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Четыре смерти святого Георгия
The present article is based on two Arab Orthodox versions of the life of St. George: the shorter one, found in a copy dated from the late 18th century AD and kept in the collection of the Academia Romana in Bucharest (B.A.R. Ms. Orientale 365, fol. 217v.7–228r.8) and the larger one, discovered in a manuscript of the National Library of Russia, which goes back to the mid-19th century AD (Arab. n. s. 91, fol. 58r, col. 1.1 – 70v, col. 2.8). The author succeeded in establishing that the roots of those two versions, the Coptic recension of that saint’s life as well as of the Arab Islamic legend on him are to be looked for in the Greek hagiographic tradition. All of them belong to the apocryphal group of variants of that tale, in which the motive of four deaths befell to the great martyr by God’s will is inherent. The text of the shorter Arab Orthodox version prepared for publication with its translation into Russian is examined in detail: as a result some peculiarities of its language and spelling are marked out. The occurrence of the rare Quranic term djibilla in that version permitted to clarify its interpretation, at least that which was accepted among Arabs Christians.