AQFAHS

A village to the southwest of the markaz (district) of al-Fashn on the left bank of the Nile about 25 miles (40 km) south of Bani Suef, celebrated as the birthplace of Julius of Aqfahs, biographer of the martyrs and himself a martyr (see MARTYRS, COPTIC). E. Amélineau (1893, pp. 56-58) fully established the exact location of Aqfahs, which his predecessors had wished to place in the Delta.

A monastery dedicated to Saint Philemon the Martyr, no doubt the one mentioned by the Copt-Arabic SYNAXARION for 7 Baramhat, is mentioned by the work attributed to Abu Salih (fol. 91^a; Abu Salih, 1895, p. 254), as being in the southern part of the district. Al-Maqrizi refers very briefly to a monastery at Aqfahs, and indicates that it is in ruins. This is probably the same as the one of which Abu Salih speaks. The latter notes (fol. 80^a; Abu Salih, p. 230) that Anba Sanhut, bishop of Misr, took refuge there when he was excommunicated by the patriarch MICHAEL IV in the month of Bashans in the year A.M. 818 (May 1102). The patriarch wished to make the Church of Saint Sergius in Old Cairo, which was Sanhut’s episcopal seat, into the patriarchal church. However, the HISTORY OF THE PATRIARCHS, which relates this episode (Vol. 2, pt. 3, 1959, pp. 248 [text], 396 [trans.]), indicates as Sanhut’s place of refuge the Monastery of Saint Severus on Mount Asyut.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Amelineau, E. La Géographie de l’Égypte à l’époque copte, pp. 56-58. Paris, 1893.

RENÉ-GEORGES COQUIN