السيرة
Joseph Abu Daqn al-Manufi was one of the great archons of the Copts in the seventeenth century.
He composed a book in Arabic on "The True History of the Copts of Egypt, Libya, Nubia, and Abyssinia," which is held at the University of Oxford. It was translated into Latin in 1675, into English in 1693, and was printed in Holland in 1740 together with annotations by the orientalist John Nicholas... Unfortunately, it has not yet been published in its original language (Arabic) among the Copts to this day.
In this book he set forth the following:
He explained in it the spiritual and social condition of the Copts, their customs, and their religious rites in that era.
He devoted a special chapter to the defense of the Orthodox doctrine of the Copts, and compared their condition with that of our Catholic brethren with courtesy and propriety, without disparagement.
The Copts won the trust of the Muslims and the rulers through their honesty, love, and service, so that the latter felt secure regarding themselves, their children, and their wealth, and formed friendships with the rulers.
He compared the monks of Egypt, in their austerity and the precision of their spiritual disciplines, with the European monks.
He made clear that the young Copts, though less learned than the young Franks, were more ascetic, and that they also possessed skill in the crafting of jewelry, in industries and the various trades, and in architecture, astronomy, and arithmetic.
The Copts' concern for educating their children in the private schools attached to the churches, as well as their concern for visiting the Holy Land—enduring the hardships of travel and the payment of two taxes, one upon traveling and the other upon entering the Holy City