What is it about?
Between February 2024 and November 2025, eighteen manuscript fragments have been discovered in the manuscript library at the Monastery of Saint Macarius, containing Arabic texts written in Coptic script. These fragments represent a collection of ascetic material such as sayings from the Apophthegmata Patrum, Isaiah of Scetis’s Asceticon, and the Bohairic work knows as The Virtues of St. Macarius. These fragments complement others discovered earlier at the Monastery of Saint Macarius, which are considered part of the same, larger codex. This codex—referred to here as the proto-Bustān—seems to represent an early version of the Bustān al-Ruhbān, the important Copto-Arabic version of the Apophtegmata Patrum. The proto-Bustān can be dated between the 11th and 12th centuries although probably reflecting a much older text. This paper aims to situate these fragments within the broader tradition of the Bustān al-Ruhbān. We will offer an edition and translation of the newly uncovered texts exploring their textual history. What emerges is that the fragments’ arrangement and lexical choices closely align with modern Bustān manuscripts making the latter philologically reliable. Despite that, certain segments reflect a different arrangement and lexical choices thus pointing to older texts, possibly connecting to the original Greek and Coptic, as well as earlier non-Egyptian Arabic translations. Given the relevance of the proto-Bustān, it is crucial to create a future edition that brings together all the fragments we currently possess.
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Why is it important?
The article is important because it offers a preliminary exploration of these newly surfaced fragments, bringing forward fresh confirmation of data already known, while also presenting highly significant new elements that open up new perspectives on this manuscript that may represent the earliest witness to the Bustān al-Ruhbān that we possess.
Perspectives
This article offers a preliminary view of the fragments and has opened the door to a monograph on the Proto-Bustān manuscript as a whole, taking into account both the newly discovered material and the fragments already known.
Markos el Makari
University of Divinity
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This page is a summary of: Newly Discovered Twelfth-Century Arabic Fragments in Coptic Script from the Monastery of St. Macarius, December 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004744707_005.
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