this passage [Deuteronomy 14] Moses says
about an animal that one should not eat it because it is ḥarām, its being ḥarām
is recorded [in writing] as “impure” [najes]. Thus, whatever is najes is ḥarām.
Jerome [Xavier] continued this reasoning about [certain animals] being only
najes, wanting to make ḥalāl every animal that he had added himself [to the
list]. However, since this line of reasoning does not stand its ground, he himself
transgressed what is forbidden [khodesh niz ḥarāmzādeh birūn amad], because
other than on [the question of] prohibitions [beh gheyr az ḥarāmzādeh] nobody
else has introduced any forgery into the Holy Books and into what they say.96

Here we see the deep implications of the theme of scriptural tampering (taḥrīf) in our
author’s vision: Xavier would have tampered with the scripture in order to circumvent
the law, here resulting in an endorsement of illegal dietary practices. But the argument
became even more complex:
the disciples [that is, Christians] of this leader of men and jinn [Paul] will see that
whatever God Almighty considered as impure [najes] and forbidden [ḥarām] in the
Torah—which he brought through Moses—is also impure and forbidden in the
book that this Paraclete [Christ] brought on behalf of the Creator. And, if there
are reports in the books of the prophets about the impurity [najāsat] and the inter-
diction [ḥaramat] [of something], and if it is also considered forbidden and impure
in the book of this Paraclete, it is then also considered as such in the Torah of
Moses and in the books of the prophets. And although at certain times and for
certain [Holy] persons it is permissible [ jā’iz] to abrogate [naskh] divine rulings
[aḥkām-e ellahi], it is not proper of the essence of existing beings [aʿyān-e mowjū-
dāt] that certain animals that had been impure in essence [najes al-ʿeyn] in the old
days could become pure [pāk] in later times; or that an animal could have been
ḥalāl before and become ḥarām after, because if such were the case it will all be
a changing matter [qalb-e ḥaqā’iq mi shavad] and this does not make sense ration-
ally [in nazd-i har ʿaqli maḥāl ast].97

Here, ʿAli Qoli refuted Jerome Xavier not only in terms of the accuracy of the
latter’s scriptural references, but also in terms of the legal rulings that Christians
could potentially draw from them. Our author argues that Jerome Xavier used the
term najes to avoid the use of ḥarām and thus render forbidden animals permissible.
ʿAli-Qoli responded that impurity [najāsat] was a sufficient condition to make an
animal ḥarām. In this case our author seemed to implicitly be pointing towards the
ratio legis (in Islamic terms, the ʿillah) behind the prohibition of certain kinds of
meat. Something similar seemed to occur when he noted that Moses ruled on pork
being ḥarām because of the rule of the divided hoof. This seems to imply that ʿAli-
Qoli acknowledged that certain judgments could be made by analogical thinking
(qiyās): if animal X is ḥarām and the reason for it is its divided hoof, then animal
Y should also be ḥarām if it has a divided hoof. This quasi-legal presentation conforms
 Muslim‒Christian Polemics and Scriptural Translation in Safavid Iran 263

to the general approach of some major jurists, even if there is no complex syllogistic
reasoning here or any elaboration on rationalist procedures known to mujtahids.
Finally, ʿAli-Qoli added to the discussion a passage from Deuteronomy 12 in which
God forbade the consumption of blood:

Christians from this age have not only disbelieved with respect to God and the pro-
phets, but they have also become disbelievers with respect to Paul and Jerome; for
not only have Paul and his disciple Jerome authorized [the eating] of certain
animals, both pure and impure, the eating of which God has forbidden; but they
have also authorized [drinking] the animals’ blood, which God has also forbidden.
This is the sense of what Jerome has written, given that the word of God says that
“you can take as food any creature that is alive and moves except those which have
blood”; which Jerome interprets for them [Christians] as the justification for the
proscription of blood [which comes] from the tongue of Moses in Deuteronomy
12, saying: Do not eat the blood of any animal, for in them their blood substitutes
their souls, and therefore you should not eat their flesh and their souls. You should
instead spill the blood like water on the ground.98

ʿAli-Qoli constructed his refutation of Christian doctrine not by dismissing its core
beliefs as false, but by pointing out its internal contradictions and inconsistencies.
What mattered for him in this passage was not just that Christians authorized
dietary practices that would be forbidden in Islam, but mostly that in so doing they
violated the logic of their own laws. In other words, in this particular example ʿAli-
Qoli considered that the fault of drinking blood was so blatantly illegal that it
would even contradict the already tampered with texts of Paul and Jerome Xavier.
Having thus established that Jerome Xavier’s text itself pointed towards these pro-
hibitions, ʿAli-Qoli moved on to see how Christian practice betrayed this restriction:

