The Precious Jewel concerning the Sciences of the Church

al-Jawhara al-Nafīsa fī ʿUlūm al-Kanīsa · Yuhanna ibn Abi Zakariyya ibn Sabbaʿ, 13th century (CCE dates his activity c. 1300) · 13th century · treatise · HOLLIS:99156572870203941

Coptic · domain: copto-arabic · researched 2026-11-13

partial / older only. An English translation exists but is partial or older than the critical edition. The gap is a modern, complete translation from the original. A rendering of a daughter version does not count here: it is recorded on the dossier of the text it actually translates.

Why this is in the register

Only its liturgical/Eucharistic section is in English: Arsenius Mikhail (ed./trans.), Guides to the Eucharist in Medieval Egypt (Fordham UP, 2022) translates excerpts of Ibn Sabbaʿ's Jawhara alongside Ibn Kabar and Gabriel V; the HOLLIS record carries the contents note 'Container of (expression): Ibn Sabbaʿ ... Jawharah al-nafīsah ... English. (Mikhail). 2022': https://hollis.harvard.edu/discovery/search?query=any,contains,Guides%20to%20the%20Eucharist%20in%20Medieval%20Egypt&tab=Everything&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&vid=01HVD_INST:HVD2&offset=0 . HOLLIS query 'Jawharah al-nafisah Ibn Sabba' returns the Arabic editions (Cairo 1966, 2001) and that English volume only: https://hollis.harvard.edu/discovery/search?query=any,contains,Jawharah%20al-nafisah%20Ibn%20Sabba&tab=Everything&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&vid=01HVD_INST:HVD2&offset=0 . The work's own Coptic Encyclopedia entry (CE, 'Ibn Sibaʿ, Yuhanna Ibn Abi Zakariyya') surveys its 100+ chapters but records no translation: https://ccdl.claremont.edu/digital/collection/cce/id/1017 .

A large encyclopedic treatment of church sciences (scripture, doctrine, liturgy, canon law, history) that the CCE describes as marking the transition into the decline of Copto-Arabic writing; only its Eucharistic commentary has been Englished, from a 1966 Cairo edition.

Existing translations recorded

Edition / series
Guides to the Eucharist in Medieval Egypt: Three Arabic Commentaries on the Coptic Liturgy (excerpts from the Jawhara) · Arsenius Mikhail · 2022

Electronic text

No open electronic text was verified for this work. The Greek/Coptic/Geʿez may exist only in a print or subscription edition (Migne, CSCO, TLG, CMCL).

Scanned witnesses

Scan search: open scan — 2 candidate(s). Two independent witnesses: the Cairo 1966 Arabic edition scanned on IA (page images good, OCR effectively absent - a re-OCR with tesseract -l ara at 300 dpi is the obvious next step, and the 1966 print is the same edition Mikhail's 2022 excerpts translate) and the 146-leaf Beirut manuscript. The 1966 scan is a 2026 upload of an in-copyright edition, so treat the file as discovery-only.

Scan / witness	Format	Pages	Rights	OCR	Evidence
al-Jawhara al-nafisa fi 'ulum al-kanisa (Cairo: Franciscan Centre of Christian… internet-archive · 20260913_20260913_2224	pdf	404	unknown	poor	HTTP 200 on the item; file list has a 14.1 MB 'Text PDF', a 128 MB _jp2.zip, and a 13,168 B _djvu.txt. Scandata leafCount 404 (also _hocr_pageindex.json.gz = 404 pages). Middle page image https://archive.org/download/20…
al-Jawharah al-nafisah fi 'ulum al-kanisah (manuscript copy) hmml · USJ 00582 / MS 582 (object 504974)	iiif	146	restricted	none	Object JSON https://www.vhmml.org/readingRoom/object/504974 = 200: MS 582, USJ 00582, Universite Saint-Joseph, Beirut, 146 leaves, contents 'al-Jawharah al-nafisah fi 'ulum al-kanisah'; uniform title in the metadata dum…

Harvard Hollis

Hollis query: Yuhanna ibn Abi Zakariyya ibn Sabbaʿ 13th century — 0 record(s). No catalogue record was retrieved.

Sources checked

Cite: Tergwame, “The Precious Jewel concerning the Sciences of the Church” (coptic gap dossier), 2026. https://naxiai.com/christian/gaps/copto-arabic-ibn-sabba-jawhara-al-nafisa