NICAEA, ARABIC CANONS OF, name applied to several series of
canons that are missing in the Greek or Latin canonical
collections. They appear to have been reworked from the Syriac,
at least in part. In the latter language the texts attributed to
the Council of NICAEA in 325 are said to have come from the pen
of the bishop Maruta of Maipherkat (in Arabic Mayyafaraqin,
today a town in Turkey). At all events, who the translator, or
rather the adapter, was is not known, nor at what date the
canons were adopted by the Copts. It will be noted—this is not a
proof that they were previously unknown—that in his Nomocanon
the twelfth-century patriarch GABRIEL II IBN TURAYK knew only
the twenty canons counted in the Greek collections, while
MIKHA’IL, bishop of Damietta, cited two series of canons of
Nicaea, one of twenty canons and one of eighty-four. Given that
the grouping of these texts diverges greatly in the manuscripts,
it has seemed better to follow the exposition given by Abu al-
Barakat IBN KABAR in his religious