These days, Christians make a snake’s venom out of any animal they want [to eat]
[har ḥeyvāni rā keh mi khvāhand zahr-e mār konand], since they never slaughter it
properly and never spill its blood on the ground. Instead they choke it and eat it
with its blood. And whenever they host a dear guest, when they kill a pig, a cow,
or a sheep, they set apart the flank of [the animal’s] throat [using] a bloody
knife as long as a lancet, and they collect its blood in a vessel and they put salt
and vinegar on some of it so that it will not rot, and then they cook a good quantity
of that blood with spices and eat [it].99

However, unsurprisingly, the apex of this scandal for ʿAli-Qoli was the sacrament of
communion. In it he saw Christians violating the proscription of blood-drinking to a
further dimension, since they claimed to drink the blood of Christ. Even if he (or any
Muslim) could of course question the alleged physical reality of this transgression,
insofar as they would not believe in the transubstantiation of wine into blood,
ʻAli Qoli condemned the mere idea of it. He reserved for this practice his
264 Tiburcio

harshest words, saying, “there could be no higher [act] of enmity against God”
(doshmani bā Khodā az in bālātar nami bāshad).100

Concluding Remarks

Perhaps the most salient feature of ʻAli Qoli’s responses to Guadagnoli was his insistence
on the latter’s misunderstanding of Muslim scriptures, which he contrasted with his own
profound knowledge of the Bible. This allowed him to assert his intellectual authority at
both the philological and the hermeneutical levels. Yet, the passages devoted to Guadag-
noli are noticeably less complex than the discussions on dietary practices, even if they
share some rhetorical strategies, such the use of biblical quotations.
As for the suggestion that certain passages had been forged by Jerome Xavier, ʿAli
Qoli seemed to be adding more complexity to the traditional notion of scriptural tam-
pering (taḥrīf), by implying that it was not (or not only) the original biblical text itself
that was corrupted, but rather Jerome Xavier’s rendition of it. This certainly seems to
be the case throughout most of his work.101 However, in the passages in which Saint
Paul is brought into question, ʿAli Qoli adhered to a more traditional trope whereby
Paul was seen as the original falsifier of apocryphal biblical passages. This theme, while
perhaps being as old as Muslim‒Christian polemics themselves, was re-utilized in other
polemical texts during the early modern period. Tijana Kristić has identified its occur-
rence in a sixteenth century Ottoman text, in which Paul is not only portrayed as a
falsifier but as a drunkard and as a pork-eater.102 It is interesting that in ʿAli-Qoli’s
text, both of these themes are also tied together and appear in the same sections.
More research on the circulation of these texts would be needed to determine the
extent to which polemicists in Iran were familiar with these Ottoman texts in particu-
lar. However, I suspect that the commonalities between these texts have more to do
with the formulaic rhetoric of the dalā’il al-nubuwwah genre. In any case, what is
clear is that the inclusion of the motif of Saint Paul as a culprit of taḥrīf might not
have been the most original aspect of ʿAli-Qoli’s work. However, the choice of it
served an important rhetorical function in discrediting the sources used by Jerome
Xavier and in paving the way to the more novel strategy of accusing an author
closer to his time (Xavier) of furthering scriptural forgery. Further research should
also explore the extent of the recurrence or lack thereof of attributing taḥrīf to biblical
translators by their contemporaries. This may well be among the most defining fea-
tures of interreligious polemics in the early modern period.
Another important aspect of the abovementioned excerpts concerns occasional
references to Sunni and Sufi doctrines and their alleged affinities with Christian theo-
logical concepts. The inclusion of these arguments is hardly surprising in the sectarian
context of late Safavid Iran. Our author’s coupling of his anti-Christian polemics to
his anti-Sunni and anti-Sufi arguments serves a few functions. It allowed him to use
his knowledge of Christianity to assert his authority among Muslim scholars who
might have otherwise found his knowledge of traditional Islamic disciplines
wanting, given his status as a latecomer to the tradition. It also served the obvious
 Muslim‒Christian Polemics and Scriptural Translation in Safavid Iran 265

function of contributing to the political self-fashioning of the Safavids in opposition

