Category: Agapius

I’m done, at last.  The Universal History of the 10th century Arabic Christian writer Agapius is now online in English here.  I hope it is useful!

Now here’s a surprise!  The Cheikho CSCO edition came out in 1912.  The PO edition came out starting in 1910 (PO5) 1911 (PO7) 1912 (PO8) and 1915 (PO11).  Even on the face of it, that means that the first fascicle — which covers the time of Jesus — was only just before the CSCO text.

But looking at the CSCO introduction, the first sentence tells us that the text was set up in type five years earlier — that is, in 1907.  Unspecified delays prevented printing until 1912.  So in fact the two editions are quite independent, as regards half of the text.

The introduction goes on by telling us that he must have known Greek letters, as well as Syriac and Arabic; that he must be a Melchite, since he acknowledges the council of Chalcedon and refers approvingly to the see of Rome.

Agapius alludes to the date when he was writing (p. 334 of the CSCO edition), as being the eighth month of 330 A.H. (i.e. AD 942).  Eutychius must precede him slightly, as the latter died at the end of Ragab, 328 AH (11th May 940 AD).  Both authors are mentioned by the Moslem author `Ali Ibn Husain al-Mas`udi (X, 957).

The CSCO text was published in Lebanon, and naturally made use of eastern copies.  For the first part of the work, it used a Bodleian Nicol. manuscript.  Cheikho knows of two more at Sinai, which he could not use.  He was able to use two mss in Beirut, both owned by the St. Joseph Catholic University.  The first, which he calls A, was bought at Emesa (Homs) and dates from the 16th century.  The second (B) was written in Lebanon in 1818.  A third ms. (C) was found in the seminary of the Syrian Patriarch at Scharfa, dating from 1662 AD.  A fourth written in 1882 he had seen in a monastery at Luaize in Lebanon, but this was already lost when he wrote.  A fifth manuscript — he doesn’t say if he used it — was in the Greek Patriarchal library of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. 

All these, he says, are pretty much identical to the Oxford ms. and all end in the middle of the same sentence, apart from the Scharfa ms. which ends on fol. 104.  He used A and B, with bits of C.

For the second part, he had a photographic copy of the unique Florence manuscript.  He also made use of al-Makin from Paris ms. Arab. 294 — the one which I was sold a wretched  microfilm of — and printed the excerpts from Agapius from it at the end of his edition (which, drat it, I didn’t notice).

I have resumed work on turning the French translation of Agapius, published by A. Vasiliev in the Patrologia Orientalis, into English.  In fact I never totally halted on this, except when I was working at full speed on the Greek translator.  My work has no scholarly value, but there must be 2bn people who can read English and cannot read French, so I hope that making this freely available will promote interest in this text.

Long term readers will be aware that Agapius was a 10th century Arabic Christian writer, who has left us a world chronicle.  This is best known for supposedly containing a unique version of the so-called Testimonium Flavianum of Josephus; and also has a fragment of Papias not otherwise known.  His work is largely made up of material from earlier chroniclers, mostly Syriac and Byzantine.  The text was published in 600 pages of the PO, in four parts, all of which are now on Archive.org.  I have made a translation of parts 1, 3 and 4, and am halfway through part 2 at the moment *.  The current text is taken from legendary material about Alexander which circulated through the east.  In truth it is quite tedious, but I hope that easier access to this text will promote study of this material.

Here is a sample.  Alexander has just defeated the Indians by rolling red-hot brass elephants (with a coal furnace inside each) into the ranks of the enemy, who happen to be downhill.

The troops of Alexander pursued them in all directions and killed a very great number of them. After this the auxiliary troops of the king of China, agitated and drawn out, came to the king of India, with their tired beasts of burden. They halted in the camp of the Indians without movement or resources. Alexander, who was unaware of their situation, thought, after having seen their camp, that this was a trick on their part. So he gathered his philosophers and said to them: “You have already seen with which speed their reinforcements arrived and what a state of exhaustion we are in; [you see] that we have fewer resources than they do. Yesterday, at nightfall, we had massacred them and made them perish. But hardly has the day begun, and their army has returned more numerous than before. What is your opinion on this, our situation and our position?” While they were reflecting, the oldest of their philosophers said: “I believe that we must attack them and fight them next Tuesday.” However this opinion was pronounced on Wednesday, seven days before Tuesday.

In Agapius, Alexander is always hanging around after battles, and asking his philosophers what he should do next.  Of course the Arabic word using is probably hakeem; usually translated “doctor”, but often “philosopher”, and in any case a learned man of some sort, of the kind that might be met with in the Arabian nights in the Bazaar.  The word might even mean “magician” or “sorceror”, as Sinbad the Sailor found to his cost.  There is an Arabic correspondance of Alexander and Aristotle, in which the former seeks ways to defeat the Persians, and the latter advises him on spells and incantations to do so!

In a sense all this is tedious.  Yet in another sense it is salutary to be reminded that the rise of superstition in the west during the Dark Ages was paralleled also in the East, even without the barbarian invasions.

* Postscript: I was translating away and suddenly found myself at the end of the chunk.  I divided each part of Agapius into three chunks, you see, each of 50 pages.  So I have in fact completed two-thirds of part 2.  Only another 38 pages to go!

I’ve translated three-quarters of Agapius.  Today I completed the first fifty pages of the remaining portion.  Each portion is around 150 pages, so still some way to go here.  I will prepare the next chunk of 50 pages at the weekend and carry on.

Mind you, I got to the end of this chunk with relief!  Agapius is unbelievably verbose.  He talked about one event of biblical history — the reign of Athaliah — FOUR TIMES, saying the same thing in different words again and again.  By the fourth time, I was ready to scream.

I now understand why so many historical works from Byzantine times onwards are published only in a truncated form, omitting the earlier legendary or biblical material that appears endlessly in them all.  Who could face wading through this tripe?