Seleznev N. N. Pax Christiana et Pax Islamica: From the history of interfaith relations in the medieval Middle East. Moscow: RSUH, 2014. 268 p.

The reviewed monograph summarizes N. N. Seleznev's research in the field of constructive social and intellectual interaction of religious communities. The author is based on the study of historical experience, attested in the original (Arabic) theoretical works. N. N. Seleznev publishes and analyzes sources that make it possible to carry out a theoretical reconstruction of the situation of fruitful coexistence of religious communities in the vast cultural space of the Islamic world. The material involved is used as a foundation that makes it possible to trace the historical logic of building relationships between confessional groups focused on the values of tradition. Data on the historical experience of such interaction were previously insufficiently taken into account by researchers: in many works, the approach prevails, revealing mainly the polemical content of written monuments of Arabic culture of the corresponding period. Studies dealing with the aspect of creative interaction between different and historically opposed Christian denominations in the context of the development of Arab culture-which led to the formation of an essentially ecumenical paradigm of interaction-are rare, and therefore the work under consideration is of particular interest.

The materials of the book are arranged in a logical sequence in the light of the detailed work "The Code of the foundations of religion and the clear essence of reliable knowledge" (Majmu' usul ad-din wa-masmu mahsul al-yaqin). Its author is the 13th-century Arab-Coptic encyclopedist al-Mu'taman Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn al-Assal, who came from an influential family of intellectuals- 'Awlad al -' Assal. This is a philosophical and theological essay

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"It is based on the legacy of its predecessors, whose works [Ibn al-Assal] embeds in a systematic presentation of philosophically meaningful Christian teaching. The author's review covers the confessions known to him, and in all of them he wants to see reasonable constructions, note contradictory positions and point out the possibility of their rational overcoming" (p. 8). In the" Code "of Ibn al -' Assal, among the abundance of material involved, we find an exposition of the section of the work " worthy priest Nazif ibn Yumna, doctor of Baghdad, Melkitos", a retelling of the work "Elijah, Metropolitan of Jerusalem, on the same subject, which he called" [Book] community of faith and a summary of religion" (and [still] said that it [essay]'Ali ibn Dawud)", a short version of the treatise "How to understand the truth of religion" by "the most venerable, the only one, the knowledgeable, the worthy, the sage, philosopher and physician Hunain ibn Ishaq" and a reproduction of "Chapter eleven of the work of Ibn at-Tayyib, a Nestorian, with a list of people's opinions about unity and their arguments". All these parts are presented in a peer-reviewed book. Of particular note is the chapter on "[Community of faith and a summary of religion". The author of the book not only provides a translation and source analysis of this work, but also provides the original text itself from the Karshuni manuscript (the so-called entry of the Arabic text in Syriac letters) from the manuscript of Ag. 657 from the Vatican Library. As N. N. Seleznev notes, "the fate of this work turned out to be no less 'ecumenical' than its author's intention. Created by the scribe"Jacobite", this treatise became widespread under the name of the" Nestorian "metropolitan who" copied "it, was used by a Coptic theologian, described by a Maronite scholar, and rewritten in a "Chaldean" letter... and, finally, it was used as evidence of the antiquity of the two fingers by historians of the Russian Old Believers" (pp. 43-44).-

The study of Ibn al-Assal's sources in this book is placed in a broader context. The book opens with a chapter about the meeting of the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius with the Catholicos of the Eastern Syriac Church Yshoyav II (VII c.), and concludes with a study of the liturgical treatise of the Arab-Coptic author-an overview of the features of Christian communities in the East, both traditional Eastern Christian and consisting of Western figures who came to the East - the Franks. In this way, a peer-reviewed book can be used as a source of information.-

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It can also be viewed as a series of fascinating excursions into various areas of intellectual creativity of representatives of the Christian segment of the medieval Muslim East. Intensive cultural contacts are shown, unifying tendencies are noted, hence the title of the book - Pax Christiana et Pax Islamica-which plays on the theme of the search for Christian unity in connection with the development of Arab-Muslim thought.

