Coptica v. 16 2017

68 Mark N. Swanson

addition to these two holy monks, there was the strange holy man Furayj ibn Isḥāq, also known as Abba Teji or, most commonly, as Anbā Ruways, who spent the latter part of his ministry (until his death in 1404) in the streets and lanes, houses and churches of Cairo. In this “urban ministry,” the strange saint brought his clairvoyance, gifts of healing, and often enigmatic words and deeds to the service of Copts in need or in trouble—as we learn from a written Life (a Sīrah plus a collection of 13 to 15 Miracles , depending on the manuscript) that was compiled shortly after his death. 3 The ministries of Patriarch Matthew, Abba Mark of the Monastery of St. Antony, and Anbā Ruways were intertwined in a variety of ways: they appear in one another’s biographies, where they sometimes converse with one another or come to one another’s aid. Most of the other characters who appear in their biographies, however—with the exception of the sultan al-Ẓāhir Barqūq (r. 1382-99), who is seen positively, and other Mamlūk emirs, who are not—appear only in one biography or the other. There is one notable exception to this: the story of a young Copt named Fakhr al-Dawlah ibn al-Muʾtaman, which appears in at least two, and perhaps all three, of these biographies. In what follows, I shall first present Fakhr al-Dawlah’s story, as we find it in the biographies of Anbā Ruways, Marqus al-Anṭūnī, and (perhaps) Patriarch Matthew. After that, I shall comment on some features of his story that provide some insight for the understanding of inter-communal relations in Egypt in the late 14 th century, especially of processes of conversion between Christianity and Islam. For the story of Fakhr al-Dawlah ibn al-Muʾtaman, we begin with the biography of Anbā Ruways, where the 13 th miracle-account begins as follows: 4 There was once in Miṣr [that is, Old Cairo] a handsome youth from the children of the Copts named Fakhr al-Dawlah ibn al-Mu’taman. The Enemy [the Devil] seduced him through the love of attending great men, to the point that he departed from his faith and entered the service of the sultan, the king al-Ẓāhir Barqūq. He remained for some time in that service; he used to spend all his days in amusement, entertainment, sensual pleasure, drunkenness, and listening to ravishing songs. Then he went beyond all that to the point that he married a woman from the 3 On Anbā Ruways, see Mark N. Swanson, “The Urban Ministry of Anbā Ruways,” in Græco-latina et orientalia. Studia in honorem Angeli Urbani Sexagenari , ed. Samir Khalil Samir and Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala (Córdoba: CNERU; Beirut: CEDRAC, 2013), 359-69. 4 What follows is my English translation fromMS Paris ar. 282, ff. 135v-136v (the beginning of Miracle # 13). The Story