Severus ibn al-Muqaffa
Egyptian bishop
Sevērus ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (Arabic: سويرس بن المقفع, romanized: Sawīris ibn al-Muqaffaʿ; died 987) or Severus of Hermopolis or of El Ashmunein (سويرس الأشمونين; Latin: Severus Aschmoniensis) was an Egyptian Coptic Orthodox bishop, author and historian. Severus is sometimes confused with the better-known Abbasid author Abdullah ibn al-Muqaffa' (d. 759).
He was bishop of Hermopolis Magna in Upper Egypt around the end of the tenth century. In this period, Egypt was ruled by the Isma'ili Fatimid Caliphate, which had taken Egypt from the Abbasid Caliphate in 969. Fatimid rule slowly but surely changed Coptic Christian culture, especially in the realm of language. Complaining that the Coptic Orthodox Christians of Egypt no longer knew the Coptic language, Severus composed a theological text in Arabic—the first Coptic text written in that language.
While he was known as the traditional author of the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria since the 18th century, modern scholarship holds that it was Mawhib ibn Mufarrij of Alexandria (c. 1025—1100) who composed this work. One of the stories in it relates how Bishop Severus was asked by the Muslim chief justice (qadi al-qudat) whether a passing dog was Muslim or Christian. As it was a Friday, the Bishop said to ask the dog by offering it both meat and wine as Muslims do not drink wine and Christians do not eat meat on Fridays.
Life
After a brief period serving the government in Fatimid Egypt, he decided to join a monastery and become a monk.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2637658. VIAF identifies the subject as 89508228. The Library of Congress control number is n86822371. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1025 and 1100.
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This entry incorporates text from “Severus ibn al-Muqaffa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.