John the Deacon (Egyptian chronicler)

John the Deacon was a Monophysite Egyptian chronicler whose Life of the Patriarch Michael, finished c.768–70, is the most important source for Christian Nubia in the first half of the eighth century.^[1] His book, written in Coptic, was later translated into Arabic and incorporated as the second part of the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria.^[2]

John was a spiritual disciple of Bishop Moses of Awsim, one of the most revered Coptic churchmen of his age.^[2]

The later historian Sawirus ibn al-Muqaffaʿ made heavy use of John's Life, and although John is one of the only sources for the time and place, he is not always reliable. For instance, he records a Nubian invasion of Egypt that reached as far as Fustat in 745, after the Egyptians refused to release Michael, Patriarch of Alexandria.^[1] This event appears to be a conflation of a real invasion of Upper Egypt and the imprisonment and liberation of the patriarch, made to coincide with a known period of Coptic uprisings and consequent persecution at the instigation of the Caliph Marwan II.^[1] John is the only source to describe the dynastic struggles that followed the death c.730 of Merkurios, whom he refers to as a "new Constantine".^[1] He is the earliest source to mention thirteen kings ruling Nubia under the high king Kyriakos at Old Dongola.^[3] He is also an early source for the Arab slave trade.

Notes

1. P. L. Shinnie (1986), "Christian Nubia", The Cambridge History of Africa: From c. 500 BC to AD 1050, J. D. Fage and Roland Anthony Oliver, edd. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 556–88.
2. Mark N. Swanson (2010), The Coptic Papacy in Islamic Egypt (641–1517), Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, p. 16.
3. Louis V. Žabkar (1963), "The Eparch of Nubia as King", Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 22(4):217–19.