(CE:70a-70b)
AGATHUN IBN FASIH AL-TURSINI, a monk of the monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai, if the nisbah (place of origin) refers to him. It is possible that he was the son of a monk of Sinai, if the nisbah refers to his father. He belonged to the Melchite community of Egypt.
In 1242 he copied in Cairo a Psalter, which he called zabur, which also contains the apocryphal Psalm 151 (Sinai Arabic 55, fols. 1-172). Folios 173-233 were added and bound with Agathun's manuscript in the sixteenth century, as is confirmed by the note by Yuwakim al- Karaki on the death of the Melchite patriarch of Alexandria, GREGORY V, on 6 April 1503 (cf. fol. 173r).
Agathun ibn Fasih al-Tursini may be the same Agathun who added observations to folios 1v and 176v of a thirteenth-century liturgical manuscript at Sinai (Arabic 226). On this occasion he signed himself as Ghathun, monk at the Monastery of Sinai. Since these two manuscripts have not been microfilmed, it is not possible to compare the handwriting.
KHALIL SAMIR, S.J.