The book demonstrates the extensive erudition of N. N. Seleznev, who freely navigates a huge body of historical sources. Among the obvious advantages of the book, we also note the author's masterful command of classical (Greek, Latin) and Eastern (Syriac, Arabic) languages. The texts on them are given in the original and the author's translation, which significantly increases the scientific value of the work. Perhaps the only reproach that could be addressed to the author in connection with the translation is the obvious same-type Arabisms that arise from the desire to convey the corresponding Arabic va with the "i" at the beginning of the phrase, as well as scrupulous adherence to the Arabic original in transmitting other conjunctions or other parts of speech that play the role of a bundle in the original between sentences ("then", "then", etc.Such scrupulousness would be justified if the Arabic syntax did not differ much from the Russian one. However, the opposite is true, and rendering the letter of the text may in this case be a deviation from the very idea of translation, since it actually distorts the text, creating for the Russian reader a sense of artificiality and purposefulness where in the Arabic original there is only following the language norm.

What field of knowledge should N. N. Seleznev's book belong to? Despite the apparent simplicity of the question, it is not so easy to answer it. On the one hand, the subtitle containing the word "history"seems to define the research genre as historical. It is difficult to object to this, but this description does not exhaust the content of the book. The author acts not only as a historian, but also as a philologist, and this philological orientation of the work is noticeable both in the attention that he pays to texts, and in the careful, loving treatment of primary sources, and even in the share of text space devoted to the reproduction of originals and their translation. The text does not go "behind the screen", does not remain somewhere in the "research kitchen" of the author, but is present,

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persistently and visibly, on the pages of the work. There is no division between these two hypostases (I hope the author will forgive me the allegorical use of the word, which plays the role of one of the central terms in his book), they organically cross over and justify each other: history is studied through the text, and a detailed philological study of the text is necessary for historical investigation. This way of telling a story or showing the life and content of the text deserves special mention and, in my opinion, is an essential advantage of the author's style.

But it's not just about style, of course. This combination of history through text and text woven into history is complemented by another equally significant circumstance. The author is interested not only in the word of the text, but also in the idea behind it, even if not directly expressed; not only in history as an event chain, but also in the reasons that gave rise to it and formed it. N. N. Seleznev's research tends, in my opinion, to be philosophical - to look beyond the obvious, i.e., presented to the eye, in order to understand how it is justified and how it became possible. Therefore, the individual research articles that make up the book are combined not only on an external, event-historical level, but also on an internal, ideological and theoretical level. As we move from one section of the book to the next, we gradually begin to understand how this fruitful coexistence of Pax Christiana and Pax Islamica became possible, not destroyed, but rather fueled by the irremediable dogmatic differences between the two confessions, not to mention the internal differences of the branches of each of them. Probably, this was made possible not least due to a single thought space defined and formed by common thought models. Of these, which are clearly visible in the text, I will mention two that are among the most widely used and important in the theoretical discourse of Arab-Muslim culture: These are ' asl-far '(root-branch) and lafz-ma'nan (word-meaning). As far as we can see, these models are also used by Christian authors when discussing the issue of unity and diversity of faiths (see pages 39, 88, etc.). Mental models are formal, which means that they do not depend on a particular content, they stand, so to speak, above dogmatic (content) differences. Not excluded-

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It is obvious that the basis of mutual understanding, which was not destroyed by dogmatic differences and ensured mutual coexistence and cultural exchange of the two worlds, was not least the use of common thinking techniques, formalized as named models, terminologically marked, and therefore easily recognizable and reproduced in the entirety of their logic by the listener.

The reader, I am sure, will receive not only benefit, but also great intellectual pleasure from the work of N. N. Seleznev. Packed with seemingly overflowing scientific apparatus and references of all sorts, the book nevertheless retained a fresh, lively style and was not covered with boring office dust. The author seems to introduce us to the circle of his good friends, who invite us to talk and want to share their concerns with us and enrich us with the results of their thoughts. We wish the reader to experience the joy of getting acquainted with this work, and its author - to continue to follow the chosen path, without getting out of his rut.

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