DAYR AL-MAGHTIS or Dabra Metmaq. Al-MAQRIZI indicated that this
monastery stood "beside the saline marshes, near the Lake of al-
Burullus . . . and in the neighborhood is the salt-marsh from
which the Rashidic [Rosetta] salt is obtained" (1845, pp. 44-45
[text], 108-109 [trans.]; 1853, Vol. 2, p. 508). He later
indicated that DAYR AL-‘ASKAR is one day's march from Dayr al-
Maghtis, but al-‘Askar was quite near present-day Bilqas, in the
northeast of the province of Gharbiyyah. This would locate Dayr
al-Maghtis to the north of Bilqas in the neighborhood of Abu
Madi, on the shores of the Lake of al-Burullus. This monastery
played an important part in the medieval period of the Coptic
church. The Ethiopian SYNAXARION, in its second recension at the
end of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth
century, for the 24 Genbot/24 Bashans account of the Holy
Family's FLIGHT INTO EGYPT, identifies the place where Jesus
left his footprint on a stone (Bi Kha Isus, or Jesus' heel, in
the Coptic Synaxarion) with Dab