That is the introduction to the creed which has come to us from Ephesus, with strict injunctions to circulate the creed among all people and recite it in all churches with the appropriate reverence. I mean reverence for the text, I mean the text of the creed, I mean the creed of belief, I mean belief in God, the God whom Christianity restored to heaven.
I spent two days in the library arguing with Azazeel until I convinced him of some things, while he convinced me of some other things about which I had been indecisive. One thing he persuaded me to do, which coincided with a whim of my own, was to retire to my room these forty days to write down what I have seen in my life, from the time I fled my father’s village up to my departure from this place, tomorrow, to do what we have agreed I would do.
Now the forty days have passed and my writing ends today. I have recorded only what I have remembered or experienced deep inside myself. This is the last piece of parchment and most of it is still free of writing. I shall leave that space blank in case someone comes after me to fill it. I will sleep a little now, then wake up before dawn, put the pieces of parchment in this box and cover it with soil under the big rock at the monastery gate. With it I will bury the fear I inherited and all my old delusions. Then I will depart, as the sun rises, free...
A Note on the Text
Youssef Ziedan’s novel Azazeel took the Egyptian and Arabic literary scene by surprise when it first appeared in 2008. Previous Egyptian writers had played with the history of ancient Egypt – most notably Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz with his three novels set in the Pharaonic period. But, as Professor Ziedan is acutely aware after the controversy he has aroused, the brief Christian era of Egyptian history, which lasted for a few hundred years up to the Muslim invasion of 639 CE, was a gap that Egyptian authors had avoided, either out of deference to the Coptic Orthodox Church or because the period appeared to offer little that would resonate with a modern Arab readership. Most of the extant histories of the period were in the hagiographic tradition, written by Copts for Copts to celebrate the sufferings and achievements of their martyrs and founding fathers.
Within months, piles of the novel appeared on the pavements of Cairo, alongside the self-help manuals, political memoirs and teach yourself English books that are the staple of the Egyptian popular book market. Many casual readers of Azazeel, at least initially, took at face value the literary device that is the framework for the novel; the notion that the story, written in Syriac and recently discovered in northern Syria by a European antiquarian, was the work of an Egyptian monk born in Aswan, southern Egypt, late in the 4th century CE. If that were indeed the case we would, of course, need to rewrite the whole literary history of the world, for there is no autobiographical work of comparable intimacy from such an early date in any language.
The response of the contemporary Coptic establishment to the novel was immediate and vitriolic. Some Coptic commentators seemed unaware of the distinction between historical fact and historical fiction, arguing that there was no historical record that a monk by the name of Hypa ever existed and denying that the events narrated in the book ever took place. However, the main thrust of the Coptic critique was that the novel misrepresented Bishop Cyril of Alexandria – a revered figure in the Coptic tradition – and was an unwarranted intrusion into theological controversies that the Christian Church had resolved internally many centuries ago.
In his subsequent non-fiction work Arab Theology [date?], Professor Ziedan argued that the cultural traditions of the peoples of the Arabian Peninsula and the Fertile Crescent were unsympathetic to the idea that gods and humans could exchange roles – an idea central to the Orthodox Christian belief in Jesus Christ’s divinity at birth. Taken in conjunction with some of the conversations related in Azazeel, Ziedan’s theory could be interpreted as being sympathetic to the Nestorian ‘heresy’ (Nestorius believed that no union between the human and the divine was possible) or as advocacy of the Qur’anic position that God is not born and does not give birth.
Professor Ziedan has responded to say that one of his main aims was to argue against violence in any religious dispute and that the history of the period is part of his own heritage as an Egyptian, not the exclusive purview of the Coptic hierarchy. The English-language reader, however, can safely ignore these controversies and enjoy the work for its narrative power, for its evocation of a neglected period that was formative in the evolution of Christianity, and for its sympathetic portrayal of the humble monk Hypa’s struggles with doubt and with the temptations of the world.
As a translator, Azazeel offered the unusual experience of handling an Arabic text almost wholly detached from the cultural context of Arabic literature, which hardly existed at the time of Nestorius and Bishop Cyril. Hypa is presented as a man whose mother tongue was the south Egyptian dialect of Coptic, the last form of ancient Egyptian language, and who wrote in Syriac, a Semitic language related to Arabic, quite distinct but now almost extinct. Although this was in many ways liberating, it could have posed a different challenge – that of trying to finding a voice for a narrator who has no parallel in existing literature from the same cultural milieu. But I soon came to see Hypa as a kind of Everyman; commonsensical but slightly naive; pious with a healthy dose of scepticism; inquisitive about the affairs of the world while simultaneously reluctant to be fully engaged. Above all, he is honest with himself, and his honesty shines through in any language. Furthermore, Professor Ziedan’s writing style is widely attested for its clarity and eloquence, qualities that greatly simplify the translator’s task.
