Of Monasteries and Miracles: An Excerpt from al-Shabushti’s ‘Book of Monasteries’
This past June, the Library of Arabic Literature published Iraqi scribe and librarian al-Shābushtī’s (d. 388/998 or 389/999) anthology of monasteries in Hilary Kilpatrick’s clear and engaging translation.
From the publisher:
Each section in this anthology covers a specific monastery, beginning with a discussion of its location and the reason for its name. Al-Shābushtī presents poems, anecdotes, and historical reports related to each site. He selects heroic and spectacular incidents, illustrations of caliphal extravagance, and occasions that gave rise to memorable verse. Important political personalities and events that were indirectly linked with monasteries also appear here, as do scenes of festive court life and gruesome murders. Through these accounts, al-Shābushtī offers readers a meditation on the splendor of Abbasid culture as well as moral and philosophical lessons: the ephemerality of power; the virtues of generosity and tolerance; the effectiveness of eloquence in prose and poetry; and the fleeting nature of pleasure and beauty. Translated into English for the first time, The Book of Monasteries offers an entertaining panorama of religious, political, and literary life during the Abbasid era.
Below, an excerpt from the book’s final and, in our humble opinion, most delightful chapter:
The Monasteries Where Miracles Are Performed According to What Those Living There Have Said and Described
The Scarabs’ Monastery
This is a large monastery between Mosul and Balad, with many monks. On one day in the year, people assemble there from all over, and that is when the scarabs appear. They cover its walls, roofs, and ground, turning the whole place black. The next day, which is the monastery’s patronal festival, people gather in the church, celebrate the liturgy, receive communion, and then leave. By then, the scarabs have disappeared and nothing more is seen of them until the same time the following year.
The Rabies Monastery
This lies between Mosul and Balad. People who are bitten by rabid dogs are treated there. Anyone bitten by a rabid dog who goes there quickly to be treated will be cured. But the treatment will have no effect on anyone who waits forty days after being bitten.
The Tar Spring Monastery
This monastery belongs to the Jacobites. It lies some fourteen miles (twenty-four kilometers) from Mosul in the western part of the district of Ḥadīthah, looking out over the Tigris. Beneath it is a tar spring—that is, a spring of hot water flowing into the Tigris from which tar is extracted. The tar stays soft in the water and can be manipulated, but becomes brittle when it is taken out and cools. There are people who gather to collect the tar. They scoop it out of the water in baskets and put it on the ground. They place a little sand in big iron cauldrons, then add a specific quantity of the tar and keep a fire going under the cauldron, stirring all the time, until the tar melts and mixes with the sand. When it has reached the right consistency, it is poured out on the ground, becomes solid, and hardens. Then it is exported and is used to tar ships and baths and for other uses tar is put to.
Many people visit this place to enjoy themselves and have a drink. They bathe in the water from which the tar is extracted because it is as efficacious at removing pustules as mud baths.
The monastery has an administrator; unlike the Nestorian monasteries, all the Jacobite and Melkite monasteries have administrators.
The Monastery of Mār Tūmā (Saint Thomas)
This is a monastery some six miles (ten kilometers) from Mayyāfāriqīn on a high mountain. People gather from all over for its patronal festival, and it attracts lovers of fun and depravity to drink there. Beneath the monastery is a pool where rainwater gathers. Mār Tūmā was a martyr who, according to the Christians, lived for seven hundred years. He was one of those who saw Christ. His body is kept in a wooden casket, which has doors that are opened during their festivals. Then the upper part of his body appears, upright. His nose and his upper lip have been amputated. A woman contrived to cut them off, took them away, and built a monastery over them in the desert on the road to Takrit.
The Bāṭā Monastery
This is a monastery in the east, beautiful, flourishing, and pleasant in spring. It is also known as the Donkey’s Monastery. It is dedicated to the martyr Mār Bākhūs. It is a long way from the Tigris and Baghdad. It has a stone door, which the Christians say can be opened by as many as seven people, but cannot be opened by more than seven.
They also say there are two ravens that breed there and never leave. The ravens fly onto the monastery tower if robbers turn up and manage to gain entry to the monastery. When the intruder reaches the tower, the ravens fly and squawk in his face as if to warn him, and make it known that the monastery is inhabited, at which the robbers retreat. The ravens would not behave like this if the monastery was uninhabited.
The Monastery of Mār Shimʿūn (Saint Simeon) near Sinn
This monastery houses the bishop’s seat. It also has a well, and anyone with a skin complaint who goes there and washes in the well will be cured before he leaves.
The ʿAjjāj Monastery
This monastery lies between Takrit and Hīt. It is flourishing and houses many monks. Outside there is a spring whose water flows into a pool containing black fish. They are good and tasty. Round the monastery are fields growing vegetables irrigated from the spring.
The Jūdī Monastery
Jūdī is the name of the mountain on which the ark came to rest. It is about twenty-five miles (forty kilometers) from Jazīrat Ibn ʿUmar. The monastery is built on the summit and is said to have been constructed in the time of Noah, peace be upon him. They say there is something extraordinary there, which a Christian of the Jazīrah told me about. When its roof terrace is measured, sometimes it is twenty spans long, sometimes eighteen spans, sometimes twenty-two spans. Each time it is measured, the number changes. He himself had tried measuring it and found that what they said was accurate.
The Church of Mount Sinai
Mount Sinai is the mountain where Moses, peace be upon him, experienced the revelation and fell down thunderstruck. The church, built of black stone, is at the top of the mountain. Its fortifications are seven cubits thick. It has three iron doors, and on the west side there is a small door with a stone in front of it. When they want to, they raise the stone, but if attacked, they let it down and it covers the place so no one knows where the door is. There is a spring inside the monastery and one outside as well. The Christians claim that there is a fire in the church like the New Fire in Jerusalem. Each evening, they light their lamps from it. It is white and does not give out much heat or burn fiercely, but it flares up when lamps are lighted from it. There are many monks living there and people visit it because it is a much-talked-of monastery.
Ibn ʿĀṣim composed this poem on it:
You monk of Sinai, what’s this light and radiance
the mountain has lit in your convent?
Has the sun abandoned the planets to live there,
or the moon sought shelter as a migrant?
“No, neither moon nor sun have come near,
but Qawzīr took communion here.”
The Priory of Abū Hūr
This priory is in Siryāqūs on the outskirts of Cairo. It is flourishing and houses many monks, and it has several festivals, which people flock to. It is said that a particular miracle happens there. A person suffering from scrofula goes there for treatment. The superior of the priory takes him, makes him lie down, and brings a pig, which he directs to the affected part. The pig eats the patient’s scrofula but nothing else. The patient recovers when the wound has been cleaned, and the ashes of a pig who had performed this operation earlier are sprinkled on it, together with oil from the priory lamp. Then the pig is slaughtered and burned, and its ashes are kept for a subsequent case.
Al-Shābushtī (d. 388/998 or 389/999) was a scribe from Baghdad who traveled around Iraq, southern Anatolia, and Syria before moving to Cairo, where he became a court companion and librarian to the Fatimid caliph al-ʿAzīz.
Hilary Kilpatrick received her DPhil from Oxford. She has taught at universities in the UK, the Netherlands and Switzerland and is now an independent scholar based in Lausanne, Switzerland. She has published a study of al-Iṣbahānī’s Book of Songs and many articles on modern, classical, and Ottoman Arabic literature.