(CE:1092b-1093a)
FARSHUT, large town situated on the left bank of the Nile after it resumes its course from south to north, having flowed contrary to its custom from east to west between Qina and Hiw. Farshut, written with the feminine article (s) in the Coptic texts, is said to have come from the language of the New Kingdom and to be a borrowing from Hebrew, meaning the lake (Vycichl, 1983, p. 31; Cerny, 1976, p. 343).
This town is famous in Coptic and Copto-Arabic literature as the birthplace in the fifth or sixth century of Saint ABRAHAM. After having been archimandrite of Pbow/Faw and having been driven out by the police of the emperor Justinian (527-565) because of his anti-Chalcedonian opinions, he took refuge at Suhaj in the monastery of Shenute (DAYR ANBA SHINUDAH). He then founded two monasteries near Farshut, one for women near the town, according to a miracle related in the Coptic text of his Life, and the other for men in the hajir, the stony area between the mountains and the cultivated valley. This monastery of men is called Jadda or Hadda by the recension of the SYNAXARION of the Copts from Upper Egypt.
A stone STELA relates the restoration of the monastery of Abraham in 698. But W. E. Crum thinks there is nothing to allow us to identify the monastery of Anba Abraham the anchorite on this stela with the monastery founded at Farshut by Saint Abraham. According to the same author, the monastery of Abraham in the Life of Pisentius is without doubt that of PHOIBAMMON at Dayr al-Bahri, the superior of which, named Abraham, was a contemporary of Pisentius.
No excavation appears to have been carried out in this region to rediscover the ruins of this monastery.
RENÉ-GEORGES COQUIN
MAURICE MARTIN, S. J.
