The Coptic church's own record. The lives of Mark III (1167 to 1189) and John VI (1189 to 1216), written by continuators close to the events, cover the patriarch's dealings with Saladin and al-Adil, the state of the Coptic community under Ayyubid rule, the famine of 1200 to 1202, and the church's ties with Nubia and Ethiopia, which looked to Alexandria for their bishops and metropolitans. For the realms south of Egypt it gives the ecclesiastical side: when metropolitans were sent, what the Nubian and Ethiopian kings asked of the patriarch, and the quarrels this caused. The published Arabic text for these decades is in the Cairo edition of Khater and Burmester.
About this source
- Title
- Siyar al-bi'a al-muqaddasa (History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria)
- Author
- Mawhub ibn Mansur ibn Mufarrij and continuators (Various)
- Author's dates
- Mawhub about 1025 to about 1100; continuators to the thirteenth century
- Written
- compiled in Arabic 1088 to 1094 from Coptic lives; continued for the patriarchs of 1102 to 1243 and later
- Language
- Arabic (from Coptic)
- Covers
- St Mark to the thirteenth century, with later continuations
- Kind
- Biography
The free editions (Evetts in the Patrologia Orientalis) stop in 849; the parts that matter for 1200 are in the Cairo edition of Khater and Burmester, which is not freely online. Unofficial web translations of the later parts circulate and are not linked here. The Arabic recension was long credited to Severus of Ashmunayn; the authorship of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century lives is uncertain.
Where to read it
Editions
- B. T. A. Evetts (ed. and tr.), History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria, Patrologia Orientalis 1.2, 1.4, 5.1 and 10.5 (Paris, 1904 to 1915), Arabic with English, to the year 849: PO vol. 1
- The same, PO vol. 5
- The same, PO vol. 10
- A. Khater and O. H. E. KHS-Burmester (eds and trs), History of the Patriarchs of the Egyptian Church, vols 2 to 4 (Cairo, 1943 to 1974), Arabic with English; the lives of Mark III and John VI are in vol. 3 (1968 to 1970) (not freely online)