ABUKARA, Theodore (Thāwādōrās). - 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 A.D. (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 christl. 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 went over to the side of Ignatius. But A. flourished a century before the latter and was bishop of Harrān, not of Caria, as appears from the 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 from others still. For the same reason he is not even bishop of Qārah. Some wish to identify A. with Abū o Puggālā, mentioned in the Chron. de M. Le Syrien (ed. Chabot, III, pp. 29, 32-34) and with the Epicurus of the account of Vardan, in Erw. Ter-Minassianz (Die armenische Kirche in ihren Beziehungen zu den syrischen Kirchen, 1904, p. 29). On this twofold identification, cf. Theol. Revue (March 1906, pp. 149-50) and Rev. Or. Christ., (2nd series, 1 [1906], pp. 103-04).
Of A.'s dissertations, which are a vigorous polemic against unbelievers and heretics, 42 were published in Greek and in Latin in 1606, Interpretius F. Turriano et J. Gretsero, and republished by Migne with the addition of a treatise De Unione et Incarnatione (PG 97, 1461 ff.). His De cultu imoginum (Bella) was published in 1897 under the editorship of G. Arendzen from the Arabic manuscript London Or. 4950. Of his other Arabic writings, C. Bāšā, in al-Mašrīq 6 (1903), pp. 633 ff., 800 ff., published, from a manuscript of Dair al-Mukhalīq near Sidon, a treatise on the truth of the Christian religion, which he then published at Tripoli in French in 1903. L. Ma'lūf (ibid., pp. 1011-33) published from the aforementioned ms. Or. 4950, which is the oldest of the Christian Arabic ones, a dissertation on the Incarnation, which however Bāšā, in the cited French work (p. 7), denies is by A.; the same Bāšā then published at Beirut (without date) 9 other dissertations, and finally L. Cheikho in 1912 published, in al-Mašrīq, from a manuscript of Dair-ash-Shīr near Beirut, a treatise on the existence of God and the true religion, translated into 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 states in the 3rd of the 9 dissertations published by Bāšā (p. 60). The manuscripts of the Georgian and Slavonic versions are to be examined (Brosset, Hist. et Lit. de la Géorgie, St. Petersburg 1837, p. 135; and Karckovski, Christianship Vostok, 1916, p. 380).
Pietro Sfair
ABŪ 'I KHAIR IBN aṭ-ṬAYYIB. - Coptic writer of the 13th century, physician and priest, collaborator with Abū Ishāq in the Raccolta (v. ABŪ ISHĀQ) and later author of the work The Illumination of the Intelligences, attributed until recently to Abū 'I-Barakāt, a theological synthesis according to the Monophysite doctrine of the Copts.
ABU 'l KHAIR IBN aṭ-ṬAYYIB. - ABUSO
Bibliography2 works
Maurizio Gordillo