Coptica v. 16 2017

90 Mark N. Swanson

According to the story, al-Karīm obeyed and returned to Barqūq, who received him kindly, to the astonishment of those who witnessed it. 44 There are at least two things that are remarkable about this story. In the first place, Karīm al-Dīn ibn Mukānis is well-known from the Islamic histories and biographical dictionaries of the time. 45 He had a roller-coaster career, rising to positions akin to “finance minister” ( wazīr ; nāẓir al-dawlah ; nāẓir al-khaṣṣ ; briefly mushīr al-dawlah ). But he also, repeatedly, got into trouble, and on more than one occasion fled Cairo and disappeared. So it happened in 1382—but then he reappears in the sources a few years later, again in a position of considerable authority. The Islamic sources do not say where he disappeared to ; but our Christian source offers an answer: to the Monastery of St. Antony! The Islamic and the Christian sources here dovetail very well. The other remarkable thing about this story, perhaps the most remarkable thing about this story, is that al-shaykh Marqus receives Karīm al-Dīn as though he were a good son of the Church . Indeed, there is little in this particular story to suggest that Karīm al-Dīn is not a Christian— but the next miracle story tells us that “[t]he aforementioned ṣāḥib had a Christian woman; he did not have in his household among his servants any Christian woman besides this one.” 46 That makes it clear that we are talking about the household of a Muslim man of considerable means. But Marqus assures this Muslim bureaucrat that he is blessed with the prayers of the saintly fathers; Marqus takes him and commends him to the Virgin Mary, probably before the image of the Virgin in the monastery church; and Marqus sends him away in peace. 47 Allow me to add one more category of religious Others; this may feel like something of an Addendum, since we’re looking at a different sort of literature. But a few years ago I was surprised when I realized that in addition to the hagiographical literature that we possess from around the time of Patriarch Matthew, we also possess a major theological and ecclesiastical encyclopedia written by a priest, physician, and civil servant become monk: his name was al-Makīn Jirjis, known as Ibn al-ʿAmīd. 48 In the 1390s, at his hermitage outside the Monastery of St. Arsenius at Mount Ṭurā (south of Addendum: Scholars

44 MS Monastery of St. Paul, hist. 115, f. 69r-v. 45 For details, see Swanson, “The Saint and the Muslim Copts,” 160-64. 46 MS Monastery of St. Paul, hist. 115, f. 69v (from Miracle #14, ff. 69v-70v); Swanson, “The Saint and the Muslim Copts,” 159. 47 See also Swanson, “The Saint and the Muslim Copts,” 165-69. 48 On this author, who must be distinguished from the 13 th -century historian of the same name, see Adel Sidarus and Mark N. Swanson, “Al-Makīn Jirjis ibn al-ʿAmīd,” CMR 5:254- 61.