Download PDF | The Coptic Martyrdom Of John Of Phanijoit Assimilation And Conversion To Islam In Thirteenth Century Egypt ( The History Of Christan Muslim Relations) Brill Academic Publishers 2005.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is a privilege to see my analysis and edition of the Martyrdom of John of Phanij¯oit come to press. I am grateful to Mark Swanson and David Thomas for their helpful encouragement and questioning and their decision to include my study in this promising series on the History of Christian-Muslim Relations. I also appreciate the professionalism and support of the staff editors at E.J. Brill. I thank Michael Patrick O’Connor both for his intellectual influence and his instrumental role in securing funding for me while I was a student in the Department of Semitic Languages and Literatures at The Catholic University of America. I am also grateful to the Institute of Christian Oriental Research at CUA for all the institutional support provided to me, particularly the workspace and access to the archives that equipped me to finish this study.
I know of no better librarian than Monica Blanchard, who unfailingly helped me locate and acquire sources, who has devoted her skills to making ICOR a first-rate institution, and whose kind attention to my success in this project has been deeply encouraging. She brokered the acquisition of MS facsimiles from both the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Vatican Library. I acknowledge the Bibliothèque nationale de France for supplying MS copies of the Arabic Apocalypse of Samuel of Qalam¯ un. I also greatly appreciate the Vatican Library’s promptness and willingness to provide me with a digital copy of Vaticanus Copticus 69, ff. 40r –55v (f. 40r pictured on the cover). I have benefitted greatly from The Dumbarton Oaks Library and the Library of Congress, which provided access to many sources. I acknowledge many colleagues and mentors who have fostered my academic growth, contributing in many ways to my thinking and translation skills as I wrote this study. David Bosworth, Bryan Estelle, Charles Flinn, Cornelia Horn, Mark Leson, Timothy Patitsas, Casimir Stroik, Clare Wilde, and Bob Winn have all earned my gratitude for the questions and insights they shared about my analysis of this martyrdom.
I also wish to thank: Thérèse-Anne Druart for her careful proofreading of this study when it was in its dissertation form; Joel Kalvesmaki for his guidance with the English index; Abel Bennett and Adam Bennett for their kind help with computer problems; David Damrel for critiquing large portions of this study, and for his commitment to my scholarly improvement; and Douglas ‘Jake’ Jacobsen who, likewise, has been reading my work and asking hard questions ever since the time he introduced me to the study of Egyptian Christianity. I also am proud and honored to have worked closely with a doctoral committee of true scholars who were promptly attentive to my drafts of this study, especially of the Coptic edition. Those familiar with the writings of Sidney H. Griffith and David W. Johnson will notice the many ways that this book is an extension of research for which they have already laid the groundwork.
They have surprised me over and over again with their insights into my research—insights bought with their many years of careful reading. Janet A. Timbie’s patient, intelligent questioning of my writing, and of the Coptic text of this book, has spurred me on to new discoveries. I thank her for introducing me to the Coptic text of this study. These generous colleagues, and others unmentioned, through their research, feedback, and conversations, have enabled me to write this book. While I am aware that this analysis and translation is imperfect and limited, I am hopeful to see this fascinating and historically valuable Coptic MS become available for further scholarly scrutiny by means of this published edition. Finally, the only person who deserves the dedication of this book is my wife Bethany: a brilliant Arabist, critic, and encourager. I have written this for you.
