The concept of jihād in pre-Islamic Syrian Christian and early Sufi Muslim writings

In the Arabic version of the account of Jesus’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus engages in a struggle or jihād. Arabic-speaking Christians drew on pre-Islamic Syrian Christian metaphors of inner spiritual struggle, and this parallels early Sufi Muslim usage. My thesis investigates the wider range of terms associated with this imagery such as fight, battle, sword, shield, race, fortress, and wounds. There is much correlation between pre-Islamic Syrian Christian and Sufi Muslim conceptions of inner struggle, which informs understandings of early Christian-Muslim relations and how jihād in Sufi Islam should be interpreted today.