to both Christian Europe and the Ottoman Middle East. In this sense, his work fits
perfectly within the framework of the Age of Confessionalization. However, it is inter-
esting to consider more carefully what it meant to produce a book like ʿAli-Qoli’s in
the early eighteenth century and contrast it to the emergence of similar works in the
Ottoman empire of the 1500s and early 1600s. By ʿAli-Qoli’s time Iran had already
been a Shiite state for almost 200 years. So the sudden revival of sectarian discourse
and its patronage by the court seems symptomatic of the state’s need to reaffirm its
legitimacy at a time when it saw itself threatened by political decay and frontier con-
flicts. Further, the peace with the Ottomans and the aggressive agenda of the French
Jesuits, which I mentioned earlier, helped to create a perfect storm in which the need
for a sectarian anti-Christian discourse became more relevant than before.
But perhaps the most revealing aspect of the abovementioned excerpts is that they
suggest that ʿAli-Qoli might have had a certain degree of familiarity with Islamic jur-
idical methodology. The fact that our author would extract the ratio legis in the bib-
lical proscription of non-ḥalāl meat and then present it to a Muslim audience
indicates that he was aware of the importance of the use of these methodologies
among jurists. This shows a degree of depth in his knowledge of the Muslim scholarly
tradition that allowed him to go beyond the specifics of the debates with Guadagnoli
and Xavier in order to address broader issues and engage his new peers and co-religio-
nists. Further study of these rhetorical strategies and methodologies will allow us to fill
in the biographical gaps of cases like his. If it is not possible to know more about the
circumstances of his conversion and his training in traditional Islamic disciplines, we
can at least evaluate the depth of his contribution to them and the degree to which he
blended into the major intellectual preoccupations of his time. This will strengthen
our understanding of the nature of courtly patronage of scriptural translations and
refutations in this period, and of the institutional dynamics of transmission of knowl-
edge within transregional scholarly communities at large.

Notes

1. Fondo di Persia, Messopotamia e i Caldei, vol. 2 ff. 219; another version of the letter is cited in
Richard, “Un augustin portugais,” 74.
2. Fondo di Persia, Messopotamia e i Caldei, vol. 2, ff. 16, 19‒20.
3. Ibid., ff. 219; Richard, “Un augustin portugais,” 74.
4. Richard, “Un augustin portugais renégat,” 83.
5. Anon, A Chronicle of Carmelites, vol. 2, 813.
6. Richard, “Un augustin portugais renégat,” 74.
7. Ibid., 74.
8. Pourjavady and Schmidtke, “ʿAlī Qulī Jadīd al-Islām.”
9. Fondo di Persia, Messopotamia e i Caldei, vol. 2, ff. 219.
10. Anon, A Chronicle of Carmelites, vol. 1, 486.
11. Richard, “Un augustin portugais renégat,” 74.
12. Anon, A Chronicle of Carmelites, vol. 1, 469.
13. Flannery, The Mission of the Portuguese Augustinians, 96.
266 Tiburcio

14. Richard, “Un augustin portugais renégat,” 75; Flannery, The Mission of the Portuguese Augustinians,
99.
15. Richard, Raphaël du Mans, 131‒2.
16. Jadid al-Eslām, Seyf al-mu’menin fi qetāl al-moshrekin, 56.
17. Richard, “Un augustin portugais renégat,” 74; Richard, Raphaël du Mans missionaire en Perse, vol. 1,
132
18. Anon, A Chronicle of Carmelites, vol. 1, 486.
19. Malcolm, “Comenius, Boyle, Oldenburg.”
20. See Krstić, Contested Conversions to Islam, 7‒16.
21. For a comprehensive study of this process, see Abisaab, Converting Persia.
22. The most detailed chronicle on the Safavid state’s struggles against the Afghans and the Baluchis is
probably found in Kermāni, Ṣaḥefat al-ershād.
23. Matthee, Persia in Crisis, 192‒3.
24. ‘Jadid al-Eslām, “Resāleh dar radd-e jamāʿat-e ṣufiyān.”
25. Matthee, Persia in Crisis, 193.
26. For a detailed account on this, see Matthee, “The Politics of Protection.”
27. I have examined over 600 folios of missionary correspondence from this period, and the number
references to Orthodox‒Christian tensions far outnumbers the references to repression of
Muslim rulers. For details, see Fondo di Persia, Messopotamia e i Caldei.
28. Ha’iri, “Reflections on the Shiʿi Responses.” For a more detailed account on the nature of the Jesuit
mission to Isfahan, see Matthee, “Poverty and Perseverance.”
29. Gulbenkian, The Translation of the Four Gospels, 20‒21.
30. For a detailed account on Akbar’s project of religious syncretism, see Roy Choudhury, The Din-i-
Ilahi.
31. For a comprehensive analysis of the mystification of Akbar’s religion, see Moin, The Millennial
Sovereign, 131‒2.
32. Gulbenkian, The Translation of the Four Gospels, 21‒2.
33. Ibid., 23‒4.
34. Ibid., 25‒6.
35. Ibid., 26.
36. Ibid., 27.
37. Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Frank Disputations,” 466‒8; Malcolm, “Comenius, the
Conversion of the Turks,” 503.
38. Gulbenkian, The Translation of the Four Gospels, 28.
39. Alam and Subrahmanyam, “Frank Disputations,” 468.
40. Ibid., 468‒9; Gulbenkian also mentions ʿAbd al-Sattār as Jerome Xavier’s collaborator in his Life of
Christ; see Gulbenkian, The Translation of the Four Gospels, 29.
41. Ibid., 471.
42. Ibid., 29‒32.
43. Alam and Subrahmanyam are unclear about this; see Alam and Subrahmanyam, “Frank Disputa-
tions,” 476‒8.
44. Ibid.
45. Gulbenkian, The Translation of the Four Gospels, 9.
46. Gulbenkian mentions this possibility but recognizes that it cannot be determined with absolute cer-
titude. Some of the clues are the fact that the scribe mentions St Thaddeus in the Colophon, and
this latter saint was credited for spreading the Gospel in Armenia. See Gulbenkian, The Translation
of the Four Gospels, 43.
47. Ibid., 11‒13.
48. Ibid., 32‒3. Gulfishan Khan has also studied these texts in detail and thinks that it is difficult to
assert whether Xavier’s new translation was an original one or just an amendment of the older
ones. See Khan, “Late 16th- and Early 17th Century Contestations,” 68.
49. Malcolm, “Comenius, the Conversion of the Turks,” 504.
 Muslim‒Christian Polemics and Scriptural Translation in Safavid Iran 267

