SSCN Voumes 1-10, 1994-2004

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

Alexandrian Library, but preserved by Arab and Persian scholars in such great Imperial Libraries as those of Baghdad, Aleppo, Damascus, Khurasan, and others. It was in such a culturally sophisticated urban setting in tenth century Baghdad that ibn al- Nadim was born in about 935 CE. Through assiduous study in mathematics, science, literature, and the tutorage of the Mosque, he developed into an erudite book seller. As a scholarly collector, and annotator he wrote and published his encyclopedic summary and assessment of all the cultures of which he had knowledge, and of their literary artifacts. His book was a lifetime venture for this impressive author, and it saw the light of day during the period between 987 - 990 CE (AD). Al-Nadim was a highly motivated and skilled master of languages, philosophy, science, and culture, who spent his adult life writing careful abstracts of every noteworthy book on which he could get his hands. He was one of those rare spirits who actually read all the books in his library, as well as all he bought and collected, and most, or all, of those he sold in his father's bookstore and scriptorium. He also interviewed travelers and traveled extensively himself. His book addresses all the available information on the ancient world of Greece, Rome, Persia, and Egypt; as well as his contemporary known world, including North Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, India, China, Eastern Europe, and Western Asia. Exposition One of the aspects of the world of culture, literature, language, and religion which greatly interested al-Nadim was that of Egypt in his day. He remarks at length upon the linguistic characteristics of Coptic language and culture in both Egypt and Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Three Coptic subjects seem to have been most interesting to him, or at least best known in the Baghdad of the tenth century. The first concerned the presence of Jacobite doctrine in Coptic Christianity. The second was the role of the scholarly Bishop of Alexandria, whom al-

Nadim names as Yahya al-Nahwi. The bishop was notable, apparently, for opposing the Monothelite doctrine of the Trinity which Emperor Heraclius attempted through persecution to force upon the Coptic Church. The third Coptic phenomenon which al-Nadim saw as very interesting and, of course, historically and culturally significant was the positive influence, in support of this Bishop Yahya al-Nahwi of Alexandria, provided by the Muslim invasion of Egypt, which thwarted the ambitions, impositions, and persecutions of Heraclius, the Emperor. Heraclius was the "Eastern Roman emperor who laid the foundations of the Medieval Byzantine state," having seized the crown of the empire from Phocas in 610. He is reported to have defeated the Persians in 622 - 627 and "restored the True Cross to Jerusalem" in 630 CE. In 636 he was defeated by the Muslim Arabs and lost Syria and Egypt to Islam. 1 Al-Nadim tells us that Yahya al-Nahwi was a pupil of Sawari, apparently Arabic for Dyocrates. The editor of The Fihrist , Bayard Dodge, indicates in his footnote to this passage that the person referred to here is probably either Hippocrates of Cos or Hippocrates of Chios, both of whom were contemporaries and colleagues of Democritus, philosophers whose teaching Bishop al-Nahwi admired. In any case, the bishop had jurisdiction over a considerable portion of the churches of Egypt, and he upheld "the Christian sect of the Jacobites." 2 This was a Christian community which held to the Monophysite doctrine that Christ had only one nature, versus the Chalcedonian theology of the two natures of Christ. Al-Nahwi's Monophysitism was certainly in compliance with that of most Coptic Christians of Egypt and Ethiopia, as well as that of many Armenian and Syrian Christians who opposed the Melkites, the emperor's people, who stood for the divine and human natures of Christ defined in the Creeds of the fourth and fifth century Ecumenical Councils from Nicea to Chalcedon.

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

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