INTRODUCTION
THE MARTYRDOM OF JOHN OF PHANIJOIT ¯ AND QUESTIONS ABOUT COPTIC ASSIMILATION TO ISLAMICATE CULTURE
Hany Takla and Leslie MacCoull have recently revived discussion about the peculiar thirteenth-century Coptic text, the Martyrdom of John of Phanij¯oit. The text’s only extant manuscript is dated 1211 and is cataloged as a part of MS Copticus 69 (ff. 40r -55v ) in the Vatican library. The Vatican acquired MS Copticus 69 through Joseph Assemani (1687–1768) during his visits to the monasteries of Wad¯ ¯ı Na. trun¯ between 1715 and 1718. 1
The martyrdom relates the story of a local flax merchant named John who falls prey to lust for a ‘Saracen’ Muslim client, later seeks public re-conversion to Christianity, and finally is executed for apostasy. Although Angelos Shih. atah has recently trans- ¯ lated (but not published) the martyrdom into Arabic in Cairo, there is no extant Arabic MS of the text, and John of Phanijoit is not men- ¯ tioned in any extant pre-modern manuscripts of the Synaxary.2 Émile Amélineau (1850–1915) was the first to edit it, using an imperfect tran scription of the text to translate it into French in 1887. 3 At the turn of the century, P. de Larminat briefly critiqued Amélineau’s edition— partly for having been based on the defective transcription of Raphael Tuki (1695–1787)—and de Larminat produced a long list of corrections comparing the work of Amélineau and Tuki with the actual MS Copticus 69. 4 At the same time, the Arabist Paul Casanova (1861–1926) published a rich analysis of the place names found in the text, in which he did not hesitate to adamantly criticize Amélineau’s edition and translation.5 Soon Giuseppe Balestri (1866–1940) and Henri Hyvernat (1858– 1941)—the latter of which had corresponded with Casanova about the text6 —together published a Coptic edition of MS Copticus 69 (ff. 40r - 55v ), along with other martyrdoms in the Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium in 1924. 7 This was followed by Hyvernat’s posthumous Latin translation in CSCO in 1950. 8 Scholarship on this text has only resumed in the late 1990s with a number of descriptive articles written by Hany Takla and a highly annotated overview of the text by Leslie MacCoull.9 Takla and MacCoull have demonstrated the relevance of the Martyrdom of John of Phanij¯oit to the Coptic problem of assimilation and conversion to Islam in thirteenth-century Cairo.
A Late Coptic Text The Martyrdom of John of Phanij¯oit (J.Phan.) provides important evidence about the history and process of Coptic assimilation to Islamicate society. The questions of when and how Christians became the minority in Egypt, and when they fully abandoned Coptic in exchange for Arabic are still matters of scholarly debate.10 Leslie MacCoull’s study of bilingual papyri, as well as literary Coptic, at one time led her to claim that ‘[a]t the time of the thirteenth-century encyclopaedists and compilers of scalae and so-called “Introductions to Coptic”, the language was dead, and the issue was a dead letter.’11 Though MacCoull documents evidence that the trend of the disuse of Coptic was underway centuries before the drafting of The Martyrdom of John of Phanij¯oit, this MS is written in acceptable Bohairic (Coptic) in the first decade of the thirteenth century, with its main topic the reconversion of an apostate back to Christianity. The contents of this martyrdom provide an interpretive model of the relationship between Christians and Muslims as a moral struggle to resist assimilation to the dominant group, even at pain of death. And it couches that struggle in traditional Coptic vocabulary. The very language of the MS for the Martyrdom of John of Phanij¯oit indicates reaction and resistance to language assimilation. All authors dealing with the Martyrdom of John of Phanij¯oit (J.Phan.) take interest in the fact that it is an original Coptic work at a time when, presumably, most Copts had become linguistically Arabised. Amélineau considered J.Phan. to be ‘sans doute la dernière oeuvre qui ait été écrite dans la langue de l’Égypte chrétienne.’12 But some authors wonder whether it is a translation from Arabic, as Hyvernat seemed to suggest when he wrote to Casanova that the Coptic text of J.Phan. is ‘mauvais,’ and that it would be very desirable to ‘retrouver un texte arabe qui aurait quelque chance d’être correct.’13 The latest work of Takla develops an argument along lines similar to Paulus Peeters’ (1870–1950) earlier hypothesis that the text was deliberately written in Coptic to hide its contents from Muslim authorities.14 There are good sociological reasons supporting Takla’s theory,15 and the literary style of the text, in which Casanova finds linguistic evidence of Arabic interference, is more opaque than Casanova assumed.16 The problem of comparing the Coptic grammar of J.Phan. with Arabic grammar is that, as of yet, there is no clearly-defined, linguistically-comprehended, corpus—either Coptic or Arabic—in which