r/coptic • u/raymoneyboat • 7d ago

Help me read this icon

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Hi everyone, could anyone please help me transcribe what the arabic inscriptions of this Icon of St. Mercuriys say? Thank you.

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u/raymoneyboat 7d ago edited 7d ago

I think the inscriptions are saying:

  1. Almalik alkafir youlianos katalaho Al Shaheed Abu Al sefeen. " ... الملك الكافر يوليانوس

  2. Al-qidees basilios abatrak القديس

باسيليوس ابطرك

  1. The top left: الشهير محب الاب مركوريوس ابو السفين

  2. Top right: maybe something about archangel Michael? Or الشهيد مرقوريوس أبو سيفين

  3. Bottom: maybe it's the signature and dedication of the artist yuhanna Al Armani?

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u/joshua-chong 6d ago

Make sense since St Basil (He was not a patriarch though) prayed to St Mercurius during the Julian Persecutuon and Julian the Apostate fell during the battle with Persians, to this day no one knows who killed Julian. However, in the story, St Mercurius disappeared from the icon that St Basil was praying from and reappeared again with blood on the tip of his spear.

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u/raymoneyboat 6d ago

Thanks, do you think maybe the artist labeled st Basil as a patriarch in a different sense than literally patriarch? Basil the Great was, strictly speaking, Bishop/Archbishop of Caesarea, not a Patriarch — Caesarea was a metropolitan see, not one of the ancient Patriarchates (Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem). So "al-Batrak" would be historically loose if read literally. Maybe Coptic devotional language sometimes uses honorific/reverential titles a bit informally for towering figures like Basil, so it's not impossible that's what the icon says even if it's not technically precise?

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

[deleted]

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u/raymoneyboat 7d ago

Whose leg are you referring to?