 At the turn of the eighth century, Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan decreed that Arabic replace Koine Greek and Coptic as the sole administrative language.Literary Coptic gradually declined, and within a few hundred years, Egyptian bishop Severus Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ found it necessary to write his "History of the Patriarchs" in Arabic.However, ecclesiastically the language retained an important position, and many hagiographic texts were also composed during this period.