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The present thematic issue of The Historical Reporter is dedicated to the memory of the distinguished Russian Orientalist, Professor Constantin A. Panchenko (1968–2024), a representative of the scholarly trend of the Institute of Asian and African Studies at Lomonosov Moscow State University.

The issue Worlds of Eastern Christianity opens with the publication of Professor Panchenko’s unfinished article, on which he had been working during the final days of his life. The text develops a paper he presented on 2 April 2024 at the Institute of Asian and African Studies during the roundtable The 7th Century as an ‘Axial Age’ of the Middle East: The Concept of the Birth of Islamic Civilization in Patricia Crone and Michael Cook’s “Hagarism”– Pros and Cons” (“Lomonosov Readings,” subsection “The Christian East”). The choice of subject is somewhat unexpected in light of the topics that occupied Professor Panchenko throughout his academic career. The article surveys modern Western historiography (since the 1970s) on the emergence and genesis of Islam in the 7th century. Panchenko justified his interest in the subject, despite his specialization in the study of Middle Eastern Christianity, by noting that “Islam predetermined the entire subsequent historical fate of the Christian East, while the Christian and other peoples of the Middle East contributed—indeed, decisively—to the formation of Arab-Muslim civilization.”

As a result, readers will encounter the new scholarly paradigm of the Western “revisionist school” of Islamic origins. Early Islam is presented as a supra-confessional Abrahamic movement of “believers,” comprising, alongside the followers of Muhammad, numerous Jews and Christians. This movement was characterized by pronounced eschatological expectations, which help explain its focus on the conquest of Jerusalem. In other words, early Islam was Palestine-centered. Only under the Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik (685–705) did Muslims separate into a distinct religious community, initiating the formation of a specifically Arabian Islam, differentiated from other Abrahamic religions, with its center not in Palestine but in the Hijaz—the very Islam familiar to us from the Muslim historiography of later times.

Pavel Kuzenkov’s article (The Eschatological Background of the Islamic Conquests …), addresses the “axial time” of the Middle East and situates itself within the framework set by Dr. Panchenko’s contribution. From its inception, Christianity anticipated the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God, which created a charged atmosphere and imparted a linear, eschatologically directed character to history. By the 6th century, eschatological tension had reached its peak, connected both with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and with the transition into the seventh (“Sabbath”) millennium (6000–7000 years from Adam) according to the Septuagint chronology at the turn of the 5th to 6th centuries. As a response, during the reign of Emperor Heraclius in the 7th century, the Byzantine (“Roman”) era (beginning in 5509 BC) was introduced and came into active use. This chronological system allowed contemporaries to assert that the sacramental threshold of the year 6000 had been successfully passed, and humanity had entered the Sabbath Seventh Millennium. This reckoning became part of imperial ideology, emphasizing Byzantium’s role as the only true Christian empire. Yet in its claims to universal spiritual-political leadership, the Byzantine world quickly came across the rise of Islam, which had emerged within the same eschatological atmosphere.

The topic of sacred geography in the Christian cultures of the Middle East—already addressed in issue 48 of The Reporter—is further developed in the contributions of Sergei Brun and Ilya Popov. The general concept of “sacred geography,” which encompasses a wide spectrum of themes such as objects of worship, calendrical cycles of feasts, pilgrimage, and accompanying rituals across diverse peoples and civilizations, is described in Dr. Brun’s article on the sacred topography of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch between the 10th and 14th centuries. The system of holy sites and the veneration of particular saints makes it possible to reconstruct the condition of a given culture or religious community. The fate of local sacred locations may reflect the historical trajectory of the community itself. In this case, the focus is on the Patriarchate of Antioch during the period between the so-called Byzantine “Reconquest” (the reintegration into Byzantium of Cilicia, northern and northwestern Syria, and western Mesopotamia) and the series of devastations inflicted by the Zengids, Mongols, and— most destructively—the Egyptian Mamluks in the 12th to 14th centuries. Through a kind of “topographical survey,” Dr. Brun systematizes the sacred sites and examines their functioning from local to universal levels. He identifies four stages of devastation that transformed what had once been a unified cultural space into a collection of fragmented enclaves, deprived of most of their historical monuments.

The genesis of an earlier stratum of symbolic space, localized within the city of Joppa (Ioppe) in Palestine, is the focus of Ilya Popov’s study. The author examines the competing “Joppa narratives” regarding Perseus and Jonah as a dialogical system—a call-and-response paradigm—between the pagan and the Jewish communities during the Hellenistic era. Dr. Popov concludes that societies construct their histories through their own re-interpretation of inherited mythological traditions, grounded in the “museumified” sacred space that remains relevant to their present.

The section devoted to intercultural interaction opens with the article by Dmitry Mishin. The text examines the rise of the primacy of the See of Seleucia-Ctesiphon within the Sasanian Empire in the 3rd century and the key role played in this process by Bishop Papa bar ʿAggai. Drawing on a range of historical sources, including the Chronicle of Arbela, the Synodicon Orientale, and others, the author demonstrates that even in the earliest stages of church history, religious decisions were taken with political expediency in mind. Dr. Mishin shows with great clarity how legends and falsifications served as instruments of political strategy. Thus, the article is not merely a biography of a single figure, but rather an exploration of a complex, multilayered picture in which politics, religion, and historical memory intersect. It argues that the elevation of Seleucia-Ctesiphon was an inevitable process, driven by the need to centralize authority in order to interact effectively with the powerful Sasanian state. The article’s conclusion reinforces its scholarly significance by highlighting the depth and critical rigor of the author’s approach.

