Coptica 15, 2016

Alexander the Great among Medieval Copts: Some comments on the uses of Alexander-materials in Copto-Arabic literature * Mark N. Swanson

Introduction: Surprises at the Library of Dayr al-Suryān My interest in the place of Alexander the Great in the Arabic literature of the Copts goes back over a decade, but this interest was intensified in June 2015 when my colleagues Stephen Davis, Yuhanna Nessim Youssef and I spent two weeks at the Syrian Monastery, Dayr al-Suryān, as part of a manuscript cataloguing project led by Prof. Davis and sponsored by Yale University’s Egyptological Endowment. 1 In the course of our work, I examined a 14 th –century manuscript in the theology section (133 Lāhūt ), containing, by my count, 31 separate treatises. The first and ninth items were major works, part of Kitāb al-Majdal by ʿAmr ibn Mattā and the whole of the Fuṣūl mukhtaṣirah of al-Ṣafī ibn al-ʿAssāl, respectively. But in between these major works, there is a series of seven short pieces: four funeral homilies (three of them attributed to St. John Chrysostom); stories about the death of Joseph and that of Solomon; followed (to my initial surprise) by a story about Alexander the Great in Persia—a story that also occurs in in a 19 th -century manuscript of the Cairo Museum (Hist. 468) to which Adel Sidarus has recently called attention. 2 This Alexander story in fact fits with the previous six pieces: it also is about death and the right attitude towards it. According to it, Alexander’s emissary Sylverius (Shilbāriyūs) was captured by the Persians and designated to be a human sacrifice. He faced his fate with courage, writing a confident and hope- filled letter of farewell to his son. That letter helped to motivate Alexander’s troops, who crushed the Persians in battle while Alexander personally delivered Sylverius from prison. At about the same time that I was working on MS 133 Lāhūt , Prof. Davis was examining a manuscript of ascetic texts (MS 174 Nuskiyyāt ) in * An early version of this paper was delivered at the 17 th St. Shenouda Conference of Coptic Studies, UCLA, July 18, 2015. The present version is only slightly adapted from the one delivered at the 11 th International Congress of Coptic Studies, Claremont, CA, July 29, 2016. 1 This project to catalogue the Coptic and Arabic manuscripts of the library of Dayr al- Suryān began in 2013, at the invitation of Bishop Mattāʾus and head librarian Fr. Bigoul, to whom I wish to express my lively appreciation and gratitude. 2 See Adel Sidarus, “Alexandre le Grand chez les Coptes (recherches récentes et perspectives nouvelles),” in Orientalia Christiana: Festschrift für Hubert Kaufhold zum 70. Geburtstag , ed. Peter Bruns and Heinz Otto Luthe, Eichstätter Beiträge zum Christlichen Orient 3 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013), 477-95, here the Annexe, pp. 494-95.

Coptica 15 (2016), 81 – 88.