Jabra'il Ibn al-Qila'i

From Maronite History

Jabra'il Ibn al-Qila'i (?-1516) was a Maronite apologetic and the bishop of Nicosia whose life spanned the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Al-Qila'i defended the Maronite Church's "orthodoxy" (the faith defined by the Council of Chalcedon) against the charges of Monothelitism. He was the first modern Maronite to assert that the Maronite Church and the Church of Rome were of the same faith. Al-Qila'i also believed that the name "Maronite" came from the term "Morio," which is Syriac means "Lord (Christ)."

In his work Marun al-Tubani (Blessed Marun), Al-Qila'i wrote that Yuhanna (John) Marun was the first Maronite "Patriarch of Great Antioch." Another work of his, Madihat Kisrawan (also referred to as the Zajaliyya), is considered by some Maronites to be a historical record of the Maronite Church from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, although this remains controversial.

Sources

• Matti Moosa - The Maronites in History (Syracuse University Press, 1986).