ABUKARA, TEODORO (Thāvūdūrīs). — His name in Arabic is Abu Qurrah, “father of joy.” He was bishop of Harrān (Mesopotamia). There are indications that he lived between the 8th and 9th centuries AD (A. Guillaume, A Debate between Christian and Moslem Doctors, in Centenary Supplement to the "Journal of the R. Asiatic Society", [1924], pp. 233-44, and G. Graf, Die arab. Schriften des T. Abu-Kurra, in Forschungen zur christlichen Literatur und Dogmengesch., X, Paderborn 1910, p. 77, note 2). G. Graf (ibid., p. 20) and others after him have concluded that A. lived from 740 to 820.
A. was confused with the bishop of Caria who at the Eighth Ecumenical Council sided with Ignatius. But A. flourished a century before him and was bishop of Harrān, not of Caria, as is clear from Arabic manuscripts, from Bar Hebraeus (G. S. Assemani, Bibl. Orient., II, p. 292, where however he writes Haran instead of Harrān), from A. Mai (Bibl. Nova, VI, p. 169), from Migne (PG 97, 1455) and others. For the same reason he is not the bishop of Qārah. It has been suggested that A. be identified with Abū or Puggālā, mentioned in the Chron. of Michael the Syrian (ed. Chabot, III, pp. 29, 32-34) and with Epicurus in the account of Vardan, cited by Erw. Ter-Minassiantz (Die armenische Kirche in ihren Beziehungen zu den syrischen Kirchen, 1904, p. 29). Regarding this double identification, cf. Theol. Revue (March 1906, pp. 149-50) and Rev. Or. Christ., (2nd series, 1 [1906], pp. 103-04).
Of the dissertations of A., which are a strong polemic against unbelievers and heretics, 42 were published in Greek and Latin in 1606, by interpreters F. Turriano and F. Gretsero, and republished by Migne with the addition of a treatise De Unione et Incarnatione (PG 97, 1461 ff.). His De cultu imaginum libellus was published in 1897 by G. Arendzen from the Arabic ms. London Or. 4950. Of his other Arabic writings, C. Bāsā, in al-Mašrīq 6 (1903), pp. 633 ff., 800 ff., published from a manuscript of Dair al-Mukhallīs near Sidon a treatise on the truth of the Christian religion, which he later published in French in Tripoli in 1903. L. Ma'lūf (ibid., pp. 1011-33) published from the aforementioned ms. Or. 4950, which is the oldest of the Christian Arabs, a dissertation on the Incarnation, which however Bāsā, in the French work cited (p. 7), denies is by A.; the same Bāsā later published in Beirut (undated) nine other dissertations, and finally L. Cheikho in 1912 published in al-Mašrīq, from a manuscript of Dair-ash-Shir near Beirut, a treatise on the existence of God and the true religion, given in German by G. Graf in Beiträge zur Gesch. der Philosophie des Mittelalters (XIV [1913, fasc. 1]). A. also wrote 30 dissertations in Syriac, as he himself states in the 3rd of the 9 dissertations published by Bāsā (p. 60). The manuscripts of the Georgian and Slavic versions are to be examined (Brosset, Hist. et Lit. de la Géorgie, St. Petersburg 1837, p. 135; and Karckowski, Christiankiy Vostok, 1916, p. 380).
BIBL.:
G. Graf, Die arabischen Schriften des Theodor Abu Kurra, Paderborn 1910.
ABU I KHAIR IBN at-TAYYIB. — Coptic writer of the 13th century, physician and priest, collaborator with Abū Isḥāq in the Collection (v. ABDISHO) and later author of the work L'illuminazione delle intelligenze, a theological synthesis according to the Monophysite doctrine of the Copts, until recently attributed to Abū 'l-Barakāt.