Anecdota Oxoniensia. Semitic series.

132

CHrURCHES AND,MONASTERIES OF EGYPT.

district of Al-Habash, near the Well of the Steps. On the wall
of the apse of this church, a Coptic inscription was found, giving the
date of the paintings upon it, namely the year 759 of the Martyrs1
(A.D. 1043), in the patriarchate of Anba Sinuthius2, the sixty-fifth in
the order of succession. At the end of the church were built two
altars: one of them named after the martyr Saint Cosmas3, with his
brothers and his mother, and the other named after Saint John, the
martyr of Aswan; and these were built at the expense of Abu 'l-Barakat,
the above mentioned, in the year 572 (A. D. 1177). In the upper story
is a church named after George the Martyr, erected by the Shaikh
Al-Makin Abu '1-Barakat ibn Kitamah, the scribe, in the caliphate
of Al-Fa'iz4; and the said shaikh also rebuilt, in the year 573
(A.D. 1178), beside the church of Saint Victor, a church named after
Fol. 42a the martyr Saint Mennas, containing a well of running water. Near
this church there is a garden, which belongs to it, but is now a desert,
and nothing is left standing in it except palm-trees.
Opposite this church, and within the enclosure of the garden known
as that which was founded by the vizier Abu5 'l-Faraj, the West-African,
in the Roman army; and he was beheaded after manifold tortures in the persecution of Diocletian. See Synaxarzum (Paris MIS. Arabe 256) ad diem; Am6lineau,
Ac/es des MMAl p. p77 ff.; Zoega, Cal. pp. 113, 239. There are other saints of
the name in the calendar.
1 These paintings are again wall-paintings, or' frescoes;' although the term
is not technically correct, as the Coptic artists worked in distemper, not in the
fresh plaster. But this date, fixing the middle of the eleventh century of our era
for the execution of the work, is exceedingly interesting. (A. J. B.)
-2 Occupied the see in the middle of the eleventh century, but the date of his
election and death are uncertain; see Renaudot, Hist. Pair. pp. 408-417.
3 Saints Cosmas and Damian with their mother and their brethren were
popular saints in Egypt. Their festival is kept on Hatur 22=Nov. 18.
4 The thirteenth of the Fatimide caliphs; reigned from A.H. 549-555=A.D.
II54 —II60.
5 Abf 'l-Faraj Muhammad ibn Ja'far al-Maghrabi became vizier in A. H. 450,
and remained in office about a year. See Al-Makrizi, Khitat, i. p. roi; As-Suytfit,
Husn al-Mlukddarah, ii. p. oo.