Page 88 - Arabiab Studies (IV)

78 Arabian Studies IV
The section ends with the statement: ‘And this triumphant
Patriarkc not long since was alive, and in perfect health, which
God continue long time.’ This was evidently Joachim I whose
dates are given by Chainc, relying on Gutschmid, as 1561 -64(?).6
These are the earliest and latest years in which he is mentioned as
Patriarch, each time in a letter of the Oecumenical Patriarch of
Constantinople, Joasaph. In 1561 Joachim was visited by the
German pilgrim Count Albrecht von Lowenstein. His narrative
was included by Sigmund Feyrabend in his collection Reyszbuch
desz heyligen Lands, das ist Ein grundtlichc beschreibung allcr und
jeder JVfeer und Bilgerfahrtcn zum heyligen Lande (1584). Count
Albrecht’s story is on ff. 188v.-212v. and is entitled ‘Beschreibung
der Wallfahrt zum H. Grab, Pilgerfahrt gen Jerusalem, Alkayr, in
Egypten, und auff den Berg Synai’. He met Joachim twice, on 28
October and 10 November, and says of him: ‘Dieser Patriarch war
hundert und zwentzig Jar alt, und noch sehr vermoglich zu
wandem (sic), hat auch in achtzig Jaren kein Fleisch gessen, wie
denn der geistlichen Griechen brauch ist.’ Albrecht’s companion
Jacob Wormser also recorded his experiences which Feyrabend
included,7 and he mentions visits to the Patriarch on 20 October
and 10 November, though he says nothing of his great age. This is
obviously the Patriarch of Hakluyt’s narrative. Unfortunately the
exact date of his death is not known, though it cannot have been
later than October 1574 when there is a reference to Patriarch
Sylvester.8 The latter must have become Patriarch before the
accession of Murad III, whose father and predecessor Selim II died
at Edime on the night of 12/13 December 1574; Murad arrived in
Constantinople on 21 December. No doubt the death of the
Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria was less widely and less
promptly reported than the death and accession of an Ottoman
Sultan. In any event our narrative cannot have been written before
1575 and, because of the reference to Joachim as having been alive
and well ‘not long since’, was probably written not long afterwards.
There is one other indication of its provenance. When Levi della
Vida was cataloguing the Arabic MSS in the Vatican Library he
discovered on the fly-leaves of a copy of part of the Qur’an a series
of European numerals arranged in groups. They proved to be a
simple substitution cipher and the enciphered language to be
Portuguese. He describes the document as ‘a short but substantial
report on a jour aey from Cairo to Mecca and Medina and back,
performed by an unnamed traveller between May and September
1565’. He notes that it might well have been written by a
Portuguese prisoner of the Turks, and it was suggested to him by
Father G. Schurhammer that the author could have been one of