Mikhail Yakushev’s first contribution addresses the journeys of Russian pilgrim-writers to the Ottoman Empire from the late 18th to the early 19th centuries. Following the peace treaties of 1774 and 1792, which enabled Russian subjects to visit the Holy Land in relative safety, the flow of pilgrims increased substantially, despite the many hardships involved. Travels across the Ottoman Empire remained long, exhausting, and dangerous. Pilgrims endured heavy physical strain, extended marches, climatic changes, malnutrition, and unfamiliar food. Many were forced to sleep in coffeehouses or under the open sky. Prior to the establishment of Russian consular representation, they often found themselves without shelter or protection in a foreign land. The diaries and travel notes analyzed by Dr. Yakushev constitute an important contribution to the literature of pilgrimage, bearing witness to the spiritual endeavor of Russian travelers who overcame immense difficulties along their way.

In a second contribution, Dr. Yakushev turns to the reconstruction of the little-known biography of the French traveler and artist Guillaume-Joseph Grelot. His Relation Nouvelle d'un Voyage de Constantinople (1680) serves as the principal source, supplemented by the diaries of his contemporaries, such as Ambrogio Bembo and Jean Foy-Vaillant.

In 1672, Grelot managed to enter the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople in secret and make sketches of its interior. The publication of his book, the first illustrated description of Hagia Sophia available to a European readership, brought him enormous popularity. His drawings and plans remain a highly valuable historical source, as they record the state of Hagia Sophia in the 17th century, including the details that have since been lost. Grelot’s work represents a significant contribution to cultural exchange between East and West, providing European audiences with unique images of one of the world’s greatest monuments.

The section on religious conversions is represented by the articles of Anna Bochkovskaya and Evgeny Kopotʹ. The Punjab had remained beyond the reach of Christian missionaries longer than most other regions of the Indian subcontinent. By introducing new sources into scholarly circulation—such as annual mission reports, as well as the notes and memoirs of John Lowrie and John Newton—Dr. Bochkovskaya sheds light on the previously understudied aspects of missionary activity in northwestern India during the first half of the 19th century. Her analysis focuses on the first third of the century, when Christianity was only beginning to enter the region. This makes it possible to understand how missionaries—American Protestants in this case—developed methods and practices of work in what was for them an “unexplored” area along the southern bank of the Sutlej River. Missionaries recognized the importance of education as an instrument of evangelization, but they also faced the reality that graduates of their schools rarely accepted baptism. This observation is of wider significance for the study of Catholic missionary activity in the Middle East as well: the proliferation of schools did not automatically translate into significant conversions to Protestantism or Catholicism. Nevertheless, missionary schools played a crucial role in fostering a positive attitude among the Punjabi elite toward Europeans and Christianity, as well as in training personnel for government service.

Evgeny Kopotʹ’s article examines the history of the Uniate movement in the Church of Antioch in the second half of the 19th century. Its central thesis is that the union (Unia) with Rome, as well as conversions to Protestantism (particularly Anglicanism), functioned primarily as instruments in the struggle over power, financial resources, and social status. Dr. Kopotʹ demonstrates that these conflicts were not rooted in doctrinal or theological disagreements, but driven by secular interests. This argument is reinforced by a comparative analysis of typologically similar processes within the Melkite Uniate community, which suggests the universality of the phenomenon across Middle Eastern Christianity. The author shows how regional rivalries between the established centers (Damascus) and the new ones (Beirut, Tripoli), as well as intra-elite struggles at diocesan and communal levels, became the primary sources of conflict. In the absence of secular forms of political self-organization, the religious sphere became the arena in which broader social contradictions were worked out. By applying Fernand Braudel’s concept of the longue durée, the study frames the Uniate movements not as isolated episodes, but as part of long-term socio-economic and regional processes. This shifts the focus away from individual actors and events toward underlying structural factors, marking a significant advance in the historiography.

The article critically reconsiders traditional explanatory models, convincingly dismantling the myth of a “national” conflict (the Greek–Arab opposition) and of external intervention as the sole or primary causes of schisms. It demonstrates how, in contexts where the religious community (millet) performed certain functions of a state structure, confessional affiliation became an instrument for resolving strictly secular issues. The use of Russian diplomatic correspondence introduces new material into scholarly circulation, confirming and deepening the conclusions of both contemporary Western (T. Philipp) and Russian scholars (C.A. Panchenko).

The section of this issue devoted to historical sources presents, for the first time, a document concerning the medieval history of the Patriarchate of Alexandria: an Arabic encyclical by the Orthodox (Melkite) Patriarch Athanasius III (Patriarch ca. 1275–ca. 1315). The translation and commentary by Professor Alexander S. Treiger (Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada) shed light on the daily life and liturgical practice of Egyptian Melkites, the process of Byzantinization of their worship, and the persecutions endured by Christians during the Mamluk era.

This issue of The Historical Reporter represents a continuation of the intellectual program established by Dr. Panchenko by providing a platform for scholarly engagement with the vast world of the Christian East. For the contributors, it is also a gesture of gratitude—a collective attempt to carry forward the ideas of a distinguished scholar, colleague, mentor, and friend.

Alexey E. Titkov Editor-in-Chief of the Journal “Historical Reporter.