Okay, wow, I found a place where the #medieval #Syriac author Ishaq #Shbadnaya misinterpreted the dictionary of Bar Bahlul.

Shbadnaya uses the term Peutah (ܦܘܛܗ), which he glosses as "Matthew the Evangelist." The relationship between the two was opaque even after I looked up the entry in Bar Bahlul's dictionary (pictured).

In the 1860s Robert Payne-Smith published an early Syriac lexicon, based in part on Bar Bahlul's dictionary. Payne-Smith helpfully identified Greek words for as many of Bar Bahlul's entries as he could. Payne-Smith's entry is pictured as well.

So Bar Bahlul included the Greek word πότε in his dictionary, defined correctly as "when?" But Shbadnaya incorrectly interpreted the question "when?" as the name Matthew (one letter off in #Syriac, the exact same letters in #Arabic), and specified that he meant Matthew the Evangelist...

A misunderstanding over five hundred years ago.

Text corpus search makes identifying medieval quotations a whole lot easier. When I started the edition I'm currently working on, I would have had to read every source quoted (there are dozens) to find what might be referred to. Now I can do a text search and get most of them.
#medieval #Syriac #DH

@philipforness
I think we're still recruiting scholars to build up the scholarly discussion here. In the meantime, I suggest following hashtags so that if someone joins and starts using that hashtag, you'll see it. So you can follow hashtags like #LateAntiquity or #Syriac or #EasternChristianity or #Byzantine or whatever.

There's no #Syriac grammar textbook on the market that can prepare you to read the Syro-Malabar scripts, which makes it somewhat ironic that this particular #manuscript is a Syriac grammar (ܟܬܒܐ ܕܓܪܡܛܝܩܝ ܕܠܫܢܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ).

A cool #syriac #manuscript find from yesterday: an exchange of letters between the Church of the East Catholicos Sabrisho V (ibn al-Masihi or bar Masihi) and his Syriac Orthodox Patriarch contemporary, Ignatius III David. This is from APSTCH VADA 00017: https://w3id.org/vhmml/readingRoom/view/539570

How important was Rome to Christians in the late #medieval #MiddleEast ?

The fifteenth-century #Syriac author Ishaq Shbadnaya mentions Rome when he quotes an earlier author listing the five patriarchates:

ܒܪܗ̄ܘܿܡܹܐ ܗܵܟܹܝܠ ܪܹܫ ܟܲܪ̈ܟܹܐ. ܕܐܸܣܦܵܢܝܼܵܐ ܣܵܡ̣ܘ ܟܘܼܪܣܝܵܐ.
ܕܡܸܢܹܗ ܪܵܕ̣ܝܵܐ ܟܵܗܢܘܼܬ̣ܵܐ. ܠܐܘܼܚܕܵܢܵܐ ܕܪܗ̄ܘܿܡܵܢܝܼܵܐ.
"In Rome, therefore, the chief of the cities of Spain they placed a throne
From which flows the priesthood for the territory of Romania."

Of course "Romania" referred to all of Roman territory, but Rome as the capital of Hispania?! Clearly these authors were not familiar with Western European geography...

So the thing about #translating #medieval texts is that you can get it 95% done very quickly, 99% polished after years of effort, and 100% done only by abandoning your goals of a clear and idiomatic rendering readily intelligible to a non-specialist...

Incidentally, I need to figure out how to render several #Syriac words/phrases into English:
* ܥܝܪ̈ܐ ("watchers" or angels)
* ܪܡܙܐ (providence, divine will, signal from God)
* ܡܕܒܪܢܘܬܐ (leadership, government, providence, salvation economy)
* ܓܢܣܐ ("race" or "kind" or "species," often with "our" to denote humanity)

#MiddleEast

More fun with deciphering Indian place names in #Syriac #colophons, this time with a side of Syriac #grammar

This #manuscript, APSTCH PIRA 00035, was copied by ܡܫܡܫܢܐ ܙܟܪܝܐ (Deacon Zechariah) who was a monk in ܕܝܪܝܐ ܕܡܪܝ ܬܐܘܡܐ ܫܠܝܚܐ ܩܕܝܫܐ ܕܒܐܛܝܟܠ: the monastery of St. Thomas the Apostle ... dbeʾṭíkal.

I transliterated the place name because that's the interesting part. Almost always, when you see the two letters ܕ and ܒ in the context of naming where something is, first instinct is to read them both as proclitics: ܕ as the relative pronoun "which" and ܒ as the preposition "in." So: the monastery "which [is] in"... and here you would expect the name of a village/area.

So, I start googling variations of the spelling "etikal", and end up with very little results. So, instead I do a google maps search for "St. Thomas monastery" or "Dayara Mar Thomas" just to see if anything pops up. One result catches my attention.

Today's (somewhat remarkable) #Syriac #manuscript discovery begins in a somewhat unassuming way: an early 20th century manuscript bound (as you can see) in the flyleaves / advertisements of an English publisher.

In a fifteenth-century #Syriac poem by Ishaq #Shbadnaya, in a section naming many musical instruments, there is the unusual word ܛܪܝܢܐܘܣ (TRYN'WS, with uncertain vowels), which is glossed in Syriac as "It is made with 24 strings," and in #Arabic with الشبقان (apparently nonsense).

What's going on here?

As usual, I turned to the tenth-century dictionary of Bar Bahlul, where I found an entry with some of the exact same words: "that which is made with 24 strings, and in Arabic is it named الشلياق." This makes clear again that Bar Bahlul is Shbadnaya's source, but the Arabic ya' was misread as ba' (dropping a dot) and the end of the word got mangled.

