Anecdota Oxoniensia. Semitic series.

A L-KULZ UiM.

Y 7

the caliphate of Al-Amir and the vizierate of Shahanshah al-Afdal, in
the fifteenth year of the patriarchate of Anba Macarius', the sixty- Fol. 58 a
ninth in the succession. This king of the Franks came with his troops
and his army, and plundered the city, and burnt it. He made up his
mind to march as far as Misr, in order to take possession of that city;
but he fell sick at Al-Farama on the third day after his arrival, and,
as his sickness increased, he commanded his followers to carry him
back to Syria. They did as he commanded them, and when he came
near to Al-'Arish he died; and so they embalmed him, and carried him
back to Jerusalem, where he was buried.
Al-JI.zllzulm.
~ Al-Kulzum2 was the fortress of the king, on the frontier bordering
upon the Hedjaz, and he named it after the cord of the weaver's
stand, which holds the garment, and which is called kulzum13. Here is
the church of Athanasius4. There is a monastery in the district of
RAnah, founded by the emperor Justinian. At Al-.Kulzum was the end
of the canal from Cairo. Here, between the two seas, namely the Syrian
Sea and the Sea of the Hedjaz, is the barrier or isthmus, which is the
narrowest piece of dry land on the surface of the earth; and it is the land
lying between Al-Farama and Al-Kulzum, a distance of one day and one
night's journey. A certain prince5 undertook to dig a canal between
Occupied the see from November A. D. I103 to II29; see Renaidot, Hist.
Pair. pp. 483-500. His fifteenth year therefore corresponds with A. D. 1 8, the
year of Baldwin's invasion of Egypt and of his death.
2 See above, fol. 19 b.
I. e., as Professor Margoliouth suggests, the Greek KXCooaa.
4 Anba Siyis is incorrectly written for Atanasiyus or Athanasius. His death
is commemorated on Misri 29 (Aug. 22). See Synaxarium at that day. Eutychius
names the church of St. Athanasius at Al-Kulzum, and states that it was built by
order of the emperor Justinian; see Annales, ii. p. 163.
5It might be thought that this refers to the canal of Pharaoh Necho, who is
said to have been warned by an oracle that his enterprise would only help the
2