Abu al-Makarim
Abu l-Makārim Saʿdullāh ibn Jirjis ibn Masʿūd (Arabic: ابو المكارم سعد الله بن جرجس بن مسعود; died 1208) was a Coptic Orthodox priest in Alexandria in the 13th century. He is best known for writing History of Churches and Monasteries around the year 1200, a key source for understanding the Coptic Church during his time.
The work entered the Western world when a portion of the manuscript was bought in 1674 in Ottoman Egypt by Johann Michael Vansleb. The Paris National Library now holds the Arabic manuscript, ms arabe 307, dated 1338 CE, and a photographic copy is kept in Cairo’s Coptic Museum. In 1895, B. T. A. Evetts edited and published the text with an English translation, but the work was incorrectly attributed to Abū Ṣāliḥ the Armenian, a mistake later clarified by scholars Ugo Zanetti and Johannes den Heijer, who showed that Abū Ṣāliḥ was merely the manuscript’s owner.
Since then, additional copies have come to light in Munich and in Egypt. An Arabic edition of the Egyptian manuscript was printed in four volumes by Samuel al-Suryānī in 1984–1985; this edition presents the work as History of the Churches and Monasteries in the Twelfth Century by Abu l-Makārim, still misattributing it to Abū Ṣāliḥ. An English translation of the first volume appeared in Cairo in 1992 under the title Abu al Makarem: History of the Churches and Monasteries in Lower Egypt in the Thirteenth Century. Clara Ten Hacken has translated the portion of the full text that relates to ancient Antioch.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 08:46 (CET).