SSCN Voumes 1-10, 1994-2004

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

18 Bell, D. Shenoute the Great: The Passion of Christ. Cistercian Studies 22, 1987, pp.292-303. 19 Orlandi, CGO 325 20 Orlandi, CGO 326 21 Orlandi, CGO 327 22 Orlandi, CGO 464 23 Orlandi, CGO 466 24 Orlandi, CGO 468 25 Orlandi, CGO 471 26 Orlandi, CGO 482 27 Orlandi, CGO 346-347 28 Orlandi, CGO 476 29 Orlandi, CGO 803-811

30 Grillmeier. Christ in Christian Tradition . Vol 2, From the Council of Chalcedon (451) to Gregory the Great (590-604) , Pt. 4 The Church of Alexandria with Nubia and Ethiopia after 451 . English Translation by O. C. Dean John Knox Press 1996, p.183 31 Orlandi, CGO 349-355 32 Orlandi, CGO 208 33 Orlandi, CGO 800-802 34 Orlandi, CGO 423 35 Orlandi, CGO 653-655 36 Orlandi, CGO 821 31 Orlandi, CGO 821 Al Fihrist of ibn al-Nadim and Coptic Christianity in the Tenth Century* (by J. Harold Ellens, PhD) Introduction:

enlightenment of the Western World by Arabic and Persian wisdom and science, nor does it make the Crusades of Roman Catholic Christendom any less reprehensible. However, out of the ferocious crusader invasion of Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean Basin there came back to Europe a rich flow of Persian and Arabic scholarship, carrying on its back the scientific and literary records of the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. The intellectual and scientific life of the West was civilized, informed, and inspired by this incredible gift from the refined Persian intellectuals and from the Arab poets, scientists, and physicians. From this gift in more modern times sprang the Age of Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the sophisticated enterprises of philosophy, science, and art that characterizes the Western World today, giving it its preeminent cultural status and role. The single most important instrument in this intellectual-cultural gift of East to West was one remarkable book, al- Nadim's Al-Fihrist , conserving to a great degree what had been lost to the West in the fall of the Roman Empire and the destruction of the ancient

The Al-Fihrist by ibn al-Nadim is a tenth century survey of the full range of international literature, philosophy, religion, linguistics, and culture known to scholars in Baghdad at that time. That Islamic city was certainly the center of civilized scholarship in the tenth century, and the wellspring of much of the wisdom and knowledge from the ancient world which became the source of enlightenment in the West, as well as the force that gave rise to the great universities of the Western World and powered the fourteenth century Italian Renaissance and its North European daughter a century or two later. Baghdad was the channel through which the magnificent science and wisdom of the peerless ancient Alexandrian Library, with its Museion and university center flowed into the intellectual and cultural veins of Europe in the two centuries after al-Nadim. That the Crusades of the Western Roman Catholic Church and of the European Roman Catholic Princes facilitated this, makes them neither the source or reason for the

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

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