Coptica 15, 2016

86 Mark N. Swanson We note that here, in al-Ḥāwī , the reference to Alexander is fleeting: he is mentioned only as part of a frame story. There is no judgment of him, positively or negatively. What is important for Jirjis is a specific book said to have been sent to Alexander by his tutor Aristotle, 24 one which enables Jirjis to claim ancient Greek philosophical support for his argument concerning human freedom. 3. Aristotle teaches Alexander how to make talismans My third example comes from another 14 th -century Copto-Arabic encyclopedia, this one largely concerned about liturgical matters and bearing the title al-Jawharah al-nafīsāh fī ʿulūm al-kanisah (“The Precious jewel: On the ecclesiastical sciences”). It was written by a Coptic deacon named Yūḥannā ibn Abī Zakariyyā ibn Sabbāʿ. 25 One of the book’s several introductory sections (chapters 3-26) is devoted to the story of human salvation, from Adam and Eve to Christ and the spread of the Christian faith—and it is here that we find a long story about Alexander the Great! Yūḥannā wants to describe how, as a result of our first parents’ disobedience in the Garden, human beings have fallen under the sway of Satan. He sees as prime evidence for this the spread in the ancient world of religions in which Satan was worshipped under the guise of the spirits of the heavenly spheres; in some of them, people attempted to tap into the power of these spirits through the use of talismans. For example, we read: Aristotle made models [of talismans] for Alexander when he went to Persia, where he was in need of his instruction. He said to him: “Know, O King, that the land of Persia is very wide consisting of desolate, thirst-inducing wilderness, and your army is large. You must have with you talismans that will help you reach your goal and facilitate great deeds. 26 One talisman which is then described in detail was an iron chest [ tābūt ] containing two sets of model armies: Alexander’s, made of iron and well-armed; and the Persians, made of lead and its weapons either turned the wrong way around or broken. This chest, along with another talisman 24 On the “epistolary cycle between Aristotle and Alexander,” see Dimitri Gutas, “On Graeco-Arabic Epistolary ‘Novels’,” Middle Eastern Literatures 12, no. 1 (April 2009): 59- 70. 25 Yūḥannā ibn Abī Zakariyyā ibn Sabbāʿ, Kitāb al-jawharah al-nafīsāh fī ʿulūm al- kanisah ; ed. Victor Manṣūr Mistriḥ (Cairo: Franciscan Centre of Oriental Christian Studies, 1966); here I’m especially interested in chapters 19-20, pp. 39-45. Not much is known about Yūḥannā, but for a bibliographical introduction see Mark N. Swanson, “Ibn Sabbāʿ,” in Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History , Volume 4 (1200-1350) , ed. David Thomas et al. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), 918-23. 26 From chapter 19; Kitāb al-jawharah al-nafīsāh (ed. Manṣūr), 42.