Common Wisdom
Luqmān the Wise in a Collection of Coptic Orthodox Homilies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66362/iji.v2i1.35Abstract
This article examines the presence of Luqman the Wise in a seventeenth-century collection of Arabic Coptic Orthodox homilies preserved as Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale arabe 4761. Through textual and historical analysis, the study situates these homilies within a broader medieval and early modern Middle Eastern world in which Christians and Muslims shared stores of moral instruction, edifying tales, and wisdom literature. The article focuses especially on two appearances of Luqman in the Lenten homilies and compares them with Islamic traditions in which Luqman exhorts believers to prayer, repentance, vigilance, and fear of God. The analysis shows that the Coptic preacher was not simply translating older Coptic materials or engaging in narrow biblical exposition, but drawing upon a wider Arabic moral culture familiar across confessional boundaries. By tracing the motif of the rooster, the call to wakefulness, and the urgency of repentance, the article demonstrates how Luqman functioned as a shared teacher of piety. The study concludes that these homilies reveal important zones of common wisdom between Christians and Muslims and illuminate a lived culture of overlapping devotional and ethical imagination.
References
A collection of 41 fables of Luqmān, copied by a Coptic Orthodox scribe in AD 1299, is found in Paris, B.N. ar. 175. This collection was published, with a French translation in 1850: J. Derenbourg, Fables de Loqman le Sage (Berlin and London: A. Asher & Co., 1850). [For an Italian translation, see Valentina Giarratano, Luqmān, l’Esopo arabo: La favola di animali dalla Grecia al Medio Oriente, Al-Qantara 2
(San Demetrio Corone: Irfan Edizioni, 2011.]
Abd Allāh Kannūn al-Ḥasanī [= Abdallah Guennoun], Luqmān al-ḥakīm (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1969), 22-24; or Muḥammad Khayr Ramaḍān Yūsuf, Luqmān al-ḥakīm wa-ḥikamuhu (Damascus: Dār al-Musḥaf, 1984), 106-9.
Abū Manṣūr ʿAbd al-Malik Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Thaʿālibī, Thimār al-qulūb fi l-muḍāf wa-l-mansūb, ed. Ibrāhīm Ṣāliḥ (Damascus: Dār al-Bashāʾir, 1994), I:228-30.
Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī, Ayyuhā l-walad, ed. ʿAbd Allāh Aḥmad Abū Zīnah (Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq, 1975), 43-46. [See now the bilingual edition: al-Ghazali, Letter to a Disciple = Ayyuha’l-walad, trans. Tobias Mayer (Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society, 2005).]
Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Ṣāwī, Ḥāshiyat al-Ṣāwī ʿalā Tafsīr al-Jalālayn, 4 parts (Mumbai: Molvi Mohammad bin Gulamrasul Surtis Sons, 1981). Again, I was directed to this reference by ʿAbd Allāh Kannūn al-Ḥasanī, Luqmān al-ḥakīm, pp. 70-73.
B. Heller and N.A. Stillman, “Luḳman,” Encyclopedia of Islam (new edition), V:811-13; A.H.M. Zahniser, “Luqmān,” in Jane Dammen McAuliffe, ed., Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001-2006), III:242-43; and Dmitri Gutas, “Luqmān: a Legendary Hero, in N.K. Singh and A.R. Agwan, eds., Encyclopaedia of the Holy Qur’ân, 5 vols. (Delhi: Global Vision Publishing House, 2000), III:724-27.
Franz Rosenthal, “Al-Mubashshir ibn Fâtik: Prolegomena to an Abortive Edition,” Oriens 13-14 (1961): 132-58, here pp. 136-38.
Gérard Troupeau, Catalogue des manuscrits arabes, vol. 1 (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1972), 34- 35, 270-71. Gutas mentions the possibility that the manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Nationale could represent extracts from one of al-Mubashshir’s sources rather than from Mukhtār al-ḥikam itself; “Arabic Wisdom Literature,” 58. The matter awaits investigation.
Ḥāshiyat al-Ṣāwī, III:239.
Ibid., ff. 20v-23r.
Ibid., f. 23rv.
