Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 120 h Dimitrios G. Letsios is narrated, was born in Eirinopolis of Isauria in Southern Asia Minor, 25 and the time of its composition puts the stories included in this Life close to the conditions reflected in the Passio of Bacchos. Ignatios composed this Life upon the request of Joseph the Hymnographer, who has been a pupil of Gregory. Gregory’s Life is colored by anti-iconoclast tone and it is assumed “that Ignatios— repentant iconoclast, as he has been labeled—undertook this commission of writing it, in order to establish his orthodox credentials”. 26 In any case, Gregory meets the Saracens at a different region. His real encounter with Saracens could be possible during his journey to Sicily and his life as recluse in Syracuse. ASaracen is as well involved in the narration of a miracle worked by Gregory. 27 This work is commented here due to its chronological affinity with the last one and its composition during iconoclasm. South Arabia—Najran In the kingdom of Ḥimyar, that is in the zone of contact between Yemen and inner Arabia, turbulences and political and religious disorder prevailed for a long period. In this area, the capital of a small kingdom, the kingdom of Saba’ “owes its fame, above all, to a tragic event: “the massacre of the Christian pro-Byzantine elite by a Jewish king of Ḥimyar…in 523.” 28 Briefly, as Ch. Robin summarizes it, external sources in Greek, such as, among others, Procopios, Malalas and Photios and sources in Syriac as well, provide useful information on this fifth- sixth century period of disorder. Homilies, hymns, and hagiographical texts, again in Greek and Syriac, such as, primarily the Dekapolites , ed. G. Makris, Ignatios Diakonos und die Vita des Hl. Gregorios Dekapolites. Edi- tion und Kommentar mit einer Übersetzung der Vita von M. Chronz [Byzantinisches Archiv 17], Stuttgart 1997, 3–11; PmbZ 2486 (Gregorios Dekapolites); ODB 2, 880, s.v. Gregory of Dekapolis. 25 Τοῦτον ἤνεγκε μὲν μία τῶν τῆς Δεκαπόλεως τῶν πρὸς τῇ Ἰσαυρίᾳ πόλις, ᾗ ὄνομα Εἰρηνόπολις· Ignatios Deacon, Life of Gregorios Dekapolites, 1, 1–2, 60. Cf. ed. G. Makris, Ignatios Diakonos, p. 134, n. 154. 26 Mango and Efthymiadis, The Correspondence of Ignatios , 17. 27 “But from there he wanted to set sail and got to Sicily. But, because the sailors refused to take the trip to those areas because of the Arabs that were lurking there…’ Ignatios Deacon, Life of Gregorios Dekapolites, 22, 9–13, 88; Cf. Ibid., 34, 1–8, 98; 88. 1–9. 148. On the vicissitudes of the saint in Sicily and Southern Italy including his being perceived as an Arab himself, cf. recently N. Koutrakou, “Layers of ‘Otherness’. Appearance defining and disguising ‘otherness’ in Byzan- tine Monasticism” in H.-W. Goetz and I. Wood eds., ‘Otherness’in the Middle Ages [International Medieval Research 25], Turnout 2021, 183–214, here at 200–2. 28 As easy reference, the comprehensive presentation, with full listing of the previous literature, by C. Robin, “Arabia and Ethiopia”, in: Scott Fitzgerald Johnson (ed.), The Handbook of Late Antiquity , 247–332, here 252.