The Safawi Collection

Composed in thirteenth-century Coptic Egypt, al-Majmūʿ al-Ṣafawī is one of the most substantial medieval Coptic Arabic collections of church and civil law.

Al-Ṣafī ibn al-ʿAssāl brings together rules concerning clergy, worship, fasting, property, contracts, marriage, inheritance, testimony, judgment and discipline. The result is not a modern code. It is a window into the intellectual, ecclesiastical and social world of medieval Egyptian Christians.

This volume presents a complete new English translation of the fifty-one-chapter form printed in Cairo in 1908. The translation preserves the work’s structure and legal force while using clear present-day English. A historical introduction explains al-Ṣafī, the Banū al-ʿAssāl family, the collection’s sources and the limits of the surviving textual evidence.

The edition includes restored printed rule numbers and source signs, 197 explanatory footnotes, a reader’s guide, Scripture index, glossary, source concordance and bibliography. It is prepared for historical, scholarly and ecclesiastical study, not as current Coptic Orthodox canon law, civil law, or legal, matrimonial, inheritance or pastoral advice.

Generative artificial intelligence assisted the preparation of this accessible English edition from the complete fifty-one-chapter Arabic text printed in Cairo in 1908. The edition is a historical witness, not current canon or civil law, and does not replace the primary text, printed editions or surviving manuscripts. Scholars should verify quotations, textual readings and academic conclusions against those sources.