Ibid., 238, lines 2-4 (Arabic text); 252 (French translation).
Ibid., 230. I was alerted to the presence of this material in Thimār al-qulūb by ʿAbd Allāh Kannūn al-Ḥasanī, Luqmān al-ḥakīm, pp. 74-75.
Ibid., ff. 29r-36v. Edition and French translation: Victor Ghica, “Sermon arabe pour le troisième dimanche du Carême, attribué à Chenouté (ms. Par. ar. 4761),” Annales Islamologiques 35 (2001): 143- 61. [And add: Mark N. Swanson, “The Church and the Mosque in Wisdom’s Shade: on the Story of ‘Alexander and the Hermit Prince’,” in Heirs of the Apostles: Studies on Arabic Christianity in Honor of
Sidney H. Griffith, ed. David Bertaina et al. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019), 284-309.]
L. Leroy, “Histoire d’Haikar le sage,” Revue de l’Orient Chrétien 13 (1908): 367-88; 14 (1909): 50-70, 143-54.
L. Leroy, “Vie, préceptes et testament de Lokman (texte arabe, traduction française),” Revue de l’Orient Chrétien 14 (1909): 225-55.
M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, trans., The Qurʾan: A New Translation, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 262. Rendel Harris once pointed out a parallel to v. 19 in the aphorisms of Aḥiqar the Wise: see Leroy, “Histoire,” 13 (1908): 371 (no. 8); English translation in Gutas, “Luqmān: a Legendary Hero,” 725.
Leroy, “Vie, Préceptes et testament de Lokman,” 230, lines 1-3 (Arabic text); 244 (French translation).
Mark N. Swanson, “St. Shenoute in Seventeenth-Century Dress: Arabic Christian Preaching in Paris, B.N. ar. 4761,” Coptica 4 (2005): 27-42.
Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al- Anṣārī; see Mohsen Zakeri, “Ādāb al-falāsifa: The Persian Content of an Arabic Collection of Aphorisms,” Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph 57 (2004): 173-90.
Nature and Scope,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 101 (1981): 49- 86, here pp. 50-51.
Paris, B.N. ar. 4761, ff. 20v-28v.
Paris, B.N. ar. 4761, f. 34v; Ghica, “Sermon,” 156, no. 79-80.
Paris, B.N. 310 (17th c.) and 4898 (18th c.); Cairo, Coptic Museum supp. Hist. 6 [new register no. 515] (AD 1739); Cairo, Coptic Patriarchate Bibl. 58 [Simaika 120] (AD 1788).
Paris, B.N. 28 (AD 1539), and Vatican City, B.A.V. ar. 286 (17th c.).
Paris, B.N. ar. 309, ff. 38v-41r; Leroy, “Vie, préceptes et testament de Lokman,” 226-28 (Arabic text), 241-43 (French translation).
Paris, B.N. ar. 309, f. 40r; Leroy, “Vie, préceptes et testament de Lokman,” 227 (Arabic text); 242 (French translation).
Paris, B.N. ar. 309: “Whoever sells the hereafter for the sake of this world will lose them both!”
Rosenthal, “Al-Mubashshir ibn Fâtik,” 133-34, 149-55.
So Gutas, “Classical Arabic Wisdom Literature,” 58. [In 2006 I had not yet seen the edition: Abū l-Wafaʾ al-Mubashshir ibn Fātik, Los Bocados de oro (Mujtār al-ḥikam), ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī (Madrid: Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos, 1958).]
Sponsored by the Saint Shenouda the Archimandrite Coptic Society and held at the University of California at Los Angeles, August 13-14, 2004; the proceedings were published in Coptica 4 (2005). I am grateful to the society’s president, Mr. Hany Takla, for the invitation to participate and for providing me with copies of the relevant manuscripts.
This essay was originally published in Currents in Theology and Mission 33.3 (June 2006): 247-52; the issue was in honor of the Rev. Dr. Harold Vogelaar, a pioneer of Christian-Muslim studies at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. I am grateful to the editors of Currents for gracious permission to republish the essay. Occasional changes or additions to the footnotes are enclosed in square brackets.
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