Seminario Narrative Morphing: Theory and Evidence from Oriental Christianity under Islam

Abstract

We study how political shocks reshape group identities and collective narratives through strategic coalition formation and historical reinterpretation. We develop a theory of narrative morphing in which non-ruling groups respond to regime change by reorganizing along doctrinal, demographic, and political lines. In our framework, groups bargain over mergers under external threat. Mergers can involve full absorption or syncretic concessions, are shaped by ideological distance, and may include elite-level rents when bargaining is non-unitary. After consolidation, groups produce cohesive historical narratives that suppress past internal conflict, amplify antagonism toward former rulers, and reinterpret collective origins to accommodate out-converts aligned to the new hegemon.

We test this framework in the context of consolidation of Oriental Christianity surrounding the 7th-century Arab conquests of the Middle East which transferred power from Byzantine Christians to Arab Muslim rulers and introduced identity-based taxation that reshaped conversion incentives toward Islam. Using a newly constructed corpus of Coptic, Greek, Syriac, Armenian, and Arabic texts (300–1500 CE), we examine four outcomes: (1) the redirection of intra-Christian conversion flows and consolidation of rival sects into the Coptic, Syriac, Assyrian, and Armenian Churches, (2) doctrinal realignment measured through Christological language and liturgical terminology, (3) material rents granted to clerical elites during mergers, and (4) systematic rewriting of historical narratives.

Based on our theory, we evaluate whether consolidation favored Christian groups with demographic strength and doctrinal proximity, whether doctrinal concessions followed bargaining power, whether elite transfers accompanied mergers, and whether post-conquest narratives strategically reframed Byzantines as persecutors while incorporating Muslim rule into a shared origin narrative. The study advances the political economy of culture by endogenizing identity change, elite bargaining, and memory formation following regime shocks.

(joint with Jean Tirole)