What is al-Shalyaq? It is the Arabic name of the constellation Lyra, "the lyre."

The only remaining question is where ܛܪܝܢܐܘܣ came from. I would guess a #Greek prefix tri-, but there doesn't seem to be a Greek word "trinaos." I'm open to suggestions!

Today's interesting #Syriac #manuscript find: a question and answer dialogue style text between a Melkite and a Syriac Orthodox. It seems primarily to be a christological work, focusing on the crucifixion. It even has an interesting little christological diagram (third image). The manuscript is APSTCH PIRA 00011: https://w3id.org/vhmml/readingRoom/view/539456

Simply transliterating the #Syriac spelling (which is itself a transliteration of a #Malayalam place name), we would get something like "Kutkarkari". So, my first step was to start googling all variations of that spelling that I could (changing the vowels, changing /t/ to /th/ but also trying /t/->/d/ or /dh/ because I've seen that in Malayalam/Syriac transliteration too, etc.).

Ultimately, I had to give up this google search because none of my spelling variations were turning up any likely places. So, I emailed Istvan Perzcel, an expert in Syriac Indian Christianity, and he kindly responded and said that this likely corresponds to the village of Kottarakkara in Kerala.

A cool feature of some #Syriac #liturgical #manuscripts: at the point in the Anaphora (or 'mass') where they celebrate the Eucharist, certain words are given calligraphic emphasis. The below example is from APSTCH AYMA 00013, which can be viewed here: https://w3id.org/vhmml/readingRoom/view/539054

For those of you who followed me on that other site, you may know that I love to post #ManuscriptBirds images. Well, a few weeks ago, I found perhaps my favorite bird decoration ever.

The manuscript is CPB 00492. In addition to the striking colors, I love how the tops of the tall letters (taw and alef, and even the mims) are interwoven and turn into little baby bird heads waiting to be fed by the larger birds.
#syriac #manuscripts

In general, I have found the #Syriac collections from India to be a rich source of both grammatical and lexical #manuscripts. It's clear that the Syriac heritage communities in India have maintained a strong desire to keep the Syriac language alive.

Time for some more #syriac #manuscripts fun: This manuscript (APSTCH AYMA 00009) appears to be a resource for someone learning Syriac. But it's not a grammar or a dictionary; rather, it's basically an opposing meanings phrasebook. For example, the first line has two phrases: ܬܐ ܠܗܪܟܐ and ܙܠ ܠܬܡܢ: "come here" and "go there." And the second line has "go up" and "come down." So on and so forth.

I'm editing a late medieval #Syriac text (by Ishaq Shbadnaya), and when I first transcribed an 18th C manuscript, I indicated the existence of a marginal note but made no attempt to transcribe it (underlined in red in image).

The manuscript is damaged, missing a portion of the page, and it got wet at some point, and some of the ink has faded, and the originally red ink does not show up the best in the grayscale image I have. There's also another note which has been deleted right next to it.

By not transcribing it immediately, I could see if other manuscripts of the same text have the note. That strategy worked for most other marginalia with this text, but in this case only one other manuscript has anything, and it is just two words (ܥܢ̈ܐ ܙܥܘܪܬܐ), which is clearly not long enough to account for the marginal note in this manuscript.

This is where editing involves lots of squinting and documenting uncertainty, but I think I solved the mystery.
1/x

Somehow, the Orontes River in Syria made it into a 10th C Syriac dictionary as a bidirectional river:
"Orontes and Dorontes: A river in the Book of Paradise, and about this river it is transmitted that on one of its banks the waters flow upward and on the other downward, and as the pilots seek they go with the water wherever they choose" (Bar Bahlul, Duval ed. I:94)

The same gloss occurs later under the headings ܕܘܕܝܛܝܣ and ܕܘܪܝܛܝܣ (Dodites and Dorites), indicating some uncertainty about the second word. Fair enough: what is the "Dorontes"? (Have we discovered the bidirectional flow of spiced tortilla chips?)
#Syriac #medieval #MiddleEast

I duly entered my information in my institutional "Experts Directory."

My (American) institution's list of scholarly fields was imported unchanged from one developed for Australia and New Zealand. This led to the (really cool!) option for picking a number of #Maori fields (which, regrettably, I do not study), and over half a dozen subfields of "Medical biochemistry" (less regrettably), but no scholarly field name including "Medieval" (nor "Mediaeval") in any discipline...

One could study "Islamic Studies" or "Middle Eastern History" or "Christian Studies"(!), but no #Byzantine Studies, #Syriac Studies, or #Armenology.

Yet another reminder that controlled vocabularies are not neutral.
#medieval #MiddleEast

It feels like a major breakthrough when one finally understands a line of #medieval #poetry.

I'm editing a #Syriac poem by Isaac #Shbadnaya and one line was stumping me. It addresses opponents of Jesus, referring to his resurrection:
ܐܢ ܨܒܝܬܘܢ ܘܐܠܐ ܩܡ ܠܗ ܘܐܢܬܘܢ ܡܟܐܪܝܢ

I initially translated this "If you want, and if he did not arise, and you are reproached."
But that doesn't make much sense, because there is an "if" clause, an "and if" clause, and then an "and," with no apparent apodosis ("then" clause).

So I thought I'd have to set it down and come back to it.

And then it occurred to me: ܘܐܠܐ could be "and if not," and the apodosis could begin with ܩܡ ܠܗ. Indeed, ܐܢ... ܘܐܢ means "whether... or..." So this line means "Whether you want it or not, he arose and you are reproached." That makes perfect sense in the context (which is similarly aggressive).