SCOT AT THE COURT OF SICILY 35 



ip was a certain Said Ibn Butrus ibn Mansur, a 

 ^4laronite priest of Lebanon * in the diocese of 

 Tripolis, a prisoner for twelve years in the place 

 where the royal standards were kept (? at Cairo), 

 who was released from that confinement in the 

 time of al Malik an Nazir. The other — a mere 

 fragment — contains a notice of the priest Yahya, 

 or Yuhanna, ibn Butrus, who died in the year 

 1217 A.D. It is not unlikely that some confusion 

 might arise between the names Patrick and Peter, 

 often used interchangeably. ' Filius Patricii ' then 

 may have been no assumed designation, but the 

 equivalent of Ibn Butrus, the real name of this priest 

 of Tripoli, who was perhaps the translator of the 

 Sir7^-el-asrar at the close of the twelfth century. 



Those chapters of the Sirr-el-asrar which relate /Ic^ri 

 to regimen were translated into Latin by Johannes ^n/^ 

 Hispalensis. Jourdain identifies this author with 

 John Avendeath, who worked for the Archbishop 

 of Toledo between the years 1130 and 1150.^ But 

 Foerster shows that caution is needed here.^ The 

 Latin version was dedicated to Tarasia, Queen of 

 Spain. A queen of this name certainly lived con- 

 temporaneously with John Avendeath, but she 

 was Queen of Portugal. Another Tarasia, however, 

 was Queen of Leon from 1176 to 1180. We may 

 observe that this latter epoch agrees well enough 

 with the lifetime of Ibn Butrus, who died in 1217, 

 and we find trace of another Johannes Hispanus, 

 who was a monk of Mount Tabor in 1175. Such 

 a man, who from his situation in Syria could 

 scarcely have been ignorant of Arabic, and whose 

 nationality agrees so well with a dedication to 



' Becker ches, pp. 117, 118. ^ Qp. cit. pp. 26, 27. 



