Coptica v. 16 2017

Fakhr al-Dawlah ibn al-Muʾtaman

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particular liturgical ceremony of readmission to the Church’s communion. 40 For Marqus, as for the other saints of the era, the door of repentance and return to the Christian fold was wide open—even though the possibility of martyrdom lay on the other side. The Permanent Convert There had been many conversions to Islam in 14 th -century Egypt, especially among Copts of the bureaucratic class who wanted to keep their positions. While the Lives and Miracles of the saints we are considering here put special emphasis on individuals who desired to return to Christian obedience, the great majority of the converts, of course, remained Muslims. The Life and Miracles of Marqus al-Anṭūnī tell us about the relationship al-shaykh Marqus had with at least two, and maybe three or four, prominent bureaucrats who were Muslims from originally Coptic families. 41 I’ll mention just one of them here, a man named Karīm al-Dīn ibn Mukānis, who came from a Coptic family that had converted to Islam some generations earlier. 42 In the Miracles of Marqus al-Anṭūnī, one of the stories tells how this high-ranking financial administrator showed up one day at the Monastery of St. Antony in disguise; but Marqus saw through it and addressed him as follows: “You there, I wonder if you know al-ṣāḥib Karīm al-Dīn ibn Mukānis?” He responded: “My revered father, I am he. I have come to you in this clothing [fleeing] from the distress that has befallen me from the sultan, al-Malik al-Ẓāhir Barqūq.” Then the Old Man answered him saying, “Be strong, my son, and do not fear. For from now on, by the prayers of the saintly fathers with whom you have taken refuge, Barqūq will no longer say anything to you or harm you. But go and meet him, and you will come out [from the meeting] free and whole.” Along with the Old Man’s speech to him, he took the aforementioned ṣāḥib by the hand and commended him to the Virgin. And he sent him to the sultan. 43 40 See the discussion in my other essay in this volume, “The Story of Fakhr al-Dawlah ibn al-Muʾtaman,” section on “The readmission of the apostate.” 41 See a summary in Swanson, “Our Father Abba Mark,” 223-24. 42 See Mark N. Swanson, “The Saint and the Muslim Copts: Episodes from the Life of Abba Mark of the Monastery of St. Antony (1296-1386),” in From Old Cairo to the New World: Coptic Studies Presented to Gawdat Gabra on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Leuven and Paris: Peeters, 2013), 157-71. 43 MS Monastery of St. Paul, hist. 115, f. 69r (from Miracle #13, ff. 68v-69v). I published my translation of this and the next miracle story in Swanson, “The Saint and the Muslim Copts,” 157-71, here p. 159.