to ground the analysis. Christian Arabic of the time presents its own problem of inconstancy and disjuncture from Classical Arabic,17 while Coptic scalae and grammars (muqaddim¯ at) that appear shortly after the writing of J.Phan. are not well enough understood to be of help as a basis for evaluating the quality of J.Phan. 18 Patient work with the Egyptian Christian Arabic and Coptic works of the time is needed to establish the literary context of J.Phan. What is more certain is that the Coptic language was still an important distinctive of Egyptian Christian identity at the turn of the thirteenth century. There apparently were converts to Islam who knew Coptic. The Arabic History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria (AHPA) relates a story, contemporaneous with J.Phan., that illustrates the problem of assimilation and the relevance of the Coptic language to acts of conversion and betrayal. A monk named John from the monastery of St. Macarius ‘became a Muslim before al-Malik al-Kamil’ ( ¯ c. 1177–1238) in exchange for a governorship over ‘Minyat Ghamar.’19 After three years John ‘remembered his religion [dhakara d¯ınahu] and his monas ticism and repented,’ even to the extent that he petitioned al-Malik al-Kamil for a reinstatement to Christianity. ¯ 20 The sul. tan granted him ¯ a return to his faith, but after some time, another apostate from Upper Egypt followed John’s example and petitioned al-Malik al-#Adil ( ¯ 1145– 1218) 21 for his return to Christianity. According to the AHPA, Al-Malik al-#Adil was not as lenient as his son al-K ¯ amil, and he threatened the ¯ second apostate with punishments, coercing him to ‘become a Muslim a second time ["aslama th¯ aniyyatan].’ Furthermore, he ordered that the earlier apostate, the monk John, be brought from the monastery of St. Macarius and offered the choice of Islam or death. John chose Islam, and again received governance of Minyat Ghamar.22 Then the AHPA depicts John as eventually becoming more deeply assimilated, turning against his community at St. Macarius by informing al-Malik al-Kamil ¯ about hidden valuables in the form of buried vessels at the monastery. John even uses violence against the monks to pressure them to divulge the location of the vessels,23 until they are finally delivered to al-Malik al-Kamil. Once the goods were in his possession, the ¯ AHPA relates that al-Kamil sent for ¯ a Christian man [na. sr¯ an¯ı] who has become a Muslim and has accepted the religion of Islam by assent [bi-qab¯ ulin], and who is renowned in it for his trustworthiness, his religion, and his faith, that he may read for us what is written on these vessels … And he read to al-Malik al-Kamil the ¯ Coptic that was on the chalices, the patens, the crosses, and the spoons, the name of every one who had worked on it.24 The AHPA’s claim that the sul. tan insisted on selecting a convert who ¯ was a Muslim by assent (bi-qab¯ ulin) reveals the atmosphere of distrust that obtained between Christians and Muslims in Egypt at the time.
Assimilation and Restoration This detailed story also attests to the problem of coercion, and to the sense of vulnerability that haunted Copts as a subjugated religious group. In the eyes of the author of J.Phan., the greater Islamicate society posed a moral challenge to the Christian community. In J.Phan., when the martyr John of Phanijoit seeks to be restored to his faith by al- ¯ Malik al-Kamil, a Christian lay leader advises him to escape ‘from the ¯ midst of these many nations and their great hatred toward us.’25 The text describes the martyr John’s apostasy as an act of moral failure; according to the text, his ‘mixing’ with Muslims resulted in a state of pollution from which John sought deliverance through the sul. tan: ‘I am a pol- ¯ luted man. Purify me with your sword.’26 Leslie MacCoull recognized this moral orientation of J.Phan. in her characterization of the text as having ‘of course give[n] John a sexual motive for apostasy, not a socioeconomic one.’ The underlying moral polemic disparages conversion to Islam, portraying John’s change of faith as a moral corruption. In MacCoull’s words, John ‘learned their evil, whorish ways … of course he desired and went to bed with a Saracen woman, and wound up living a dissolute life.’27 By casting the problems of conversion and assimilation in moral terms such as pollution and purification, the martyrdom does not defend theological tenets or Christian doctrine so much as the community’s existence–its cohesiveness and distinctness from the dominant society. To mix with Muslims is to become polluted. The martyrdom functions as a solution for the pollution of assimilation. In his challenge to the assumption that early ‘Judaism and Christianity are two separate entities,’ Daniel Boyarin has examined martyrdoms as identity-shaping tools used by a community seeking to distinguish itself against an Other. He considers martyrdom to be a ‘“discourse,” as a practice of dying