ABŪ 'I-BARAKĀT (Šams ar-Ri'āsah ibn Kabar). — A Monophysite Coptic theologian of the thirteenth–fourteenth century, who died before 1327. He was a priest and perhaps a physician, and served as secretary and assistant to the emir Rukn ad-din Baybars.
He left several collections of an encyclopedic character, the principal one of which is entitled Lampada delle tenebre o Esposizione del servizio divino, a genuine manual of ecclesiastical sciences for the use of the clergy, divided into twenty-four chapters. More important is the Risposta ai Musulmani e agli Ebrei sul significato delle credenze cristiane in Dio Padre, Figlio e Spirito Santo e nella divinità di Gesù, figlio di Maria, a kind of apologetic treatise in three chapters. These works are written in Arabic. A. compiled an Arabic-Coptic dictionary for the use of ecclesiastics, which he entitled Scala Magna. This lexicon had the good fortune to be published by A. Kircher in his work Lingua aegyptiaca restituta (Rome 1643, pp. 41–272). Apart from certain chapters of the Lampada delle tenebre, the other works remain unpublished, in manuscripts of the Arabic collection of the Vatican Library. They constitute the best source for knowledge of the history and institutions of the Monophysite Coptic Church, from which illustrious Copts such as M. Vansleb and E. Renaudot drew.
ABŪ 'I-FARAḠ 'ABDALLAH IBN AT-TAYYIB. — Also called ibn at-Tib and in Latin Benattibus, he was a Nestorian monk and priest from Iraq. He flourished in the first half of the eleventh century (d. 1043) and was secretary to the patriarch of his sect, Elia I (1029–49). He had also been secretary to Giovanni VII di Nazuk, elected in 1013 (Amr et Sliba, ed. Gismondi, 1897, p. 56 of the Latin version).
His literary activity in Arabic was considerable, and he is cited by Avicenna and Averroes. Bar Ebro refers to his works, but Abū 'I-Barakāt, a Monophysite Coptic priest of the thirteenth–fourteenth century, lists more of them. He made a vast collection of Eastern and Western canons, of which a complete list is found in Arabic ms. 57 of the Medicean Library, reproduced in the catalogue of that library by S. Ev. Assemani, together with all of A.’s works, on pp. 93–96. These canons appear in Vat. ar. 153, which does not contain the author’s name because it is mutilated, but Abū 'I-Barakāt provides a summary of them in his catalogue as a work by A. Moreover, the same collection bears A.’s name in Vat. borgiano 199. It is known under the title Fiqh an-Nasrāniyyah (Law of Christianity). Mss. Vat. ar. 36 and 37 contain A.’s commentaries on the Old and New Testaments, commentaries entitled The Paradise of Christians. Vat. borg. 231 contains A.’s commentaries on the Gospels, Vat. ar. 35 his commentaries on Psalms 33–60, and Vat. ar. 157 a treatise on marriage and divorce. These last two works are mentioned neither by Abū 'I-Barakāt nor by Bar Ebro; and, according to Abū 'I-Barakāt, the Jacobites removed from the commentaries on the Gospels the passages containing Nestorian doctrines. A. also wrote a treatise on inheritance (Vat. ar. 150 and 160), one on unity and the Trinity, and one on the divine Persons (Vat. ar. 145 from fol. 48 onward). A treatise of his expounding Nestorian doctrine against those who asserted that Mary was the Mother of God is in Vat. ar. 115. Elia, metropolitan of Nisibis, wrote an apologetic disputation and, before circulating it, submitted it for A.’s approval. This lengthy approval is found in Vat. ar. 180, fol. 120 ff. A. “commented on Aristotle’s books on Logic and Philosophy, and on Galen’s books on Medicine,” as Bar Ebro says.
Of all his works, only the commentary on the Psalms was published (Cairo 1908). According to Vat. borg. 250 and the manuscript of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Diatessaron (v.) was translated from Syriac into Arabic by A. A. Ciasca (v.), who published the mutilated codex Vat. ar. 14 (thirteenth–fourteenth century), completing it with the said Vat. borgiano 250 (fifteenth century), also advocates this opinion (A. Ciasca, Tatiani Evangeliorum Harmoniae arabice, Rome 1888). But the leaves of the Library of the Catholic University of Beirut prove, according to some, that the Arabic version predates A. (cf. L. Cheikho, in Journ. As., 9th series, 10 [1897], p. 301, and al-Mafrīq, 4 [1901], pp. 100–103).
ABŪ 'I-FARAḠ HIBATĀLLAH. — A Coptic writer of the thirteenth century, also called Abū'l-FaraḠ ibn al-'Assal, brother of Abū Ishāq.
He became famous for his “Concordanze evangeliche,” based on the Greek, Coptic, Arabic, and Syriac texts. He is also the author of a Coptic grammar, a treatise on the “state of the soul after death,” and the “book of the teacher and the disciple.”