Inevitably, in tracking down the historical events, personalities, place names and ideas that appear in the novel, I learned more about the period than I ever expected. I was particularly struck by Professor Ziedan’s meticulous commitment to the original sources. His accounts of the death of Hypatia in 415 or of the proceedings of the First Council of Ephesus in 431, for example, contain nothing incompatible with the historical records that have survived. That in itself is an eloquent riposte to many of his critics.
I must thank Professor Ziedan for the hours he spent clarifying aspects of the text, and to Jane Robertson, who handled the copyediting with sensitivity, made valuable suggestions and asked all the right questions.
Jonathan Wright
London, August 2011
Youssef Ziedan is an Egyptian scholar who specializes in Arabic and Islamic studies. He is a university professor, a public lecturer, a columnist and a the author of more than fifty books. In 2009 he was the recipient the Inter national Prize for Arabic Fiction.
Jonathan Wright studied Arabic and Turkish at Oxford University and has worked in the Middle East for most of the past thirty five years, mostly as a correspondent for the international news agency Reuters. Since he turned to literary translation in 2007, his translations have included Khaled al-Khamissi’s Taxi, Rasha al-Ameer’s Judgment Day, Hassan Blasim’s The Madman of Freedom Square and Alaa el-Aswany’s On the State of Egypt.
Endnotes
1. In this part of the manuscript, there is a noticeable trembling in the writing of the words.
2. At this point someone has written in Arabic in the margin of the parchment: ‘A strange thing happened to me two days ago: I saw His Holiness Bishop Theodore the Interpreter in a dream, blessing this journey of mine to Jerusalem and calling on me to stay there for the rest of my life. The bishop is one of the most revered patriarchs of the Church and in our monasteries we still read his commentaries on the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. It is written in the original Greek and as far as we know has not been translated into the language of the Arabs among whom we now live and whose language we speak.’
3. The council which took place in Antioch in 341 on the occasion of the opening of the Golden Church.
4. It was widely believed in early times that the ancient Egyptians lived long lives, and so were able to build pyramids and enormous temples. The Jews and early Christians saw confirmation of that in the references in the Old Testament to p
eople living hundreds of years and some of them close to 1,000 years. The truth is that the average lifespan in ancient Egypt was only about thirty-six years. (Translator’s Note)
5. This is all that is written on the seventh parchment. Between the lines there are many erasures and overlapping circles. In the margins in an unsteady hand the monk Hypa drew in the space surrounding the words many crosses of various sizes. (Translator’s Note)
6. In the margin of the parchment it says in Arabic: ‘He means the Almagest, which remains the standard work on astronomy up to present times. I have seen an old Greek copy of it, and several Arabic translations with copious annotations, in our church in Edessa.’
7. The Aa mentioned twice in this parchment is probably the ancient Egyptian name for the disease which we now know as bilharzias. (Translator’s Note)
8. In the margin of the parchment, someone has written in Arabic: ‘This refers to four monks who were brothers and were followers of Origen, whom they considered a saint. The four brother monks were tall in stature, hence their name the Tall Brothers. After Alexandria expelled them, they travelled from town to town, proselytizing for their sect, and they gathered followers who glorified and sanctified Origen.’
9. This is an Aramaic (old Syriac) story which tells the tale of the wise man Ahiqar, chancellor to King Sennacherib, how destiny betrayed him and how he emerged serene, as well as his advice to his nephew. It is strikingly similar to the story of the wise man Luqman, and his advice to his son. (Translator’s Note)
10. Historical sources indicate that Nestorius became a monk in this monastery and it is strange that Hypa the monk did not refer to that here. (Translator’s Note)
11. Pharisee: an epithet applied to those who are dogmatic in religious matters, derived from the name of the Jewish group who adhered to the externals of Jewish law and argued against Jesus Christ. In Christian times and to this day the term has come to mean ‘dogmatic’. (Translator’s Note)
12. These were followers of the Roman Bishop Novatius, and since the end of the fourth century AD they had agreed with the Donatists in North Africa and the Melitians in Egypt in rejecting penitents who had once abandoned Christianity but then reconverted after the age of persecution. At that time they were known as the Church of the Martyrs.
13. The Diatessaron was a summary of the four Gospels in Syriac, written by a Greek intellectual by the name of Tatian. The book was widely available but the clergy did not like it because Tatian was a pagan.
14. On the edge of the parchment there is a long commentary, written in Arabic in tiny writing, including the following paragraph: ‘It seems to me that this monk by the name of Pharisee was truly inspired, for a thousand years of war between the churches have passed and that war was the sole reason why I left my home in the east. It is well known that rivers of blood flowed in Alexandria after the death of Bishop Cyril and the Christians persisted in destroying the city and killing the non-Christians – the Jews and the pagans. In fact the Christians rose up against the bishop of their city, Bishop Proterius, tore him limb from limb and set fire to his body. They also fought against Bishop Timotheus of Alexandria and much slaughter took place in the great city. Today the city is largely forgotten, since it fell into the hands of the Muslims.’
15. There are seven prayers a day in the Syriac and Coptic systems. The rimsh (eyelash) prayer is performed at sunset. The Syriac word sotoro means ‘protection’ or ‘protector’.
Azazeel Page 34