for God and of talking about it,’ arguing that the development of this new type of discourse in the Roman world ‘was at least in part, part and parcel of the process of the making of Judaism and Christianity as distinct entities.’28 Boyarin’s analysis of Christians’ and Jews’ use of the martyrdom as a discourse for distinguishing their identities during the first four centuries is relevant to the Martyrdom of John of Phanij¯oit because the situations are analogous. During the first four centuries after Christ, martyrdom discourses expressed both ‘the drive of the nascent orthodoxy to separation [from Judaism,] and the lack thereof.’29 Likewise, for Egyptian Christians of the thirteenth century, J.Phan. expresses a drive to distinguish Christianity from Islam, in reaction to the fact that Christians were assimilating to Islam. The martyrdom codifies that drive in a ‘ritualized and performative speech act associated with a statement of pure essence … For Christians, it is the declaration of the essence of the self: “I am a Christian.”’30 That declaration certainly appears in J.Phan., but furthermore, it is stated by John in his efforts to fully renounce Islam and return to being a Christian. The writing of this discourse makes the martyr’s restoration available to all the audience of the martyrdom, and projects his purificatory speech act as a statement about the community itself. As a discourse drafted in moral (rather than theological) terminology, it states that Christians are moral, and that Muslims are immoral. By chiefly using the terms of pollution and mixing to critique John’s life as a Muslim convert, J.Phan. is emphasizing the very fact of difference between the communities (i.e., mixing eliminates difference), more than it is heralding any particular religious distinctives of the Coptic community. While there were obvious religious distinctions between Egyptian Christians and Muslims, Egyptian Christians were being drawn, at this time, into closer identification with Saladin’s Ayyubid dynasty, in ¯ response to the Crusader encroachment on Egypt and the holy sites of Jerusalem. As Chapter Four argues, the actions of the Crusaders only deepened the Islamicate Christian distrust of, and dissociation from, European, Chalcedonian Christians. At the same time, Saladin endeared himself to Islamicate Christians and Muslims alike, building a reputation for benevolence, even toward Coptic administrators in his d¯ıw¯ an. 31 As in all times under Islam, Egyptian Christians played influential administrative roles in the governments of the Ayyubids. ¯ 32 And the themes of the AHPA continually attest to the Christians’ investment in Islamicate society, even brokering with al-Malik al-Kamil for the instal- ¯ lation of the patriarch Kyrillos III, David Ibn Laqlaq (r. 1235–1243).33 There were reasons for Christians to draw boundaries between themselves and Muslims. Boyarin comments on a rabbinic discourse drawn from the early centuries of Christianity when, he claims, the borders between Christianity and Judaism were still ‘fuzzy:’34 the Rabbis themselves understood that in notably significant ways there was no difference between Christians and Jews, and the difference had to be maintained via discursive force, via the tour de force. This was the case, as well, with ‘the making of martyrdom.’35 In a completely different context, J.Phan. similarly serves as a discourse for maintaining difference between Egyptian Christians and Muslims.
A New Study
This study engages the tasks of the earlier editions and translations as well as the later questions that Takla and MacCoull have raised about Coptic history. The text still lacks an English translation, and the last edition was published in 1924. This project builds upon that earlier philological work by producing a new diplomatic edition from the manuscript, together with a first English translation (Chapter Two). It also furthers the inquiry into the Arabic linguistic influence on the Coptic style of J.Phan., provisionally concluding that it is unnecessary, at this point, to posit an original Arabic Vorlage (Chapter Three). In addition to making this text more widely accessible, this research examines the literary and historical contexts of the Martyrdom of John of Phanij¯oit, 1) to demonstrate the rhetorical strategy of moral polemic that this martyrdom employs to counter assimilation (Chapter One), and 2) to elucidate the identity problems faced by Copts as a subjugated Christian community in the midst of an Islamicate society at war with Crusaders (Chapter Four). This analysis demonstrates that the Martyrdom of John of Phanij¯oit polemicizes against Islam with ethnic identifiers, in reaction to a perceived trend of Coptic assimilation to Islamicate society: an assimilation that is correlated both with the Copts’ aversion to Western Crusader Christians and their identification with Ayyubid civilization.
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