50. For a detailed study of his polemical works, see Halft, “Schiitische Polemik .”
51. Malcolm, “Comenius, the Conversion of the Turks,” 504. See also Camps, Studies in Asian Mission
History, 39.
52. Ha’iri, “Reflections on the Shiʿi Responses,” 154‒6.
53. Malcolm, “Comenius, the Conversion of the Turks,” 504; Camps, Studies in Asian Mission History,
39.
54. García-Arenal and Mediano, Converted Muslims, 300‒303.
55. Malcolm, “Comenius, the Conversion of the Turks,” 504‒5.
56. Richard, “Un augustin portugais renégat,” 78; Alam and Subrahmanyam, “Frank Disputations,”
506.
57. Alam and Subrahmanyam, “Frank Disputations,” 507.
58. Nicéron, Mémoires pour servir, 276.
59. Jadid al-Eslām, Seyf al-mu’menin, 57. For more on the work of Fāzel al-Hendī, see Abisaab, “al-Fāḍil
al-Hindī.”
60. Jaʿfariyan, Din va seyāsat dar dowreh-ye Safavi, 306.
61. Jadid al-Eslām, Seyf al-mu’menin, 57.
62. Ibid.
63. Schimdtke, “The Muslim Reception of Biblical Materials,” 250.
64. Lazarus-Yafeh, “Some Neglected Aspects,” 64.
65. For an examples of the use of these trope in an Ottoman context, see Krstić, Contested Conversions
to Islam, 84‒6.
66. Ibid.
67. See Tiburcio, “Convert Literature, Interreligious Polemics.”
68. This is ʿAli Qoli’s own ellipsis.
69. Jadid al-Eslām, Seyf al-mu’menin, 188.
70. Ibid., 189.
71. Ibid., 191‒2.
72. Ibid., 193.
73. Ibid.
74. As in Arabic baʻthat.
75. Ibid., 583.
76. Ibid., 586.
77. Ibid., 587‒8.
78. Ibid., 589.
79. Ibid.; to strengthen his case, ʻAli Qoli recapitulates the main arguments that he had made on this
regard in his Hedāyat al-zāllin, but it is beyond the scope of our study to delve into them. See Jadid
al-Eslām, Seyf al-mu’menin, 590‒604.
80. Ibid., 621; translation of the verse from the Saḥīḥ International Version
81. Ibid., 622.
82. Ibid.
83. Ibid., 622‒3.
84. He mistakenly says Hosea 14.
85. Ibid., 623.
86. Ibid., 623.
87. Ibid., 624.
88. Ibid.
89. Ibid., 640.
90. Ibid., 641.
91. Alam and Subrahmanyam, “Frank Disputations,” 502.
92. Jadid al-Eslām. Seyf al-mu’menin, 173.
93. Ibid., 173.
94. Ibid.
268 Tiburcio

95. Ibid.
96. Ibid., 174.
97. Ibid., 175.
98. Ibid., 175.
99. Ibid., 175‒6.
100. Ibid., 176.
101. For more details on other passages, see Tiburcio, “Convert Literature, Interreligious Polemics,” 66‒
100.
102. For a detailed account of an example of this trope in Ottoman texts, see Kristić, Contested Conver-
sions to Islam, 84‒91.

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