LE SYMPOSIUM INTERNATIONAL LE LIVRE. LA ROUMANIE. L ...

When and Where “The Melkite Renaissance” Started?... 479
All accessible information about the life of uwakim in hamatura can
be found in colophon of his abovementioned Tipikon. he wrote:
… We arrived to the monastery in the year 7097 from our farther Adam,
and discovered that the monastic community suffered from lack of space.
And me, the humble one, have got used to what kind of a monastic
solitude, which we had in the Mar Saba monastery. And I founded a
new cell by curving a cave… from the left side of the church’s doors.
And our lord helped us in this case and facilitated the curving. I have
worked hard and we finished it with God’s assistance and we constructed
for it a door and a window from the side of the river. the cave was
named ‘the cell of the metropolitan of Bethlehem’. the brother priest
Ibrahim and the abbot uwakim, head of the monastery, helped us. And
me, the humble one, went away to Jerusalem in the year 7100 which
corresponds with the year 1000 of hijra. … And everybody who will
recall us will be recalled by the Merciful God, amen. 26
At the end of the manuscript there is one more, besides the Tipikon, text
of uwakim. It is a description of Constantinople, combined from different
texts of medieval authors. uwakim wrote: “By the name of the Farther, the
Son and the holy Spirit, the Single God. here is a description of the city
rumiya and of its peculiarities and of everything what is in it. It is a true
tradition, which we received from the ancient [authors], who had known
this city”. It is worth to note that uwakim, who visited Istanbul twice, did
not try to present his own impressions and reminiscences, but borrowed
information from Byzantine authors. Such a tradition of compilations
was widely spread in the Arabic geographical literature. the metropolitan
started from a description of urban fortifications. however, only a little
part of the text survived. last pages of the manuscript were lost. 27 We can
not know how large it was and what else was written in the description.
nevertheless the similarity between the composition of uwakim and
historical and geographical compilations of the mid 17th century written by
Antiochean patriarch Macarius is obvious. Macarius had the same traveling
experience as uwakim and, as uwakim again, he realized a necessity of
enlightenment of the Christian Arab community.
So, the energetic nature of the Bethlehem metropolitan found a way
for a self-realization even in the small lebanese monastery. reasons of
the returning of uwakim to Jerusalem are so obscure that I prefer not to
comment them. We can only date it by combination of 7100 year from
26 Ibid. № 14.
27 Ibid.