Al-Muqawqis

Account by Muslim historians

Ibn Ishaq and other Muslim historians record that sometime between February 628 and 632, Muhammad sent epistles to the political heads of Medina's neighboring regions, both in the Arabian Peninsula and the Near East, including to al-Muqawqis:

Al-Tabari states that the delegation was sent in Dhu al-Hijja in the sixth hijri year (April or May 628). Ibn Sa'd states that the Muqawqis sent his gifts to Muhammad in 7 A.H. (after May 628). This is consistent with his assertion that Maria al-Qibtiyya bore Muhammad's son Ibrahim in late March or April 630, so Maria had arrived in Medina before July 629.

Letter of invitation to Islam

Main article: Diplomatic career of Muhammad#Correspondence with other leaders

The epistle that Muhammad sent to al-Muqawqis, through his emissary Hatib ibn Abi Balta'ah, and his reply are both available. The epistle was signed with the seal of Muhammad.

Al-Muqawqis ordered that the letter be placed in an ivory casket Al-Muqawqis is said to have replied with a letter that read:

The two slave-girls mentioned are Maria al-Qibtiyya, whom Muhammad married, and her sister Sirin bint Shamun, whom Hassan ibn Thabit married.

It is said that a recluse in the monastery pasted it on his Bible and from there a French Orientalist obtained it and sold it the Sultan for £300. The authenticity of the preserved sample and the elaborate accounts by medieval Islamic historians regarding the events surrounding the letter have also been questioned by modern historians.

The letter is considered a literary forgery by scholars. Based on comparative palaeographic analysis with early Arabic papyri, Austrian orientalist Joseph Karabacek assessed the letter to be a forgery. Nöldeke (1909) agreed with his conclusions, and Öhrnberg (2007) considers the narrative about a letter being sent to al-Muqawqis to be "devoid of any historical value", and the seal to be fake on paleographic grounds – its writing style being anachronistic and hinting at an Ottoman Turkish origin.

Explanation of the name

The word muqawqis is the Arabized form of Coptic ⲡⲓⲕⲁⲩⲕⲟⲥ, meaning "the man from the Caucasus," an epithet among the Copts for the Melchite patriarch Cyrus, who was seen as a corrupt and foreign usurper of Pope Benjamin I of Alexandria. alternatively, "Jurayj ibn Mattá").

Film and television depictions

• Al-Muqawqis was portrayed by Egyptian actor Salah Zulfikar in Muhammad, Messenger of Allah to the World, TV series aired on Egyptian TV in 1993.

References

References

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13. "The story of this particular embassy to al-Mukawkis must be considered as legendary and devoid of any historical value. The parchment which was thought to be the original of Muhammad's letter to al-Mukawkis—it was found in a monastery at Akhmim in 1850 (cf. the publication by Belin, in JA [1854], 482-518)—has been recognized almost from the beginning as a fake, on both historical as well as paleographical grounds (J. Karabacek, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Mazjaditen, Leipzig 1874, 35 n. 47; Nöldeke-Schwally, Geschichte des Qorans, i, Leipzig 1909, 190)." K. Öhrnberg, ''[[Encyclopedia of Islam]] Second Edition'' s.v. "Muḳawḳis", (2007).
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