ABUKARA, TEODORO (Thāwādārās). — His name in Arabic is Abu Qurrah, “father of joy.” He was bishop of Harrān (Mesopotamia). There are indications that he lived between the eighth and ninth 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 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 him and was bishop of Harrān, not of Caria, as is clear from the Arabic manuscripts, from Bar Ebreo (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 as well. For the same reason, he is not even the bishop of Qārah. An attempt has been made to identify A. with Abū or Puggālā, mentioned in the Chron. de M. Le Syrien (ed. Chabot, III, pp. 29, 32–34), and with Epicurus in the account of Vardan, in Erw. Ter-Minassianz (Die armenische Kirche in ihren Beziehungen zu den syrischen Kirchen, 1904, p. 29). Regarding 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 treatises, which constitute a vigorous polemic against infidels and heretics, 42 were published in Greek and 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 by G. Arendzen from the Arabic manuscript London Or. 4950. Of his other Arabic writings, C. Bāšā published, in al-Mašrīq 6 (1903), pp. 633 ff., 800 ff., from a manuscript at Dair al-Mukhalīq near Sidon, a treatise on the truth of the Christian religion, which he later published in 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 manuscripts, a treatise on the Incarnation; Bāšā, however, in the cited French work (p. 7), denies that it is by A. The same Bāšā subsequently published nine further treatises in Beirut (without date), and finally, in 1912, L. Cheikho published in al-Mašrīq, from a manuscript at 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 treatises in Syriac, as he states in the third of the nine treatises published by Bāšā (p. 60). The manuscripts of the Georgian and Slavonic versions remain to be examined (Brosset, Hist. et Lit. de la Géorgie, Petersburg 1837, p. 135; and Karckovski, Christianship Vostok, 1916, p. 380). Pietro Sfair
ABŪ 'I KHAIR IBN aṭ-ṬAYYIB. — Coptic writer of the thirteenth century, physician and priest, collaborator with Abū Ishāq in the Collection (v. ABŪ ISHĀQ) and later author of the work The Illumination of Intelligences, until recently attributed to Abū 'I-Barakāt, a theological synthesis according to the Monophysite doctrine of the Copts.
ABU 'l KHAIR IBN aṭ-ṬAYYIB - ABUSO